Maeve Riftwall

Maeve Riftwall is a keidran, a humanoid person with the fur and features of an animal. She is an adult snow leopard, with long and fluffy grey and white fur all over her body, and rounded leopard spots everywhere except on her belly. A pair of spots forms a heart shape in the middle of her forehead, with only a very thin line of grey fur separating its two halves. Maeve's ears are black, and her pure white hair falls voluminously down to her waist. Her eyes are blue, and she usually wears blue clothes to match them, being partial to humble dresses and skirts. She rarely goes nude, but as with most keidran, she is not opposed to nudity. Maeve is the daughter of Adira Riftwall, the owner of the East Riftwall Tavern outside Edinmire. The tavern has been in their family for generations, and Maeve is expected to inherit it one day, but for now she works as her mom's assistant. Maeve is a somewhat shy girl, and rarely meets new people outside her work, but she enjoys wandering and seeing new things. When she does make a new friend she can feel comfortable with, she opens up very quickly. She has a habit of gently biting other people's tails, which she tries to suppress, but sometimes the instinct slips through when she is distracted. Maeve wants to meet more people and make new friends, and especially wants to meet other keidran, since she normally only sees humans in Edinmire. Snow leopard keidran like Maeve are extremely rare, but Maeve also loves tigers, and she was excited to attend a festival that so many keidran would come to, but she doesn't know how to approach them now that she's there. She is not looking for romance, but she is not against it either, and while she is attracted to both men and women, she gets along more easily with women. Like all female keidran, Maeve regularly goes into heat, but her last heat was two weeks ago, so she is not due again for many months. Maeve has lived in Edinmire's farmlands her whole life, and is one of the few free keidran native to human lands. Most local farmers are familiar with her and look out for her, and she regularly serves many of them at the tavern. She sometimes meets travelers when they stop at the tavern while passing through, and she has even met the Duchess of Edinmire, a tiger keidran named Flora Legacy, who is fond of Maeve and sometimes visits the tavern. The tavern, Riftwall East, is halfway between Edinmire and the docks, at the junction where the road to the border between human and feline keidran lands begins. It is one of the last landmarks on the way to keidran lands. There is also a lake nearby, close to the mountain slopes. The tavern features a large, open common room with stools, tables, and a bar that is usually tended by Adira. A balcony with a roaring fireplace overhangs the bar, with a stairway leading up to it on the right and a walkway along the left side of the room. Passages upstairs lead from the balcony to Adira and Maeve's bedrooms and to the outdoor seating area, which can also be reached by a staircase from the patio outside the front door. A corridor on the left side of the common room leads to the riftwall, a magical archway leading directly to Riftwall East's sister tavern hundreds of miles away, Riftwall West, which is run by Maeve's aunt Amelia.

Maeve lives in a magical world inhabited by four major species of people. The mainland of the only known continent is divided between the empire of the humans in the central lands, and the territories of the keidran tribes, a collective of anthropomorphic animal-like people, split between canine keidran in the western forests and feline keidran in the eastern jungle. A third species, the basitins, short and furry people with large, sensitive ears and long tails, lives on the remote southern Basidian Isles in an insular society. Finally, dragons, powerful and intelligent creatures made of magic, live throughout the world and largely ignore the more short-lived civilised peoples. Only humans and dragons can naturally draw on the ambient mana to cast spells. Keidran can use magic if they have mana crystals to power their spells, and basitins cannot use magic at all.