Psionic Cat

These big cats use psionics to hunt but kill with tooth and claw. Two kinds are known, the tagster and the tigone, sharing the same powers. Clairsentience: the science clairvoyance, with radial navigation, poison sense, know direction, danger sense, and all-round vision as devotions. Telepathy: the science domination, with awe, contact, ESP, invincible foes, and life detection as devotions.

A tagster has short yellow-brown fur, a pale belly, sometimes spots, and always some distinctive dark marking on a foot, tail, or elsewhere. It tracks prey psionically but goes quiet near the target to avoid tipping it off, then charges from the flank. It claws with its forepaws (1d3), bites (1d8), and rakes with its hind claws (1d4), then drags the kill somewhere safe to eat.

Tagsters claim territories along desert trade roads and the city-state heartlands. At the yearly mating gathering, rival males often fight to the death, loudly enough to hear for miles; an intruder is killed by both before they resume. Herders sometimes abandon weak or injured animals so the tagster leaves the rest alone, a clear example of the desert world's survival of the strongest.

The tigone is a dark green cat with black or yellow-brown vertical stripes, up to 7 feet long and over 250 pounds. It hunts by radial navigation, starting at the edge of its range and circling inward. It prefers to drop on prey from above, knock it flat, and pin it with its weight while striking with forepaws (1d3), raking with hind claws (1d4), and biting (1d10).

Native to the humid jungle borderlands, tigones also roam a nearby mountain range and attack nearly anything entering their territory. Motionless in brush, one is almost impossible to spot, and it moves quietly anywhere. Heat kills them, so most die in transit to the arenas, but a live one fetches a fine price in a sorcerer tyrant's city. Halflings prize them as hunting partners.