the_genderman

This is Jaguar's Ears (Ears for short), my Tabaxi wizard who will be replacing Augh in our campaign. When you choose a background, you get to choose some traits and motivations and flaws, and whatnot. But if you choose Tabaxi for your character race, you also get to pick Tabaxi-specific traits (or let the dice pick them). Such as "You are a font of random trivia from the lore and stories you have discovered." Which, ok, is the entire reason I chose Tabaxi in the first place for my (first) backup character. Heck yes special interest cat-person. More details about him after my other rambles.

And yes, Tabaxi do appear to be inspired by Mesoamerican cultures. There may be D&D published adventures set in the Tabaxi homeland, but I don't know enough about D&D as a huge entity to say so for certain. From what I have read, usually, in the Forgotten Realms, if you encounter a Tabaxi, they're currently on their knowledge-gathering travels (some Tabaxi are hit by a sort of wanderlust which drives them to travel and learn as many things as they can, then return to their homeland and share their knowledge with the rest of their communities).

The way I see it, Tabaxi are not replacing Mesoamerican humans on whatever planet the Forgotten Realms are found on, they're just another culture who lives alongside them. And the Mesoamerican elves and dwarves, etc. So in the D&D version of Tenochtitlan, you'd have a human city, but since it's such a large, cosmopolitan city, you would also have non-human communities and neighborhoods within the city. Some elves would be only visitors, returning to their own cities after visiting, but others might stick around because it's a hub of culture and commerce. And then there would be the Tabaxi communities, always changing as new Tabaxi come to the big human city to learn human lore and arcana and see how the humans run their wizarding schools and such (and how different human cities compare to each other), and the Tabaxi who have been there for a while, move on to visit new places.

I gave Ears a headband with an Ocelated Turkey feather on it instead of a traditional European wizard's hat because one: it's kind of awkward to draw a wizard hat on a cat, and two: he probably wouldn't wear one of them. He may be traveling through the Forgotten Realms, might wear their clothing because it's more suited to their cooler climate, but he certainly wouldn't give up his culture's wizarding accessories for someone else's. Sure, he'd learn about them, learn about why wizards in these lands like pointy hats, but he probably wouldn't take to wearing one himself. As a wizard, he'd probably be allowed to wear feathers that are usually reserved only for the nobility, but not in such great quantities. So he's got his single turkey feather.

(And I get to play a cat.)