Mai Yamato

Faerie, reincarnated into a human body. Compulsive liar. Shapeshifter. Kittypaws.

Mai Yamato in cat form

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Mai Yamato in cat form (image credit: drawn by Herm Baskerville)

  • Origin: Terra
  • Home: ?
  • Race: fae (appears human)
  • Gender: female
Mai Yamato is an American of Japanese descent, about ten years old, who has run away from home.

Except she isn't.

Mai isn't just fey: she's a literal faerie spirit incarnated into a human body. Most humans see her as one of them, but her own kind recognize her as a faerie with some human and animal characteristics. In Mai's case, her animal type is housecat. She can change shapes between her human self and a calico kitten, but neither of these is her true form.

Mai is forever separated from humanity, marked as Other by her striking amber eyes and her near-total inability to tell the truth about anything. She can never fit in.

But damn it, she's going to try.— Mai's Dreamwidth profile

Mai Yamato looks like a Japanese-American girl, a feline "furry", or a half-grown calico cat. She's really a pooka from the old World of Darkness. One day she wandered into the near edges of the Dreaming and got lost, eventually finding herself at the Cross'd Roads. Her author associates her with a lilac hue for unknowable reasons.

Appearance

Human seeming

Asian female, age 10. Black hair, amber eyes. Last seen wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, green skirt and black Mary Janes. Blood type B-positive.

Female, approximately ten years old, of Japanese ancestry. Shoulder-length super-straight black hair, amber eyes (sometimes mislabeled as "light brown"). Petite and scrawny.

Last seen wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, green skirt and black Mary Janes.

Blood type B-positive.

Feline

Mai can take the form of a six-month-old calico kitten. Just like her human shape, the kitten is female, half-grown, and amber-eyed.

Personality

"Vermin? Are you calling me a small fur-covered thief of food? I am NOT! I would never take food that wasn't outright offered to me, I mean, really!"— lies

As with all pooka, Mai is a compulsive liar. She's aware that she isn't telling the truth, but she can't help herself. Her personal brand of untruth makes heavy use of the Question Game ("Oh, is that what I said? Why would I have said that?" etc.) and sarcasm ("Looks perfectly safe!.... You go first").

While Mai loves being fae, her lies tend to get her into trouble with people who just don't understand that she's not trying to be mean. She enjoys a good chance to let loose with a rioting tall tale. She tends to remain quiet (or in feline form) around unknown people or those she fears might get irritated with her. She's a bit young to really understand how mundane beings operate.

As Mai gets a little older, she spends more and more time as a cat in order to avoid the social consequences of the lies she's forced to tell. The long-term effects of this tendency remain unclear.

Abilities

Aside from shapeshifting, she's also amazing with computers. (This has never once come up in-story, alas.) She has some basic sleight-of-hand and minor fae magic too, but that comes up even less than the computer use.

She has poked a dragon in the eye and lived to tell the tale. (Alas, forgot which Pro story that was, but it gets a brief narrative callback here.)

Stories

Reality

Changeling: The Dreaming is Copyright White Wolf Publishing, Inc.

(Mai originated as a C:tD pooka, but has deviated wildly from that canon ever since her creation. Mai belongs to Ree. No profit is being made from Mai or Changeling so I don't *think* WW could sue, and anyway, credit to WW for creating the game that brought her into being.)

At some point, a rules change at Profusion meant that Mai could no longer be played there. She has since become exclusive to journal roleplay.

External links

Category: tabletop