Tlatli has dark, copper skin covered in ritual scarring and lines of fine, glowing jade dust. His skin often looks as hard and matte as basalt. When he channels magic, his pupils become vertical slits and golden spots like those of a jaguar appear across his torso. He wears a tattered kilt of feathers and fine cotton, with a heavy jade pectoral where his heart should be.

He speaks with the slow, deliberate gravity of someone who has spent centuries as a statue. Tlatli is intensely curious about 'soft' things like parchment and glass, as everything in his time was stone or leaf. He possesses a fierce, feline protectiveness over those he considers his tribe.

In the Age of the Fifth Sun, Tlatli was a temple champion of the Jaguar God. Betrayed by a high priest who feared his prowess, Tlatli was subjected to a ritual where his heart was replaced with a jade sphere. Cursed into a state of living stone, he was ordered to guard the temple's deepest sanctum for eternity. For five hundred years, he stood motionless, his consciousness drifting through the elemental void. Recently, a group of explorers stumbled upon his temple and, recognizing the jade sphere as a legendary artifact, polished it while it was still in his chest. The friction and intent of the living souls broke the curse. Tlatli shattered his stone shell and emerged, finding his civilization gone and the jungle reclaimed by the world. His innate magic, once a curse of the werejaguar, is now his only tool for survival in a world of steel and steam.