Cloud-Pouncer is a tall, powerfully built male tabaxi with cloud-gray fur marked by darker silver stripes across his shoulders, forearms, and tail. His pale blue eyes are sharp and restless, and one ear bears a small brass ring taken from a fallen comrade. He wears battered scale armor beneath a wolf-gray cloak, carries a massive greataxe across his back, and keeps four javelins bundled at his side. His movements alternate between lazy feline stillness and sudden explosive violence.

Cloud-Pouncer is inquisitive, blunt, and easily distracted by unusual sounds, smells, or displays of skill. He treats danger as both a serious threat and an irresistible invitation. Though he often appears aloof, he is fiercely attentive to the people he considers part of his pride and expresses affection through practical acts, such as sharpening a companion's weapon or silently taking the watch.

Cloud-Pouncer was born in a caravan that followed high mountain roads and traded between isolated settlements. From an early age, he developed the tabaxi habit of pursuing anything that caught his interest, especially the strange thunder of siege engines and the rhythmic movement of marching soldiers. His curiosity eventually led him to enlist with a frontier regiment, where his climbing skill, keen senses, and terrifying bursts of speed made him an exceptional scout and raider. During a disastrous campaign against a fortified hobgoblin warband, Cloud-Pouncer served as the standard-bearer for a company that was ordered to hold a mountain pass. The order was impossible, but the soldiers held anyway, buying time for refugees to escape. Cloud-Pouncer survived by leaping from the battlements onto a supply cart below, but nearly everyone he considered family was lost. He still wears the regiment's insignia and carries a broken piece of its banner. Now he wanders as an adventurer, seeking dangerous roads, worthy companions, and some answer to whether courage is obedience, survival, or simply refusing to run when everyone else does.