The Dort Explorer's Society lists Jacob Quillian under "active field researchers," which is their polite way of acknowledging that he goes places they wouldn't and comes back with information they want. Jacob does not attend Explorer's Society dinners. He is always somewhere that is not the dinner.

Jacob is a cat-folk male, tall for his kind, with sleek black fur covered in faint dark gray stripes that are easy to miss until the light catches them. His eyes are a sharp amber, constantly scanning — he has the quality of someone who looks at a room the way you'd look at a map, noting exits, angles, and things out of place. Scars on his left arm and across his back mark past encounters with the kind of terrain and wildlife that appears in his books under "notable hazards." He wears a deep green cloak that does useful things in foliage. Around his neck, a necklace of animal teeth — one from each significant challenge he has documented, added slowly, only when something actually cost him something.

He is curious in the deliberate way, not the reactive way. He does not rush toward interesting things; he approaches them methodically, having already considered three ways the approach might go wrong. He can spend days tracking a single creature to understand its range and behavior, or the same amount of time finding the safest path through terrain that looks impassable. He finds this satisfying in a way he does not try to articulate.

Around people he is generally reserved, though he becomes animated when the subject is somewhere he has been or something he has found. He has a deep respect for the natural world that expresses itself less as sentiment and more as precision — he goes out of his way to leave the places he studies as he found them. His partnership with Liora is the most important professional and personal relationship of his adult life, something he would describe as mutual respect and shared goals, and which anyone who has watched them work together would describe as considerably more than that.

He has a small notebook he sketches in constantly — landscapes, creature profiles, routes and terrain features. When alone he hums a family lullaby without noticing he is doing it. He always checks wind direction and sky conditions, in every environment, at all times, as automatically as breathing.

He releases books periodically documenting his and Liora's discoveries, the most recent being Quillian's Guide to Creatures.

Race: Cat-folk | Class: Ranger | Level: 10

HP: 85 | AC: 16 (Studded leather) | Speed: 30 ft.

Skills: Stealth +8, Survival +7, Nature +5, Perception +7

Abilities: Feline Agility, Cat's Claws (climb speed 20 ft.), Natural Explorer (forests), Favored Enemy (Beasts), Primeval Awareness, Land's Stride, Hide in Plain Sight

Equipment: Longbow (+8 to hit, 1d8+4 piercing), Shortsword (+8 to hit, 1d6+4 piercing), Studded Leather, Explorer's Pack, Notebook and Charcoal