Talia Kindstep - Coast-Walking Healer of the Tideline

Introduction

Ask along the Kindlestrand shallows where the nearest healer is, and someone will eventually point south down the black sand and say she'll be back this way in a week or two, maybe less if the tides are kind. Talia Kindstep doesn't keep a hut, a shrine, or a name on any door. She keeps a route: Kindlestrand Shore to Emberstrand Cove and back again, the whole warm length of the tideline, carrying whoever can't walk it themselves. She isn't a priestess and she'll tell you so before you finish asking. She's just the one person on this coast who's walked every mile of it enough times to know exactly where it's safe to be hurt.

Profile

Name: Talia Kindstep
Race: Tabaxi
Gender: Female
Alignment: Neutral Good
Role/Class: Coast-Walking Healer of the Kindlestrand-Emberstrand Tideline
Challenge Rating: 1

"I can't promise the sand will heal you. I can promise I know which stretches of it won't kill you first."

Appearance: Talia is lean and sun-scoured, her short fur a banded orange-and-ash that fades pale at the muzzle the way old embers fade at the edges. She walks barefoot more often than not, her claws left untrimmed for the grip they give on wet volcanic rock, and she carries herself with the loose, unhurried gait of someone who has never once been in a rush to arrive anywhere on a schedule that wasn't a patient's. She wears a sun-bleached wrap of undyed cloth over a satchel harness slung across both shoulders, and a wide woven hat, more sunshade than fashion, hangs down her back on a cord when she isn't wearing it. A long, salt-silvered walking staff, taller than she is, travels with her everywhere; it has worn a smooth, pale groove into her right palm.