Creation

The Taka were created by Kelly Thompson and Meredith McClaren in Black Cloak 1.

Major Story Arcs

General History

Taka are small magic fuzzy animals that live in the city of Kiros. They are thought to be extinct, with the last of them publicly seen in approximately twenty years. Now they are only seen as stuffed animal toys sold at coffee shops.

It is unknown why most people thought they went extinct, since the real reason is a secret.

The Taka Arc

The magic that powers much of Kiros has been waning over time, seemingly since the last set of great wars. This magic helps keep up some of its most vulnerable areas, such as the Trees and Narrows, and the people that live there.

Queen Taline and her loyal and ruthless magician Lysanthir decide the only solution is to breed the Taka and absorb their magic. They breed thousands of Taka in small cages underneath the Castle and create a machine that absorbs and collects the magic. Once a Taka’s magic has been absorbed, it turns into a black, hairless creature. They let it go into the underground caverns of the city. The burnt-out Taka tend to slowly find their way back to the surface, where the people, not recognizing them, call them Wraiths instead.

The Black Cloak Phaedra Essex had one of the last Taka, named Mister Starlight, when she lived in the royal castle as a child. She gave him to Freyal III of Sidra when she left the palace.

Taka, in the form of Wraiths, are spotted several times through the first arc of Black Cloak, getting underfoot of the characters without them realizing who or what they are. Master magician Ividor finds a natural Taka that escaped one day, and can tell something is going on. He mentions it to Phinneas II of Thane, a powerful Dracona. Then they tell Phaedra, who investigates and eventually destroys the machine during a fight. She feels that even if this causes harm, it is better than basing the city’s life on the destruction of innocents, even if those innocents are not fully sentient.

The Taka swarm out of their imprisonment and move towards the surface. The city starts to quickly feel the lack of their magic, with floods and fires sweeping through the marginalized sections of Kiros.

The Dragyern Arc

The return of the Taka is welcomed by the people of the city. Black Cloak Alden, who is a Bellweather, a class of beings unusually sensitive to people’s emotions, is constantly surrounded by them, with the creatures perching on his head, sitting on his lap, and so on.

Valorie, a magician, notes around this time that the Taka are constantly giving off magic, which she is able to use to recharge her own magical abilities without hurting the Taka. She notes that if the Queen had been less greedy, she could have done the same, absorbing enough to keep the city going at a subsistence level without causing harm to the Taka.

When Phaedra and her allies try to stop Elea Veris from using the also-thought-extinct, but much larger, creatures known as Dragyern from killing people, the Taka are there to watch. The heroes free the Dragyern from Elea’s prisoners, who have been magically controlling them. Once the Dragyern are free, the Taka sniff around them. Alden senses that the Taka feel a similarity between themselves and the Dragyern—presumably that both are semi-sentient and full of magic.