The Bureaucrat's Guide to Heroism: Audio Book
Hannah Keaveney for Arba - Cast
Arbalest Whiskers (She goes by 'Arba') — Female Nekosapien, late teens (adult)
Role: Supporting — recurring
Arba is a waitress at the Sleeping Cat Café, a Nekosapien (cat-person) with all the grace, curiosity, and quiet warmth that implies. She's young, friendly, and genuinely enthusiastic about her work without being irritatingly so. There's a subtle feline quality to how she engages with people — attentive when interested, diplomatically distant when not. She's not a comic character but she exists in a comic world and carries herself with an easy, natural charm.
Voice: Light, warm, and bright with a gentle quality. Young but not childish. Think Sophia Lillis's natural openness and quiet intelligence.
Note to performers: Arba is a Nekosapien — a cat-person — but this should not inform the vocal performance beyond a natural, feline-adjacent grace in delivery. Purring, hissing, or exaggerated cat-like vocal affectations are not appropriate for this role. Think person first, species second.
- english
- warm
- light
- Sophia Lillis
- Gentle
- bright
- female teen
- female young adult
[Friendly, chatty] My parents met at a weapons exhibition. Father was demonstrating historical siege weapons, Mother was selling refreshments. The arbalest misfired, knocked over her drink cart, and the rest is history. Please, just call me Arba.
"Legend has it that he was originally a Nekosapien who wanted to be more cat-like and paid an alchemist to create a potion that would enhance his feline features. The alchemist, being slightly mad, produced a concoction that…did absolutely nothing. He's just a cat. Our very ordinary, very sleepy family cat."
[slightly apologetic] "I'm sorry, we don't have any at the moment. We haven't had a fresh supply for a little whilst now. There's some sort of problem with our suppliers. I don't know the details. Just that the haberdasheries we trade with haven't produced much tea recently. Manager's been quite frustrated about it."
