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Sagittary Man (Left) and Woman (Right)
The general definition of
"sagittary" is "archer," or sometimes
"centaur," as centaurs were traditionally expert
bowmen. In heraldry, it also refers to a creature with the
torso, arms, and head of a man joined to the body of a lion.
From this obscure reference, the Skyhaven sagittary was born.
Origins
Sagittaries once existed on the
main continent, but were wiped out ages ago in some unknown cataclysm.
They survive today on islands off the coast of Eoterra, and in pockets on
the unexplored land of Eoterra itself. There are unsubstantiated reports of rare subspecies of non-leonine sagittaries surviving deep in the heart of Eoterra.
Habitat
Sagittaries prefer
warmer climates, such as savannahs and tropical forests, though some are
known to live on highland plateaus. Their primary source of meat is
large herd animals, so where there is a sufficient food source sagittaries tend to follow. They have little tolerance for freezing temperatures
and no love of wetlands or swimming, though sagittaries on islands and in
coastal regions sometimes fish in the shallows.
Feeding
As one might guess, sagittaries are primarily carnivorous, though they do
eat some fruits, grains, and vegetables. They usually hunt in gender-specific
groups, either all men or all women, as it is considered bad luck for males
and females to hunt together. The men usually use bows and arrows or
hurling spears to take down large animals, while the women hunt smaller
animals with their spears, knives, or
clubs in direct confrontation. Sagittaries prefer taking the life of
one large animal to feed their group (known often as a pride) rather than
many small animals, but they will hunt smaller animals if they need
to. It is universally forbidden to eat the "unclean" meat of a scavenger or a
predator, and anyone who kills a big cat, especially a lion, is considered
little better than a murderer.
Life Cycle
Cubs are born in spring or summer in litters of one to three, spending their first six or seven years
with their mothers at camp. When the signs are right (roughly when
they are eight or nine years old, but sometimes as early as seven, or as
late as twelve), a ceremony is conducted in which the growing cubs are
chased out of the camp at night by adults wearing spirit-masks, shaking
rattles and drums and crying in the ancient tongues. The boy-cubs are
chased one way, the girl-cubs another. At a certain point, the chief man
and chief woman are waiting; they ritually turn back the pursuing
"demons," then take the cubs into training for upwards of two
weeks. At this time, boys learn the secret ways of the male society,
and girls the secret ways of the female society. At a preordained
time, the pride welcomes the new men and women back into camp with a feast
and ceremony, burning their childhood clothes in a symbolic ritual.
Within the next five years, sagittaries are expected to marry or be taken on
as apprentice to a healer, spirit doctor, sign reader, or herd master.
This is also the time when they leave their birth pride to find or found a
new one. Sagittaries live for roughly two hundred years under ideal
conditions.
Culture
They live
in prides, groups of upwards of ten core families and
their offspring. Like the animals they hunt, they are nomadic
wanderers, setting up camp in one area for a few months at most before
moving on. The women build shelters of woven reeds, sticks, and leaves
as the area provides, but only use them for food storage or to protect the
ill; like centaurs, sagittaries prefer open air to even the most
primitive of homes. Once the shelter is built, the men head out for
days or weeks at a time, following the herd animals. Not only do the sagittaries
hunt these beasts, but they act as overseers, protecting them
from dangers and other predators (excepting big cats) and looking out for
their well-being. They also, by extension, keep an eye on the land,
for an ill land produces ill animals, and ill animals lead to ill sagittaries. The women defend the cubs, including the old, the infirm,
and the boy-cubs who are
too young to go with their fathers and uncles, also hunting smaller animals
to supplement the pride food stocks. The women and men have their own
religious ceremonies and traditions, to a certain extent living separate
lives. Men learn the ways of the trail, of tracking animals and
appeasing the spirits of the slain. Women learn the ways of the
hearth, of chasing off illness demons and reading omens. Neither is
considered lesser for not knowing the others' ways, as both are necessary
for survival.
Sagittaries cut off from the natural world die very
quickly, "withering away" as one observer wrote, in a case where a
young sagittary man was accused of killing a foreigner's livestock and
locked up in a neighbor's cellar. His death nearly sparked open
warfare with local sagittary prides, but the matter was resolved peacably
when authorities took the unprecedented step of evicting the settlers, who
had come there against international law and therefore were technically
trespassers. (It could be a coincidence, but the foreigner whose accusation
led to the man's death "disappeared" before he could board the
boat for home; his neighbors reported a "hideous" shriek coming
from his home the night before he vanished, and a roar "like a ghostly
lion the size of a house." When questioned, the local prides merely
shrugged and seemed to consider such a fate commonplace for a murderer,
especially one who had "lost his lion soul," as they refer to
two-legged humanoids.) With the rediscovery of Eoterra and its surrounding
islands, Tiriallean authorites are doing their best to control contact with
and settlements on this new land, for the protection of the sagittaries and
other natives as well as for the well-being of foreigners.
Temperament
Some consider the sagittary brutish or savage, but in truth they simply have
little love for the duplicities and trappings of what most species call
"civilization." They respect the earth they walk on, the air they
breathe, the animals they eat, and the waters they drink. They appease
their ancestors, worship their gods, and heal their souls with music, stories, and rituals.
Little else is worthy of their concern. For a long time, they lived in
isolation like the rest of Eoterra, and their first exposure to modern-day
Tirialleans - the same sort of brash adventurers and ruthless treasure hunters who
inadvertently reawakened the eodracs with their greed and violence - left them with a less than favorable
impression. Those who think to "educate" sagittaries in modern ways soon give up, though some
sagittaries learn
enough to serve as emmisaries and ambassadors. It is through their
efforts that the sagittaries agreed to send representatives to Skyhaven,
believing that perhaps other worlds are in need of sagittary wisdom and
protection.
Magical Traits
Like many so-called
"primitive" people, sagittary lore and magic runs deep and
powerful. The men are perhaps the best sentient trackers known,
finding prey as much through metaphysical as physical means. A
sagittary man needs only one hair from an animal to follow it for
miles. The women
may not have the herbcraft of centaurs, but their healers have an excellent
track record, relying more on their understanding of the spirits associated
with plants, animals, illness, and health rather than the physical aspects
of such things. Sagittary women read fortunes and dreams via cast
bones and other peculiar methods, with unerringly accurate results. Sagittaries
have secret ways of monitoring and
maintaining the health of the land and animals they oversee, and not even
the scholars baffled by their methods and cultural silence on such matters
can doubt their effectiveness.
Other Notes
Sagittaries owe their appearance, according to
legend, to having both a "man soul" (or "woman soul"),
which gives them higher reason and connects them to the gods and ancestors, and a
"lion soul," which gives them spiritual wisdom and connects them
to the animal world. By extension, they consider all big cats
kin, and sometimes even hunt side by side with them. One of the
biggest puzzles to them is how or why humanoid beings gave up or lost
their "animal souls." For this reason, the best
ambassadors to the sagitarries have traditionally been dragons, griffins
or others who do not resemble humans.
Outsiders,
especially humanoid outsiders, like to lump centaurs and sagittaries into
the same category, but both species resent being classified together.
Centaurs consider sagitarries crude and unrefined, blind to the ways of the
Star Maker and intolerably reliant on hunting and meat. Sagitarries
think of centaurs as arrogant and warlike, "acting against their animal
soul," and historically hunted them as they believed was their right,
since lions naturally hunt equines. Some wonder if the "mysterious cataclysm" that drove
mainland sagittaries to extinction wasn't in some way perpetuated by
centaurs. Today, since they don't share natural habitat and therefore
pose no direct threat to one another's well being, both species are making
efforts to learn mutual respect.
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