#cantelopes

This species was originally based off of the egyptian typhonic beast, but I quickly branched off from that. See, in this first drawing, I ended up giving it cervid-like forelimbs instead of paws, which gave me the idea to make them into carnivorous deer. I also gave them super long claws, originally for traction in sand, but later I decided they live in a big muddy floodplain actually.

So here's take two, now truly a deer. At this point I started calling them Cantalopes (canine-antelopes), because I'm hilarious :) . In universe this is usually shortened to Canta, or else they're just called hunter-deer.

So this is basically just an exact replication of a random photo of a deer I found, except I added horns and changed the ears, and the lips are far wider, to allow for properly ripping into flesh (as opposed to grazing). They look so wise and peaceful right?

I felt it was important to show the other side. :)

and now for some full body refs (forgot the horns :/)

As I said before, these guys live on a muddy floodplain. More specifically they're endemic to a valley in this one mountain range that literally turns into a lake every spring. The ground is extremely loose slippery mud, which their long claws give them a really good grip in. The weird sphere things on their heels keep them from sinking any further than their claws somehow. It's a thing.

This is why they're endemic though, they can't really travel or survive anywhere the ground isn't made of pudding, so they're trapped.

Of course, this valley happens to be a really convenient pass, complete with a river, which means there is eventually a human city built there, which expands, and puts concrete everywhere, and eventually, the cantas have nowhere to go every spring when the valley floods :/

There is a desperate conservation movement that leads to the creation of these massive pallets of land built to float on the flood, (which come to be known as Mud-Palace), but a lot of the canta's prey dies anyway, leading them to rely more and more on catching fish and amphibians, as well as on the generosity of city-dwellers.

Perhaps I shouldn't have waited so long to mention that the hunter-deer are sapient.

Since their species is so confined, they do start with a fairly monolithic culture. Their first interactions with humans are a bit tense, but things quickly settle into trade: jewelry for food. Cantas, lacking opposable thumbs, can't really do crafts, but boy do they find the things humans make fascinating. On the other hand, these humans come from the arid desert(ish) beyond the mountains, and have no idea how to hunt or gather here.

Of course this only lasts until the humans settle in, but by that point Cantas are fairly integrated, and they transition pretty neatly into the entertainment sector as dancers. Human high society starts to look down on them as a species, but they run their own troupes, and they're good at it (both dancing and management), so as things naturally grow in scale, a class of rich business-people cantas develops, presiding not only over dance, but most of entertainment. They become known as Booters, due to the stuffed boots they wear over their claws to allow them to exist comfortably in the city. (Though eventually it becomes popular to get completely declawed. In fact there's two entirely different schools of dance based on that split.)

The cantas that don't make it however, are drowning every year, and then confined to the mud-palace slums. The booters have capital and influence, but that just makes the humans in charge more resistant to helping them out (bitterness) and more able to pretend they don't need it.

The working class humans are generally ignorant for one major reason. Canta biology silences them. They physiologically cannot speak the human language, and their lack of opposable thumbs severely limits their employment options, meaning humans don't have a ton of meaningful interactions with them unless they go out of their way for it. Super high class Booters tend to have hired translators, but they don't interact much with working class humans because they have people for that. Also there's not a ton of them.