Tarzan’s friends…

Disney's Tarzan is not based off a true story- it is based on a series of novels by Edgar Rice Buroughs (specifically the first book, Tarzan of the Apes). In the original novels Tarzan is raised by a fictional species of apes called the mangani, which are like gorillas but have more human-like traits including a limited verbal language. One of my copies of Tarzan actually has a little dictionary for their fictional language!

In the Disney film the species was changed to Gorillas, and I've posted before about how their depiction, while anthropomorphized, is pretty good. Though all species of great apes will adopt offspring they are not necessarily related to, a wild gorilla would likely not adopt a human baby. Humans are pretty unique in that our infants do a lot of noise making, which is not something other species tend to be fans of.

The “Ape-Men” of Central Africa, these are surviving early hominids that survive today only in isolated groups.  Having raised a famous hero (Tarzan), they live on largely protected lands (some of which they do themselves.  Few Mangani travel beyond their forest home but do their best to ‘fit in’ with society when they can.  Mangani have a +5 to Strength, +2 Dexterity, and +3 Constitution. They may raise these attributes to superhuman levels.  They are negatively buoyant, prone to acting out their anger (-1 Antisocial impulse towards violence), have the Partial Biped and Low Intellect drawbacks from Terra Primate, Natural Toughness, and the Wild Card (Survival) at +2.  

A related species, known simply as The Killer Ape, uses a similar quality as its bade, but has more extreme impulses to violence (severe Impulse), a primarily carnivorous diet, a further -1 to Intelligence, with a further +1 to Strength, and more powerful bite attack (2 x Strength).  This is a 10 point quality, but is not recommended for player characters. 

But make great adversaries.