#ranth

Caaraz was a tide-locked, tectonically active planet in the Outer Rim. Its night-side was frozen with glaciers. Its day-side was scorching. In between was a thin, habitable region in which the Ranth race evolved. Both sides of the planet were tectonically active as well, allowing subterranean gases, lava, and steam to escape into the atmosphere. Two moons also provided illumination to the night-side of the planet.

Knowledge of Ranth history as a whole was fragmented and incomplete. However, individual families did maintain detailed histories of their own, with each community and extended family unit possessing its own history. Each individual Ranth community, whether civilized or nomadic, had its own government and culture, with no single authority uniting them.

This changed when the Galactic Empire discovered Caaraz while searching for Rebel bases in the sector. When initial scans indicated the presence of eleton gas on Caaraz, a small Imperial force was sent to seize control. The Empire faced almost no resistance, and soon employed the civilized faction of the Ranth to help build and operate eleton mines near their ice-cavern cities. Civilized Ranth also served as hunters and guards, protecting the mining operations and the local garrison from the natural predators of the world.

The civilized Ranth began to reject their native culture, replacing it with ideas taken from Human and Core Worlds culture. Even their clothing was patterned after off-world styles. Their interest in off-world affairs led them to develop trading relationships with inhabited planets in nearby systems. The cities of Caaraz began to use Imperial technology and restructure their governments with the Imperial bureaucracy as a model. Due to their loyalty, civilized Ranth enjoyed more freedom under Imperial rule than many nonhuman species—though the Imperial Governor's word was, of course, still final.

While initially no resistance was faced from the nomadic Ranth, the gradual dumping of waste from the Imperial mining operations began to damage the planetary environment. This angered the nomads, who began to ambush Imperial patrols and attack Imperial mining stations. These nomads mastered hit-and-fade guerrilla tactics. Finding their snowtroopers unable to defeat the "savages", the Imperials provided weapons to the civilized Ranth, and requested that they hunt down the nomads. This led to a civil war between the civilized and nomadic Ranth. The Rebel Alliance considered intervening by arming the nomads, or by convincing the civilized Ranth to change sides, but it is unclear what actions, if any, they took.

Eventually, the Imperials abandoned Caaraz, leaving their bases and mines for the civilized Ranth. Without Imperial support, these bases became overcrowded and impoverished makeshift cities. The wars between the city-dwellers and the nomadic tribes continued, as the civilized Ranth tried to push the nomads further into the wilderness, and the nomads continued their raids. Even without the destabilizing influence of the Empire, neither side of the war showed any sign of trying to settle the conflict.

While under Imperial rule, some civilized Ranth left their homeworld to work as traders, scouts, bounty hunters, and mercenaries. They were drawn towards planets with cold climates, where they were in great demand as wilderness guides. After the Imperial retreat from Caaraz, many more civilized Ranth left their homeworld. The nomads were rare in the greater galaxy, however, except for escaped Imperial slaves who had been relocated by Imperial forces. During the Imperial occupation, a few nomads were rumored to have escaped Caaraz to contact the Rebel Alliance, or fight the Imperials on other worlds.

When discovered by the Empire, the two Ranth societies had already diverged. Civilized Ranth were working towards an industrialized society with formal governments. Their cities, built in ice caverns on top of drifting glaciers, contained sophisticated architecture. Meanwhile, the nomadic Ranth continued to exist as small groups of hunters, led by the best warrior among them. They had no machines, only muscle-powered devices and riding beasts.

The two Ranth cultures also had different typical temperaments. While many Ranth in either society were short-tempered, nomadic Ranth expressed their anger violently, while civilized Ranth tended towards flamboyant, but harmless displays. Nomads tended to be self-confident, passionate, and determined, while city-dwellers were introspective, with a tendency towards apathy. All Ranth cultures had a strong respect for family ties, and were usually led by the elder members of extended family units.

Caaraz was a tidally locked planet, with one side perpetually facing its sun. The Ranth lived on the frigid night side of Caaraz, which was lit only by Caaraz's twin moons and heated by Caaraz's geological activity. Ranth were highly resistant to cold temperatures, thanks to the insulation of their thick fur. Nomadic Ranth were also particularly skilled at surviving in extremely cold climates.

Ranth possessed long bushy tails, flat muzzles, dark eyes, and short pointed ears which were canine in appearance. As natural hunters, they had sharp claws on their hands, and mouths filled with short sharp teeth. Ranth had to continually forage, hunt, and swim to survive in the harsh environment of their homeworld, and would hunt for food whenever the conditions would allow them to do so. Their keen hearing, extending into ultrasonic ranges, helped them search for prey and avoid larger predators.

A typical Ranth adult stands about 1.65 meters or 5.4 feet tall.

Ranths age at the following stages:

1 - 11 Child

12 - 15 Young Adult

16 - 45 Adult

46 - 65 Middle Age

66 - 84 Old

Examples of Names: Foreez Ch'zori, Eshee Dersat, Evasta Foosher, Feychar Paska, Jaastal Rasheer, Tir'arr Zur.

Languages: Ranth language was the native language of the Ranth species from Caaraz. It was mainly formed by purrs, growls and rude vocalizations.

Ranth had a written form which combined short marks, similar to claw marks, to create the characters.

“Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power, master of shadows and of phantoms, foul in wisdom, cruel in strength, misshaping what he touched, twisting what he ruled, lord of werewolves; his dominion was torment.”

Ranth Degare was never comfortable in cities.

The dribbly, haphazardly placed candles cast a dim orange light onto a claustrophobic room that looked as if it might burst into flames at any time. A desk held up by a pile of codex books and covered in chemical stains and glass distilling apparatus dominated one wall, a bookshelf filled with scrolls, a teapot, and the obligatory yellowed skull filled another. The third wall, across from the door had a bed half covered in pillows and half covered in loose sheets of parchment covered in cramped, spidery writing, arcane sigils and formulae, and filled with strange pictures filling every margin. Sitting atop another pile of dry, flammable looking codex books was a round platter holding a half-eaten meal.

Ranth had appeared in the the room - no, the lair, she decided, when you hole up in your tiny laboratory and come out only when you’re forced, it becomes a lair - she had appeared in the lair quietly and unexpectedly. She had managed to enter the door without a creak, trusting in the the way am active spell put her fur on end to avoid whatever magical traps or alarms the wizard had set before locking himself in his laboratory for what was nearly a week. An old fear rose in her at the sight of so many candles so close to so much dry paper and beakers of strange fluid, but she quieted even her own heartbeat and padded on feline-soft steps to behind her quarry.

Edan’s ears twitched nervously as she approached. She froze. After two and a half long breaths, he turned back to muttering to himself and writing something completely incomprehensible in a combination of two languages and the occult symbols of a third. She ducked smoothly as he crooked a finger and a ink vial flew to him over her head, dripping a single dark blot onto her white hair. He finished a line of text, reached over for another scroll, and she struck.

“Edan.” She took a half step back so that when he turned in a panic, bags under his eyes and glasses askew, he didn’t hit her with the stool he knocked over. Her next move, so perfectly calculated from years of dealing with the wizard (and all wizards are at least a quarter mad), was to grasp his wrists, gently but firmly, in case his exhaustion would slow his rational thoughts. It wouldn’t be good for either of them if he reached for a panic spell before he recognized her.

“Ach, Ranth, you’re here, I thought you were… y’ken, the forest..?” Of course, she underestimated him. How could he not recognize the face, the voice, even the smell of the woman who against all logic and common sense he’d tied himself to? At least, she decided to tell herself it was that and not the fact that he was too tired to stand, much less fling lightning or fire. He rested his head on her shoulder while he processed her sudden return.

“You told me you’d be out of tha city for three days.” How he sounded like a child caught out past curfew.

“It’s been a week, Edan.” She eyed him up and down. Dark shadows were under his eyes and his silvery hair was tangled. She knew he usually kept that in place with the simple spells he used to keep his pince-nez on his nose and his robes unstained and unruffled. His usually narrow face looked more drawn and hollow than usual and he had on a single woolen sock. All in all, it didn’t make her happy.

Ranth curled her arms low around Edan’s waist, pressing her face to his chest so she could hear his quickening heartbeat. He tensed, then relaxed as his natural suspicion gave way. She turned her body, pressing her hips against his, the curve of her ass pressing against him in a way that made him putty in her hands. She ground herself a bit lower, and, once she felt the last bit of resistance leave him, sprung into action. Popping her butt backward, she shifted his weight, from his pelvis, on to hers and lifted him into the air despite her diminutive body. The bony elf rolled over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Surprised, Edan hit the bed face first, forgetting to tuck and roll. For her part, Ranth looked a bit ashamed. Of him. Edan’s elven eyes were sharp enough to pick out even a minor detail in the semigloom of his tiny, poorly lit lair. He noticed that Ranth’s pupils had contracted to tiny slits.

Edan was used to people who were different. After all, he, his mother and his sister were the only elves in his neighborhood when he grew up and nearly a century later he still spent most of his time around people from wildly different countries, cultures, and species. Still he was often forced to remind himself of how little he actually knew his Ranth. Not as well as she knew him, he understood. Sometimes he forgot that she was almost half a cat. Her body tensed in that frozen moment, muscles in her thighs visible with the shorts she wore (for her own pleasure, but she knew he appreciated it.) The thing Edan had forgotten is that cats do two things superlatively, sleep and kill. They were hunting machines for all men and elves wanted to pretend they were lazy and cuddly. It was easy to see a catfolk woman, all muscle and curves and flexible grace and let fetishization blind you to what a woman with quicker reflexes than even an elf can do when provoked. She had him pinned to the messy bed, sharp nails digging into his forearms tight enough to draw blood somewhere in the middle of this epiphany.

“What in the depths of Hel do you think you’ve been doing in this hole of yours?”

He’d been a husband long enough to know the wrong answer: all of them. “Re…search?”

She hissed and seized one of the pillows, setting off a cascade of parchment. She clocked him hard enough to release a feather or two, then shimmied off him, set on getting in a solid glower before she berated him for once again forgetting himself in his magic. Perhaps a less tired Edan could have taken advantage of the slinky way she drew her hips over him to try distracting her from her cold fury. Edan was a thinker and tactician and hardly talented at seduction. With a grimace, he realized he was planning this entire encounter in hindsight. He rubbed bleary eyes and tried to focus.

“So… er… how’s your lion?” He knew she was raising some sort of massive leonine beast when she went on her nature trips. She pillow whacked him again.

“I know you think your job is more important than yourself, and I know you’re working on some big spell for me, and don’t lie about it, but this has to stop.” She stomped a foot and then lunged over to a falling candle to right it. Real fear flashed in her eyes and Edan chewed his lower lip in shame.

“Well, you see…” He flicked a pillow at her face with a foot. She hissed and looked as if she might deck him. So he swung another.

“Ass!” She ducked his swing with another ninety degree bend at the waist and snatched the pillow that had hit her face from the ground. When she righted herself, three pillows spun around Edan, who sat on the bed with his fingers steepled and a sinister grin on his skinny face. To her credit, she was able to twist out of the way of two before the third caught her in the chest. He flicked another at her with a foot and she clawed it in half out of frustration and pounced on him again.

“Amaranth…”

She dragged a claw across his face. “Stop treating yourself like shit. It doesn’t help anyone. Not me, not the city.”

She did it again, harder. Edan then realized he couldn’t smell her, even though she was on top of him.

Edan woke up from a trancelike elven dream. His face hurt. His familiar, a fluffy cat with fur the same color as hers was in the process of clawing him awake.

“You’re having another pathetic memory,” she observed. She shared a concern for him that resembled her namesake, but none of the sweetness his wife had (at times). Still, he supposed his familiar took keeping him from self-destruction as a duty she had inherited from the original Amaranth.

“So what are we doing today?”

Edan glanced around the rented room. It had been run down before he arrived, but he’d left papers and magical instruments around it like the lab of his memories. He busied himself putting the room to rights, and checked a pocket watch, a compass and a mirror, all of which hummed with their own spells.

“She’s not nearby, but I think we can still catch this bounty if we’re hasty.” Edan stowed his last tools away in a secret pocket of his cloak, which was rumpled after having slept in it.

“Work first, desperation later. Get the bounty and don’t worry about finding Ranth.” There was a note of concern in the cat’s voice, incongruently alto for a small animal.

“Ye know I cannae do that. I’ll worry.” Edan scooped her up, tossed a handful of silvers onto a table, and hustled out of the inn.

A nondescript grey cloak slid back to reveal a glimpse of jet-black leather, buckled tightly and oiled to prevent noise. Dexterous hands, with knives strapped to the undersides of the wrists and scars across the back of the knuckles, reached out from under the shroud to clutch a long wooden box. Soft shoes, their soles actually padded with a layer of lamb’s wool, reflexively hopped over a puddle in the worn cobblestones as the man, a professional in every way, ducked quietly into an alleyway. 

“Sir! We need you in the city square, about two minutes ago!”

The door to the café slammed open and  a young, darkskinned man in a beige tabard and ill-fitting chainmail barreled into the room, his momentum carrying him through the door, knocking aside a chair, and skidding into a table. The elf at the table looked up at him, slowly, ignoring the loaf of bread he’d knocked to the floor. Taking his time, he took a last long sip at the teacup in his hand, and set it down. He pulled away from his table, also slowly, stood, and placed a hand on the young guard’s shoulder, every motion calculated for grace and calm.

“Calm down and explain yourself, lad.” Edan Paisean had been a captain in the city constabulary for ten years now. He had less time in the force than some of the human commanders, but as one of the only elves, and one of the few mages, he commanded a certain respect and presence from the other lawmen. As he gained rank, he learned to use this to his advantage – Edan had never been charismatic, but he could keep his head in a crisis most of the time and feigned competence was always a wizard’s best friend.

The guardsman caught his breath. “Sir, there’s no time. The culprit demanded you by name. There’ll be blood in the streets if you aren’t there soon.”

Edan upended the teacup into his mouth and buckled on his rapier. He checked the holster mounted in with the slender blade’s sheath – two wands rested there for easy access. He removed his cloak from the back of his chair – the mantled cloak with the badge of his office pinned to it. As a lawmage, he carried the shield crest of the city in miniature, on the flowing cloak that marked him as a spellcaster. That finished, he crooked a finger towards a rack near the door, and a dark-stained wooden staff, tipped with a blue-green crystal, flew over to his hand. It was short, as wizard’s staves went, and bore nicks and scratches from back alley-brawls. He rapped it into the ground like a cane and tucked it through his belt, satisfied.

“Sir…!” The guardsman was fidgeting like a young boy who needed to relieve his bladder. But a wizard was never late. Edan reached out to him and with his other hand, folded space over into a rippling blue curtain. He took a step forward –

“Ah good, you’re here. I needed you to see this,” the rogue said, his voice holding a false warmth.

The crowd had formed a half-circle around the pair standing in front of the fountain that marked the center of town. Edan recognized the man who stood there, his shortsword to his captive’s throat, taunting him. Clothed in dark leather armor and rich velvets, he was a criminal prince – a mercenary and killer with a feared reputation, though he mostly operated across the northern border. Edan had interrogated men claiming a connection to the bandit lord, but they’d given away little. Rumors. Auren had slit a hundred throats. He had a harem of women in his desert mansion. He had poisoned the leader of the thieves’ guild. Nothing he could prove, and nothing worth leaving the city that had become his permanent home to find out. Up until now, Edan had no interest in the man. He was in another country and he was another man's problem. But now that he stood there, with his blade shimmering at the throat of his wife, Amaranth, he was the second-most important person in the world.

Ranth met his gaze, a look of sorrowful resignation on her face. Her normally slitted pupils dilated – with fear or adrenaline. She stood nearly on tiptoe, a small, slender woman with a big bush of nearly white hair, scarred brown skin revealed by the gaps in the leather and fur that clothed her, looking tough and vulnerable and streetwise and innocent all at once. She stretched up, the taller man’s knife making her twist a bit in his grasp, her tail thrashing as it was wont to do when something had her agitated. Edan’s teeth chattered with a sudden rush of the chills. The staff in his hand slid, nearly falling from his grasp, and he stood in silence as Auren cracked a slow grin and Ranth apologized to him with her eyes, not saying a word.

Edan took a slow step forward, taking long meditative breaths and counting to himself quietly. In, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Out, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Falling back on training from over a century ago, when his mother first started to guide his mage talents. Gathering his strength and will as a wizard and a soldier, so when he spoke he wouldn’t crack with fear or weep with weakness. Clapping the end of his staff down, he made his voice cold.

“I am willing tae negotiate. What are your demands?” Edan felt a tremble in his stomach, but the only indicator on his face was a soft pop as the spells that kept his usually immaculate bangs in place fizzled. Usually, the concentration to keep his hair and glasses in place was effortless as long as he was awake, but here, at the gates of his own personal hell? Edan focused on another of his magical abilities. To his magical Sight, Ranth held her usual glow – an unusual green aura tinged with her emotions – after ten years, he could almost read her – she didn’t look scared, just sad. He resolved to reward her bravery by rescuing her. The blade at her throat, on the other hand, burned with powerful enchantments. He suspected they might slice though any wards he could cast. He’d just have to hope he could convince the man to make a deal…

“What do I want? I’ve got what I wanted. And now you’re here. Sorry mate, but this is just business…” With a sudden jerk, he ripped the blade across Ranth’s throat and elegant like a dancer spun away from her. Her blood shimmered, Edan’s magical and mundane sights overlapping as life energy flowed from her like the spray from a waterfall. He squeezed his eyes shut, both to clear the afterimages and to deny what he’d seen. He opened them, and Auren stood, impassively, as Ranth fell, cut like the flower of her namesake. Before he knew he’d spoken the words, Edan crooked his fingers in claws and filled his lungs with wrath. Auren gave him almost a quizzical look, as if he couldn’t understand the fury that had torn his heart and replaced it with fire. Fire that streamed out as Edan’s spell gave him the dragon’s breath. The rogue leaped and rolled sideways, dodging the stream of flame, running quicker even than the reflexive twitch of the wizard’s neck. The crowd, already panicked by a murder in their presence, broke into open stampede when spellfire began to scorch the marble of the city center black and boil the water of the fountain into steam.  Edan turned, livid and unthinking. Auren was seemingly unharmed, a quarter-circle away from his previous position.

“Edan, you should take better care of yourself. I want you to go running. It’ll be good for you.”

Ranth had said that, long ago. The sickly and unatheletic wizard he’d been for most of his first century wasn’t gone; Edan was still pale, skinny and underweight. But a certain confidence in his body made him carry a sword, engage criminals and cutthroats, and even take risks like this.

Edan charged at the man, unable to focus his mind enough to bind him with a spell. Had he been thinking, he’d have rooted him with conjured ropes, frozen him in ice, even slowed time itself to trap an escaping criminal in place. Any other crime, any other victim, but a small, cold, whispering part of Edan knew it would fail. Knew somehow that the only thing that could be right would be to kill that man, now, inescapably, or risk missing vengeance forever. Not expecting the wizard to tackle him, Auren went down and was treated to the sight of the slender silverhaired elf, violet eyes blazing almost as hot as the smoke pouring from his mouth and nose. Edan took a deep breath, a roar building as he prepared to burn the rogue’s head to ashes.

And then, the flame guttered out. Suddenly, he was less vengeful dragon and more stab victim. He coughed a bit of smoke and blood, looking down quizzically at Auren’s blade in his gut. The bandit rolled the lawmage off him and stood. Muttered something Edan couldn’t hear. Walked through a group of onlookers who parted like minnows before a shark. Cold washed over Edan.

You’re going into shock, he thought. He looked over at the people. Some had finally ran over to him. One placed a hand on his wound and pressed down, in what he could assume was a medical sort of fashion, and then a chill that had nothing to do with bloodloss hit him.

Ranth. I went for the killer… instead of her. I can’t see her… Ranth? Where…?

A potion forced between his lips, and the world dissolved into bubbles of red pain.

He was in a bed, somewhere, bandaged. His glasses were missing. His hair was a mess. There was a glass of water, beside the bed. He grabbed it, the muscles of his stomach aching as he stretched. Half-chanting, half growling the words, he called a scrying image into the water. Nothing, just a ring discarded in the red sands… Why couldn’t he see her? Why hadn't he said anything to her? Why did he let that man...