Maned

The Maned are a proud, leonine race native to the grasslands and mountain valleys of central Kathar, where endless savannahs roll into thorn-choked hills and dry river gullies. Their territory has never been a kingdom in the strict sense, too loose, too unmilitarized, too prone to fracturing into prides that gather when the rains are good and scatter when they are not. What they have built instead is memory and culture, a legacy of song, fire, and contest. Once rulers of fertile valleys and feared champions of arenas that stretched across Kathar, their numbers dwindled drastically during The Fall, near doubly-so as The Great Schism's hundred years of wrath that the Devils' invasion during the Fall had created. Yet their presence, though far rarer, is no less striking. The sight of their manes, their painted armor, and the deep-chested roar that can rattle bones across a battlefield remains enough to command awe. Their homeland, like all of Kathar, is a place half-wild and half-lawless. Maned prides persist in this middle country because no one has seen fit to drive them out. To the south, the Tuskites bleed themselves dry in endless wars and have no appetite for northern conquest. To the west, Canid tribes find them more useful as allies in hunting parties than enemies across their borders. Surrounding them in the remaining borderlands by an overwhelming majority, the Orcish clans keep them as spectacle, for the Maned arenas are too profitable to burn and too entertaining to abandon. Thus the Maned survive not through fortification or conquest, but because their enemies prefer them left alone, profitable, picturesque, and just dangerous enough to hire when needed.   But if the savannahs gave them a homeland, the pits gave them a vice. Unlike many enslaved peoples forced into bloodsport, the Maned have often entered willingly. For them, combat in the eyes of thousands is not degradation but temptation, their pride and culture transmuting spectacle into sacrament. From the roaring amphitheatres of Opulence to Wardsea’s Saltblood Arena, from Bordersword’s brutal Arena of Blades to Twinpeak’s infamous Red Rings, they have become the ultimate draw, the warrior’s warrior, born for sand, steel, and the gaze of strangers. Where others see bondage, the Maned see legacy: scars traded for applause, names remembered longer for a single victory than a dozen quiet years in the grasslands. This duality defines them. At rest, they are regal, even relaxed, their movements slow, deliberate, unhurried. But in battle they are thunder, unmatched in speed and ferocity, able to face two or three trained humans with instinct alone. Their bodies remember Kathar’s wide skies, lean, swift, adapted to stalk and strike. Their spirits remember the stories told in firelight, of ancestors who roared stars into place, of prides who fought the first devils shoulder to shoulder, of champions whose glory was measured not in gold but in the awe of their people. And yet, for all that memory and dignity, their greatest weakness remains applause. A Maned may sleep through the storm, but gods help you if they wake in the middle of it, or worse, if they hear the crowd calling their name.