Katagaria Lore

[Vixaria]

OVERVIEW

Katagaria are the race of shapeshifters in Deviant.

Katagaria: Have animal hearts, which means their base form is animal. Born as animals, they can only become humans at puberty when their magical powers are "unlocked." The Katagaria are very mistrustful of humans because they believe humans are often deceptive. Katagaria follows the law of kill or be killed, preferring to attack when they feel threatened as opposed to waiting to be attacked themselves. The Katagaria only kill to defend themselves, their pack, or their territory.

Whenever a Were-Hunter is injured, knocked out, sleeping, or dead, it turns into its base form.

ORIGIN

There was a King of Arcadia named Lycaon, who had a very pretty Apollite wife named Mysene. She bore him two lovely sons. The king didn't know about the curse until he watched Mysene die a very painful death on her twenty-seventh birthday. He didn't want the same fate to befall his two sons, so he used his magic and messed around with DNA of animals and Apollites. He picked only the strongest and most feared, creating the first Katagaria.

His experiments succeeded in circumventing the curse. Instead of living only twenty-seven years, they now lived for close to a thousand. Choosing the most powerful of the animals on which he had experimented, King Lycaon blended his sons with a dragon and a wolf.

For defying the will of a god, the Fates demanded that Lycaon kill his sons as punishment. When he refused, the Fates cursed the new race saying,
“They will spend eternity hating and fighting until the day when the last of them breathes no more.”
Whenever Lycaon blended an Apollite with an animal, he ended up with two new separate beings: one with an animal's heart and one with a human's. Thus the Katagaria came to be. Those directly descended from King Lycaon took the surname of Kattalakis.

PATRIA

There are twelve different groups of Were-Hunters. One representative from each Katagari Patria sits on the Omegrion.

Patria - Animal
Balios - Jaguar
Drakos - Dragon
Gerakian - Hawk, Falcon, Eagle
Helikias - Cheetah
Litarian - Lion
Lykos - Wolf
Niphetos Pardalia - Snow Leopard
Panthiras - Panther
Pardalia - Leopard
Tigarian - Tiger
Tsakalis - Jackal
Ursulan - Bear

MATING

Mating is not a joke for the Katagaria. Nor is it something to be taken lightly. Having a Mate is more than about having sex. Those who have found their Mates have them for life. They are their soulmates that the Fates have chosen. Unmated Katagaria can have sex with anyone they want, but once they find their mate they can only be with that mate.

For some species, mating involves a hunt or chase. The female must have reached maturity and be ready to receive the male. For some, it is just the divining of the proper pheromones. Then all of this animal instinct has to be weighed against the two Katagaria as humans, with all the pain and emotional baggage that goes with that. Once the soul mates have discovered each other, beautiful Greek scroll-markings burn themselves into the palms of the male and female after they have sex. The markings mirror each other exactly, showing parental lineage and the ancient cipher can only be read by another. It looks a bit like a delicately detailed henna tattoo.

The couples that have such marks must be careful as each will carry the scent of his or her mate. This complication has put a Katagaria in mortal danger more than once. Once an enemy has pegged them, they will be tracked by his/her scent. A Katagaria’s scent is the one thing he cannot change or hide with magic. Once the mating marks appear, the couple has three weeks in which to consummate the mating–an act over which the female has total control. She is the one who must decide whether to take her partner into her body and accept him as a mate. If the female doesn't want the male for whatever strange, selfish, or stupid reason, then the Fates have declared that they must live out the rest of their very long lives without another mate. This means neither side will be able to bear children until the other dies.

Those are only the Fates’ laws, however. The clan laws are not so benevolent. They are strict about who and what they will allow into their Patria, Fates be damned. In certain Katagarian groups, punishment for a female mating with a despised Katagaria male is that she be “given” to the unmated men of the clan. Few women survive such a punishment.

Now, once mated, there are two classifications of how strong the bond between each couple could possibly be: claimed mates and bonded mates. Claimed mates are together until one dies; then the other has a chance to one day be mated again. Bonded mates bond their life forces together. When one dies, the other dies, unless she is a female with a child and the male is killed first. She will remain alive until she gives birth to the last child, then she will die and be reunited with her mate in heaven.