Felians

A race of feline-descended bipeds known for their uncanny trading skills and inexplicable attachment to an archaic caste system of hierarchy."Average Height of Male: 7’10” (2.37m)""Average Height of Female: 6’3” (1.89m)""General/Average Build Type: Muscular"

Notable Features:
All Felians are covered in a fine pelt of fur (very short due to their home world’s tendency toward hot weather rather than cold). Stripes and points are the most common fur patterns, with tabby being quite rare. Spots or rosettes are unheard of for unknown reasons. Common colouring tends to run toward lighter colours; grey, cream, tan, seal, and silver being the most common. Some regions have higher instances of specific colours. Eye colouring runs through all shades of gold/yellow, blues, greens and hazels. Brown eyes are rare but not unheard of.

All Felians possess feline style, upright ears, long tails (non-prehensile), thick hair on their heads in either complimentary or contrasting colour to their pelts. They have humanoid looking hands with four digits and a thumb on each. Most have retractable type claws at the end of each finger. The warrior caste is the only segment of the population that deliberately leaves their claws unclipped.

At maturity, each Felian is welcomed into adult society by a “registration ceremony” where they are heat-branded with the mark of their caste and family grouping. Usually this mark is applied somewhere on the torso or arms such that it will always be visible and that any other Felian may see at a glance what exact rank another of their species holds.

== On Felian Dress: == Most Felians do not cover their torsos or arms. To do so would hide their caste/heritage marks which would imply shame. Males and females alike opt for trousers or skirts from the waist down and any number of different styles of footwear. When the warrior caste must don armour for battle, each individual usually transfers their brand onto their chest or arm guards to make sure they are not insulting their caste or family by covering their mark of registration.

Children from birth up to the half-grown (approximately 10yrs) are usually dressed in robes that cover from the neck downward. At the stage of half-grown (11-20yrs), each youth covers half their torso; From the left shoulder down to hip for males and reverse for females. At registration, the torso portion of all of their clothing is removed as a symbol of their acceptance into their caste.

On The Castes:
The caste system is highly ritualistic and ingrained into the culture and psyche of the Felians as a whole. To try and remove it from their way of life would cause great distress. Diplomats or nobles are the highest ranking caste and carry the greatest wealth and influence. A close second is that of the warriors (mostly as a sign of respect as there hasn’t been significant warring amongst the Felians for the last two centuries). Following them come the academics, traders/merchants, trades and artisans, labourers and agriculturists etc.

Children are raised within the caste of their parents. Felians may abandon their own caste for a lower one after registration, but may not move upward unless they are promoted as an entire household at the whim of the diplomatic caste (nearly unheard of). Moving downward is seen as a sharp failure and point of shame even in the case of making the move in the name of love and will often result in being shunned by the higher caste family.

Up until Felia was accepted into the Interstellar accord 50 years ago, if a child failed to be accepted into their own caste at 20 years old (was denied registration), they were considered casteless and unwanted. The only option left to the casteless was the basest of work; thievery, crime, prostitution and any manner of work deemed too low for proper, registered folks.

One of the stipulations of the Felian acceptance into the Interstellar Accord was that Felia would have to adjust their caste system to be more inclusive of those who didn’t fit into their birthright, either by allowing them to leave and find work elsewhere, or by allowing them to formally join a lesser tier of the hierarchy. This was a matter of great debate, spanning nearly three entire generations of Felians before an agreement was reached.

The Felian Homeworld:
A small, M-class planet with most of the Felian population centred on a single, large land mass. Currently most of the land mass is covered in a combination of grassland and the very beginning attempts at terraforming. Over the last several centuries, the Felians have chosen to live in just a handful of large cities on the mainland in order to encourage the planet’s surface to recover from thousands of years worth of intensive farming and careless stewardship.

Approximately two hundred years ago, Felians started colonizing their two moons, using the mineral resources found there rather than mining on their own home world. They also began the arduous process of streamlining food production and moving that to the colonies in the form of lab created protein products, fish farming and hydroponics in bio-domes.