Maraquoi

• Treat everyone you trust as family, a side effect of having seven different ancestral lines.
• Relish wide open spaces and the freedom to move.
• Distrust people who are dismissive of tradition and the simpler things in life.

• Assume technology is new and unfamiliar to you.
• Trust you to improvise solutions in difficult terrain.
• Wonder how you survived having seven parents.

Maraquois are bipedal humanoids covered in fine, silky fur that naturally grows in shades of brown and gray, with other variations developing only rarely. Their fur grows continuously and isn't shed. Maraquois cut and style their fur in a wide variety of ways, often using subtle variations in cut as nods to different parts of their complex heritages or to express their personality. Their fur has evolved to function as a network of thousands of tiny sound receptors, passing vibrations to their skin and allowing them to navigate by hearing even in complete darkness. Maraquois can exert some muscular control over their follicles to manage this capacity, such as raising their hair to hear distant sounds or flattening their coat to protect from the loudest noises. Maraquois do have vestigial ears in a similar position to other humanoids as well, but they lack the complex sensitivity of their skin.

Maraquois have large, compounded eyes that protrude slightly from the front of their heads, which allow them a wider range of vision than many other humanoids. Their complex eyes are adapted to function even in small amounts of light. Most maraquois train their long, prehensile tails to be strong and dexterous enough to serve as a sort of third hand, useful for carrying items, assisting in climbing, and maintaining balance. They stand around 6-1/2 feet tall on average with long and powerful limbs. Maraquois are naturally adept climbers; their limbs end in short, sturdy claws that are ideal for gripping steep surfaces. They can secrete a sticky film from the pads of their fingers that allows them to climb even smooth surfaces with relative ease.

There are slight, but recognizable, physiological differences between the seven sexes. The three sires—ilshas (“earth-sires”), qshas (“sky-sires”), and sushas (“water-sires”) often have complex, dappled coloring patterns in their fur. The klshas (“bearers”) and meshas (“cradles”) tend to be the shortest, stoutest maraquois. The uishas (“sharers”) have the shortest tails. The psychic zyshas (“facilitators”) are perhaps the easiest sex for non-maraquois to identify, with their distinct thin, willowy builds that sometimes reach as high as 8 feet tall.

Maraquoi society developed around pastoralist lifestyles, wherein differing tribes formed yearlong circuits through Marata, following the seasonal rainstorms to plant, hunt, and harvest resources at their peaks of availability. The seas of Marata are extremely salinized, making them unsuitable for drinking water, and freshwater rivers and lakes are relatively rare. Maraquoi migration patterns have arisen out of strategic necessity since tribes rely heavily on huge, artificial rainwater catchments and ornate biological salt filtration solutions to survive long dry seasons. These elaborate public works projects are generally too large to move from place to place, and each tribe relies on a combination of several water sources to meet their needs for the entire year.

Different tribal communities often specialize their lifestyles around different resources, depending on the terrain and biomes their migrations pass through. By harvesting surpluses of abundant resources, maraquoi groups have developed elaborate but informal systems of trade with neighboring tribes. Some inland groups have domesticated huge herds of shevkirks, reptilian ungulates valued for their meat, hides, and horns, while coastal groups track spawning patterns and harvest huge numbers of fish and mollusks from the seas. Numerous maraquoi tribes have built large, seasonal societies in the canopy of Marata's extensive old-growth kvash forests. They've constructed miles-long systems of nets and barriers to filter wildlife into specific corridors, and to manage the flow of rainwater, while others farm cactus-like crops in vast expanses of scrubland.

In pre-Gap times, several societies visited Marata and attempted to engage with maraquois, only to have their overtures peacefully and politely rebuffed. Only in recent, post-Gap time have maraquois begun accepting offworlders, though the acceptance is far from universal. Many maraquoi groups (often called expansionists) have enthusiastically embraced galactic travel, the arrival of new technologies, and an increase in the offworld development of Marata. The most progressive of these groups have begun lobbying the Pact Council in recent years to grant Marata full membership rights in the Pact Worlds.

Traditionalist groups have rejected these changes as a threat to time-honored tradition, and they fight for heavy restrictions on offworld arrivals. Some of the most extreme traditionalist voices have withdrawn from larger communal society, preferring to maintain their territory in isolation from groups they view as interlopers. Numerous diplomatic conflicts have grown from this tension since offworld pharmaceutical companies seek to research the curative properties of some of Marata's native flora and mineral springs. Thus far, the strong beliefs of the isolationist community have kept these sites mostly free of development, though those who seek to profit on Marata's rarest resources have developed a small but lucrative black market. The truth is that most maraquois fall between the two extremes: they maintain a semblance of their traditional societal practices while still embracing the availability of new technologies and the chance to interact with new and interesting people and travel the stars.

Maraquois have no formal name for their traditional religion, and the specifics of their beliefs come in as many variations as the people themselves. In general, the focus of traditional faith on Marata is veneration of a complex web of ancestral legacies rather than worship of any divine beings. At the end of life, before moving to the afterlife, each maraquoi is said to leave behind a fundamental part of themself in an ancestral wellspring—much like the water caches on Marata's surface— between the stars. Maraquois can harness the collected wisdom and magical power stored in these wellsprings with proper training or sufficient power of will, though these invocations are relatively rare. The connection to the wellsprings is fundamental to maraquoi faith, and eventually becoming a part of them is almost universally considered the noblest possible end. One of the direst punishments in maraquoi society is to be cut off from the ancestral wellspring and forced to live the rest of their life knowing they'll never contribute to future generations.

Since integrating themselves into the larger galactic community, some maraquois have begun to synthesize other faiths into their own. Talavet and Yaraesa are popular choices, for they can be seen as analogues for or caretakers of the ancestral wellsprings.
Popular Edicts find solutions in the world around you, learn all you can to pass on
Popular Anathema forget the wisdom of your ancestors, waste natural life

Maraquois have a given name along with a surname formed by taking the first phoneme from each of their parents' given names. Traditionally, these names are built in order of their participation in the reproduction process, with the zysha first. Many maraquois used to include the name of their tribe as an additional surname, but this practice has fallen out of fashion. Maraquoi names include Avilisha, Covrithe, Dnethri, Gjevri, Hasthithsha, Lirqoa, Mnevsine, Nainai, Phxiande, Sivrie, Tvaqran, and Weirlaitha.

8

Medium

Climb 15 feet

Two free attribute boosts

Additional languages equal to your Intelligence modifier (if it's positive). Choose from the list of common languages and any other languages to which you have access (such as the languages prevalent on your home world).

You perceive sound through sensitive receptors on your skin rather than their ears. Your hearing is an imprecise sense with a range of 30 feet, alerting you to the presence, but not the precise location, of creatures within the area.

You can see in dim light as though it were bright light, so you ignore the concealed condition due to dim light.

You gain the Prehensile Limbs (tail) standardized ancestry feat, even if you don't meet the prerequisites.