Codex: Kaithrit

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Name: Kaithrit

Sexes: Female, Male, statistically significant occurrence of hermaphroditism

Height: Males range from 5' to 6' 2” tall. Females and hermaphrodites range from 5' 6" to 7' 3".

Hair: Nominally, kaithrit only feature hair on their head and a fine layer of soft fur on their tails and ears. Fur and hair coloration is highly diverse; every color and hue seen on terran felines has been reported, but some have stranger colors.

Eyes: Kaithrit have two eyes in the normal humanoid position. These eyes are typically colored amber, hazel, brown, blue, green, gray, yellow, orange, black, yellow-green, blue-green, violet, copper or gold. Kaithrit have a slightly higher predisposition towards heterochromia than other races. They possess slitted feline pupils which give them much keener low-light vision than humans.

Features

Kaithrit have the normal structure of bipedal humanoids, with two arms and two legs as well as a single head, and fundamentally human-like faces. The hands and feet feature long, sharp-tipped nails that are capable of extending slightly to form dagger-like claws, adept at slashing and piercing, though these are hardly ideal weapons against most modern forms of armor. They have a single pair of large, feline-like triangular ears atop their heads, which are capable of swiveling and moving just like those of a terran cat. Combine this with the fact that they have two tails sprouting from their rear that are also reminiscent of a terran cat, and it's no wonder that many humans consider them to be "space catgirls".

The strangest aspect of kaithrit is that they all appear, to a casual glance, female. Even males - or perhaps especially males - have a feminine appearance, being dainty, fine-boned and curvaceous.Females and hermaphrodites are naturally taller than the average male, and more voluptuous - they have larger breasts and buttocks as well as wider hips - but males are easily mistaken for females unless they deliberately flaunt their masculinity. Male genitalia tends to be small, with scrotums that hold themselves snugly against the groin in tight pouches, only furthering the confusion.

Male kaithrit sexual organs are typically 5" to 7" long and 1" thick, and are feline in nature, presenting a shaft covered in small nodules of flesh that provide a tantalizingly soft, bristly texture. However, some kaithrit instead have bristly-textured but ultimately canine phalluses, though this is a distinct minority - this is believed to be due to traces of ausar genetics.

Breast size varies depending on sex; males never grow larger than an A-cup and are normally flat chested, despite their feminine physique, with lactating males swelling to a B-cup or, at the largest, a C. Females average between a C and an F-Cup.

Environs Typically Inhabited

Although a widely scattered race that can be encountered across much of the known galaxy, with the existence of nomadic space-faring clans and families that happily establish themselves in human or ausar-created colonies alike being reliably documented, kaithrit do in fact have a homeworld. Known as Rosha, it is a lush, verdant orb that sits just slightly closer to its sun than Earth, resulting in an overall tropical and sub-tropical climate. Much of Rosha is grassland or open scrub forests, with dense jungles towards the cooler polar regions, vast mangrove swamps along the coastlines and a dense strip of arid savannas and bushland across the equators. Only at the very poles themselves do tundras and taigas form.

As a consequence, kaithrit are most comfortable in similar environments; the jungle-rich world of Mhen'gha is expected to see many of these aliens coming to settle, with its wild, lawless frontier world status sure to act as a magnet for this bold, brash species. However, Kaithrit have been seen all over the galaxy. Some of the more daring have succumbed to their wanderlust and taken to travelling through space, oftenly in clan crews, to colonise and seek their fortune abroad.

Though it is true that many Kaithrit enjoy traveling through space, the truth is that the great majority of them are traditionalists unwilling to leave their home planet. Even if they do take trips to stations and other planets. After the Great Exodus, an event that marked the beginning of a new age, not many Kaithrit born on their homeworld choose to leave it.

Reproduction

Kaithrit reproduce in fundamentally normal mammalian style, with males impregnating females who then give birth to live young that are suckled on milk from their mammary glands. Furthering the gender confusion, males who remain in close, constant proximity to an expectant female. Pregnant kaithrit emit a steady wave of hormonal musk which can trigger a lactation response in males, swelling his breasts and allowing mother and father alike to nurse. Kaithrit pregnancy lasts approximately eight months after conception, and results in one to three kittens, though incidents of multiple births are quite low -- most pregnancies result in a single healthy child. Male hormonal balance tends to return to equilibrium faster than females, allowing them to recover from the effects of a female's pregnancy and return to their normal chest size quickly.

Confirmed kaithrit crossbreeding has been documented between both humans and ausar. Human/kaithrit hybrids tend to have more human-like facial features and typically only have one tail. Ausar/kaithrit crossbreeds are most distinctive from purebred kaithrit because males and hermaphrodites typically have ausar-like phalluses, albeit usually with the typical kaithrit texturing.

History

The kaithrit are believed to have a rather human-like evolutionary story, beginning as tree-dwellers who, as the trees gave way to grassland, evolved towards a bipedal frame. As one may expect, the kaithrit's most distant ancestor was more feline than primate. Perhaps because of this, gender roles also evolved differently to humans; unlike human precursors, these proto-kaithrit were a matriarchal species. The females were, as they are today, bigger and stronger than the males, responsible for hunting and warring with other prides, while the males cared for the offspring. This inversion of standardized gender roles shows through in many aspects of kaithrit society; it is far more common for a female kaithrit to initiate a relationship than it is for the males, for instance.

Higher intelligence developed in-line with other observed evolution; with bipedal locomotion freeing the hands for other uses, sapience soon followed, the kaithrit becoming masters of tools and moulders of their environment. While many aspects of their feral past were discarded on the road to civilization, others remained, and one of these is the social dominance of female over male. Male kaithirt are seen as creators, shapers, builders and caretakers, while females are seen as warriors, pioneers, adventurers and explorers. Men are kept to the background by society, due to the belief in their passivity and frailness; while things are not quite so bad that men are 'househusbands' with no greater role in life than to get married, father daughters and look after the house while the woman earns money to support, they are encouraged to take up more intellectual or otherwise passive roles.

Indeed, kaithrit society is in many ways stunningly sexist. Male kaithrit are forbidden to uphold matters of state or assume political roles, because it is believed they are too weak and inept to make hard, necessary decisions - indeed, this same belief holds them away from any position of power or control over others, especially over women. Society coddles them in many ways; males who commit crimes receive weaker punishment than females do, goods crafted by males attract more money, they receive better service in restaurants and stores. Indeed, it's surprising just how much they are favored - some xenobiologists and historians point to a significant difference in population ratios between males and females as the reason for these differences, with males being relatively less common than females. In some colony worlds, the lower occurrence of male births can be cause for a great deal of concern, and result in even more stringent constraints on male activity.

This is not to say that there is not a division between viewpoints on these aspects. While a distinct number of males are accepting of the impositions against their gender due to the privileges they receive, still others resent it and wish to bring their culture more in line with that of many others of the U.G.C., with true equality between the genders. This viewpoint became more popular amongst males, and even began gaining ground amongst the females after contact with other species was established, but it was the Great Exodus that caused the viewpoint to become the simmering underground faction that it is today.

The Great Exodus was the period immediately following the kaithrit’s contact with the U.G.C. The idea of other planets, people, whole other societies fascinated the kaithrit, and as a result the more daring females jumped at the chance to get a license and fly a starship to the great beyond. This was a time of great frustration for males; they were denied the rights to take the test for a license as they were deemed too frail to handle a spaceship. While this didn’t stop some males from stowing aboard visiting ships or even stealing ships for themselves, their restriction from starflight became a matter of great debate, and finally brought to light the fight for equality.

Of course, it must be noted that this patronizing attitude towards males predominantly applies to the kaithrit of Rosha; offworlders, especially those who have many generations removed from the homeworld, are far less traditional.

Other Notes

Hermaphrodites are an uncertainty in the kaithrit viewpoint of the world, and reactions can vary wildly from settlement to settlement. Perhaps as a response, hermaphroditic kaithrit have always been inclined towards nomadic behaviors.

As noted above, kaithrits have feline-like tails, with two to a specimen. These tails are functionally prehensile, if too weak in most cases to use for wielding weapons. An entire social strata exists within kaithrit society involving them; tail body-language is an important part of understanding kaithrits and how they communicate with each other. Motions, positioning, these can all speak volumes to another kaithrit or a trained observer. Contact with a tail is a social language in its own right. Who a kaithrit touches, how, when, and where, are all bound by distinctive aspects of kaithrit proprietary. For example, a simple looping of one tail tip around another kaithrit's tail-tip signifies a friendly acquaintance and is a polite greeting, whilst doing the same with both tails on the same side is a gesture of sibling affection and doing it with one tail on either side, so that both Kaithrits must be facing each other, is a romantic gesture similar to a cuddle. More intimate tail-touches are supposed to be kept private or to the bedroom, but may be seen as an expression of dominance in a social context.

When dealing with aliens, a kaithrit's tail-touching often serves as an indicator of social interest; they prefer to stroke the alien's tail, if they have one, but the buttocks and thighs will suffice. A side effect of this, though, is that most tail-touching gestures they can perform are signifiers of lust or camaraderie - the equivalent of a friendly spank on the ass, for example.