Beast-People

Origin Realms: Arbustus, Sirrus (minor)
Axioms: Biology 4, up to 6 for the weirdest mixes

The majority of the sophonts in Arbustus are human-like, except they’re also animal-like. The Beast-People, as they’re collectively known, are actually at least a thousand different species of human-animal hybrids. The quantity of animal-ness varies with each species, as well as how the body is restructured to support these extra features; it’s completely possible for a Beast-Person to have four legs and two arms, arms and wings at the same time, or other combinations usually reserved for arthropods. (And if they’re arthropod people, then they can go really nuts.)

Animal-Featured: Human-like with small animal creatures. Catpeople, for example, are regular humans with cat ears, eyes, tail, and a penchant for pawing at small moving objects. Fauns have horns and a lower bipedal goat freak body.

Centauroid: Human from the waist up, quadrupedal animal from the waist down. Mysteries as to how the human half can eat enough to sustain the beast half are not dwelt upon here. Centaurs are obviously like this, as are the less known lamias (lion lower half) or false nagas (snake lower half)

Minotauroid: Animal-headed humanoids, may have other animal features as well. Minotaurs have bull heads and often but not always bull feet, and tenku have bird heads, wings and feet.

Human-featured: Regular animals (changes in size not withstanding) with human intelligence and minor features. Sphinxes are lions with a human face and chest, and true nagas are serpents with a human head (which looks really freaky when they dislocate their jaws).

Beast-People can certainly derive animal features from more than one animal; the most common are bird wings added to another species. These can come across from cross-breeding, or mutation and selection and all that evolutionary stuff.

Crossbreeding

Breeding among different Beast-People species is complicated (like breeding anywhere). While Arbustus’ high Biology axiom ensures even the most bizarre mixes will be viable, the base species with the greatest genetic contribution tend to reassert themselves in later generations. Willy-nilly crossbreeding can cause that greatest of freaks, a native Arbustus pure human, which is frowned upon by man-beast and beast-man alike.

Crossbreeding rules

  • Each Beast-Person has a "genetic makeup" composed of six slots (1-head, 2-arms, 3-legs/lower body, 4-torso/upper body, 5-peripheral features, 6-mentality), each of which refers to an animal or "human".
  • For any slots that are "human" for one parent but "animal" for the other, the child inherits the animal slot.
  • For slots that are different animals on either parent, the child has a 50/50% of getting either.
  • Deduce what the freak of nature should look like. Anything that vaguely makes sense is OK.
    • Peripheral features covers ears, horns, hair, tail, eyes, etc.
    • Creatures with the torso of a quadrupedal animal and the arms of another animal have a centaur body, with a tiny torso of the same type as the arms.
    • Bird arms means you have wings instead of arms whether you have a bird torso or not. Human arms and bird torso means you have a pair of arms and a pair of wings.
  • Traits only assert themselves if at least two slots of the makeup are assigned to the same animal. Otherwise, that slot looks like the majority animal, or just plain human.

Example: A male centaur (human/human/horse/horse/human/horse) meets a female tenku (bird/bird/bird/human/human/bird) in a singles bar. 2d6 months later, a child is born. His genetic makeup is (bird/bird/horse/horse/human/bird) - A creature with a horse's lower body, a bird's head and arms(wings), and bird brains.

Example 2: A catgirl (human/human/human/human/cat/cat) dates a minotaur (bull/human/bull/human/human/bull) with extra benefits and ends up giving birth to twins. One child (bull/human/bull/human/cat/bull) has no noticeable cat traits and looks much like her father. The other (bull/human/bull/human/cat/cat) is a minotaur with cat ears and tail, as well as a naturally cattish behavior. Hopefully he'll figure he doesn't belong in tall shelves before college.

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