Ideas for catfolk

Catfolk are one of the standard beastfolk races in fantasy and scifi that features beastfolk.

There isn't really much I can say that hasn't already been said by the innumerable catfolk writeups in various fantasy supplements. Instead, I decided to put together some traits from various different catfolk in scifi and fantasy. I had this in my head for a couple years but somehow haven't posted until now.

My primary influences are: khajiit from The Elder Scrolls, artathi from Legends & Lairs: Mythic Races, and c'tarl-c'tarl from Outlaw Star.

From the khajiit: I take the concept of astrological birth signs determining the degree of anthropomorphism. Based on their birth sign, a catfolk may range in size from a talking housecat to a horse-sized panther and range in appearance from an intelligent feline to a human/elf with slight feline features.

From the artathi: I take the concept of a caste system based on their feline species aspect. These castes would include lion, tiger, puma, lynx, cheetah, leopard, jaguar, and snow leopard. As with other caste systems, each is pigeonholed into particular social and economic roles. Mixed-race individuals would be considered outcasts.

From the c'tarl-c'tarl: I take the concept of a shapeshifter who can change shape from nearly human to giant cat and everything in between. This would be considered a distinct birth sign.

Miscellaneous links

• https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CatFolk
• https://gamingeveryman.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/so-sick-of-catgirls/
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/133161/Animal-Races-Clan-of-the-Cat
• https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Catfolk

On the naming of demons

Demons (and other fiends, I don’t distinguish here) in fantasy gaming have undergone a few naming schemes over the last forty-odd years.

Originally they were named with numerals, but that quickly became unwieldy once they got to "Type V demon"/"Type 6 demon"/"Sixth-category demon" and beyond. Although the Dante’s Inferno-inspired supplements by Judges Guild and Spellbook Games apparently expanded this scheme by adding Latin letters, such as a "Type 3B devil". Similar numerical expansions are apparently used in other OSR products.

In later editions of D&D the demons got gibberish names (apparently meant to be demon language) by species like balor, marilith, and glabrezu. This also quickly becomes unwieldy because these names don't mean anything in English. There are a bazillion demons and those names aren't memorable.

Many writers across many 3rd-party publishers opted to use simple descriptions of the demon’s obvious shtick, such as ice devil, fly demon, two-faced demon, jester demon, etc. Pathfinder 2e takes this approach: balor becomes "fire demon", glabrezu becomes "treachery demon," marilith becomes "pride demon," shemhazian becomes "mutilation demon," succubus becomes "lust demon," vrock becomes "wrath demon", etc.

I see nothing inherently wrong with all of these approaches. I think it makes sense for all demons to have numerical indexes, names in the demon tongue, and descriptive names in English.

The arbitrariness of beastfolk

Fantasy gaming has many races variously known as “beastmen” or “beastfolk.” Catfolk, ratfolk, mongrelfolk, etc. I have alluded to these in past posts but didn't address them directly until now.

The basic premise of my world building attempt is that the beastfolk are worshipers of the beast lords, one of the groups of primal spirits or nature deities alongside the plant lords and elemental lords (a la Stormbringer, which D&D liberally copies). The beast lords are responsible for creating them, and each race is associated with a specific lord (or lords, as the case may be).

There are multiple ways to create beastfolk, not just heredity. This is because there are an arbitrary number of possible beastfolk and I don’t want to waste time on a bazillion entries for each race. Some may receive more attention than others, if only because fantasy gaming has focused more on them. For example, beastmen could be transformed humans, uplifted animals, or wholly original.

Here are some examples I thought of how a beastman’s animal aspect might be determined. I'm sure you can think of countless others.

• When an animal is uplifted to a beastman, its aspect is determined by the animal it used to be.
• This aspect may be changed through various means, such as the blessing of another patron, transmutation spells, etc.
• Beastmen are born in an ambiguous humanoid form and gain their aspect later in life. (Alternately, their animal aspect is not fixed until later in life. Like the daemons in His Dark Materials, their animal aspects shift based on their emotions.)
• A beastboy goes on a rite of passage to find his spirit animal or totem. After succeeding, he gains his animal aspect and is considered a man.
• A beastboy receives magical tattoos that determine his animal aspect, a la Lunars in Exalted.
• The animal aspect is determined by their faith or the blessing of their patron totem. Changing their faith (i.e. Beast Lord worshiped) changes their animal aspect.
• The animal aspect is determined by hereditary bloodline. This may be general (mammalian beastfolk has mammalian children of any specific aspect) or highly specific (wolfmen are only born to wolfmen parents).
• How quick is the transformation from one aspect to another?
• As a beastboy matures into a beastman, his human visage steadily becomes more beastly until he is fully therianthropomorphic.
• The transformation occurs more or less instantly upon the aspect being determined or changed.
• A beastboy's animal aspect is present from birth. He may become more or less human as he matures or grows in power, similar to anime character power ups.
• Beastmen appear as varying combinations of human and animal, determined by genetics, magical practices, or random chance.

Here are some examples of specific races that seem to show up fairly regularly (and not so regularly) in fantasy:

• The reptilefolk are the descendants of the Atlantean saurian race (aka dramojh, sarruk, sli’ess, samat, etc). The saurian race selectively bred themselves into a caste system, each caste resembling different reptiles like serpents, chameleons and tortoises. This obscured the unstable nature of their bloodlines, and by modern times many display bizarre mutations. The serpentfolk engaged in crossbreeding experiments with freakish results. (Based on Slavelords of Cydonia, He-Man, Warhammer Fantasy, Robert E. Howard, etc.) They would be patronized by, depending on whether you care for real taxonomy, the Beast Lord of Dragons, Reptiles, Dinosaurs, and/or Birds.
• The catfolk have highly varying degrees of anthropomorphism, ranging from nearly human to bipedal panthers. These are known as birth-signs since it is determined by astrology at their birth. Although they look identical at birth, close to humans in fact, as they age their appearance develops into that decided by their birth-sign. (Based on Outlaw Star, The Elder Scrolls, anime catgirls, etc.)
• The ratfolk always look like anthropomorphic rats, although they range in size from halflings to ogres. They come in many different cultures, ranging from peaceful monastic orders, to alien biker gangs, to vicious hordes of mad cultists. (Based on Ptolus, Scarred Lands, Warhammer Fantasy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Biker Mice From Mars, etc.) They would be patronized by the Beast Lord of Rodents and/or Muroids.
• The mongrelfolk are the chimerical beastmen. I already wrote a post about them in which I posited they are the planetouched by the planes of discord and chaos. As beastmen, they would be patronized by the Beast Lord of Chimeras; s/he may well be a naturalized aberration or other demon of chaos.

In the future I would like to give more detail to various beastmen races. Perhaps expand the beast lords into a full-fledged feudal system to account for the messiness of real taxonomy.

Miscellaneous links

• http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2010/04/bx-beastmaster.html
• http://joyfulsitting.blogspot.com/2016/03/beast-men-from-d.html
• https://screamingstoryteller.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-sankarjin-furry-race.html
• https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Beastmen
• https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Beastfolk
• http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlidingScaleOfAnthropomorphism
• http://www.dmsguild.com/product/188081/Beastfolk-an-Original-Race-for-DD-5e
• https://gate-thus-the-jsdf-fought-there.fandom.com/wiki/Humanoid#Part-Animals
• https://overlordmaruyama.fandom.com/wiki/Beastman
• https://tensura.fandom.com/wiki/Beastman

Celestial spheres cosmology

The “celestial spheres” are an outdated model of the solar system dating back to Aristotle.

The Aristotelian universe consisted of the world in the center (composed of the four elements air, earth, fire, and water), the celestial spheres above (composed of the fifth element ether), and the spherical firmament of the fixed stars surrounding all.

A modern interpretation of the Aristotelian Universe, with the earth in the center, the elements above, then the celestial spheres, and finally the firmament.

People actually believed this was how the universe worked. It supplanted earlier models in which the world was flat, the heavens or “firmament” was a literal dome which separated the world from the “waters” of primordial chaos, and the underworld was another dome under the flat Earth which complemented the heavens. (A model I mentioned in past posts. It roughly informs the omniverse and world axis cosmologies.)

This model influenced some retroclone writers. The Pathfinder cosmology (specifically the Golarion campaign setting) based the organization its elemental planes on Aristotle’s. The Blood & Treasure cosmology (specifically the Nod campaign setting) adopts Aristotle’s cosmology wholesale, and combines it with that of Dante’s Inferno too. As I mentioned in a previous post, Nod’s cosmology goes even further and makes each of the planets an outer plane. ADDEDUM 11/21/2019: The Voidspanners setting also uses a variation of the Aristotelian celestial spheres. Unlike Nod, these are mundane planets and not outer planes as planets.

Why is this remotely relevant? It occurred to me that I was going about campaign cosmology all wrong. This should be common sense! There is no reason why the multiverse cannot contain multiple universes with different cosmologies. A flat world, celestial spheres, solar systems, etc.

In future posts I should like to describe a multiverse consisting of multiple universes with different cosmologies.

Walking dead and spectral dead intellect

An oddity I noticed in the distribution of undead intelligence scores is that the incorporeal undead are almost always of average intelligence. Of those in the MM, only the shadow has INT lower than 10.

I don’t understand why this would be the case. In general I would have expected the specter, will-o’-wisp, and wraith to have lower intelligence. I would’ve expected at least some spectral dead with comparable intelligence to zombies and skeletons.

Or perhaps, more likely, the writers didn’t give much thought to what effect intelligence had on the fluff. 

In real life, the voodoo religion tells of “astral zombies” as the spectral counterparts of regular zombies. These spirits are enslaved by bokors and used to perform various tasks.

In a future post, I plan on dedicating thought to a more thoughtful ecology of the spectral dead. With influence from The Lord of the Rings too.

We don’t need so many reptilian races

One of many oddities of D&D is that it has a bazillion reptilian races. As with goblinoids and orcs, I think it makes the most sense to treat all these chike/gatorfolk, kobolds, lizardfolk, serpentfolk/naga/ophiduan/inphidian, lernaeati/dorvae/manalishi, troglodytes/xulgath, dinosaurfolk, etc as members of the same monster family. For example, the reptilian races could be distinguished by categories like subrace, caste, size, tribe, degree of anthropomorphism, etc a la Warhammer Fantasy lizardmen.

Way back I briefly recapped the saurian race from Slavelords of Cydonia, which had several castes representing different reptile varieties like gators, chameleons, and turtles. I said back then that it made sense too, but this moment I wanted to add something else.

The reptilian races should be explicitly linked with dragons, dragonborn/dragonkin/dragonspawn, and so forth. In D&D-inspired media, this is already seen to a degree like the “dragonewt” race.

Furthermore, I think this family should (vaguely) include what amphibian races exist. A herptilefolk family? I alluded to this a while back when I discussed the Ogdoad of Ancient Egypt, a paired set of primordial deities in the forms of snakes and frogs. (Which are the parents of basilisks. Patterns are fun!)

In a future post I intend to explain about how I would define dragons based on comparative mythology rather than the idiosyncratic D&D norms.

A brief list of aboleth variants

Many different aboleth variants have been published in third part products. Here is a listing of some of them. (Servitor races are not listed here.)

These are simple additions to the aboleth family:

• The behemoth, engulfer, manipulator, livyathan, protoaboleth, and larval aboleth swarm appear in Monster Menagerie: Horrors of the Aboleth.
• The nihilith appears in Tome of Beasts.
• The veiled master appears in Pirate Campaign Compendium.

These additions presume that the core aboleth is a member of a family called the [lethid] (invented by Grim Tales). Many lethid are parasitic.

• The mohldaleth, nihileth, rgleth, shibboleth, and true aboleth appear in Slavelords of Cydonia.
• The possessor appears in Possessors: Children of the Outer Gods and reprinted in Forgotten Foes. Not originally a member of the aboleth family, but the lethid are based on its rules.

These additions presume that the core aboleth is a member of a family called the [alghollthu] (invented by Pathfinder).

• The omnipath and veiled master appear in Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 6.
• The uldraaghu appears in Pathfinder Adventure Path #121: The Lost Outpost.
• The enisysian appears in Pathfinder Adventure Path #124: City in the Deep.
• The plizeazoth appears in Pathfinder Adventure Path #125: Tower of the Drowned Dead.

As I mentioned in prior posts on aboleth, I decided to use all of these together. I love variety in monster families.