Native to Marata, one of Bretheda's moons, maraquoi traditionally based their societies around a semi-nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Unlike many species common to the Pact Worlds, their genders are centered on a septenary system with all seven participants playing a different role in reproduction. Maraquoi culture therefore developed amid a complex web of kinship and tribal affiliations, which defused violence and drove a deep respect for life in all its forms. However, outside philosophies, technologies, and commercial interests have challenged maraquoi identity and lifestyles, with Marata's denizens recently wrestling with pronounced isolationist sentiment.
Physical Description
Maraquoi are bipedal humanoids, covered from head to toe in silky fur, generally in shades of gray, brown, or silver. Most maraquoi grow their fur longer at the top of their heads to form into hairstyles. Their fur coats function like thousands of small antennae, transmitting sound to their sensitive skin and allowing them to navigate even in absolute darkness. A maraquoi exerts some control over the follicles, such as making hairs erect to capture faint sounds or flattening fur to partly dampen cacophonies; fur arrangement also conveys a maraquoi's mood. Though they do have ears similar to humans, these parts are largely vestigial and overshadowed by their skin's sensitivity. Their compound eyes are set forward in their heads and protrude slightly outward, giving a wider range of vision than most humanoids and enabling them to see in even small amounts of light.
Their simian, prehensile tails can manipulate objects, and most maraquoi use these as an “off-hand” for spare items and weaponry as well as for balance. They have short, sturdy claws on their hands and feet to aid in climbing, and they can secrete a sticky film from their fingers, enabling them to ascend even smooth surfaces with relative ease. On average, an adult maraquoi stands about 6-1/2 feet tall.
Though the seven sexes are associated with minor physiological differences, they're typically not pronounced enough to be recognizable to non-maraquoi. On average, klshas (“bearers”) and meshas (“cradles”) have shorter and stouter builds than the others, while zyshas (“facilitators”) tend toward taller, willowy builds, sometimes reaching heights of almost eight feet. Uishas (“sharers”) typically have shorter tails, and the fur of ilshas (“earth-sires”), qshas (“sky-sires”), and sushas (“water-sires”) tends to have a dappled appearance with distinctive patterns for each.
Home World
Maraquoi's ancestral home is Marata, a moon orbiting the gas giant Bretheda. Currently, its official status is a protectorate of the Pact Worlds, much the same as many of Bretheda's and Liavara's inhabited moons. However, many maraquoi balk at not being afforded the full political rights as the system's planets, and a progressive, expansionist faction has been lobbying the Pact Council for full membership like their sister moon, Kalo-Mahoi.
Marata is the largest of Bretheda's moons, with an arid, temperate climate. Scattered forests of gnarled, enormous trees (called kvash) dot Marata's lands. Maraquoi folklore holds that these forests were where their people first originated, and they prize all parts of the kvash for use as building materials, food, or medicine. The largest of these forests, Ste Xinnith, recently came to prominence after researchers discovered healing properties in some of its flora, attracting the attention of offworld pharmaceutical companies, though maraquoi traditionalists are attempting to block any further external involvement in the site.
Marata's land is split between two primary continents, Taksha and Rhesa, which are connected by land bridges at the poles. The oceans between them are relatively shallow and extremely salinized, making them unsuitable as drinking water. Most life on the moon has evolved to require minimal water as a result, acquiring what they need from Marata's cactus-like plants, few freshwater rivers, and seasonal cloudburst storms. Much of the terrain beyond the kvash forests is scrubland, covered mainly by short grasses and shrubs.
Traditional maraquoi society built few large settlements, preferring to subtly modify the landscape to fit their nomadic lifestyles without creating sprawling cities that transform local ecosystems. Ouat Vali, referred to as the Shining City for its iridescent stone buildings, is the largest pre-Gap city on Marata, located in the northwest steppes of Taksha. In ancient times, it served as a meeting place for intertribal negotiations and festivals, though it maintained a small permanent population as well. In the modern era, Ouat Vali is a bastion of maraquoi traditionalists who maintain it as a vital part of maraquoi culture and bar offworld visitors from entering. The city's sacred hot springs purportedly augment the powers of anyone bathing there, spurring a black market trade in vials of “Vali water” that Pact World authorities and local maraquoi partners combat. However, in nearly all cases, the fluids' origins are dubious at best.
Ha Quoia
Founded about a century ago, Ha Quoia is Marata's eminent city and spaceport, located along the eastern coast of Rhesa. The city's high polycarbon walls shield it from the region's predictably recurring high winds as well as from the voracious scrubland predators known as temnaks, massive vulpine creatures with a paralytic venom. Within the walls, tall skyscrapers built from offworld alloys house a hub of diplomacy and commerce, most notably serving as the seat of an intertribal government formed to represent Marata's interests to the Pact Worlds.
However, Ha Quoia's status as the center of government and a symbol of offworld contact has made it a hotbed of tension between Marata's more outspoken traditionalist and expansionist factions (see Society below). More extreme traditionalist factions have successfully blocked many efforts to open Marata to the galaxy at large, to the point that even in Ha Quoia most trade and travel are highly restricted. The factions largely battle each other through peaceful protests, demonstrations, and passive-aggressive smuggling, but it's only a matter of time before clashes escalate to violence.
Society and Alignment
Maraquoi culture developed around hunter-gatherer and pastoralist lifestyles which encouraged maraquoi to form semi-nomadic tribes that each traveled yearlong circuits to harvest seasonal resources. Inland populations often relied on reptilian ungulates known as shevkriks, either hunting wild populations or herding domesticated variants to secure meat, hides, tool-quality horn, and a fatty substance analogous to milk. Coastal groups tracked seasonal upwellings that drove fish spawning, supplementing diets with abundant shellfish whose shells were repurposed into mortar to create sparkling seaside villages. Wherever maraquoi traveled, they also modified the landscape in innovative ways: deep cisterns collected infrequent rain over the course of a year to create oases along a route, mile-long coastal weirs created artificial habitats for marine life which made harvesting easier, and travelers seeded semiwild orchards and grains to abandon, revisit, and then reap only when the cultivars ripened.
Until recently, maraquoi were the only developed culture living on Marata. While the popular-yet-false narrative is that maraquoi were isolated and uncivilized, their seclusion was largely their own choice. Stories from multiple societies preserve how various alien species—most notably verthanis, witchwyrds, and barathus—all contacted Marata in pre-Gap times, each time being politely turned away by maraquoi ambassadors and kept at arm's length. Only in the post-Gap era have maraquoi begun accepting offworlders.
Even then, maraquoi don't agree on what's best for their planet, people, and culture. Many maraquoi (sometimes called expansionists) have embraced the galaxy, travel, and new technologies, including welcoming offworld development of Marata. Of the opposite view are traditionalists, who consider maraquoi's rapid transition from early metalworking to space age technologies as a serious threat to time-honored traditions. The most hardline traditionalists push for heavy restrictions on offworld visitors and innovations, if not an outright return to isolation. In practice, most maraquoi embrace a moderate view, but extreme voices dominate the conversation.
Maraquoi society is highly communal. While individuals have personal possessions and tribes maintain territories, the idea of personal property in a broader sense was uncommon until recently. Resources exist for the well-being of all on Marata, and gathering comes with an expectation of restoring disturbed landscapes, such as conscientiously backfilling, replanting, and ecologically monitoring expired mines. It's less cost-effective than the several offworld mining operations that have finagled mineral leases in limited areas, driving contention with most maraquoi communities. These differing approaches further fuel expansionist and traditionalist conflicts, with the former insisting that participating in the galactic economy is key to becoming a true Pact World and the latter interpreting foreign operations as plundering Marata's resources.
Due to their complex reproductive and familial system, respect for life is integral to maraquoi culture, as the loss of even a few people could prevent a tribe's continuation. As a result, highly ritualistic forms of nonlethal combat evolved to settle disputes and intertribal conflicts, relying on a strict, complex honor code emphasizing respect for one's foe. So deeply ingrained is this tradition that most maraquoi who go offworld still carry out rituals post-combat to honor fallen foes or friends. Though most maraquoi view killing other maraquoi as abhorrent, the numerous dangerous predators on Marata ensure they're well-versed in lethal combat as well, and some take up mercenary work on other planets. This practice is divisive; some maraquoi believe it's acceptable as long as they don't kill their own people, while others view it as a corruption of their honor system and combat skills on behalf of outsiders.
Maratan Government
Maratan society was traditionally organized into tribes large enough to ensure protection against natural threats and small enough to thrive on the resources that a particular territory provided. Contact between tribes was frequent, and upon reaching adulthood a maraquoi would often leave the tribe of their birth to form their family in another. In practice, this system formed a web of trade, information exchange, and extended familial ties that spread global cultural touchstones while enabling many regional variations. Due to maraquoi's respect for life and extensive kinship networks, formal treaties were rarely necessary and most deals needed only last a few months before two groups went their separate ways.
After the Gap, many tribes decided a more centralized government was necessary to represent Marata to the galaxy and protect their planet from outside exploitation. The result was an intertribal council headquartered in Ha Quoia. Each tribe can choose to provide a representative, and of Marata's 275 known tribes, 247 have representatives on the council. Twenty- eight traditionalist or isolationist tribes have declined seats, preferring to remain apart from galactic society altogether. The Maratan Council has little involvement in the day-to-day affairs, focusing instead on interplanetary policy.
Maraquoi Faith
Traditional maraquoi religion has no formal name, and focuses on ancestor reverence over worshipping a specific divine entity. After death and before moving to the afterlife, each maraquoi is said to contribute a portion of their essence to an ancestral wellspring that exists between the stars. With proper ritual and conviction, a maraquoi can coax a forebear's wisdom or raw magical power from this wellspring, with the latter feat rarely performed except by trained ritualists. Inclusion in this wellspring is an integral part of a maraquoi's spiritual health, and thus one of the direst punishments involves cutting off a living maraquoi such that they'll never contribute their undying knowledge to future generations.
Since the Gap, some maraquoi have adopted other faiths, syncretizing them with their traditional beliefs. Yaraesa and Talavet increasingly feature as analogues or caretakers for the ancestral wellspring, encouraging maraquoi to learn from those who came before and discover new wonders.
Maraquoi Gender and Families
Each of the seven sexes plays a role in maraquoi reproduction. The ilsha, qsha, and susha all contribute genetic material to the uisha, who then passes the unborn child to the klsha to gestate. After birth, the infant maraquoi is passed to the mesha, who nurses the child and carries them in a marsupial-style pouch for several months. The seventh sex, the zysha, plays no physical role in the process, but their psychic influence throughout is vital for a viable birth. The notion of monogamous marriage is bizarre to most maraquoi, who regard the concept with bemusement.
Given the number of individuals involved, a maraquoi doesn't necessarily have a romantic relationship with all the other parents of their offspring. In most cases, they're romantically linked with some other parents and metamours with the rest; it's rare for a maraquoi to decide to have children if they aren't in a romantic relationship with at least one participant. Full polycules where all the participants are romantically involved with one another are uncommon, but not unheard of. After weaning and leaving the mesha's pouch, maraquoi children are reared communally, though their parents collectively hold the most influence over their development.
The Maraquoi language doesn't divide pronouns by gender, instead using words that roughly translate to “this/that person.” When speaking Common, most maraquoi use “they,” with other pronouns used based on individual preference. Some maraquoi identify with a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth or express a degree of gender fluidity. Such individuals are highly respected in maraquoi society, as they're believed to be spiritually influenced by an ancestor of their identified gender(s).
Names
Maraquoi have a given name and a surname, often using mellifluous tones and combinations of consonants. A maraquoi's surname is formed by taking the first phoneme from each of their parents' given names, in the order of the reproduction process with the zysha first. For example, a maraquoi whose parents' names were Tlana, Ensesha, Vaoliri, Nemnasha, Svarai, Qithieen, and Soklei would have the surname Tlenvanesvaqiso. Traditionally, many maraquoi also appended the name of their tribe when giving their names, though this practice is now considered somewhat old-fashioned.
Sample Names
Some sample maraquoi names include Aolisha, Bnevri, Dviathe, Esthithsa, Hxendei, Jqera, Klevsana, Llanai, Navrielle, Qivran, Srilaith, and Telvyi.
Vital Stats
Average Height 5-1/2 to 7 ft.
Average Weight 100–250 lbs.
Age of Maturity 12 years
Maximum Age 40+3d10 years
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