Khajiit

When the world was young, after the dying Fadomai placed the moons into the sky to guide Her children, She gave departing gifts to each of them. The greatest of these gifts was to Her daughter Nirni with the ability to bare children of her own. After this, the only of Her litter not to have a gift was Azurah. To Her, Fadomai gifted three secrets, and her pick of Nirni's children to take as her own. This is how Azurah took some of the forest people and formed them into the most beautiful on Nirni's back, tying their forms to the cycle of the Lunar Latice.

Sixteen Kingdoms and the Moon Emperor

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Khajiit formed one of the oldest Bronze Age civilizations in continental Tamriel. Extending far beyond their modern-day borders, sixteen kingdoms ruled the land. Little record remains of this era. The only surviving legend of this time refers to a Moon Emperor who united the kingdoms as some sort of immortal god-king. They are said to have divided the Khajiitii furstocks, the myriad forms they take at birth based on the phases of the moons, and assigned each a Path to follow. However, actual evidence of this being is almost non-existent, with only a single, possible depiction in a wall carving within an ancient temple. There are some accounts of a conflict between the Khajiit and the mysterious Bird People of central Cyrodiil. Their borders would gradually be pushed south by the colonial Ayleid civilization.
Some time during the Merethic Era, an icy wind from the north brought winged Demons to the region. With fire and sky-magic, they slew the Moon Emperor, and brought the kingdoms under heel. The Khajiit had built a gate to the Core of Jode, one of the lunar sky spirits. These demons plotted to take its power for themselves. A hero named Khunzar-ri and his companions were clever enough to trick the demons, convincing them to pour their power into the Core to combine its power with their own. This gamble worked, and they were able to defeat the demons before they could reclaim their power from the lunar core. Khunzar-ri, knowing that demons cannot be killed, allowed them to escape back to Nirni, where he lured them into the Halls of Colossus and sealed them away.
With the Moon Emperor killed, the sixteen kingdoms turned to the spiritual leadership of the Mane, under whom, they maintained relative peace for over 2,000 years.

Two Kingdoms and the Riddle'Thar Epiphany

This long peace began to collapse in the year 1E2260, when the Thrassian Plague, an engineered weapon of the Sload to pacify the continent, burned through the trade routes. Within a decade, all sixteen kingdoms had collapsed as nearly half of its population fell to the disease. Over the following decades, Khajiiti culture reorganized around two kingdoms. In the dry deserts of the north, nomadic tribes and ancient temple settlements united under the banner of Ne Quin-al, or Anequina to outsiders. To the south, wealthy tropical plantations and densely populated coastal cities became the Kingdom of Pa'alatiin, or Pellitine to foreign merchants. These two alliances divided ancestral lands and competed over stewardship of sacred temples along their border. From their inception, the Twin Kingdoms were at war.

"A perfect society is always found elsewhere."

— Khajiit Proverb

The squabbling kingdoms were no match for the Reman Empire in the final centuries of the First Era. Both kingdoms quickly fell to the nascent empire, but remained at odds with one another, never able to be fully tamed by Imperial rule. In an effort to finally end the conflict, in the year 2E 309, the nobility of both kingdoms finally called for a truce as King Keirgo of Anequina and Queen Eshita of Pellitine were wed. While separate entities by rights of the nobility, the kingdoms had finally formed a true alliance. The united royal family named this new government the Elsweyr Confederacy, named perhaps after an old proverb.
This alliance nearly collapsed in a generation, as the chieftains of Anequina resented their power flowing out to the nobility of the south. In 2E 326, an army of Anequinan loyalists sacked their own capitol, slaughtering the royal family, and prepared to march south to start a civil war. The army was stopped by Mane Rid-Thar-ri'Datta, who declared a revelation given to him in meditation. This revaluation became known as the Riddle'Thar Epiphany, and had a profound impact on Khajiit life.
The many furstocks had been divided into castes since the time of the Lunar Emperor. This fueled much of the animosity between the wealthy south and the comparatively impoverished north. Rather than abolishing the caste system, the rankings of each caste would rotate along the phases of the twin moons, in sympathy with the birth cycle which created them. The army of the rebellious nobles turned on their leaders, and accepted this new philosophy with open arms. This did not eliminate the disparity of wealth, but it did ultimately allow power to shift back and forth between the nobility of the south and tribal leaders of the north.
He also taught new spiritual beliefs, shifting the importance of certain gods, and instead focusing on right-living, and for all furstocks to follow the Riddle'Thar, the True Path. This philosophy would come to be deified in time, but was never anthropomorphized, instead regarded as a supernatural embodiment of the Path itself. Those who follow the Path are granted recuperation in Llesweyr, an Old Ta'agra word translating to Sands Behind the World.
The Confederacy had begrudgingly accepted Imperial rule once again under the Septim Empire. Despite their loyalty and economic contributions, Khajiit are mistrusted and discriminated against across the Empire. They are regarded as thieves, and peddlers of skooma, a narcotic derived from moon sugar which happens to be Pellitine's largest export. The Legion routinely looks the other way as Dunmeri pirates raid the coastal settlements of southern Elseweyr, and selling their captives as slaves in Morrowind, despite slavery and the trafficking of sapient mortals being illegal in the Empire.
In 3E395, during the Imperial Simulacrum, when a sorcerer named Jagger Tharn disguised himself as the emperor, a Five Year War broke out between Elsweyr and Valenwood. The war resulted in the Khajiit controlling the west bank of the Xylo River, but losing proportionate land in the east to the opportunistic County Leyawiin. Elsweyr's westward march was cut off when desperate bosmeri refugees, displaced when Elsweyr broke a standing truce and massacred their village, initiated a Wild Hunt. This forbidden wood elf ritual, transformed them permanently into fearsome sub-sapient beasts with single-minded determination to kill their enemies at any cost. They slaughtered the khajiiti army until they retreated, looking back in horror as the creatures behind them turned on eachother in a "cannibalistic orgy".

dro-m'Athra and The Dark Mane

In the year 3E 433, the emperor had been assassinated by a daedric cult called the Mythic Dawn, breaking an ancient ritual which the Imperials understand frighteningly little of. Soon after, gates of fire opened across Tamriel, and out poured demons in service to of the Adversarial Spirit, the Ja'Khajiit Meruunz. While the other provinces burned, Elsweyr had a crisis of faith, which perhaps threatened its people more than the prospect of extinction.
Word of the Mythic Dawn reached few official ears before the Emperor was slain. Without notice, they had made converts in every major city in Tamriel, who dutifully performed rituals at hidden locations near settlements and in the wilderness where Oblivion Gates could be opened. However one world leader had discovered this secret. Ji'Sajmann, by appearance an average young Khajiit had been traveling in the right circles to be invited into the cult, where he spent nearly a year studying and learning. One day, the young novitiate disappeared. They day after the Emperor's assassination, a new Mane was announced. The cultists recognized his face, and attempted to assassinate him, but he was far too familiar with their tactics, and had already placed moles to infiltrate their ranks further.
Mane Sajmann answered the slaughter of his people with a new revelation. With the walls separating Nirni and Oblivion dissolving, it was up to the Khajiit to use their power against them. Altering the oblivion gate ritual, Sajmann's followers dug up four ancient Dolmans, ritual apparatuses built by the Worm Cult in the Second Era to merge Tamriel with another Oblivion realm. They used these dolmans to call forth Dark Anchors from the Dark Behind the World a realm of Namiira the Great Darkness, the eldest spirit in the Khajiiti monomyth.

From these dark anchors poured legions of dro-m'Athra, khajiiti spiriits who succumbed to corruption in life, and were dragged into the Void in death to become twisted soldiers of shadow. These children of the Dark Moon have always been deadly enemies of mortal kind, but this time they appeared solely interested in defeating the forces of Merunnz. Cooperating and even communicating with the mortal soldiers defending their plane.
Although this did not tip the scales fully, and losses were severe, Elsweyr was spared the worst of the Oblivion Crisis. Turning to their oldest enemy was controversial. Many in Elsweyr reviled this strategy, but when faced with genocidal daedra, most relented. This changed near the end of the Crisis, when it was discovered that the dro-m'Athra had been secreting away civilians, carrying them into the portals at the Dolmans, to have their souls invaded by the Dark Heart, becoming dro-m'Athra themselves. A full rebellion spread across the Confederacy, and Mane Sajmann willingly gave himself to the crowd, warning that payment for their salvation was inevitable as he was executed.
Although Imperials claim it was their emperor's secret son who sacrificed himself and ended the Crisis, both the Dark Anchors and the Oblivion Gates shut down the moment the mane's head hit the floor.

Fourth Era

Months after the Oblivion Crisis ended, a kingdom in northeast Elsweyr called Rimmen declared its secession from the Empire. Although Rimmen was a Khajiit territory, and paid taxes to the Mane as part of the Province of Elseweyr, Rimmen was a largely independent kingdom, having left the Elsweyr Confederacy in the late Second Era. Khinrina, the interim governor of the Confederacy, made no objection to the Eleventh Legion marching through their territory to put down this rebellion. In a speech, she spoke about a need for unity and faith in this time of faithlessness. Days later, she would change her tune, after word broke of a three-day massacre of their city. Discipline had broken down in the Eleventh Legion, freshly traumatized from fighting daedra, and they had committed crimes against its people comparable the bloodthirsty demons themselves.
Potentate Ocato had intervened after three days, sending the Legion home for disciplinary action and formally surrendering to Rimmen, promising reparations. Khinrina saw this as an opportunity, and had Elsweyr's soldiers escort the Legion out of the province personally. This nearly resulted in a skirmish at the border before the Legion commander intervened. With Cyrodiil in disarray over their crimes in Rimmen, and proof that the Empire was willing to actually concede territory without a fight for the first time in over an Era, Khinrina began campaigning for Elsweyr's independence as well.
In the decade since the Oblivion Crisis, Rimmen, Black Marsh, and the Summerset Isles have all peacefully left the Empire. Khinrina and the surviving nobility have all been negotiating for years, but the Empire seems much less willing to compromise with them. Meanwhile, her rule is being challenged by Ya'Tirrje, the Gold Cat, a notorious kingpin who has spent the last twenty years reforming his image as the cat who brought prosperity and order to the traditionally lawless city of Senchal, while obviously continuing to operate his drug-smuggling business out of other cities on thee coast. Ya'Tirrie's following is threatening to overthrow the governor if she "can't get the job done."
The Khajiit are currently at a crossroads, with a spiritual leader who sold their future to the Void, a ruling Empire in shambles, and a crime boss vying for office, the very soul of Elsweyr is at stake.

Khajiit Traits

The moons Jone and Jode have given you the following traits:

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Ability Score Increase

Your gain +2 to Charisma and Dexterity.

Age

Khajiit come of age in their late teens and live less than a century. Elder khajiit are well taken care of by their community in Elsweyr, but many do not live that long in the unforgiving world outside.

Alignment

Khajiit are protective of those they care about, but have little loyalty to those they do not. The trick is being able to tell where you stand, as Khajiit tend to regard everyone with the same casual friendliness and sardonic humor. They are most often Chaotic Neutral.

Speed

Your base walking speed is 40 feet. But, if you walk too fast, you might miss something. It is better to go slow, is it not?

Cat Eye

You have a cat’s keen senses, especially in the dark. With Darkvision, you can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Cat’s Claws

Because of your claws, you have a climbing speed of 20 feet. In addition, your claws are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with them, you deal slashing damage equal to 1d4 + your Dexterity modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.

Cat’s Talent

You have proficiency in Acrobatics, Perception, and Stealth skills.

Languages

You can speak, read, and write Cyrodilic and Ta'agra, the native tongue of the Khajiit. Any given sentence in ta'agra is likely to have multiple possible meanings, and must be thought of as a riddle in order to properly translate.

Furstocks

The form a khajiit takes is tied to the eternal dance of the sky spirits: Nirn's twin moons Masser and Secunda. In the Khajiiti tradition, they are called Jone and Jode. Their combined phases determines a khajiit's furstock. Each of these furstocks are traditionally grouped as part of a caste, and will usually travel out of the province in groups of the same furstock for mutual protection and companionship. This is why one usually only sees a single furstock represented in another province at any point in time.

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The phases of Nirni's larger moon, Jone determines approximate khajiit's body plan, while phases of Jode determine how bestial or human they appear.

Jone Full - Large Quadroped

• Jode Full - Senche - Lion-like beings, as large as horses, who are sometimes rode into battle by other Khajiit.
• Jode Waxing - Senche-raht - The largest furstock, massive lions-like beings twice the height of an Altmer. These "Battlecats" are exceedingly deadly enemies and tend to live out in the savannah alone when they reach adulthood unless family obligations call them back to society.
• Jode New - Pahmar - Tiger-like beings, with a bear-like body structure, allowing them to walk on two legs as well as four.
• Jode Waning - Pahmar-raht - One and a half times the height of a Pahmar, these towering giant tiger men are far deadlier than their siblings.

Jone Waxing - Large Biped

• Jode Full - Cathay - The most common and diverse furstock in terms of facial features and fur patterns The same average size of a human with cat-like heads and a tail.
• Jode Waxing - Cathay-raht - larger and faster than Cathay with specifically Jaguar-like features.
• Jode New - Tojay - Rarely seen outside of Tenmar Forest - they have linx-like ears and skittish personalities
• Jode Waning - Tojay-Raht - Larger and less flighty than Tojay, they also remain in Tenmar to serve the futile purpose of organizing their smaller siblings.

Jone New - Small Biped

• Jode Full - Ohmes - Almost indistinguishable from Bosmer, if slightly shorter. Some tattoo cat-like patterns on their faces to stay true to their heritage, while others disappear into the wider world, avoiding the discrimination faced by their people.
• Jode Waxing - Ohmes-raht - The size and build of an average human, with elf-like features, a thin layer of fur, and a tail.
• Jode New - Suthay - Similar in height to Ohmes, but distinctly feline, with bestial faces and digitigrade legs.
• Jode Waning - Suthay-raht, commonly targeted by Dunmeri slavers, Suthay-Raht are the average size of men, but with feline features and legs.

Jone Waning - Small Quadruped

• Jode Full - Alfiq - Physically indistinguishable from common housecats. They can speak, and learn magic in order to function. They are often employed as spies outside the province.
• Jode Waxing - Alfiq-raht - lesser known than Alfiq, these larger "street cats" are known to form gangs in the back alleys of coastal cities.
• Jode New - Dagi - Larger than Alfiq, and with bear-like skeletons, allowing for bipedial movement, these lanky khajiit are often seen leaping between trees in the rainforests of Pellitine.
• Jode Waning - Dagi-raht - slightly larger than Dagi, and preferring to stand upright. These territorial cats will stalk interlopers from the treetops for miles before ambushing them.

The Dark Moon and the Mane

Once in a generation, Jone and Jode align, and a double-lunar eclipse occurs. Khajiit believe a third moon, the Den of Lorkhaj can be sensed, though not seen, during these events. Those born under the Dark Moon are of seemingly random furstock. They are more sensitive to the corrupting, creeping darkness at the edge of mortal thought, and can easily become dro-m'Athra. One person born under this moon is chosen when they come of age. They must travel to the planes of each of the three moons in turn in a testing ritual. If they survive the ordeal with their soul intact, they ascend to the role of Mane, and act as spiritual leader of the Khajiit for as long as their heart remains pure.

Parent ethnicities

• Fey - Changeling

Related Organizations

• The Ancestor's Path
• The Third Empire of Man

Languages spoken

• Cyrodiilic
• Ta'agra

Related Locations

• Elsweyr