Hakanu

The hakanu (Labio callidans) are a tall, lithe excultid race from the southwestern continent of Okaluan and surrounding isles. Their faces are flatter than other excultids, with only slight muzzles with somewhat elongated skulls. Hakanu skin is glossy black with smooth, small scales. Their faces are flatter than other excultids. Hakanu eyes are large with irises of gold, green, blue and copper hues.

Males average six and a half feet, females are somewhat taller with more robust builds. Male Hakanu have two rows of small horns running along their temples and reddish throats. They also have large spikes on corners of their jaws and chins, as well as along their brows. Females have smaller horns and spikes and their throats have a bluish hue. The throat hues in both genders darkens over time until old age when they are as black as the rest of their skin.

Both males and females have manes of long, hair like feathers on their heads and slightly down their backs. In males, these mains are crimson and stand erect, creating a type of crest or mane. Female manes are flowing, with blue or violet, with longer, finer feathers.

They are at home in the heat of their tropical homeland, and tend to succumb to illnesses in colder climates. Hakanu are egg laying, laying one or two blue-black, leathery shelled eggs that hatch after 3 months. The young are fed by mother and father on regurgitated food supplemented with a nutritious, milk like substance called liguro secreted into their throats from two rows of three pouch like glands that grow on either side of their necks. These glands recede, leaving the skin smooth once the child is weaned one year after hatching.

Hakanu have the greatest expertise in semiotic magic of any excultid people, the power of their practitioners rivaled only by those of the humans of Kalmasa.

Hakanu can be divided into two main ethnicities, the Kahala'i of the northern highlands and the Talani'i in the lowlands of the southeast.