Most the uacata (plural uacatai) on Sharitarn live in the White Mountain, near to the Arctic Circle. They feel more comfortable on cold regions and high altitudes.
A significant portion of this race has a close relationship with the city of Mandallu, know as The Ice Gate, which is a mandatory stop for all humans who travel to the North Continent by land (what few have reasons to do). Some few are citizens, most have parents and business partners living on Mandallu. The race has some influence and is represented in all castes, but the Ice Gate is a human city and that's beyond question; at least for the moment.
Uacatai are centauroids. Above the waistline they look like humans, usually more muscular, with a few small differences. Below the belt they have two frontal pairs of legs which have the general aspect of lion legs, and one pair of rear legs which are stronger and end in paws that hide sharp blades as large as swords. Each leg has a spike pointing up and back, except for the rear pair which has two spikes on each leg. The uacatai also have a tail, about as long as the body, which sometimes ends in a natural weapon. When that exists can be a bone spike_ most common_ or a mace.
Their original planet has magic, not exactly identical to the one found on Sharitarn but close enough to give them some basic understanding of how it works here. Thanks to that they usually adapt to the new world easier than most involuntary immigrants.
By natural inclination the uacatai are male dominant, as most the intelligent mammal species (but not all intelligent mammal species).
In terms of social organization and family the race is divided in tree lines of attitude, with several internal variations naturally. There is the
Ancient or Primordial, the Traditional, and the Urban ways.
Ancient, or primordial, are uacata who follow a structure of habits and believes that was almost as dead on their home planet when they faced the vortex as the religions are on Earth 2090. The fact that a relevant number or uacatai choose that model of life is usually explained as a reaction against the inevitable cultural contamination generated by the relations with the dominant specie on Sharitarn.
The primordial uacatai are hunters and warriors, strictly nomad. About half dozen adult males who share a bond of friendship join to hunt larger preys and fight invaders, but beyond such occasions they keep a respectable distance from each other's territories. Each male has a harem, in their absence the females_ between two and fifteen of them_ stay together all the time, hunt small preys and take care of each other's children. They obey the male on everything, and keep a rigid hierarchic structure in his absence; interfere in this structure is one of the most difficult things for any male uacata, what in some sense is the one limit for his power over the females.
During the childhood boys and girls look more or less the same, except for their sexual organs. In puberty the boys grow larger, their tails became thicker and in some cased gain deferential structures at the end; some females develop small boobs in their upper body, and a more delicate aspect, others grow for some more time looking like young males.
The young leave their families alone or in small groups. In this point men usually join a mercenary band of human outlaws or some similar alternative social structure, or visit Mandallu for a couple of years to get a additional martial training_and live experience_ before go back to the ancestral way. Most females stay closer to each other, forming small hunting bands controlled by the one who look more like a male.
Uacatai male, whatever their way of live if, hunt this young females. They use strategies older than their specie itself, and adapt them according to the circumstances, to separate and capture the young females. Following the basic instinct of their specie when male catches a female he uses his superior weight and strength to immobilize her, while she fights trying to escape. The more feminine uacatai give up the fight easier, while the dominant ones resist more. Most times, any way, the virgin female escapes intact the first assault. She can kill the male in the process, but more frequently he leaver with superficial bruises. The girl also gets some bruises, and sometimes loose a spike or two.
When the male succeeds and penetrate the female her resistance looses energy. The intercourse takes hours, and after that experience the female body changes very fast. She looses muscles and gain fat tissue, and in some cases start the process of lactation (all adult females in a harem, and feed each other's children, even the sterile ones).
In the ancient times on their home planet, and among the most orthodox primordial on Sharitarn, a female after his first sexual experiences became the preferential prey for opportunistic males. She usually keep the fight and flee routine for some time, and the male who took her virginity usually insists in the hunt until she give up. Eventually the female changes direction and follows the male (or one of them) back to his harem. The most determinate fighters by this point will have no more spikes on their legs, the docile ones on the other hand will be mostly intact.
In the new life the young female is protected by the male captor, up to the moment when he must leave to hunt for the first time. Then the other women surround her, to ripe apart her tail and eat it.
Only one female in each harem keeps her tail, the dominant one. Who usually is also the first to be captured by their husband (but not always).
Traditional uacatai live in larger villages, being semi nomads they cultivate the field when possible an trade more often with the two other groups of their race. Their social structure is similar to the tribal way of life adopted by the Forest People in the south. They adopt the practices of slavery according to the codes agreed upon by civilizes humanity and most wild folks on Sharitarn, which in essence don't differ too much from what was usual on their home planet when they lived up there (except for detail, mostly ritualistic ones).
The bonds between the parents and their children are kept for as long as possible. Males try to protect their daughters and sisters up to some point in life, from other males, sometimes accords are made and free companionship contracts are celebrated for a period between five and fifteen years: during this periods the male can neither slave his free companion nor move with her to another village without the consent of her father (and her consent usually is implicitly necessary to get that). In traditional groups there is a larger variety of occupations and sources of status. Castes are not adopted, but there is some degree of specialization according to skill and inclination.
When the sexual hunt and capture happen they are ritualized, in some level. Once the first male succeeded in have intercourse with one female no other hunter is authorized to approach her, all the fight and killing between the males for that particular female must happen before that point.
The basic structure of mind under the traditional moral and behavior is the same followed by the primordial uacatai. They sophisticated a large part of it, but gave up little of their essential instincts.
Urban uacatai are a more complicated subject.
They still keep the bonds with their wild relatives and make presence in seasonal festivities, they have the harems and the ritualized hunts (but take effort to recognize it, sometimes a lot good will). On the other hand they adopt the caste system and participate in the political structures of Mandallu like humans and the other citizen races do.
One kind of character that only appear on the cities is the adult lady who has no free companion. She is a sort of prolongation of the state experienced by the dominant young girls since primordial times.
High Caste (is almost impossible achieve that status without being one) and with a strong father or brother to back her relationship with their caste, she will dress armor like a male uacatai usually do. And keep a harem of slave females, and often one or more slave males from their own specie. Those free ladies are pejoratively called "ice armors" or "spikes" by the other uacatai females. Urban males tend to be more tolerant with the type than the females, strangely as it may seems; possibly because each one of them feels that her unnatural state as spikes is more his own fault than hers.
Of course, ice armors are attractive targets for slavers of all races, as much so as their corresponding images among the human ladies are.
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