Klage

Disclaimer
I've received a lot of requests from people to make their own Zarthu character. At the moment, I'm not comfortable allowing such and only giving the permission to really close friends. Please respect this.

The different breeds are still being worked on. Listed below are at least the breed names. Their specifics will come later.
Ancient Zarthu
Northern Zarthu
Desert Zarthu
Jungle Zarthu
Savannah Zarthu
Ash Zarthu
Swamp Zarthu
Cave Zarthu

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The Zarthu are a race of nearly-extinct warrior beasts forged from canine and dragon blood. Strong, intelligent, and with a penchant for violence, the Zarthu are a relatively new race to the land of Furcadia, but their effect has taken root upon numerous large kingdoms in the past hundred cycles.

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Resembling something between a large canid and a small dragon, the average Zarthu is just slightly more massive than a bipedal wolf. Male Zarthu, being more powerful than females, register anywhere from 5'8" to 6'8", and can weigh up to two-hundred and fifty pounds. Females are more diminutive in stature, and generally do not hit anything higher than five and a half feet. Neither gender should be taken lightly; a fullgrown female can stand nearly toe-to-toe with a male lupine in combat ability, and her manipulative nature can make her far deadlier.

Being warriors, the Zarthu as a race are strong, full of pride. The only find rarer than a Zarthu is a Zarthu who is weak, the racial average being tightly packed sinew and dexterous movement. The Zarthu suffer from their heavy frames, not being as fast as their lighter lupine and vulpine cousins, but they are capable of packing more muscle into an equally-sized frame with a plethora of built-in weapons.

The head of the Zarthu can be angular or smooth, but it always is reminiscent of a stock canine. The snout is elongated -- up to 7 inches -- and the ears are almost bat-like in nature, sharp, pointy-tipped, and extending two-thirds of a foot from their fuzzy, four-inch base at the skull. Inside the snout are two rows of sharp and jagged teeth, the twin sets of canine teeth making the bite of the Zarthu especially wicked. The bluish-black tongue is large, flat, and very canid in nature, and Zarthu saliva is slightly acidic. While it is not potent enough to cause true damage, the strong digestive fluid can leave uncomfortable rashes on exposed skin.

The entire body is covered in a layer of thin, coarse hairs, which cling closely to the skin and require little maintenance. The fur of the Zarthu species can range from black to light grey, with black being the most common. Lighter shades are most often found in arctic regions, with the darker hues more accustomed to the mainlands. The fur and the skin beneath offer little protection against attack; the Zarthu depend wholly on being able to strike first.

The majority of the Zarthu's body follows the sleek trend of canine forms, the only major difference being in the tail and back. From the back of a mature Zarthu extend a pair of wings, not flight capable, which have a span of up to six feet. Batlike in nature, the wings vary in composition from raw, warm leather to a light layer of soft feathers.

Tailwise, a more draconic appendage extends from just above the buttocks, slender and covered in a furry mane. A leathery tassel extends from the tip of the tail, quite possibly capable of being utilized as a weapon, should the need arise. Other such weapons include the sharp claws which extend from both fingers and toes, thick and black in color, regardless of the color of the Zarthu's fur.

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For a race so bent on fighting, the Zarthu are understandably vagabonds, rather than pack animals. Upon reaching maturity, a Zarthu will spend the rest of her life wandering alone, taking what life will give her. Generally speaking, this involves a Zarthu finding a likeable spot and claiming it. Such territorial claims are without any legal standing, and many a fight has resulted over the rash behavior of the species.

The Zarthu are incredibly aggressive, to the point of random violence. It is not unheard of for pillaging and murder to be thought of as 'sports' by some Zarthu. They are fed by fear, anxiety and pain, which brings many Zarthu to run such unsavory sites as dungeons and underground slave fighting arenas, where many a furre has met his death.

The anger of the Zarthu stretches to such a point where there is a low-- 13%, estimated-- survival rate upon simply meeting a Zarthu, regardless of one's intentions. Many who have ventured to learn about the species have never been seen again, presumably killed and eaten by the beasts which they wished to study. A Zarthu has very little patience, and even less mercy for other species, which it considers 'inferior'. Humans are viewed even lower; a human may have a one in a thousand chance of surviving an encounter with a Zarthu.

Zarthu are relatively untamable; only one in twenty attempts will result in anything short of the Zarthu going completely insane. Lack of mental stability and a searing temper make very prized arena slaves, and some corrupt kings have enslaved Zarthu to be pitted against gladiators in brutal, bloody arenas

The Zarthu are not capable of love as most humans and furres would have it. While they can feel compassion, lust, and even love itself, those feelings are displayed in a gory, kink-ridden fest of torn flesh and bloodied screams. It is not unheard of for one partner to die during sex with a Zarthu, unintentionally.

Fiercely loyal to the few lucky enough to be 'friends', a Zarthu would sacrifice its own life for someone it cares about. However, most Zarthu choose not to enter relationships, which are viewed as 'weaknesses' among members of the species. Most Zarthu never have more than one or two others who they would consider to be friends.

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The long ages of the Earth birthed many creatures, many forms of life. The tracts of the Earth have been owned by fish, insects, amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, birds, and mammals. . . all in their due time..

The race of Humanity now controls the Earth. By their hand, its very face is shaped, and by their will, the Earth has been brought to heel under their mass numbers and advanced technology. However, Humanity is not the firstborn of Terra, but the younger sibling. Thousands of years before Humanitys first steps out of the howling dark of non-sentience, the race now known as the Zarthu ruled across the face of the plan

The purpose of this document is not to explain their evolution, nor to describe their physical characteristics, or famous Zarthu through history. Herein lies the history of the Zarthu as a rising race, a powerful empire, and a dying species.


The first evidence of fully sentient Zarthu were discovered in scattered locations across Eastern Europe. Key sites exist in Bavaria, the Saxon coast in Poland and Norway, and Romania, in the region that was formerly known as Transylvania. These sites date to roughly 775,000 years ago, a full quarter-million years before the first homo sapiens even evolved. During this time, humanitys ancestors were still represented by homo erectus in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia. By this time, however, earlier forms of Zarthu had spread to nearly all corners of the globe, including the snowy wastes of Siberia and the southern tip of modern-day Argentina..

These first communities were little more than nomadic, hunter-gatherer societies. Early Zarthu clans seemed to have been ruled over by a dominant male, though many communities show signs of a dominant female or even a dominant couple or family. Their early tools were well-machined, far beyond the simple ones utilized by their homo erectus rivals. These hunter-gatherer clans quickly spread throughout the globe, thanks to their evolved brains and tendency to slaughter and in some cases devour resident homo erectus and earlier Zarthu villages. It is widely believed that the rapid extinction of the earlier Zarthu forms during the middle of the Pleiocene was largely due to the modern Zarthus brutality. The early humans continued to exist, however. Scientists believe this is because Zarthu viewed the roving bands of erectus more as a nuisance or food source than an actual threat. Butchery marks and even signs of erectus domestication at Zarthu cave sites support this claim, suggesting that erectus may have been kept like cattle or as household pets early in the Zarthu civilized history. Having little to provoke them into advancement, this nomadic, tribal lifestyle persisted among Zarthu for the next 400,000 years. When the ancient human heidelbergensis came to prominence in Europe, the Zarthu were already coalescing into Earths first true cities. The vast majority of these cities have been buried under the ravages of time and the violent conflicts that were to come, but some still exist, and are even inhabited, today. Hotbeds for Zarthu civilization existed in southern Mezoamerica, western China, Egypt, South Africa, Sinai, the near east, and the Indus region. Evidence of lesser city-states have been found on every continent, including a minor empire upon the northernmost peninsula of Antartica.

By far the most powerful Zarthu empire existed in Egypt. The center of this empire was a city that has long been considered humanitys most significant ancient achievement. This city is Cairo. The entirety of the Egyptian Nile fell under the Egyptian Kingdoms rule. All of the ancient Pyramids from pre-dynastic times to the end of the Old Kingdom were created under Zarthu rule. However, humans are not mistaken when they name the Pyramids their most proud creation. No Zarthu expended a single bead of perspiration in the construction of these megaliths. The domestication and use for food of humans had evolved into full-blown slavery. They were corralled into walled villages and sequestered off from mainstream Zarthu society. They were allowed to live freely within these cities. . . though this autonomy was not so much an act of mercy, but a sign that Zarthu cared so little for their slaves that they allowed them to do whatever they wished, so long as they did not interfere with the construction of their cities.

The Old Kingdom Pharaohs were in fact Zarthu rulers, not human ones. Little evidence is available on these ancient kings, for reasons to be explained later, but it is known they created statuaries and carvings proclaiming their glory and dominance many times more magnificent than any humans have achieved.

The pyramid is a common symbol among Zarthu cities. All across the world these edifices exist in one form or another, always constructed by human slaves, workers, or worshippers, but always created in the same general form, all traceable back to the greatest Zarthu city-state in Cairo. This suggest that the Zarthu not only knew of each others city-states across the world, but had a real exchange of ideas, information, and trade to these cities. Something humans wouldnt accomplish for tens of thousands of years afterwards. Though there is no evidence of their technology passing beyond iron-age implements, and no evidence whatsoever of complex machining, gunpowder, or electricity, the Zarthu civilization was vast, intricate, complex, and, though infinitely fractured into warring factions, immensely powerful.

During the turbulent times after the fall of the Old Kingdom, the Zarthu civilization began to decline all over the world. The reason why has been debated. . . possibly a global epidemic, a devastating war, or a shift in the climate. . .whether political or otherwise. However, overwhelming evidence exists to suggest that what toppled the great Zarthu civilization, were the cattle it had been exploiting and preying upon for millennia.

Prevailing theories hold that the human slave population within Cairo rose to a breaking point. The uncaring attitude of the Zarthu Pharaohs toward their slaves led to them growing and advancing unchecked in the filthy, grinding slave camps. Eventually their population was many times that of the Zarthu rulers in the city, and they rose up and cast down the prevailing rulers in a long, bloody coup. The humans were eventually successful, defacing and destroying most evidence of the Zarthu Pharaohs, replacing it with false evidence of their own species ruling in their stead. Zarthu tombs were raided and exhumed, the mummies burned and replaced with the corpses of humans who had died heroically in the uprisings. In effect, they erased the Zarthu from their history as best they could.

Evidence exists however, in the culture the Zarthu left behind in Egypt. The Pharaohs wore false bears, long and curled. This same tuft is distinctive of Zarthu males once they have reached their physical prime. The tall headdresses worn by the kings were meant to mimic the hoods stretched across the horns of the ruling kings. The style and clothing of Egyptians were also adopted from their former masters..

From this central locus, numerous other uprisings began. The most significant of these existed in Mesoamerica, when the Zarthu city near Norte Chico was overthrown and nearly destroyed. Evidence of violent conflicts exist all over the world, and explains why Zarthu artifacts and hard evidence is so difficult to find. . . humans, in their hatred for their oppressors, did their best to erase them not only from history, but from their very minds. As it happened, they were not entirely successful.


The global decline of the Zarthu race was not quick, but it was irreparable. With the primary cities of the Zarthu race taken over by humans, the vassal city-states shrank, withered, and eventually died. By the time the Roman Empire fractioned, the Zarthu race was a shadow of its former self. They had regressed back to existing in nomadic clans, isolated villages, and secret, underground covens that often resorted to dark rituals, torture, and other atrocities in an effort to frighten humanity back into submission, or simply out of bloodlust and the desire to avenge their ancestors brutal fall from power

To this day, Zarthu continue to exist in isolated pockets throughout the world. Their form and nature are engrained into humans psyche, in fact humans perception of demons, dragons, and other monsters are based off the form of their former masters. Scattered sightings of Zarthu exiles have been chalked up to Bigfoot, yetis, the Jersey Devil, and other local monsters.

The future of the Zarthu race is assured. They are nearly extinct, and fewer are being born every day. Their nest sites are often extremely well-hidden and guarded fiercely, and every viable egg is treasured as a priceless jewel. Eventually, the last of the Zarthu will die, leaving the Earth to their former slaves to rule..

Until the next civilization rises..