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Rats

The Rat people can be generally compared to a blend of Tolkien's Orcs society and members of Rattus biological genus.
Rats are one of the fifty-five races of anthropomorphic mammals that populate Yanìs, and are grouped in the subgenus of Rodents together with Beavers, Mice, Porcupines and Squirrels.

Physically, they are of medium height, averaging between 4 and 5 feet, and have varying weights. Their short, bristly fur is greyish to brown in color, and black or white grizzled on the back. The body is pear-shaped, with a rounded hindquarter and elongated head. Both arms and legs are mostly hairless and pinkish-gray in color, as is the prehensile tail, which is generally longer than the head and body combined, and it's sparsely covered with hair.

Overbearing by nature, the Rat people consider strength and power to be the most important virtues. On an almost intuitive level, they believe they are allowed to take whatever they want unless someone stronger prevents them from doing so. They have the ingrained belief that work should fall to the bottom of the social hierarchy and weigh on the weakest shoulders. It is said that the Rat people have their origins on the Sungam continent, alongside their cousins Mice, but then they migrated by sea and settled in Dav Al Munar, although all these all just rumors.
While they are able to survive thanks to an opportunistic diet, and feed even on waste, being able to eat almost anything edible they can find, Rats are almost always short-lived. One-third of them die in childhood from a wide range of accidents or simple violence, but the short lifespan of the Rats is balanced by their terrible fecundity as females become fertile when they reach maturity and remain so until they die.

Rat people are much better at simply populating an area than building a civilization. Most of their settlements consist of badly dug tunnels in mountain rock or in clayey subsoil, which branch off into a large number of secondary tunnels loosely set up for specific purposes, and a huge wood and rock fortress erected over the tunnel mouth to fortify it. Each settlement is ruled by a town chief, who is generally the strongest or most violent, and it's usually assisted by his most loyal henchmen, but among them chiefs can constantly change. All town chiefs are then led by the Rat king, ruler of their capital city, to whom everyone owes a periodic tribute in food or valuables, none excluded, not even his wives or his cubs. This is why the Rat king always and quickly becomes recognizable as bigger and more obese than everyone else.
Rats’ clothing is primitive, more focusing on covering and protecting furs and leathers, which are also the most easily obtainable materials. Part of their usual and traditional clothing includes hide and plant fiber weave ponchos and a straw hat with a particularly wide brim, not unlike modern sombreros.

They speak the Commal language, common to all Anthro mammal races, and the most commonly spoken language on the planet.

Religiously they are mostly devoted to Thialon (deity of tyranny and ambition), Dekar (deity of wealth and slavery), and Teeje (deity of piracy and looting), but here and there also thrive the cult of Dykren (deity of gamble and subterfuge), Kudan (deity of poisons and diseases), Zundoey (deity of undeath and curses), and Madra (deity of corruption and deceit).

Their Ancestral Princes were Murdut and Trisgrak, who taught their race that the strength of their people lies in numbers: the more Rats there are in the world, the harder it is for their enemies to overwhelm them. They also taught them that the night is always preferable to daylight and that one must simply follow the stronger because the weakest must be ignored.

Footnote
During their century-long imprisonment, the Rat people developed the habit of using gunpowder and a weapon called hacuebuche. This weapon is a sort of rudimentary hand cannon that requires manual external ignition through a touch hole, without any form of firing mechanism.

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