Sablekyne

"Old Mar'Qua maps always pointed to Onkarth as being a potential testing ground for social experiments, and when The Federation wanted to bring more planets into the fold they were more than happy to put that theory into practice."

Sablekyne are a vaguely feline race of horned alien bipeds hailing from the planet of Onkarth. Nearly a century of integration and cooperation with humans have made them openly accept Sol Federation rule and they have allied with them to spread their influence and race to the stars.
A quick-start guide:

• Sablekyne are vaguely feline horned bipedal aliens averaging at 182cm (6’0 ft.) and have bodies built for strength and harsh weather conditions.
• Sablekyne are strong and tough and get a +5 to their toughness and robustness stats. An extra +5 can be gained if their home-world is chosen in character setup.
• Sablekyne can see further in the dark than humans.
• Sablekyne are at home in extreme heat and cold with bodies built to survive in such environments.
• Sablekyne have claws and horns that are suited for use as weapons, they deal more damage in unarmed combat and may cause bleeding on hit.
• Sablekyne primarily draw nutrition from meat and foods containing animal protein as they are carnivores, regular nutriment does not sate hunger nearly as well.
• Sablekyne hail from the star system Gamma Minoris and the planet Onkarth.
• Sablekyne are separated by the Northlanders and Southlanders, told apart by magnetic poles.
• Sablekyne have were hand picked by Sol Fed and Mar'Qua for peaceful integration into the federations do.
• Perk: Sablekyne gain the perk "Last Stand", which allows them to ignore the effects of pain for 1 minute every 15 minutes. Nonlethal weapons will have almost no effect, but severe enough injury will still make them fall unconscious. This also doesn't make them immune to any other effects of injuries.
• Perk: Sablekyne gain the perk "Bone Plated", which allows them to withstand 20 more damage before going into shock. This is similar to having 20 more points in Toughness, but with none of the other benefits of raising the stat.
• Perk: Sablekyne gain the perk "Brawny Build", which makes them immune to knockdown attacks from many wild critters, and resistant to being shoved by other people. This is identical to the "Immovable Object" job perk given to the Blackshield Commander and Warrant Officer.

Home System and Planet

The Sablekyne hail from the star system gamma Minoris, a small system of only three planets that is positioned largely out of the way of the galactic stage. Of the three planets only one is hospitable with the other two being a magma planet and gas giant respectively. The three planets within the Minoris system are named Anzonus, the magma planet closest to the Minoris star. Onkarth, the hospitable desert planet where the Sablekyne reside and Xegetis the gas giant and farthest planet from the sun.

Anzonus is a dense metal rich planet extremely high in ore content but completely inhospitable due to volcanic activity throughout the surface of the planet. The systems gas giant, Xegetis, is largely similar to other gas giants and possess nothing in the way of abnormalities. The home planet of the Sablekyne, Onkarth, is mostly a lush planet full of low density forests, thickets and other grassy highlands with intense seasonal heat and freezing winters. Onkarth is also the only planet that has moons, of which it possess two named Cannick and Muros. Onkarth's moons lead to Sablekyne adopting a more subjective time frame on planet, being loosely kept as cycles of generations or season changes.

Still season is marked by extremely calm wind patterns making little to no wind patterns. The Still season leads to water build up, making a small season of heavy raining refills rivers, ponds and lakes. Next is the spring season when vegetation begins to grow rapidly and abundantly near sources of water. Next begins the summer where the late stages are marked with a steady rise in temperature that cause a noticeable drying of all lakes and rivers near the equator that slowly expands outward. The ember season is marked by most of the vegetation dying and small fires due to the heat, a process that releases most vegetation seeds as the flames carry them into the wind. After the long ember season the frost season begins where each night becomes increasingly colder until winter begins and snow begins to fall. The frost season is marked by water freezing slowly making large blankets of snow and thin ice over bodies of water, ending as slow as it started.

Onkarth consist of many different thin forests, long stretches' of grassy plains and many different bodies of water. The biodiversity of its planet is mainly herbivores, and insects with only a few types of lizards or birds making Sablekyne the top of the food pyramid were ever they went. Well being the prime carnivores on the planet that doesn't mean their were not predators and the pray themselves still fight back. Another type of food Sablekyne sustained themselves on were some of the many types of fishes, typically smaller as the larger bodies of water were host to many sea like creators able to fight back.

Biology: Built Tough

The Sablekyne are bipeds that are vaguely feline in appearance and closely resemble the standard biped evolution in biology with a handful of major unique features. Sablekyne, with the aid of modern medicine, have a life expectancy equal to humans. A Sablekynes build depends on their build up of metals in their bone, magnetizing themselves either to a north pool or a south pool. Both northlander and southlander Sablekyne are generally adapted to survive both the cold and intense heat. To thrive both weathers Sablekyne have incredibly thick and insulated fur that protects them both from intense cold and intense heat. All Sablekyne possess a thick and easily shed outer coat of fur and a secondary coat beneath that is extremely compact to the point of providing a highly regulated temperature control to their body. The fur patterns of northlander Sablekyne tend to be white, gray, black, or brown while the fur patterns of the southlanders are blonde, orange, brown, chestnut, tan, or in some rare cases silver.

• The most notable feature of Sablekynes are on the skull as all Sablekyne possess various shapes of horns. Functionally the horns work as weapons, allowing a Sablekyne to headbutt animals with surprising force when charging. The shape and size of the horns vary greatly, but are usually curved or spiraling with ridges or fluting.
• Starting from the head Sablekyne have a notably feline shaped skull with vertical slit eyes adapted for low light environments, giving them excellent vision in the dark, and large pointed cat-like ears below the horns that can swivel and move in response to noise. Sablekyne do not possess pupil coloration, all Sablekyne have pure white eyes with black slit pupils.
• All Sablekyne have extremely large fangs commonly referred to as sabers, of which jut downward from the mouth in the form of tusks and vary from a few inches to half a foot in length. Sablekyne teeth consist entirely of fangs due to being primarily carnivores and have quite long rough tongues.
• While a Sablekyne can eat plant matter they do not draw much nutrition from it and must eat meat on a regular basis.
• Sablekyne possess sturdy and sharp retractable claws on the end of each hand and foot that function well as weapons. Sablekynes claws can be forced out of their sheathes by pressure applied in the right place along the knuckle.
• At the end of each finger tip and on the palm each Sablekyne has soft padded skin much like earth felines.
• Sablekyne have a long tail that they may flit and move at will to maintain balance often when walking, running, or charging.
• Sablekyne are physically adapted well to strength intensive tasks but tend to be rather awkwardly clumsy. Though agility and speed can be found among them this is the exception rather than the rule.
• Sablekyne are bipedal and possess digitrade legs ending in arched feet with claws on the end of each toe that are retractable much like the ones on their hands and course foot-pads that protect the feet from light damage. Sablekyne lacked any form of proper transportation for most of their evolution, as such they are well adapted to walking and running long distances with little rest, food, or water.
• Across the arms, forearms, shoulders, outer thigh, and shins all Sablekyne possess bone-like plating on the extremities that are quite tough and sturdy. While this doesn’t protect them as much as one would guess it allows them to absorb the impact and force of a strike, leading to their high pain tolerance.
• All Sablekyne build up a small magnetic field do to how their bone plates deposit irons and other minerals. The field is small and has little to no practical other then when socializing with different groups of Sablekyne.

Deviation between Sablekyne can be hard to tell for non-Sablekyne do to the small minute differences from the Southern and Norther. Small differences in diet, and had lead to the major split in the ethnicities, making minerals and iron build up heavily in bone marrow and fur pigments giving north and south slightly different facing magnetic polls leading to the two factions mixing together rather well, and groups of same type often struggle in more social aspects.

History: Strange Acquaintances

While Sablekyne largely did not keep written history, Mar'Qua observers watching them through the decades before Sol Fed's contact did. What little the Mar'Qua saw was recorded in great detail and then put away into deep databases leaving most other races in the dark on what the native population is like other then by those that first saw the planet and landed.

First Contact: The Pivot Point

Much of the First Contact mission was rifled with mistakes and confusion as Sol Fed personnel had many issues trying to translate the Sablekyne native tongue in any meaningful way leading to a few cases of having to subdue locals and wildlife. Only after a few weeks of landing and Sol Fed had declared the experiments the Mar'Qua wished to do, a wasted effort and in their frustration the project was outsourced almost instantly.

Second Contact: The Oni Contacts

After a few years Sol Fed had decided to try again on the system of star system Gamma Minoris.

The Federation trusted this operation to a little known corp known as Oni LLC, a jointly influenced proxy both funded by the Federation and Influenced internally by the Mar’Qua.

This time under more direct leadership and Sablekyne language being translated properly were able to make semi peaceful talk, and interactions. However this was only successful in some parts of Onkarth with some towns needing to be forcefully integrated into the Sol Fed Empire or wiped out completely.

Oni LLC made wasted little time in testing the many theories of the Mar’Qua while they could on the Sablekyne, this data is largely cited in aiding later projects and interactions of races into Sol Fed or helping make strides in improvements of cooperation between different already adjusted species. With a lot of the events mostly being glossed over it has wildly become the first real successful proper peaceful uplifting in Sol Feds history.

Northlanders & Southlanders

Northern Sablekyne even in with the more calm Southlanders have shown to be more active in larger celebrate holidays, and social activity leading them to be quite charismatic and well spoken, well charming their wit takes a hit with them being generally slower to grasp conspectus with aids from the Southlanders. With the flip side being that Southlanders has a more general agility to understand a situation or idea, but are rather harder to approach in conversations. Thanks to one another generally able to cover one another is what makes Sablekyne both rare and exceptional to see one without another type in the community.

Culture: Influenced Evolution

Early history if Sablekyne is rarely documented do to how little was known and how quickly Sablekyne were able to adapt to humans. What little is known is that Sablekyne were able to relatively easily adapt to learning Common and handling space travel through only a few generations making their uplifting relatively easy, only a few details on the Sablekyne that were not able to be as well adapted survived through folk lore, diaries and some reports made public, that being the more violent towns had mostly same type of Sablekyne leading to more strife making them unwilling to cooperate with humans or any other species with a strong desire to stay isolated. This behavior has shown to resurface from time to time when the Northern and Southern Sablekyne species tend to be apart for long spans of time.

Many Early Sablekyne towns, villages and outer settlements had extremely narrowed crafts relying on trade and advanced logistic networks to allow for innovations, dedications and specializations. This honing of skills and crafts still persists through most integration allowing Sablekyne to become valued in many different fields of work that other species would either refuse or be unable to.

Lodges

Lodges are similar to the human concept of guilds but encompass more than a singular skill or task and often cover every aspect of its specific industry. While not every Sablekyne is trained by a lodge they are big industry players in their respective economies and many Sablekyne worked for one at some point. Members of a particular lodge often prefer others from the same lodge, seeing it similar to a fraternity that remains ingrained even if both members leave the lodge.

• Magma Lodge – The lodge that trains miners and drillers for the nearby magma planet as well as producing metallurgist, weapon smiths, gun smiths, and armor smiths due to being heavily invested in the metal trade. They've existed before human contact but didn't grow huge until after they got off planet. The magma lodge began as primitive blacksmiths focused primarily on making tools, weapons, and armor before later growing into a large spanning industry based in military and civilian markets. Many prominent clans and military leaders hail from the magma lodge and its often seen as the most traditionally acceptable lodge to belong to.
• Beast Lodge – Sablekyne are carnivores and the production of meat is a priority for food. their industry for butchers range from home town cutters to massive meat producers on large ranches. The beast lodge is named thus because they also produce farmers and ranchers who grow food to feed the massive herds of livestock being fattened for later butchering. The beast lodge also includes game hunters and survivalists and it isn’t uncommon for members to later become explorers and rangers when they go off planet.
• Hero Lodge – The lodge of the hero a gift of integration, as under the Sol Fed's single banner lead to to many Sablekyne practice sword, shooting, archery and other combat based learnings. Ontop of a broad skill in fighting, the Hero's Lodge teaches many different crafts and skills for day to day living, weather it be learning to tailor or basic repair of wooden to modern day furniture. It's non specified training leads it to be a broad ketch all for Sablekyne to be raised and learn skills that would be use full in most stimulation on habitable planets.

Present Day

Present day Sablekyne have largely assimilated into human society as apart of the Sol Federation and can easily blend in with any human environment quite easily. While they are generally aloof with alien races they tend to be friendly with humans and, although wary of them, human gene splices. Many Sablekyne who move off planet tend to have a broad spectrum of skills and talents and don’t really specialize in anything as a race barring physical labor thanks to their tough stocky bodies. The spread and travel of Sablekyne has given rise to new cultural facets however. To avoid confusion, Sablekyne measure their age based on terran years when stating how old they are.

Sablekyne absolutely loathe Nekomori or ‘cat-girls’ as they liken them to the mutation that creates a subservient pet rather then a fellow being. Few Sablekyne will associate with Nekomori willingly and many Southlander Sablekyne will be passive aggressively insulting while Northlanders are outwardly and openly belligerent. If one thought this prejudice was odd Sablekyne also find ‘exotic’ fur colors something to be laughed at. Many Sablekyne who see brightly colored unnatural fur colors will ridicule the offender relentlessly and in some places beat them severely for ‘offending’ them with what they perceive as an idiotic color patterns. Sablekyne also find speaking in third person incredibly offensive when done by their own kind and other feline type races due to learning of a stereotype of feline races speaking as such. Sablekyne go out of their way to self police this habit.

Outside of present day cultural impacts from traveling the universe many Sablekyne also carry and use a unique weapon called a bolt lance when employed as soldiers or mercenaries. A modern take on an old crossbow designs the Sablekyne modified their original design with the aid of their human allies to create a powered mag fed crossbow that fires super heated bolts. While considered a practical weapon due to requiring only easily made metal rods as ammunition and a power cell they are uncommon outside of Sablekyne mercenary and military forces thanks to their archaic appearing design.

Sablekyne have also begun to accept cybernetic implants, synthetic limbs, and robotics as a facet of life due to their last few decades of dangerous mining operations on the planet of Anzonus. Both north and Southlanders will take work off planet in the various orbital platforms funded by the Oni, LLC for the extravagant pay. Such work has a comparatively high mortality rate and often requires the use of mechanized suits and robotic assistance. Injuries are quite common and it is not unusual to meet a veteran miner who has lost a limb and long since obtained a synthetic replacement. As a byproduct of these operations, robotics and cybernetics have become a more commonly accepted practice on the Sablekyne home world.

Canon Species in the Sojourn Universe
Core Species Akula - Kriosans - Humans - Mar'qua - Sablekyne - Naramad - Abhuman
Non-Core Species Opifex - Cht’mant - Cindarite - Mycus - Folken - Aulvae - Minor Factions