Endurance · memory · responsibility
Sapient people · western and northwestern VarethKhoruun
Great Apes
What is worth building should be built to endure.
The Khoruun are a large-bodied, primate-descended people whose civilizations join monumental craft to long-term civic responsibility. Great strength creates an expectation to carry an appropriate share of the community's burdens; it does not confer automatic privilege.
A people, not a costume.
Khoruun read heavy before they read tall: broad rib cages, immense shoulders and backs, long powerful arms, large hands, dense legs, and a grounded center of gravity. Adult males generally stand 5.5–6 feet, with rare individuals near 6.5 feet; adult females generally stand 4–5 feet and are visibly smaller and more compact while remaining exceptionally strong. Faces and fur vary from strongly ape-presenting to more human-presenting, but multiple ancestral identifiers must remain. Khoruun never have tails.
How decisions endure.
A common paired civic tradition joins The Memory, which preserves precedent, treaties, institutional knowledge, and long consequences, with The Hands, which implements decisions and adapts inherited knowledge to present needs.
Civilization has weight.
Terraced jungle and mountain cities, fitted stone, reservoirs, waterways, root bridges, heavy timber, ancestral halls, granaries, workshops, defensive works, and old-growth integration make Khoruun civilization feel like geology and civic life negotiated a settlement.
Living variation
Three homelands within a homeland.
Subculture influences custom, work, dress, and architecture without deciding an individual's profession, morality, intelligence, or affinity.
High-Stone Clans
Plateau, cliff, and mountain-valley communities renowned for masonry, surveying, mining, archives, defense, and heavy public works.
“Stand where the mountain stands.”
River-Valley Clans
Terrace, canal, reservoir, mill, and river-crossing communities that anchor food production and internal trade.
“The river carries what the stone protects.”
Deep-Forest Clans
Old-growth and jungle-interior stewards known for medicine, hunting, forestry, woodcraft, ecological care, and wilderness guidance.
“Roots carry weight too.”
Ordinary life & public duty
A civilization cannot be reduced to warriors.
Khoruun doctrine favors formation integrity, heavy shields, polearms, long-handled mauls, reinforced armor, terrain control, and bringing people home: take the ground, keep the ground, protect the people.
Visual continuity lock
Recognizable in silhouette.
These rules govern future public art and prevent either people from collapsing into generic fantasy filler.
- 01No tail—ever.
- 02Mass, shoulders, arm span, and grounded movement matter more than extreme height.
- 03Male and female models preserve approved scale, build, fur, facial, and clothing differences.
- 04Equipment is made for Khoruun proportions rather than ordinary human scale.
- 05Profession, subculture, wealth, weather, and individual personality shape dress.
Khoruun build things meant to endure.
Old trading partners · mutual respect · frequent good-natured frustrationSenkari build systems capable of changing.
Meet the Senkari →