Tari

Called ratmen by the other peoples of the region, tari stand about 5' tall and weigh roughly 100 pounds. They walk upright or knuckle along on all fours, balancing with a 2 1/2' tail strong enough to let them hang from a branch. Fine fur covers them, usually brown but sometimes gray, gold or silver, or mixed, and many paint spots or rings on it with gyava berry dye. Both sexes braid the longer fur at the neck and lower back and add beads or feathers. Needle teeth and long black whiskers complete the rodent look.

Ordinary tari go naked; warriors may wear leather jerkins or chitin greaves. Warriors and chieftains both stand taller than common tari, and chieftains wear plenty of dye, beads and ceremonial gear.

Their own speech is a squeaky chatter that includes sounds too high for human ears. Shaping humanoid words is hard for them: only 5% know a human or elven tongue, and humans understand them just half the time. Some chieftains have psionic means of talking to their packs and others.

Tari are nocturnal hunters and scavengers. A pack, made up of one chieftain, 2-12 warriors and 5-30 ordinary tari, only attacks humans or similar creatures when it outnumbers them at least three to one. It waits until the still hours before dawn, rings the prey, and strikes, with the warriors massed along one stretch of the circle and the chieftain coming up behind them. Bigger-than-human foes are never attacked, but wounded or weak travelers are followed in the hope the desert finishes them.

Half of ordinary tari carry a weapon, typically a bone or wooden spear or sword for 1d6; the rest bite for 1-3. Warriors wield two bone weapons for 1d8 each and can bite as well that round, while a chieftain swings a ceremonial club (1d6) and bites.

Any bite has a 5% chance to transmit disease, avoided with a save vs. poison. A sick victim falls feverish and nearly helpless within 1-6 hours, and from the third day onward loses 1-3 hit points a day, permanently. Markets are full of fake remedies; only cure disease works, and even it does not return the lost hit points.

Each chieftain possesses a single psionic wild talent, picked by the DM during play. If it is useful in a fight, the pack adjusts its tactics, and the chieftain earns the higher XP value. Kill the chieftain and the rest scatter.

City and desert tari kill the same way but live differently. City packs nest in sewers and refuse heaps, sleeping under the trash by day and emerging at night to gather food and water and to steal comforts for themselves and their leaders. They climb walls and slip through windows, but they are noisy, clumsy burglars, knocking over chairs and tables as they go. Hunting them pays a seasoned warrior about 8 ceramic pieces per head, though it is no job for children. Their lairs are chaotic piles of loot and garbage: crates draped in silk, rugs and pillows everywhere, and a chieftain decked in whatever jewelry and rags the neighborhood supplies. Left alone, a pack lives quite comfortably under the city.

Desert tari have it harder. They wander widely in search of the best scavenging, competing with other wasteland creatures for scraps, and drag their goods and families on triangular leather-and-pole frames. Sometimes they use shellback lizards or claw-runners as pack animals, but catching one can take a whole pack and cost many lives, so the rare tari who can handle beasts are highly valued.

Long ago the tari had a thriving civilization far to the south, with stone and concrete buildings and learning far beyond what they have now. Its legendary capital lies in ruins among the crags, and nobody knows what destroyed it. Modern tari keep no written records, only exaggerated legends of marvelous works.

Tari breed once a year, when a pack's females come into heat during the moons' conjunction. After a six-month pregnancy, each bears 2-8 young, which nurse for three months before learning to hunt. Another year passes before they are fully grown, spent learning desert survival or city thievery. Immature tari have just 1 Hit Die, and 3-36 may be found in a lair.

The disease venom comes from two deep jaw glands that squirt through openings beside the main fangs. Cutting the glands out of a dead tari is risky, but city alchemists and bards in the larger cities pay up to 12 ceramic bits for a pair.