The_Ugiri

 
The wild forests of Nasat Suka are home to many frightening creatures, including the ugiri, a humanoid race of terrifying reputation. The female is called a ugiriss, and she is indistinguishable from a human woman by sight. Ugirissi are astonishingly beautiful and fatally deceptive. The males, or ugirini, are nearly indistinguishable from human males, with the exception of two sets of horns which grow in adolescence. Two short horns protrude out and up from the forehead, and two curved horns grow back and then down from the temples, like a ram's horns but more slender. The sex of a young ugir is indistinct until puberty.

Adult males live together in small groups of ten to twenty called kutini. Lone ugirini are rarely encountered as they depend on their numbers for protection. In addition, young urigini join established kutini to learn skills of hunting and of making themselves attractive to ugirissi. The oldest member of a kutin grows long white hair and a flowing beard, while the younger ugirini have their heads shaved by ritual every full moon.

Young ugirissi, on the other hand, live in smaller groups of four or five called kallissi. Each kalliss is supported by one or two ugirissi past the age of child rearing. The older ones instruct the younger ones in the ways of the ugiri. The kallissi is the only social structure the young women know, and that only for a few years.

In the early spring while the snow is still on the ground the urigini engage in ritualized competitions to prove their worth to the young ugirissi of child-bearing age. The three main categories of competition are log tossing, volda hunting, and personal combat which is usually not fatal for the loser. Only the ugirini with the longest and whitest hair are considered worthy of competing. A urigin usually has a particular ugiriss in mind to impress, but the women aren't shy about indicating their preferences.

Once a urigin has secured the interest of his desired mate, he must prove himself to her more personally. He and his kutin will spend several months building a home for her if she is young, or repairing her home if she already has one. The ugiri like their privacy and build their homes several miles apart. Their homes are constructed of stone, having a dozen or more rooms and one or more courtyards, often partially walled. The houses contain little in the way of furnishings or decorations, being rarely more than bare stone littered with skulls and bones. If the ugiriss finds the ugirin's work acceptable then he will provide her and her children with clothes and other gifts he has taken from raids during the previous year. He will also fill the smokehouse with plenty dried meats to complete the mating ritual. Then the two ugiri will mate for nearly three days starting on or right after the summer solstace, usually in the courtyard away from prying eyes. The ugirin must remain alert during this time, because once the ugiriss is confident she is pregnant she may decide to feed her mate to her children.

If she becomes pregnant she will deliver one to three children in about nine months, with twins being the most common occurance. The father is not involved in raising the children, and the ugiriss will mate again many times throughout her life, sometimes in the same year she gives birth. It is not uncommon, then, for a ugiriss to have ten or fifteen children at home from many different fathers. The older children help care for the younger children without prejudice.

The mother feeds her children on the dried meats provided by the most recent father. However, the children do not develop properly without fresh blood, and the ugirissi believe that the blood of speaking races ensures healthy children. To this end a ugiriss will resort to any kind of trechery or deceit, even to cannibalism. Once is a great while a ugiriss will enter a human settlement to seduce a man and bring him home to feed her children. More likely she will lure lone travellers with crying, tears, and tales of helplessness to lure them close to her home. Ugirissi, either by nature or by training in their years in the kallissi, have powers to charm and seduce any speaking race, including voldas. Voldas seem to fear and avoid ugiri, but sometimes a pack which has been preyed upon will attack a ugiriss in her home. Such fights end only after all are dead on one side or the other.

The ugiri have normal human intelligence, being prone to neither high or low extremes. Their skin feels normal to the touch, but when attacked their bodies release a hormone which causes the skin to harden and thicken, protecting them as well as a leather hide would. Mature ugirini also develop thick, strong nails which they keep filed to points. However, they prefer to use iron weapons, although they lack the skill and interest to forge metal. Generally they do not produce anything themselves, including tools and clothing, preferring instead to steal what they want from others. For this reason ugirini leaders usually spend late summer and early autumn on long journeys with their kutin, looking for distant civilized settlements to raid.

Because of their violent and self-destructive nature the ugiri have never settled their own towns. The ugirini, who outnumber the ugirissi by four or five to one, are nomadic and may travel hundreds of miles between mating seasons. The ugirissi raise their children in the solitude created by the mother's intense ambition to feed her children on fresh blood. No ugiri trusts a mother ugiriss, although in the spring time the desire for blood is buried under the more intense desire to mate and have more children. The ugirissi will congregate at a local kalliss where the ugirini competitions are conducted. The women suppress their blood lust during this period for fear of being banned from future gatherings and thereby lose the opportunity to have more children.