Bastials Vs. Canids

Bastials

All modern bastials are the result of an ancient protective working. The historical details were lost ages ago, but legends claim that house cats started to become associated with magi. This came at a time when magi were persecuted for their abilities. A cat was an easier target for violence than a magic-wielding magus, and so the feline populations of cities and towns suffered.

These legends claim that a woman named Bast instantiated a powerful working to protect the innocent cats. In some stories she is a young erudus, and in others she is one of the Creators, but regardless of her origins she loses control of the working. One compelling song passed down by melodians for generations claims that Bast spoke aloud during her working and asked that all cats be able to find home and family amongst the people of the cities and the beasts of the wild, but her words were misinterpreted. Of course, that isn’t how magic works.

The protected cats (stories variously place the original numbers at one recipient, or a litter of nine kittens, or every cat in a large city-state) became able to interbreed with any species. Animals of drastically different temperaments took in abandoned kittens and raised them as their own. New populations of hybrid felines exploded in the wild and lurked in the cities.

Historians have questioned the existence of Bast for hundreds of gyres. Whether she truly existed or not, the magic described in stories about her is undeniable. Bastials, wild and domestic, are an unavoidable part of life. Griffons are perhaps the most well-known of the bastials. Barnyard griffons provide eggs and meat, diver griffons make it possible to fly over the dangerous oceans to find new lands, and several types of griffons serve as beasts of burden – pulling wagons and carrying goods to market on their backs. A scam involving the existence of griffon milk across Empire even led to the raucously inappropriate and funny song Do Griffons Have Nipples?

This brings us to the most controversial aspect of the history of bastials: the children of Bast. More vulgarly known as bastards, records indicate that people with feline traits have existed in the margins of society for nearly as long as bastials. While there are those who deny their existence, frequently as an attempt to ignore the persecution the children of Bast have endured, the children of Bast are very real and less accepted by society than the unpatterned.

Canids

The origin of canids is a messy combination of two different workings never meant to interact. The first piece of the canid puzzle involves what is called “true-bred canids.” These creatures are the results of a magical working known as intertwining. Desirable traits from one creature are introduced into another creature at a young age. There are few theramancers able to perform this working with a high degree of success, but it is prized in times of war as a method for creating dangerous creatures to unleash on the opposing side. In many intertwined creatures, the traits being added are those of wolves. Once intertwined, the creature will breed true only with others intertwined in the same way, so if only one such creature is created it will be doomed to a very early extinction.

The most well-known of the true-bred canids is the gray bear. The result of intertwining dire wolves with brown bears, these gray-furred canids hunt in packs, generally weigh well in excess of 2,000 pounds, and can be trained to obey simple commands like a dog. I’m sure you are familiar with the story The Gray Charge, when a force of 50 gray bears with riders routed an army with more than 20 times its number.

While populations of escaped true-bred canids that have established themselves in the wild can be dangerous for travelers, it is the second element of magical intervention that has led to attempts to exterminate canids. About 1,000 gyres ago the magus Ektavyn was a theramancer with a mongrel dog as a familiar. The magus was angered when a local noble made disparaging comments about the familiar in comparison to his own purebred hunting dogs. Ektavyn placed a working on his familiar that allowed it to pass some of its own appearance and crossbred traits to other dogs through its bite, or more specifically, by getting its saliva into the blood stream.

Surely Ektavyn could not have known that his working would one day form the basis for a widespread and feared curse. It started when his familiar bit the noble’s hunting dogs. It spread when some of those infected dogs bolted into the woods where they eventually infected a pack of wolves. The magic passed down through generations of dogs, wolves, and other creatures as a disease for which there is no cure. Then, around 500 gyres ago, a true-bred canid received the disease-like curse from a wolf. Unfortunately, the true-bred canids are mixes of wolves and other creatures, and this allowed the curse to mutate and learn to propagate amongst other species.

A cursed canid is said to be “ektopic” – a reference to the progenitor of the curse. It can be very difficult to tell a true-bred canid from a cursed canid, and the uninformed assume that a bite from any intertwined wolf or dog will spread the curse. Stories of ektopic people, or werewolves, have terrified people for the last few generations. There is no cure for the curse.