Pashak

The pashak are a catlike Lineage with full-body fur, whiskers, claws and long, sinuous tails. They call themselves the Kits of Six Mothers, revering a sextet of feline Creator Gods.
Although they revere the Mothers, however, a kit cannot walk in their mother’s footsteps only and always and the pashak worship gods of two other kinds. The Keepers are the gods who taught the pashak as a race how to survive, how to live, and gave them the rules of their society. While different pashak groups have different Keepers, a few major gods such as Queen Abasa, Kelicet the Night Hunter and Old Tom are honoured in most places. The Pathfinders, meanwhile, are personal gods, cultural deities who taught particular skills to the pashak and who are adopted by individual pashak or smaller groups as tutelary patrons. Pathfinders are usually associated with a particular form of activity, and while their worship may be passed down parent to child, many have only a few worshippers, or even only one.
After the Cataclysm, the pashak settled in the east of Yethera. They migrated west and north after the giant city of Eurosia fell into the Sea of Fate, joining the mastanda and featherfolk in the so-called Beast Kingdoms, straddling the Wall of the World.
Pashak of the mountains are known as the pashak amat, and tend to be smaller and more agile than those on the coast, known as pashak mar. The pashak mar are sometimes rumoured to interbreed with Giant-Kin, and in addition to their size often sport impressive manes. There is a degree of competition between the two groups, but first and foremost they are pashak. The largest groups of pashak, of both groups, live in settled communities, either in primarily pashak settlements or as neighbourhoods among mixed populations, but others still travel, often in the company of Halfling bands.
Settled pashak are strongly territorial. They value land and property – especially innovative, vertical architecture – and the trappings of their own heritage. They call themselves the landed, and associate in resident communities called clowders. The spiritual life of the clowder is typically focused on the worship of a number of Keepers. MIlitary defence falls to a fighting society known as the glaring, which includes active fighters, trainees and former members who can be called on as a reserve.
Nomadic pashak, on the other hand, are family focused. They value portable property, stories and kin. They call themselves the free, and a travelling family of pashak is called a kindle. A kindle will revere some Keepers, but is more likely to focus its worship on a group of ancestral Pathfinders. A kindle may focus on mercenary work, and is known as a gleaming in that case.
Settled and travelling pashak look on each others’ lifestyles as lesser, far more so than amat and mar. The landed call their nomadic cousins ‘feral’, and look down on their rough ways, while the free call the settled pashak domesticated, and consider them soft and weak.
The majority pashak society of the Riverlands is further organised around the activities of an additional social structure, the large, commercial concerns called Houses – such as the House of Ninesisters. These houses form the hub of their clowders and provide both a focus for Keeper worship and a conduit for the clowder’s trade and foreign relations. Depending on the house and the clowder in question, they are either a valued part of the community or an unofficial second government, and many of the Beast Kingdoms grant legal protections to houses not extended to modern guilds.

Pashak and Identity

Pashak have little sexual dimorphism that other species can detect, and generally associate gender with pheromonal differences which are usually, but not always, linked to biological sex. Pheromonal gender has no direct social role, and pashak tend to use phrases like ‘this one’ or ‘that one’ in place of gendered pronouns, and indeed prefer to use their persona in favour of pronouns wherever possible.
It would not be true to say that pashak societies have no role for gender, but social gender is a complex thing constructed from a variety of internal factors, including biology, age and sexuality, as well as whether they consider themselves sexually active and if they have any intention of breeding. The formation of breeding partnerships and the propagation of bloodline is one of the few roles of these gender constructs, which through a combination of dress, perfume and gestural cues rapidly convey a wealth of social detail to other pashak.