Centaurs

Centaurs are beings which have an upper body resembling something like a human or an elf, and a lower body resembling a four-legged herbivore. Typically divided into hippocentaurs, where the lower body is like a horse, and elaficentaurs, where the lower body more closely resembles a deer. Centaurs are native to Osthas, and once inhabited wide swaths of the continent, including all of what is now Cascadia and the Moonbell Plains. The hippocentaurs in particular are catalogued early in human history as being territorial and frequently slaughtering humans in territories neighboring their own during the Foundation Age. During this time, ancient records state that the valkyrie often came to humanities rescue, and the angelic warriors were said to have spurred on centauric adoption of the elven bows. Over the following centuries, however, the centaurs were slowly displaced from their ancestral homelands as the rate of humanity's technology and magic advancement outstripped their own. By the dawn of the Celestial Age, the centaurs had been driven from the Moonbell Plains and much of their southern lands as well, residing only in what is now Equara and the areas west of it along the peninsula. The pressure from the Axani Dominion would thereafter continue to drive human westward expansion, and by the time of the Godslaughter there were no independent centaur tribes left. In Brironia, the legacy of centauric brutality against human settlers has left great animosity between the two peoples, and the human rulers do not allow a centaur to exist in their lands without a bridle, which most centaurs view as barbaric tyranny. In Equara things are more equitable, as both elafi and hippocentaurs are prominent forces within the province and the syncretistic Aeonism is followed by both humans and centaurs alike. A few hippocentaurs live in the south of Elen and some elaficentaurs live in the north, though the centauric aversion to the sea tends to struggle to mesh with the very sea-faring Elenish culture. Elaficentaurs are also somewhat common in the Horn and on Freysia Island, but tend to be skittish and wary of even the native humans.

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