This is a work-in-progress article and subject to changes in the future
Mantises
A lone warrior stalks to a bamboo forest, on the hunt after his next meal. He disguises himself perfectly in the green scenery with his green chitin. He stands perfectly still, until suddenly he moves forward, his bladed arms striking a small rabbit with deadly precision.
Dressed in a kimono, a pink Mantis is meditating in a small shrine. She hums an enchanting tone, communing with the spirits in the shrine. Suddenly, her eyes flare up in bright violet flare and a strong wind bursts open all windows and doors in the shrine.
Dimorphic Sexes
A mantis can be identified by their triangular head, with bulging eyes and beak-like mandibles on a broad upper body. Most mantises are incredibly flexible and can use their natural weapons with deadly precision. These are spikey protrusions growing from their forearms that are sharp like daggers and can be used. While all mantises share these traits, there are significant differences between the males and females of the race.
Male mantises are known as Warrior Mantis, the smaller of the two subraces, standing about 4 to 5 feet tall. Their chitin ranges in colors from green to brown, making it easy for them to hide in greenery. Males are called Warriors and are often innately skilled hunters and warriors. They have lightning-quick reflexes and can stand perfectly still for hours.
The female mantises are called Orchids. They are slightly taller than their male counterparts, reaching around 5 to 6 feet. Their chitin hues range from dark violets to pastel pinks. Unlike the warriors, orchids aren't so adept at fighting. Instead, they are much more intelligent and have innate psionic abilities.
Honor of the Family
Mantises live in large families led by a single matriarch. She is the eldest orchid in the family and enforces her rules with absolute authority. These laws are based on longstanding traditions of how the family functioned for hundreds of years. As such, each family focuses on a specific line of work, and all members are expected to put their family's honor before themselves. Unfortunately, this makes mantis adventurers especially rare, as they often went against their family's traditions.
The warriors rarely take up higher positions within their families, acting as laborers and servants to the orchids. On the other hand, the Orchid mantises represent the family in public, managing their affairs with other clans and dealings with foreign forces. The Orchids with the most potent psionic abilities in the family are trained to confer with the family's patron spirit.
Spiritual Guidance
Orchid mantises are blessed with innate psionic abilities that allowed their ancestors to reach outside of time and space and pull at the chaos outside of the known universe. They drew the attention of malevolent aberrant spirits that tried to invade the Material Plane through the connection the orchids forged. However, the orchids managed to bind these spirits to the Material Plane, harnessing their abilities and slowly transforming them into benevolent forces.
Most mantis families have an ancient family heirloom or a shrine where the family spirit resides. Each generation within the family trains an orchid with powerful psionic abilities to become a sage. This prestigious position comes with an important task: to converse with the spirit and transform the aberrant being into a benevolent force for the family. In return, an appeased spirit grants the family heightened psionics or functions as an invisible protector of their grounds.
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