Luperin

Overview

Luperin are a large lupine people, standing well above human proportion and built for endurance and sustained pursuit rather than short bursts of force. They come from a world made of three regions — frost, jungle and desert — and those regions are the closest thing the species has to divisions within itself.

Physical traits

The body blends humanoid arrangement with strong lupine design. The torso is humanoid in structure but carries dense wolf musculature beneath the surface. The lower body shifts fully into digitigrade structure, shaped for running efficiency and stability at speed. Hands are a hybrid of humanoid and lupine form, ending in clawed fingertips.

Build is not uniform. Luperin run lean through broad depending on the individual, and every point along that range is ordinary. Coats vary just as widely as wolves’ do — shorter or longer, denser or thinner — depending on the individual and the region they were born into.

Every luperin is an excellent runner. That much is universal.

The head striping

Fine, fiery striping traces the head of every luperin, and it is the defining trait of the species. It is not decorative and it is not a light signal.

The striping is where a luperin transmits and receives mind waves. One luperin can send a message that reflects off every other luperin in the area until it reaches the stripes of its intended target, who is the only one able to actually read it. The signal travels on the sending luperin’s own natural frequency. The red striping simply marks the point where the underlying patterning in the brain and the inside of the skull reaches the surface, which is also why the stripes look different from one luperin to the next — the neural patterning beneath them is not identical.

This is communication, not mind reading. A luperin can lie over the channel as easily as they could lie out loud.

Whether a message can be stopped depends entirely on pack. Messages between packmates cannot be blocked, and most magic dampeners and frequency jammers fail against them. Messages between luperin who are not packmates are far more fragile, and can be blocked by a spell, by some jammers, or by another luperin.

Range works the same way. It depends on how many luperin are in the area and whether they are connected to the transmitting luperin’s pack. Packmates guarantee retransmission and a substantial range boost. Luperin outside the pack may simply decline to pass an outsider’s message along, and often do.

Every luperin in range can tell that a transmission is happening, even though only the target receives it. Outside equipment can sometimes detect that something is being sent. There is no known way to read or decode it.

Magic

The striping is the one thing the species fixes, and it sits in both categories at once: the structure is biological — neural patterning, skull, surfacing at the stripes — but what travels through it is magical. Every luperin has it and none of them chose it.

Nothing else is fixed. Whatever else a luperin is tied to magically is their own.

Packs

A pack forms when luperin decide someone has earned the right to lead. What earns it differs from luperin to luperin: some value loyalty, some strength, some courage. Overt dominance is not what creates the right, though it can be useful when members get out of line, and some luperin do look for it depending on their own disposition.

A luperin cannot be forced to enter a pack and cannot be forced to stay in one. They can be forced to leave.

Luperin survive without a pack, but not comfortably. Mental range drops sharply, and a packless luperin grows antsy and then aggressive. If they will not accept a pack, the pack in the area will typically kill them once the violence or the loss of their mind starts to show. It is not treated as cruelty by luperin; it is treated as what happens.

Shared instincts

Luperin share wolf instinct and pack structure. They react quickly, hunt and work in groups, settle disputes fast, and generally work together extremely well.

They do not share a temperament. Some are quiet, some are open pack leaders, some are expressive and playful. The dominance others read into a luperin is often just a consequence of size and stillness rather than anything being asserted, and how any given luperin behaves is theirs alone.

Field notes

Individual colouring, marking patterns, build and pack belong on each member’s own page.

A species of the same name appears in Blackwood Tales. Those luperin were based on these, with several details changed to fit the story, so where the two differ this guide is the one that applies here.