From the Lunar Archive of Sancta Gloria, Book II — The Peoples of the Surface, Chapter II. Compiled by Archivist Ophira Reyne, 7th Cycle.
Preface
"Where hoof made road, tooth made law."—Margin note in the Crag Warden Codex, 5th Cycle copy.
This chapter concerns the six great Beast Clades whose shadow falls longest across terrestrial history: Feline, Lupo, Vulpo, Ursus, Reproba (hyena-kin), and Anaty (musteloid-kin). Unlike the Landborn Compacts, these peoples never forged a universal pact. Their customs diverged—honor, pack, wit, hunger, salvage, and stealth—each sufficient to build a city, none sufficient to bind them all.
I. Origins: Edge-Dwellers of the First Hunts
Late First to early Second Cycle
The earliest fossils that bear inscription-marks from Beast hands cluster at ecotones: forest edges, river mouths, glacier toes. From the beginning they mastered transition, living where prey and opportunity crossed.
Feline learned stillness until stillness became geometry. Their first sigils—three cuts in bark, then one—denoted a kill's right of claim.
Lupo discovered law by singing, synchronizing pursuit over long ground.
Vulpo survived by the joke that isn't a joke: feint, flee, return.
Ursus took winter into the blood and made patience a weapon.
Reproba metabolized ruin—bone economists who understood scarcity as algebra.
Anaty found locks in the world and opened them—thief-engineers of weir and warrens.
Inscription, Wolf-bone whistle, 2nd Cycle:"Run is prayer. Chorus is covenant."
When forests thickened in the Second Cycle, each clade came down from the edges to test the heartwood. They did not come together.
II. The First Cities of Tooth
Second Cycle — Forest Empires
The Landborn raised spires of horn; the Beast Clades raised dens that were cities by any other measure.
Feline: The Quiet Courts.Arcades of woven branch and tendon where trials were held in near-dark. A judge's blink ended testimony; a whisker's tilt pronounced sentence. Physicians and strategists flourished here; the first recorded surgical suture is Feline.
Court Seal, 2nd Cycle:"To watch is to weigh."
Lupo: The Law-Fires.Longhouses arranged by kin-songs, each hearth a charter. Disputes settled by recitation, never duel—fighting was for the hunt, not the hall.
Hearth-Stone Rune:"Say it so we may carry it."
Vulpo: The Market-Baffles.Alleys, mirrored corners, talking walls. They taxed confusion and sold clarity: maps, rumors, lines of credit in knotted string.
Stall-Carving:"Who laughs last keeps the ledger."
Ursus: The Smokeworks.Workshops that smoked through winter—salt houses, kelp-iron forges, oil presses. Hospitality was law; violence at the table was answered by clan.
Door Mark:"Eat, then speak."
Reproba: The Bone-Yards.Terraced charnel-markets where refuse became resource. Pickets of femur, roofs of scapula, scales for barter cut from molar plates. They invented guarantee by salvage: fail a debt, forfeit your broken things.
Yard Motto:"What you throw away you owe."
Anaty: The Lock-Towns.Canal gates, fish-weirs, sluices—a city measured in hinges. They wove oath-chains (rings of linked promises) and broke them clean when terms were met.
Gate Etching:"Water obeys those who notice."
These cities kept truce only when needed. Predators respect boundaries until hunger or honor says otherwise.
III. The Fifth Cycle: From Forest Watchfires to Capitals
With agriculture's spread, Beast Clades entered mixed polities. They did not surrender custom; they codified it.
Feline became surgeons, quartermasters, and—where needed—assassins in mercenary companies that sold precision instead of numbers. The Velvet Charter (Alexandria copy) limits poison to three drops and forbids strikes at healers.
Lupo served as road-law: pack courts on the move, settling disputes along caravans with verdicts sung in call-and-response so all understood.
Vulpo mastered ports and border towns. The first shadow-exchange (information market) is theirs; so is the first amnesty ledger where banned names could buy their way back into law.
Ursus held the cold edges—fisheries, timber, and winter-caravan hostels. Their oath-bread tradition bound guests and hosts for a night's peace.
Reproba became indispensable in siege and famine. They turned siege-wreck into rebuild-stock by morning; ethics wavered, efficiency did not.
Anaty kept rivers honest—contraband inspectors by day, smugglers by night. Cities tolerated the paradox because floods did not.
Mixed-Clade Street Placard, 5th Cycle port:"No hunting beyond the third bell. Disputes to the Lupo cart. Salvage auction at dusk. Physicians carry white whiskers—untouchable."
The Fifth Cycle might have lifted the Beast Clades into lasting parity. Instead, their divisions sharpened as wealth pooled.
IV. The Sixth Cycle: Iron, Smoke… and Fault Lines
Industry amplified instinct.
Feline turned logistics into doctrine. Their Chord Schools plotted supply like anatomy—arteries, veins, clots. In war, they starved cities before blades crossed.
Lupo built signal-rails—whistles keyed to pack-codes. When governments conscripted them as gendarmerie, many packs split rather than sing state songs.
Vulpo made empires of paper: insurance, risk-sharing, rumor futures. When factories struck, they arbitraged truth until riots picked sides for them.
Ursus ran heavy industry at the latitudes where metal forgave no error. Their unions were clans by other names, and strikes were siegecraft without arrows.
Reproba became salvage banks: collateralized wreckage, famine markets, ruin turned currency. Many called it predation; they called it math.
Anaty invented locks that learned—tumbler-arrays guided by microvibration, then broke them for sport. Prisons hired them to test cells; prisons broke anyway.
When the Reverse Side bled through, these divisions became liabilities.
Feline cells turned on one another over purity of method.
Lupo law-singing failed in the din of shells and sirens.
Vulpo exchanges collapsed under rumor contagion.
Ursus held lines too long and froze with their furnaces.
Reproba profited, then starved when nothing remained to count.
Anaty flooded the last bridges to slow Sarkaz advances—and drowned their own neighborhoods buying time for others to flee.
Last Dispatch, Lupo signal-rail, 1917:"We are still here. If you hear this, you are also law. Carry it."
The Ash Rain fell. The Sixth Cycle ended.
V. The Seventh Dawn: Terms of Survival
The Sankta did not appoint kings among the Beast Clades. They offered terms.
Feline were given charge of triage and supply balance across mixed cities; they accept ration calculus as penance and vocation.
Clinic Plaque: "Precision is mercy's skeleton."
Lupo resumed the road as traveling magistrates—short jurisdiction, long memory. Their verdicts are recorded on bone tags, then burned after the sentence is served: law without archive so it cannot be weaponized later.
Hearth Oath: "We sing so the blade need not."
Vulpo were licensed to run truth markets under Sankta audit: rumor auctions where lies cost more than they are worth. They keep the books everyone hates and needs.
Ledger Edge: "Price your secret before it prices you."
Ursus became keepers of resilience works—grain vaults, winter grids, coastal smoke-buoys. They ask for little but obedience during storm orders. Refusers rarely refuse twice.
Buoy Carving: "If you can see this, follow it."
Reproba are bound by the Three Salvage Laws:
do not starve the living to feed the ledger,
name the maker when you sell the make,
leave one thing unbroken in every ruin.
Yard Ruleboard: "We keep what's left so there is a left."
Anaty hold the Flood Keys—city gate and lock systems designed to fail safely. They also write the escape maps no one reads until the water rises.
Gatekeeper's Ring: "Open, but not for you."
Humans remain the majority; the Beast Clades remain themselves. Unity is not expected—only balance.
VI. On the Question of a Predatory Accord
Scholars periodically propose that the Beast Clades once held a universal pact. Our archives hold no such text. What we find instead are local pragmatisms: market truces, winter feasts, shared hunts against threats larger than prey. Each is time-limited, place-bound, sworn to circumstance rather than creed.
Ursus Winter Toast:"To the enemy who brings wood."(Annotation: Accepted at the door. Debts resume at dawn.)
The truth is simpler and less tidy: they endured together apart. Their divisions, though fatal in the Sixth Cycle's roar, also kept them from a single catastrophic error. No shared mania consumed them all at once.