Factsheet for the ch'rai (Vulpes subterraneus) The ch'rai, or subterranean fox, is a subspecies of vulpine thought to be descended from the red fox, diverting from the latter when a group of red foxes was isolated by migration underground. There, selection pressures caused a variation of form and behavior distinct enough from its original stock that the ch'rai may be classified as a separate species. The word "ch'rai" is the name by which the subterranean vulpines refer to themselves; it translates roughly to "the living." The term "ch'rai" is used in reference to an individual, or in general reference to the race as a whole, while "ch'raiim" is plural (but not used in general reference to the entire race). When reproduced by a foxish voice, "ch'rai" sounds literally like a chirp followed by an ascending, growling whine, if pronounced correctly. The most dramatic difference between ch'rai and their predecessors is in the colorations of their pelts; the markings of the ch'rai resemble a very dulled or muddy red fox pattern. The basic body coloration of the ch'rai is a dark brown, fading to black along the flanks and spine, with the tail being utterly black but for a muddy beige tip, a vestige of ancient markings. Their hands, digitigrade feet, and ears are also black, the ears filled with soft plumes of long black guard hairs. The characteristic ventral stripe of the fox has also muted into a dirty beige trail of thick fur. By far the most striking are their facial markings, which are solid black upon the forehead and muzzle, framed by a fringe of pale fur, the extension of the ventral stripe. Within this dark mask are the ch'rai's eyes, a solid glistening black with no visible pupil or iris; and while the ch'rai are not blind, they do not see well in bright light (their primary senses being hearing and smell, which are superb, understandable given their environment). Their skin, where exposed, is also a rich, inky black. On average ch'rai females stand at about four feet tall, males being slightly taller. They are slightly stocky, and females have a propensity towards obesity when food is plentiful. When not breeding, both males and females will hunt, but when pregnancy advances to an ungainly degree the females remain within the dens and are provided for by the males. Ch'rai feed upon whatever can be found beneath the ground; insects and other arthropods, salamanders, toads, cave fish when available, bats, mice and rats. They will take larger prey, but such prey is scarce beneath the ground unless it happens to wander down from above. They will also eat various fungoids, and certain roots if they are near the surface. The ch'rai are agoraphobic in the extreme, used to having a solid roof above them, but will go onto the surface at night if there is a canopy of trees or a heavy cloud cover, to hunt the rich food there. When surfacing they shun densely populated areas and take great care not be seen by anyone of consequence; even so, in the dark they might be taken for red foxes if not for the mask and for the difference in their scent. The ch'rai have a legend which tells of how they came to live under the earth. It tells of a time when numerous civilized species coexisted upon the surface, one of them being the vulpine species. When civilization in general was still very young, most species worshipped their own gods and had very genocentric religions, and so it was with foxes; but as time passed and the various races expanded outward and encountered each other, new beliefs arose to include new knowledge, and panracial religions developed, challenging the established beliefs. The new religions grew mostly in cities, with their greater exposure to outside ways, while in rural areas the old ways remained largely intact. Even in those days it was clear that the power of man was beginning to overwhelm all else. Man took territory more rapidly, and was more purposeless in his brutality, than any of the other races. Some farsighted individuals saw that one could only be allied with this power or else be a victim of it. Thus it came to be that one of the foxish nations adopted an anthropocentric religion; and when the momentum of mankind's expansion inevitably drove them to take another foxish state, they enforced their own religion there. The city dwellers largely accepted this change, already lulled by their religious uncertainty, and aware of the force which could be brought to bear against them. But there was a great cry of dissent from the rural population, many of whom still held the old vulpinocentric beliefs. The invaders gave them three choices: they could convert, they could be less vocal about their beliefs, or they could be put to death. Very few of these fundamentalists stood for this proclamation, and were openly hostile to the invaders, who responded by withdrawing any tolerance they might have had. The nation had already been effectively conquered; the invading soldiers were ordered to slaughter any adherents to the old religion, and villages known to be enclaves of the old beliefs were set upon. The ch'rai are descended from the population of one of these villages, which fled from the approaching soldiers and sought refuge in the earth. There is a specific romantic tale associated with this flight, which is meant to explain how the ancestors of the ch'rai were able to escape, and why they never rose from below the ground. The tale tells of a vixen, Vanal, living in one of the rural villages, and a fox soldier from among the invaders, and their love for each other. After the initial invasion had succeeded, life had gone on pretty much as it had before, but for a different leader at the top, and the invaders and natives had been at least tolerant of each other. Vanal's lover was a good soldier, knowing that one fought other soldiers, not citizens, for citizens and the work they did (and taxes they paid) were among the spoils of war; and it made no sense to anger them or harm them if such could be avoided. It also made no sense to him that the natives should be pressed into the state religion; traditionally invaded peoples were free to worship whatever gods they wanted, as long as the taxes were paid. Whether or not the villagers knew of the affair isn't made clear in the tale; but when the word was given that the purges were to begin, Vanal's lover appeared in the village, calling for her, and when she appeared told her what was to happen. He told her that a column of soldiers was right behind him, and that they meant to slay everyone in the village, fundamentalist or not. Vanal alerted the village to the danger, and managed to convince everyone to follow her into the hills, where there was the entrance to a cavern where they could hide. Vanal and her lover held each other one last time, and then he went back to misdirect the other soldiers so that the villagers had time to escape. Vanal and her lover knew that the disappearance would be noticed and that the cave entrance would eventually be found and suspected, so the villagers must be led deep into the earth, further down than any sane fox would go, far enough that it would not be considered fruitful to pursue them. After they had been given up upon, Vanal's lover entered the caves to search for her, and though he explored them extensively, he never found another fox. Thinking his lover was dead, or certainly lost, and dismayed at what his nation would now have him do, he leapt off of a cliff upon which, it is said, the lovers sometimes met. After a somewhat longer time had passed, Vanal made her way to the surface alone, to find her lover and to determine what the world above was like. The villagers had felt betrayed by their own people, who had done nothing to help them, but Vanal felt as though there was one good fox on the surface, her lover, the world was not beyond redemption. She found traces of him in the higher caves, and realized he had been searching for her. She went to the cliff where they would meet, and found his clothing and weapons there, and knew what he must have done. Vanal sat upon the cliff for an entire day, watching the sun rise and set, waiting to make certain that he had not simply left his things behind for a while; the next evening she returned tearfully to the caves, certain of his death. She told her people what she had found and what she believed. Now that he was dead, there was nothing for them on the surface. There was no place on the surface to escape to; their country was conquered, and outside it were the forces which had corrupted foxkind. They would remain in the earth, denying the surface. The theology of the ch'rai states that the Earth itself is the mother of all foxes, and that its caverns are her wombs. Therein the ch'rai are nourished and nurtured and held safe and breed in the warm dark; and yet are unable to be born onto the surface, to sample the fruits thereout, because of the harshness of the light and the open space, and the things which thrive within it. Darkness is the natural state of things, and the Sun is an unwelcome interloper. Mankind and the other races which dominate the surface are regarded as parasites upon it. Ch'rai theology states that when the Earth has matured enough, their goddess, As-ch'r, the mother of the Earth, will take it into her womb again, blotting out the cruel light and allowing the ch'rai to emerge upon the surface, vanquish their enemies thereout, and join with the sh'mai, the foxes of the surface, who have dreamt in a poisoned sleep since the ch'rai were driven below (the word "sh'mai" is roughly equitable to "the stricken" or "the infected"). In the meantime, the ch'rai believe, the goddess has sent one of her children to assist them. The religious and spiritual focus of the ch'rai is the vixen Oersenthe, her full title being "Great Oersenthe, Queen Vixen, Mother of Foxes," considered the avatar of their goddess. These titles are well-deserved for she is hypergravid and fecund in the extreme, bringing forth great broods of kits each season. Though her exact age is unknown, it has been ascertained that she must be at least three thousand years old and is evidently immortal, the oldest living member of their species; the ch'rai maintain that as many as three fourths of all ch'raiim living today are descended directly from her. Time has allowed her to produce larger and larger broods, as the incidence of multiple births increases, and her body has shaped itself to accommodate the scale of her reproductive ability. There are stories of her holding her kits in her womb until they are fully grown, of holding them a second season while they breed within her, even of allowing ch'raiim to enter her womb from outside, sometimes to breed within or to breed with her unborn kits. In these ways she is a physical representation of the cosmology of the ch'rai, and a powerful motivational and inspirational force. None of the tales of the queen vixen can be verified, and may very well be exaggerations or fantasies, for Oersenthe has never knowingly been seen by non-ch'rai. Few of the other subterranean races take her existence seriously, at least not as the ch'rai describe her. She would be considered entirely metaphysical, but for the insistence by the ch'rai that she is in fact a living being, with all the accounts of personal interaction that this entails, and the distinction of identity between Oersenthe and As-ch'r. It is said that when the time to rise to the surface is near, Oersenthe will conceive one last great litter and hold it within her, letting her kits mature to adulthood and mate within her and give birth and mate again and again, her body growing titanic with her brood, until when the light is blotted out by the belly of the goddess, Oersenthe will bring her kits forth into their new world. The ch'rai are extremely prolific in their breeding, reaching sexual maturity in less than two years and full size in slightly more than three. A vixen's first brood will be one or two kits, but her average number of kits per brood will increase with each season she breeds, until she may average as many as six per brood. Ch'rai live for about thirty years on average, with females living somewhat longer than males. Every ch'rai that has ever lived is descended for the most part from the few hundred refugees who fled from invading soldiers into the earth in fear of their lives. Their number diminished further due to the hardships that would be endured by a surface species living below the earth, and inbreeding was necessary for their continued existence as a people. As time went on inbreeding became the rule rather than the exception, an instinctive part of their reproductive drive. Ch'raiim breed with their parents, with their children, with their siblings. Because of the problems inbreeding creates with the manifestation of recessive genes and sometimes banal traits, their claim to having been an almost thoroughly incestuous species for such a long period of time might naturally be dismissed as fantasy, if not for the sense of such behavior pervading all that is known about their culture. If true, their inbreeding seems to have purified their species rather than debilitated it, and most who study the ch'rai suspect that a strong magical influence is involved, an influence which might also allow for such a being as Oersenthe. In any case they breed torrentially, continually moving outward to fill more territory when they crowd each other, encouraged by their queen to inundate the underworld with their numbers. Any fox which wanders into the domain of the ch'rai is almost certainly doomed. They take great pains to conceal themselves from other surface races, but allow surface foxes to enter, and readily welcome them; however they are never allowed to escape. A female fox from the surface is courted and bred by many ch'rai males, and when she has given birth she is consumed. A male from the surface is used for breeding by several ch'rai females, and then consumed. The offspring of such unions are not killed; if they resemble ch'raiim closely enough they are kept within the earth, but if they resemble a surface fox closely enough they are released above (and care is taken that they will be found by the foxes there, and cared for) to infiltrate the extremely distilled genes of the ch'rai into their fellows on the surface. There are rumors of the ch'rai nurturing agents among these hybrids who know their nature and who surface to convert or corrupt the surface population, but this is very unlikely because of the fear which the ch'rai have for the light and open space of the surface world, and anyone born into their society could only share this fear. There are also tales of ch'raiim breeding with wolves in order to increase the overall physical strength of the race; like most tales of the ch'rai, these are unsubstantiated. Virtually all knowledge of the ch'rai comes from secondhand sources, usually other subterranean races. Though the ch'rai try relentlessly to keep surface man and fox from knowing of them, they do not hide from and are infrequently sociable with other underground peoples. There are very, very few firsthand accounts of encounters with the ch'rai, and most of them are almost certainly false. If a person from the surface were to encounter the ch'rai and somehow manage to escape, s/he would be relentlessly pursued as far as is possible for the ch'rai; such a person is essentially marked for death, though is usually not given the opportunity to realize this. The ch'rai are superb trackers of scent, due to the nature of their environment, and while they are afraid to surface during the day, they would surface even during full moon on a clear night to bring down such prey. Few true accounts of ch'rai encounters exist because few live long enough to tell them. It is said that one day the goddess's womb will cover the Earth, shrouding it in twilight, and the ch'rai will rise to the surface and destroy their enemies there; this certainly includes the race of men, but the foxes of the surface might also be numbered amongst these adversaries. Certainly they are viewed with great suspicion, as ignorant and potentially dangerous children. The liturgy of the ch'rai states rather ambiguously that when the ch'rai conquer the surface, the foxes there are to be incorporated into their numbers. The majority of ch'raiim take this to mean that the foxes above are to be welcomed and interbred with, unifying their races into one. However some believe that the intent is to literally incorporate the surfaces foxes into the ch'rai by eating them, as they always have when they've strayed below; indeed many ch'raiim have a taste for foxflesh, though they will not consume their fellow subterranean dwellers. Oersenthe is mute upon this subject; few ch'raiim have asked the specific meaning of the phrase, since they have faith that when the time comes it will be made clear to them. Addenda While it was previously known that the ch'rai are habitually incestuous, it was also incorrectly believed until recently that ch'rai indiscriminately have children with any relative at any time in his or her life. It has since been determined that a ch'rai's yearly pairings follow a strict hierarchy from the very first season of sexual maturity, which only wavers if for some reason it is disrupted by death or separation of family members. A ch'rai female will typically mate with her father in her first breeding season, with one or more of her male siblings in her second, and with her male offspring from her father's litter in her third. In her third season, and in every breeding season thereafter until her death, the ch'rai vixen will breed with the male children of her litter of two seasons previous. Likewise, a ch'rai male will normally mate with his mother in his first season, with one or more of his female siblings in his second, and with his female children in his third and following seasons. If for some reason the usual mate is unavailable at the appropriate time, other family members will take their place; a sibling from an elder litter may take the place of a parent, for instance, or elder children may mate with their parents again if no new litters survive to maturity. If a ch'rai is unfortunate enough to lose all of his or her immediate family, the individual may very well be adopted by another grouping, but such a loss is deeply traumatic for a ch'rai, and he or she may simply be unable to function with all close relatives gone. The startling and somewhat gruesome details of ch'rai funerary ritual have also recently come to light. Because the ch'rai breed in such large numbers, their population can become quite dense in places, until migration thins it; and because food is relatively scarce in the underworld, what nutritive matter there is must be used with great efficiency. Therefore the ch'rai consume their dead, unless the carcass has somehow been rendered inedible or toxic. This also has a particular hierarchy; the mother of the fallen ch'rai is expected to consume the carcass, as it is she who brought forth the individual, and she whose very flesh went into the new life. Most often this occurs when a kit is stillborn, and such cases are commonly accepted as part of childbirth, as natural as consuming the placentae. Older children, however, are also reclaimed in this way when they die; if the fallen child is adult, the mother vixen may share with her daughters or female siblings, but she will dine first. Should a ch'rai have no living parent at its time of death, it will probably be eaten by its nearest female relatives. Male chrai'im have no claim to the dead, regardless of relation, and never partake of such feasts. If a fallen ch'rai is unclaimed, every reasonable attempt is made to locate its female parent before decomposition renders the carcass inedible. If she cannot be found before that time, the body is shared among the local females. It should not be thought that the ch'rai make a brutal, unthinking feast of their fallen family members; their passing is mourned with great emotion and sadness, even as their bodies are devoured, and it is only small consolation to the mother that her child's passing has provided her with meat, even if such meat will help her to bring forth new life... consolation lies in the warmth and scent of her surviving children. Although such cases are extremely infrequent amongst so prolific a species, when a ch'rai female loses her only child, it is therefore a sad event indeed. Traditionally the last child is buried rather than eaten, sealed in a small cave or buried under stones, for reasons not yet clear. The few gravesites of chrai'im to be found are almost invariably these final children, and such places are said to have an almost palpable sense of grief about them, beyond even that which typically accompanies a place of the dead. ______________________________________________________________________________ The contents of this factsheet are copyright (c) 1994, 1995 Ashtoreth (William Haas), and may not be used, reproduced, or reprinted without permission of the author, except for purposes of review or perusal.