Capre

'Important note: This species was created with vore in mind so there will be references to it throughout this (both fatal and non-fatal). If you don’t like vore this species doesn’t have to be used for it but please keep this in mind when reading, thank you!'

Capres are an average-sized mammalian species found in the mountains and alpines of Faria. They are a rare species that live a near-isolated existence from the Outer Lands, preferring to live in villages and towns made up of their own kind, so they are rarely seen by other species.

Capres have one of the most detailed records of their own history, records dating back thousands of years which is something they take a lot of pride in. What also makes them unusual is they are a race capable of both using and functioning as a living conduit of magic.

Biology
Capres are a mammalian species that stand on two legs and have two arms. They resemble a cross between a goat, fox and red panda, they have a digitigrade stance with canine-like noses and goat-like eyes, granting them a wide field of view which lets them easily spot predators without needing to turn their head (unless they're directly behind them which is still a blind spot). Their most distinct trait is that they can have multiple tails. These tails can reach counts from 1 at the very least to 9 at most, though a count of around 3-5 tails is most common. Capre fur coats can be a wide range of colours, though they tend to have warmer hues of colour in warm regions, while capres in colder regions have cooler colours. During winter, the fur coat of a capre will double in length, though capres living on a mountain that sees snow frequently may have long fur all year round.

Males stand between 6-7ft on average and have a pair of horns protruding from the back of their head, females stand between 5'5"-6'5"ft on average, and have no horns at all.

Capres favor living in villages built upon high mountain peaks in the alpines, so they are well adapted to the cold and low oxygen, and to how perilous living on a mountain can be. Their cloven feet are able to stand on even the steepest of cliffs that any other species would be clinging to dear life from if they hadn't already fallen to their death. It can be quite a sight to witness a capre working diligently on building a new pathway while seemingly standing on thin air while they secure planks into place.

Capres are a distant relative to titans. This relation to the giants of the past means they are one of two known existing races in Faria that are able to both use and function as a conduit for magic, the only other known race being deceivers. Capres frequently use their magic to protect themselves, passive magic radiating from their bodies fuels magic-powered tools/machines within their villages. This magic has caused the capres to evolve a rather frail disposition due to using it for much of their work. They still do small and delicate tasks themselves, but heavy duty work is more often done with magic.

Behaviour
The capre society is cut off from the wider world as a result of their preference of living so remotely from other species. While this near-total isolation has fostered a unique culture, they tend to be quite strict traditionalists and have a difficult time embracing new ways of doing things. Because only so much grows in the alpines they reside in, capres make the most of their environment by using as little wood as possible and building into the mountainsides to reduce the need for it. The common method of creating housing is digging into the rock to create caves, which can function as homes, businesses or hollows dug out to build intricate shrines to their gods.

Capres in spite of their traditionalist ways, are surprisingly industrious. They are known to invent all manner of contraptions to make the day to day work they need to do much easier. Rather than using a lot of metals, their machines are mostly made out of stone, brick, clay and all powered by their conduit magic. These machines provide the heavy lifting capres would struggle with by themselves as they're such a physically frail race.

Capres are very protective of their villages and don't like to be found very easily, so many capre villages are not marked on commercially available maps, or they're considered a myth. Every village has guards posted just outside the village borders that patrol day and night on shifts in order to keep trouble and potential threats away. These capres are trained to be stealthy and quiet, something capres are surprisingly good at doing even without their magic, but these guards will keep themselves cloaked or hidden regularly while on watch.

Much like lyres, capres are fond of artisanry. It would be nigh impossible to find any building not lavishly decorated on the outside with pots, flags, gardens, statues, paintings and just about anything else that could be used to make their villages as beautiful as possible. Because of how much work goes into decorating the exteriors, the interiors of capre homes are surprisingly minimalist, but not lacking in carefully thought through home décor to make their homes stand out. It's considered a form of compensating for ones shortcomings as a person to overdo interior décor in capre culture. Capres favor light clothing to allow for warmth to be kept in when needed, but not so heavy or densely layered as it would weigh them down too much in their high altitude home. The higher a capres class, the more intricate and complex their outfits will be in order to present themselves accordingly.

Unlike lyres, capres are not shy about indulging in the vices of life. In the past, capres had to preserve a lot of foods so they would last through hard times like winter or poor crop yields, and these preserving methods have remained in practice to this day. While they have stores of pickles and preserves buried deep in the rock, the most popular way to make crops last longer is brewing them into alcohol, or drying plants that cause capres to experience a pleasant high as a simple means of having fun through the long, cold months.

Capres frequently and unabashedly partake in unmatched levels of everyday hedonism in the present day, seeing their hedonistic ways as a celebration of the fact they have lived to see another day. Their near-constant consumption of alcohol has given them an unmatched alcohol tolerance, able to only start getting drunk when other species would already be unconscious from drinking too much.

Their hedonism is actually a necessity, capres need to eat decent meals to replenish their magic reserves throughout the day. In order to maintain decent food supplies, they reserve all their eating for 3 square meals every day, a large breakfast to restore magic lost during the night, an equally large lunch for further replenishment and then a lighter dinner since activity usually dies down enough in the evening to eat lighter. This is exempt for the many festivals they have throughout the year when stalls will serve specialties to celebrate special occasions.

Capres are also the only sentient species that hibernates for winter due to how dangerously cold the mountains can get. Winter starts earlier on the mountains than on the ground, usually starting as early as the beginning of November, or earlier than that. Much of the year is spent preparing for winter and stocking up on stores of food that will last all throughout winter. When capres are ready to hibernate, they prepare their homes with all the blankets, pillow they have, stores of firewood and coal are prepared in a store for them under the floor of the main room so they're readily to hand to throw into the hearth and warm the room. All the blankets will be spread on floor of their main room for all the capres in a home to settle down to sleep for the next four months in groups. Capres put on a lot of excess fat before winter so they can largely sleep throughout winter and live off of their body fat while they sleep. Capre bodies are adapted to not need to eat as much during winter, able to live on meager meals while their bodies sleep for days to even weeks before they wake up and need a meal, though they may wake up more often for water.

Capres are strongly encouraged to spend their hibernation with others so they can keep warm easier with their body heat, but some prefer to hibernate alone so they can enjoy some months of solitude as a break from the year spent needing to socialize, or use some of their time awake to meditate or catch up on hobbies they didn't get much time for. By the time spring returns, they will return to their usual figure and start over this routine again.

Capres as Predators
On average, capres prefer to reserve needing to eat live prey until they're backed into a corner, but they aren't afraid of pulling out tricks up their sleeve when this happens. The most common method of keeping threats away is using their radial magic to create short-range illusions to confuse and bewilder threats, this will usually turn around predators in another direction or can be used to conjure terrifying figures to frighten them away. These illusions can be more powerful and have greater reach if a group of capres use their magic together.

A capre caught alone while confronting sentient species may not have enough reach to effectively deal with a group with frightening illusions, so they might choose to target a specific member of the group, usually the leader or the most weak-willed person, and cut them off from their group by casting an illusion on them, using a separate illusion to trick the group into thinking the selected target is missing and send them off looking for them. While the group is distracted, the target will now inevitably wind up prey for the capre, shrunken down to size with the rest of their magic if applicable, or stunned into being able to move for a brief moment before the capre pounces on their prey and eats them there and then. While their group panics, the capre will waddle off to cover until their meal digests and they can return to their village without being followed.

Capres as Prey
While they know how to stay hidden and out of trouble well, it can still happen where capres are caught and eaten by predators lurking outside of their villages. Rock aghrahns and nagas are among the most common predators capres have to contend with due to these species commonly sharing the same terrain as the capres.

Diet
Capres are very much omnivores and can eat almost anything, their teeth are able to easily chew up nigh-inedible plants like thorns. Capre stomachs are able to pull the most nutrients from foods with little nutritional value like these tough mountain plants, their gastrointestinal hardiness only being outmatched by the lacris. A food culture based around preserving crops means they practically live on salted/dried meat or fish, pickles and jams during the winter, though there are usually so many stockpiled that capres have developed local delicacies around repurposing these preserves. Pairing these preserves with rice is quite popular since rice serves as a pleasantly plain backdrop to the intense flavors of their food stores.

Weaknesses
While knowing how to use magic is a major boon for any species to have to more easily protect themselves, it's not always able to be depended on, and it's most unwise for any capre to over rely on it. While magic may exude from their bodies naturally, it's also tied to their own energy to an extent. It's for this reason that capres need to eat fairly regularly compared to other species to not only give their bodies the energy it needs, but also to restore their own personal reserves of magic regularly since they constantly expend it, and their magic is most certainly still finite to a degree.

If the reserves of a capre got too low at a critical moment, they would find themselves unable to do much against their predators as they have a frail build and can't use a lot of weaponry effectively other than small weapons. Whether they have some sort of a backup weapon or not, capres are at a major disadvantage without their magic so it can be quite easy to overpower and eat one when they run out.

Spirituality
Capres worship the titans, it's largely unknown to the wider world that titans were once a species that walked on Faria. The titans created the earliest known civilization, but much of their impact is now little more than ruins largely eroded away or buried deep in the dirt, sand and snow. What's also largely unknown is capres are a living distant relative to the titans, bearing some loose similarities to the giants of the past.

Unlike lyres, capres don't believe there are a small handful of gods as told in the stories of The Family. Capres instead hold the belief that the titans were an entire race of gods that created the planet of Faria, all life on it's surface, it's sun, moons and stars and founded the first civilization. This creates further contrast with the lyres belief system in that capres don't see the sun and moons as gods, but rather the creations of gods.

Some of the oldest scrolls written by capres thousands of years ago contain key information that supports their belief system. The records state that the titans began to dwindle as a race due to a change in Faria's environment, meaning the world could no longer support their existence, putting their species at risk of extinction. Wanting to escape this fate, the titans built immense gates known as The Titan Gates. The titans collective magical power allowed them to cross through these gates into a new world that would allow them to continue surviving, at the cost of bringing all of Faria's magic with them.

The capres believe themselves to be the direct descendants of the titans, and the titans intend them to become the new god race of Faria and restore the world's magic. Their belief system is founded on achieving the enlightenment needed to become gods, so a lot of a capres time is spent meditating at shrines found all over their village in devotion to the titans in order to search their souls for answers. On an every day level, capres may visit these shrines to commune with titans through meditation as a means of seeking guidance for everyday problems. Shrines are most commonly filled with statues made from ores or stone depicting titans. Capres will even travel far outside of their villages to build shrines so the titans may protect their people who wander far from home. These further away shrines usually don't see as much care as ones built directly in the village, but capre guards will sometimes travel to them on their patrols to clean them up, leave offerings and meditate for protection.

Some especially devoted capre monks may go out on long, perilous pilgrimage to a titan gate in the hopes to be granted enlightenment that will bring their species to godhood. Many never return from these journeys, but the few who have travelled to all corners of the world and visited every titan gate will quickly become leaders of their people.

Because of how many potential gods there are, the titans are worshipped collectively, but stories of particular titans performing deeds such as filling the planet with it's oceans, pulling continents, stamping the earth to create mountains and creating/placing the sun and moons into the sky will be represented frequently in depictions. These could be statues, paintings, screens, clothing, pottery, flags, the mountains themselves and just about anything that could be adorned with stories telling of countless legends of the titans. Capres have a no holds barred policy when it comes to worshipping their gods, believing that the more fantastic a display made for their gods, the better a chance they have at reaching enlightenment to become like them though remembering their achievements and feats.

Overall
Capres have very limited interactions with other species due to their self-imposed seclusion and their lack of trust in outsiders, so they tend to be rather cold and unwelcoming to those who have found their village, or will even subdue them until they learn the intentions of a visitor. Only small handfuls of people have found capre villages since capres make their villages difficult to find through the use of illusions to turn around explorers. There have been visitors to villages with innocent intentions like wanting to know if the species were real and to learn more about them and their culture or to seek out rare oddities the capres would see as commonplace, and while capres will be incredibly wary of them, they can warm up to outsiders keen to learn about them quickly, especially if they really get involved with their culture, one of the fastest ways into their good books. These trusted individuals are sworn to secrecy over the locations of these more remote and hidden villages.

Of course their lack in trust in outsiders isn't misplaced, as others who have come to their villages have come for less scrupulous purposes. Poachers who prize capre tails for proof of having found some of these rare species have cut the tails of capres in the past, a loss which can destroy the social standing of even the most high-class of capre, especially as their tails only begin to split just past the base into their multiple tails, so they are more valuable if they are cut without separating the tails. Poachers, bandits and other troublemakers will usually be swiftly punished, and will likely not return home due to being eaten to protect the location of their village.

Finding a capre village is a popular goal of Faria's intrepid explorers. This could be for the purposes of marking them on personal maps, seeking to learn the culture, or just for the sake of being able to spin drunken yarns in a tavern that they definitely visited once, which may be met with dismissal. The most popular village to try to find is a village hidden high upon Malina's Azure Mountains called Tahio. It's said that the capres there are the most welcoming of outsiders, and throw some of the biggest festivals in Faria, so many seek to find Tahio just to get to party with no restraints. While there are numerous villages rumored to exist on each continent, even deep within the perilous Oskeli Badlands, Tahio is the only village frequently told about by name among travelers.

While capres as a whole are rather close-minded about other species, there are species they struggle more to get along with, but exceptions can always occur.

Humans
Humans are a species capres are especially distrustful of. Humans are the most common species who lead or make up gangs of poachers who hunt capres to collect their tails. The tails are sold on the black market for high sums of reigels, with rumors stating buyers in The Warren will buy them for an even greater sum in credits. The distrust of humans is so bad that capres may forbid them from entering the village entirely, which can even extend to halfkin due to them being half-human.

Lyres
One would think the two most spiritual species in Faria would get along well, but this is not quite the case due to their beliefs and lifestyles being strongly contradictory. Devout lyres tend to take offense to the notion of a mortal race being gods, the capres trying to become gods and that the capres don't consider the natural elements to be deities, but rather the creations of mortals. Lyres also dislike the hedonistic ways of capres, seeing their choice of lifestyle as terribly wasteful and/or an offense to their own gods. Capres in turn tend to see lyres as stuck up sticks-in-the-mud who don't know how to have some fun. Capres are still quite sensitive to others disrespecting their own beliefs nonetheless, and especially the notion of the titans not being gods can offend capres.

Rock aghrahns/Nagas
These species are quite simply disliked for being common predators to the capres, as well as often living too close to the capre villages for their liking. Town guards are always on the alert for them and ready to try to bewilder them with illusions, but these species have a major size and strength advantage, so if a capre gets caught off-guard they will most certainly end up food for these large and voracious predators.

Class Divide
Capres mostly get along with each other well since they almost only ever come to know their own kind, but a social hierarchy based on tail count has dictated their traditions since the beginning and can cause heads to butt on purely a local level. Capres operate on a strict class system based around the number of tails an individual has.

Working class capres (1-3 tails) usually do a lot of the hard going work on the lower flanks of mountains such as farming, brewing and mining. These workers have a hard time getting the supplies they need to work without having to spend their own money from trade, so all the money they earn from their work goes towards supporting their work again, leaving them only enough spare for food. They wear very basic clothing with little adornment on them as they cannot afford the luxuries of higher classes to appropriately adorn themselves, earning further judgements from above.

Most capres have tail counts numbering between 4-6 so are seen as middle-class. Out of necessity, a lot of middle class capres will work in working class trades, but local custom dictates they are paid slightly more for "magical contribution". These capres may own farms of their own, but it's most common for them to run businesses selling cosmetic items, run food stalls, sell alcohol/drugs, tailor clothes and whatever else is able to be done by them. Since they can afford the means to create their own jewelry and cosmetic pieces, their clothing is usually more ornately decorated and they can spare one of two luxuries on themselves, but much of what they make is reserved for the higher classes to purchase.

High-class capres have 7-8 tails, these capres may run businesses of their own, which tend to become the most successful businesses with lots of employees. These employees may travel outside the village to sell goods to merchants and bring fresh income or supplies back, a necessary risk to replenish local economy. Due to excess wealth, these residents can afford to spend the most time lazing around and doing nothing, so will often be seen lying around very drunk, high or keeled over a noodle bar after indulging in vices heavily. While they might be wealthy, they should never be assumed as being high-strung.

Nine-tailed capres are the rarest, but they hold the position of village leaders by tradition, collectively the leaders are called the nine-tails. Nine-tailed capres born in the village are taken straight to the nine-tails to be raised by them with little to no involvement from parents. Villages could have any number of leaders but these leaders will always have the villages elder, the oldest resident and a trusted advisor to the leaders, at their side no matter what their tail count is since their life experience is considered as equally valuable as the magical power of nine-tails.

Many capres are often too stuck in their ways to push for real changes, but there are some trying to push the idea that there’s more to an individual's worth than just the number of tails you have. With their culture having been the same for longer than most species, this is a hard change to make happen, but baby steps happen all the time thanks to influence from the outside world being brought to villages, showing them they can do things differently to make things better for others.

Among hushed whispers from the working class and some middle class, they will complain over drinks about how their systems are founded on poor basis. Many monks who have become leaders of villages in the past came from their roots when such positions are normally reserved for nine-tails, village elders are allowed to sit as a leader alongside the nine-tails regardless of tail count due to their age. Some working class capres have also just been more powerful than even some higher class members, but are pushed back into their respective lanes to keep the system in order and contradicting past exceptions. These contradictions to their living are usually kept to oneself and those who speak out are usually punished for it.

Everyday Living
While this class system may exist, capres still favour living around enjoying the spices of life as much as possible, so even the hard-working working class never forget how to have fun and enjoy life, but may resent that they can't afford to do so as regularly as those above them.

Everyday life for a capres does involve needing to do the days work that needs done, but casual drinking, smoking and snacking are all so commonplace that it's even deemed acceptable to do at work as long as the work is generally done. Capre tolerance for such vices is so high that by the time they would even be incapacitated by the effects, it would be time for them to quit working for the day so they'd go and drink more at noodle bars if they haven't already passed out drunk about half an hour before quitting time.

Capres are also lax about routine and time, running on what is known as capre time. They are champions at being fashionably late to everything from starting work, meeting with friends and getting their own festivals started. The only thing they are known to do on time is stop working so they can relax and party. Being late is one thing a capre will never see punishment for in their life in the village, so it can be a struggle for them to adjust to a more strictly routine workplace that won't let slide being half an hour late and turning up noticeably drunk.

The only time this activity dies down is in winter, when the majority of villages are battered by snow and blizzards and force the capres to remain indoors as much as possible. Capres will already have stores of preserves, rice and other foods ready to help them get through winter until spring returns. Because of hibernation, capres with larger figures are often seen as being more attractive in their culture through symbolizing wealth and good health, since a fatter capre would have less difficulty surviving winter. Gaining weight throughout the year is even encouraged ahead of time for winter, which is why food culture is so in your face in every village with stalls encouraging you to try every little thing you walk past, so visitors rarely leave without putting on some weight.

Capres can tire of the sameness of everyday life and may choose to leave the security of their villages and venture into the wider world. This might be because they want to attempt to integrate with other species and get to know them better, finding their own social hierarchy too stifling to their freedom of choice over what to do with themselves in their lives and feeling there are more opportunities and choices of how to spend ones life in the Outer Lands. While these capres are rare, they often are specialists in a particular trade who with their knowledge will often find success as merchants or artisans in settlements. Choosing to leave home is not punishable or looked down upon as long as they don't intend to expose the location of their village, something even some of the most spite-ridden of capres fed up with home life would never want to do since it would put their species in jeopardy with poachers and predators.

In some cases however, leaving home is not voluntary. Capres can be banished from their home and never allowed to return for numerous grievances surrounding breaking the chain of command or stepping outside of the statue quo. This could be attempting to live within higher levels of a village without being partnered to a high class member first, purposeful destruction of a shrine or trying to bring awareness to the flaws in their own social system. Some offenses can even aware the higher class members punishment, this might be eating or drinking entire supplies of food or desecrating sacred relics or foodstuffs needed for festivities. Rumors circle in the Outer Lands of a high class capre that was banished from Tahio for drinking an entire supply of alcohol intended for an important festival.

Golems
One of the most striking elements of visiting a capre village is seeing the sight of these lumbering automata ambling slowly through rice paddies and around the village doing heavier work for capres. Lower class capres invented golems about 2000 years ago to help them with their work, though they have since become popular across the culture for doing all manner of heavy duty work, or to simply transport villagers from one point to another at a leisurely pace, or even to serve as a town pet or mascot of sorts.

Golems are made out of common materials found in every village. Any race could certainly work out the means of which these machines are constructed, but only the capres have the know-how to actually bring them to life. The secret to this is that capres use their magic to imbue the golems with a mysterious magical fire, which is designed to run on the radial magic exuded by the villagers, keeping them running as long as capres around them have enough magic to spare. Golems are all designed with a readily accessible hollow in their torsos so this flame can be tended to easily, since it cannot be snuffed out by water like a conventional flame. If capres near them run too low on magic, the golem will cease functioning, indicated by it's fire weakening to a tiny ember. All that needs to be done to power them back on is for capres to tend to their own food needs or to bring in extra hands with more magic spare, and the golem will start to run again. While golems are only able to run on the whims of their creators, they are noted to have a gentle disposition, quietly tending to their work or spending time watching over the children when commanded. Capre kids love to climb all over the golems and decorate them in flowers, paints or whatever else their body can be adorned with.

Golems made of much more expensive materials like brass, iron and gold are popular among the upper classes to do work for them, though these are also built by the lower class. While these metallic golems are usually expected to do some work too, they're more of an ornamental piece to show off the wealth and class of their owner, usually found carrying them or ambling just behind them.

Whatever material they're made from or purpose they're intended to serve, there is one purpose that all golems are expected to fulfil, which is to protect the town in the event of major incidents like full raids from invaders that the capres can't get under control or to provide immediate assistance with disasters. Golems have also been integral in events like fires, storms, earthquakes and other such disasters in helping survivors, locating the dead and cleaning up and restoring the village to it's pristine state.

If looked after well, a golem can last a village for decades or well over 100 years, depending on the materials used to create it. Capres are surprisingly fond of their golems, seeing them as much a companion or even a fully fledged resident as those around them, even if they could never act alone. When the time comes for a golem to need to be retired due to their repair and upkeep becoming too expensive to maintain, capres will take them to a suitable place and extinguish their flame, allowing the golems their long deserved rest. Capres will not throw away or scrap the golems parts due to how attached they can get to them, instead they repurpose these retired golems into beautiful displays, decorating them with plants and leaving them offerings to thank them for their years of work.

While the class divide may cause strife among the capres, it's a quietly unspoken truth that the love for these gentle giants keeps them all together.

Festivals
Perhaps the one thing capres are well known for in the wider world, is their penchant for throwing festivals so regularly that many visitors to their villages have a hard time recalling a visit when there wasn't a special occasion being celebrated.

Capres throw festivals every season for their gods to thank them, except in winter when the mountains grow too cold to be outside. There are also festivals to celebrate staple foods or crops that get them through hard times like rice, pickles, dried meat, ramweed and of course alcohol. Festivals might also celebrate particularly famous figures in titan stories and put on public plays to retell these stories. There's also of course the Festival of the Nine-Tails which gives thanks to the village leaders by letting them rest for a day, even if working class capres might point out quietly among themselves that the nine-tails hardly lift a finger anyway.

Capres are deemed as experts in throwing festivals and partying like the worlds ending, they go all out with their special occasions to the point that it could be a high class members birthday and they might just decide they want a festival to celebrate. Sometimes the lower classes don't even know why they're celebrating at times, but festivals are about the only time all capres regardless of their class can meet up and have fun together without social restrictions holding them back, so it's likely no one really cares too much as long as everyone's having a good time.

Moonlight Festival
The Moonlight Festival is considered the biggest party you could ever attend in your life. It takes place at the end of autumn as the last big party of the year before winter comes and capres need to hibernate.

Preparations for this festival happen all year round even with other festivals going on near-constantly in every village. In order to make the last big festival of the year before hibernation truly special, a sacred alcohol called moonlight sake is made out of the finest rice harvested years prior. The alcohol is so sacred to this festival that it's been made at least 10 years in advance for as long as anyone can remember to ensure it's peak flavour is developed in time for every festival.

It's said that the roots of the Moonlight Festival happened by pure accident when a brewer found an entire store of this sake they'd made 10 years ago that they'd completely forgotten about, so they shared some with the whole village as a small comfort before they would have to hibernate before winter. It was so delicious that they threw one last party to make the drink as special as possible and have fond memories tied to it. The drink was said to be so delicious and potently intoxicating that each capre that drank it slept all through winter in complete peace, the sake keeping them warm all through winter.

The festival celebrates the newest batch having been completed while drinking a supply of it properly aged for 10 years. Moonlight sake get it's name from the fact that it seems to soak up the colours of the twin moons and take on both colours in an unusual but vivid mixture of colours one can't forget easily long after they've had a taste. The drink is known to have these colours without the moons even being visible but is brought out more by fuller moons. How exactly this colour develops in the drink is a secret only known to it's brewers. The drinking of the moonlight sake is done in the hopes of a restful winter nap, though it's not as effectively alcoholic as told in the stories it stands up in terms of it's flavour.

Reproduction
Choosing partners is yet another thing strictly determined by the class system, but it is surprisingly more lax than one might expect. Capres will hold a preference of trying to stick to their class system as much as possible, but it's not deemed punishable to choose to partner with some one of a lower class as long as you have them move into your home so they can become higher class by proxy, but such a union might receive judgements from those in the same class. It's also deemed acceptable to travel to another capre village to try to find a partner, this mixing is necessary however as capres live in very closed off populations so inbreeding would occur very easily without some allowances made, which would be bad for the species in the long run.

Outside of class dictation, the process is very similar to humans. Capres will socialize with each other through everyday life, meet someone they like, get to know them, date them and likely have a lot of casual sex before they decide they're made for one another and tie the knot. Marriages are of course another big occasion that might see celebration from higher classes through festivals, but the marriages themselves are more modestly held in front of a shrine and given approval by one of the nine-tails sent to oversee, give the vows and unite the couple in marriage. From here, a capre couple might decide to go for having a child. Much like humans, capres are capable of having offspring at almost any time of the year, so they have a lot more freedom to decide when the time is right for them.

When pregnancy occurs, capres very commonly have twins, but single kids or triplets are also ordinary, offspring counts numbering four or more is rather rare. Pregnancies in capres last for 8 months until the kids are born.

Life Cycle
Most commonly, capre kids will have a similar tail count to their parents so they will be raised by them, but it's also a norm for kids to be placed into the homes of appropriate classes depending on tail count. High class capres will place all of their kids born with less than 7 tails into suitable homes to be adopted by parents of a matching class, working class capres have to do the same with their children if they are born with greater numbers of tails than their own, middle class depends on if their kids have less or more tails than their own. These capre kids separated from their birth parents are forbidden to have this information revealed to them, so they will often grow up believing their adoptive parents to be their real parents. Sometimes the kids may be told the truth in secrecy but sworn to never tell anyone they know the truth.

Any capre kids born with 9 tails are immediately turned over to the nine-tails to be raised into future village leaders the moment they're born. These kids rarely see other children due to the nature of the training they have to undergo to become leaders. 9-tails are the rarest births, so it's most likely the case that these kids will not even have an equally aged companion alongside them. The nature of how strict this class system means even the nine-tails have to give up their own children if they don't meet the required count to keep them, so the 9-tails they take into their fold are usually the most spoiled and doted upon children in a village, which makes for the common leader mindset as an adult where they expect to get their way when they want it.

Capre kids start off fairly small but will grow steadily as they get older. In males, their horns will emerge when they turn 2-3 and keep growing throughout their lives unless managed to not get too uncomfortably large. Long, well kept horns are seen as quite attractive to females.

Capres become adults at the age of 18, but have one of the lengthier lifespans of the sentient species, able to live to be about 150 years old on average, though some village elders have surpassed this and even gone past 200 years old.