Radiant Heart nekos

I had this idea for a while already... but only now am I drunk inspired enough to put it down. Thinking along the same lines as FOOD (what do you do when you want to strike back?), but a little saner, I came up with this. New neko tribe! Now with a new flavor: OVER NINE THOUSAND!



The Radiant Heart tribe comes from the shaky grounds of Deeper Felarya. They're a sedentary tribe, a strange privilege which only the strongest can maintain... and do so only for good reason.

Originally, the Radiant Heart tribe was a pretty generic tribe inside Negav. During Micolon's reign, a young magician had a vision of a voice calling to his tribe from Deeper Felarya. Usually he'd have went alone, but some dumb people had disagreements with the monarch, and decided to roll with it. They went north for several weeks, until they finally found Deeper Felarya. And once in Deeper Felarya, they searched until the magician found the source of that voice: a tree. The tree promised him power, safety, and health. And the magician would make sure the tree delivered. They settled there, and the tree, with the magician's help, accepted them, changed them, and protected them forevermore. That's how the elder tells it, at least. He also says the magician was really handsome, charming, and smart.

The first thing you'll notice when you look at a Radiant Heart neko is that it's HUGE. The tribe's average height is just under eight feet, and their basketball crop is around ELEVEN FUCKING FEET. If that doesn't distract you, you'll notice most of them have creamy skin, and achromatic hair tones, such as pure white and silver. Golden eyes aren't uncommon, but the most common colors are gray and crimson.

Radiant Heart nekos have a physical prowess that is impossible. They've been known to open pickle jars at midnight on the first try (and easily enough to go back to sleep afterwards), leap well over twenty metres, run faster than... something fast, eat entire tribes of tinies, and most impressively, their wounds seem to close within minutes. It's told that a neko from another tribe once met the chieftain's little daughter, who shook his hand; shortly afterwards he met the tribe's elder, who bandaged it.

Oddly enough, their strength and size isn't what deters predators from eating them. Well, it is, but not the way you'd think. Most predators claim that despite overpowering and consuming a Radiant Heart wouldn't be as different from eating any other neko as it would seem, they'd rather not eat them because radiant Heart nekos just have something... wrong... about them. There's something unnatural about how big they get, and it makes most predators uneasy. This doesn't mean that they won't eat them, but most predators would rather be sure there's nothing else to eat before eating one of those (except fairies, and eisners of course, and dimensional dragons, and... well, only a few predators have that qualm, actually). It's rumoured among predators that Radiant Heart nekos contain dangerous levels of growth hormone and anabolic steroids. Well, it isn't, but it would be. Anyway, most predators that eat a Radiant Heart usually don't eat anything else that day. One of those nekos is a lot of food.

Actually, Radiant Heart nekos are that big and strong because of... well, magic. They worship a big magical tree, the biggest they know. When told that THE Giant Tree is bigger, their answer is usually "But ours is better". Well, they don't, actually, it's a secret that their tree does anything. They're also arrogant pricks and would probably go down the Ur-Sagol route really fast if it weren't they've got to go back to their tree once in a while to charge back their power, and stay relatively close for it to do anything, which limits their influence to a relatively small area.

This tree is a holy oak, but its power is greater than that of other holy oaks by an order of magnitude. The tribe resides on this tree, and fiercely, fiercely, fiercely protects it. At the center of the tree, there's a small hollow section, which is guarded at all times by spell, weapon, and vigilance. That's the deepest sanctum, reaching all the way to the core of the tree, where only the elder may enter.

The Radiant Heart tribe is aware of its 500-foot tall weakness, however. And it aggressively kills any interlopers who get too close. If you're a neko, however, they MAY talk to you before killing you. They've got some respect for magicians, too, and that may spare your life. You'd need to be a neko, a magician, a very eloquent diplomat, and have a really good presence to actually get to visit them. All those who got to visit them, however, say that it was obvious they were being tested... but what for, they don't know.

However, there's a last strangeness about this tribe: older (100+) members that left the tribe claim that tribesmen used not to be that big. The elder dismisses those rumors, but he's only a five foot six dude... hmmmmm...


Credits to Icalasari for Holy Oaks in the first place.

This seems good.

uh oh... a tribe of giant nekos in a few years ? XD

Sort of. We all know that won't go so well, don't we?

I like this. It's a pretty cool idea. Although I wonder why they're called radiant heart nekos... what exactly do they radiate from their hearts?