Daratur live in social packs in numbers of
twenty to one hundred approximately, the average being around forty.
Nomadic in nature they usually stay within other civilisations' reach.
Partly for trade, partly for safety and partly for opportunity. Dominant
in the pack is the Chief Dara, usually the strongest male. He will have
a Gural of several bitches. Beneath the Chief Dara are all the other
daratur males and all the free bitches. Any sons of the Chief Dara
become the Chief Dara's own personal bodyguard. When the Chief Dara
dies, or become too ill or too old to fight, he becomes a Gnawer or
Tagisshral, otherwise known as Wise Dara. The sons will then battle for
supremacy, the losers of which are then relegated to normal pack-member
status. So winning the battle is very important.
Daratur bitches are fertile twice a Dodecate. Late
Fall and mid Rise. They can have one to six cubs, of which the ratio of
male to female is 4:1. This probably explains the main decline in
daratur numbers over several Dodecates.
Usually daratur alignment in Neutral, which is fine when they are are
doing well and allied with a settlement of some lawful civilisation.
When allied with Evil or Unlawful partners however, they often overstep
themselves and are often destroyed by retaliating forces of Good, or
become betrayed by their Evil allies after their usefulness to them is
over. They only work for the benefit of their community and care not
for other races. They have trouble recognising boundaries and fences,
which often brings them into conflict. All this aside, however, daratur
are good mercenary forces for anyone willing to put up with them.
Daratur dislike and distrust Galaniŕ and Galashkra, as well as fear
Manc. They trust most barbarian tribes and hunt jekara and langures.
Most dog people packs are in the South Lands not venturing much past
the middle lakes, but they do traverse much to the south and west. They
live, on average, forty Dodecates before their lifestyles kills them
off. Females often living longer, perhaps by ten Dodecates or so.
Daratur have no worship of gods or spirits, but do have typical dog
instincts in sensing these sorts of things. Their senses are very acute
and they are fast. Their strength is a little less, normally, than a
serevmen's, but it is really their intelligence that lets them down.
They are good with missile weapons having good hand-eye coordination.
They speak their own language of animalistic
barks, snarls, whines, and yeps, but they somehow easily learn Common,
but master no other, if rarely at all.
Daratur often howl when extremely pleased or
extremely worried or angry. Often it begins with one member of the clan
and the others begin to join in. It actually starts as a cacophony but
slowly merges to a haunting musical call of which they seem to really
gain some benefit.
Daratur tend to inhabit dells, woods, caves and
some mountain passes. They will construct simple structures and walls
but use wood or plant-based materials. They do not use stone less it be
as a simple rock wall or dig dens and may reinforce walls with boulders
and smaller stones. A few developed daratur packs have built
wattle-and-daub huts in the plains using grasses, mud and their own
faeces.
