Nonhumans
Páchi Léi
“They were pear-shaped, soft-skinned beings, greyish-green in hue, a hand taller than a man, with four curiously articulated lower limbs for locomotion and four more, longer upper limbs for swinging in the trees of the forests of the Pán Chákan Protectorate ... [they] wore little more than cross-belts of untanned hide, and their leader carried a short, thick spear tipped with a barb of white bone. Harsan stared at them, and they stared back from round, platter-sized eyes, greeting him pleasantly enough in oddly accented Tsolyáni and chattering amongst themselves in their own burbling tongue.”
from The Man of Gold by M.A.R. Barker, ©1984 DAW Books
The forest-dwelling, friendly Páchi Léi are active in human affairs, enjoying politics and social interaction enough for many of them to have attained high posts in the army, priesthoods and administartion of the Tsolyáni Imperium. They despise the Mu”ugalavyáni, however, because of historical massacres of their race by the inhabitants of that country.
Physical Attributes
The Páchi Léi have four short legs, a soft, grey-green pear-shaped body covered with small knobs and pendulous protuberances, four slender upper arms with four fingers and a thumb on each hand, and a heavy-jawed, toothy, animal-like head. Their huge, platter-shaped eyes permit them to see well in the dark, and they also possess an atrophied ‘sixth sense’. They range from 1.53 to 2.01m in height.
The Páchi Léi reproduce by budding; exuding spore-like spermatoza which fertilize the ‘egg-buds’ on the bodies of others. These become pod-like extrusions which burst open to release an infant in about 250 days. They have no families as such, but tend to live in small groupings of two to eight individuals.
Enclaves
The Pan Chaka Protectorate is the Páchi Léi homeland.