Ferigans

Ferigans (more correctly *Ferigane*, Nesarian adaptation of native *Feriggan*, lit. "stone-flesh-one"), also known as Grey Demons, Greyskins or simply Greys, were (or, more likely, *are*) a race of Dreadfolk widely speculated to be closely related to the Savuans, given their similar appearance. Compared to the Savuans, the Ferigans are often considered to be significantly more malicious and dangerous.

Ferigans were similar to Savuans in appearance, and the two presumably share a distant common origin. They had the same basic shape and form, being humanoid with a pair of horns. The main area of difference is that whilst Savuans had purplish-red scales, Ferigans had grey skin, faintly speckled with darker patches, coloured darker on the legs and arms and lighter on the belly, similar to the colouration of the Urilians. The twin horns on their head were similar to those of Savuans, but were uncovered by the skin, showing their black colour. These horns were also noticeably more rounded in females, whereas the horns of males ended in a sharp point. Like the Savuans, Ferigans possessed feline eyes which faintly glowed in darkness and gave them excellent night vision, which were coloured white rather than the violet or burgundy possessed by Savuans.

Ferigans stood taller than Savuans, at approximately 6' 3" (192cm). Though they were one of the few races of Dreadfolk to have two distinct sexes, they had little sexual dimorphism beyond the aforementioned horns; both males and females were around the same height, had a similar stature and build, and had no significant differences in physiology beyond their sexual organs. Examination of Ferigan specimens suggests that in some groups, the females were both taller and stronger than the males, but in the majority of cases these traits were more or less equal between the sexes. It is debated whether this was either a cause or an effect of their peculiar mating practices, which are explained later in the article.

The greatest difference between Savuans and Ferigans which truly set them apart was their psychology and behaviour. Whereas Savuans took no joy at all in violence and suffering, and tended to avoid it where they could, Ferigans were seemingly completely apathetic to the suffering of others and saw combat as entertaining rather than tragic. They did not appear to take joy from actually inflicting violence and suffering, but instead simply did not care for the consequences of seeking the thrill of carnage. They displayed little empathy to other members of their own race, and even less to foreign races, rarely forming actual friendships or loving bonds and instead simply making alliances as the situation demanded, often breaking them later as circumstances changed. They have often been characterised as liars and manipulators, but the extent to which this is true is debatable; at least with their own race, the evidence suggests they usually kept their word, though most scholars believe this was due to fear of reprisal rather than any sense of loyalty.

## Pairing and Mating

The discussion of Ferigan mating practices is often linked to the discussion of whether Ferigans were capable of love. Whilst all the evidence does suggest that they had a strong parental instinct - reports of Ferigans fighting and dying to protect their children are commonplace - whether they felt romantic love is far less certain, and the apparent total lack of true friends that Ferigans had seems to imply they were incapable of platonic love.

Ferigan societies, though usually not matriarchal, were not particularly patriarchal - a dynamic probably stemming from their relative lack of sexual dimorphism and the relative dominance that females held in the mate selection process. As is standard for most sexual species, the males competed with each other for the right to mate with a female, but they also had to compete with the female themselves to prove that they were worthy of mating her. Males would fight females to prove themselves, and would only be considered as a mate if they won the fight. It is unclear whether or not a female would mate with a male who lost the fight the first time, but challenged her again and won; it is most likely that this differed between individuals.

Scholarship on Ferigans is divided on the extent to which this practice was consensual. Some scholars characterise it as a loveless system where the males overpowered and forced themselves onto the females, whereas other scholars characterise it as a violent but wholly consensual ritual for a female to determine the quality of potential mating partners. Though the former theory has no lack of supporters, the latter theory has generally been more popular ever since Inquisitor Tedan Foledias published *On the Greyskins* in 1848, which included information he had gathered from prior works on Ferigans as well as information he had gathered by questioning a female Ferigan he captured, named Theya.

Inquisitor Tedan asserts in the text that the combat between males and females was highly ritualised and that they fought in armour with blunted weapons or no weapons at all - which could still result in an accidental death, but made deaths very rare. Cases of females killing males they fought (or vice versa) were overwhelmingly not part of the ritual combat, but were cases of males assaulting females with the intent to rape them rather than to prove themselves as worthy mates. The strong disdain that Theya, the captured Ferigan, held for rapists was - to Tedan - proof that their ritual combat was consensual.

As a side note, Inquisitor Tedan later freed Theya, but kept her under close supervision to ensure that she would keep to her promise to do no harm. The general consensus amongst modern historians is that this was a pretext for the two to live together; since Tedan never married and had no children, and he lived with a seemingly pacified Ferigan female whom he had beaten in combat and captured, it is widely assumed that Theya's natural instinct to be attracted to males who bested her in combat eventually led to the two falling in love. This theory has since spawned a large cohort of fanciful romance novels.