Murin

***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!***

Murins are a tiny rodent species, notably the smallest sapient species in Faria, found almost everywhere in the world.

Murins aren't seen as "people" properly due to their small size, as well as being easy snacks. The constant struggles of their life include working towards making themselves acknowledgeable on a social level while having to avoid being eaten by every lurking predator, including the persons of other species they’re trying to have a conversation with.

## Biology

The wide variety of morphs of murins mean it’s hard to pin down a standard appearance, but the murin themselves would tell you that the average looks include long ears that appear feathery, beady eyes and a pair of long prehensile tails ending in soft, fluffy tips resembling feathers. The average height of a murin is 5-6” tall (not including their ears), with little difference to distinguish a male from a female.

Inside their mouths, they have long incisors that must be kept whittled down by chewing on softwoods or any other suitable material to keep their teeth healthy, if they don’t do this their teeth will keep growing and develop painful problems.

Their hearing is their best sense. They have sharp eyes and keen noses, but like their distant cousins, the lyres, other species can outdo their sense of smell, but it does well enough for them to detect potential threats in the area.

The front paws of murins are perfectly dexterous for delicate tasks, but they are surprisingly good at gripping with their tails as well, often using them to hang from tree branches, pull themselves up to harder to reach places or to just carry more stuff home in them, which is the most common use since murins tend to be hoarders of anything remotely useful.

Hind feet are much longer and made for a quick starting sprint to escape from prey, they are capable of walking proper and upright, but they switch to running on all fours as they can run much faster this way.

## Behaviour

Murins are found pretty much everywhere in the world of Faria, the only exception is the northern and southern poles of the planet. No one is sure of their population count, but the average home has around 5 murin living inside its walls or under its floors, so it can be safely said they have a very stable population.

Murins who live in houses or burrows are typically large families numbering in dozens, thanks to their high reproductive rate. Many members of these families will be pups who are too young to venture outside, so parents will travel out for necessities in turns so there’s one parent at home to keep the children safe, though oftentimes children who have grown up into adults will stay at home to look after their younger siblings. People who see murins normally only see one at a time, to the point that it’s a common misconception that they are a solitary species. The reason they are usually seen alone is that families will send out one adult member at a time to forage for food, water or supplies. Murins do this because they believe it’s safer than risking several lives at once outside.

Murins generally share in the cultures of the more civilized species around them, but their own culture places a lot of importance on words and how to best use them. This tends to mean that swearing isn’t considered offensive to murins as long as it’s amongst themselves, even children won’t get scolded for foul language. They don’t like being called pests, vermin and other such terms used towards rodents however, those are seen as slurs.

Many murins however do long for more unconventional lives, and they often become lone wanderers looking to find their place in the world, all while still living in the shadows of the bigger species around them. Some also never settle anywhere and just seek to travel on adventures.

Murins are typically seen wearing some clothing; they tend to wear as little as possible, but they are noted for often wearing disguises made out of leaves, flowers, feathers, grass and insect chitin/shells and sometimes seashells and seaweed. Murins make these clothes to hide themselves better from threats and mask their scent from predators. Insect chitin is particularly popular amongst murins as it’s harder for them to acquire without hunting and careful work salvaging it, so it’s a way to show off and impress friends and family.

Other species will joke that a murins real best sense is their sense of danger, but this holds some truth to it. Murins are indeed extremely wary as a species, their instinct is to flee or hide if their suspicions of danger are roused, only emerging again when it feels safe. This doesn’t mean murins don’t keep in touch, they believe that information is the biggest tool they have for survival, so knowing where everyone is as well as anything going on wherever they explore is essential. Foragers meet up regularly to spread the word of anything going on. If dangers come close or enter the area, murins raise their tails in the air and bristle the tips as a warning signal, murin hearing being sensitive enough to hear the faint ultrasonic sound this bristling produces.

### Information

An unusual foothold murins have on being seen as a people is their unique "currency": Information. Information is so important to murins that it has shaped their culture and become a form of currency to them since they can’t carry coins on their person comfortably. It has given the species a foothold to be recognized as a people to other species in civilization, an important stepping stone for the species. Any kind of information holds value to them, even a passing rumour can hold potential value to a murin as they could turn out to be extremely valuable information if true, so it’s like a sort of gambling to bet on spreading rumours, those whose rumours turn out to be true would be considered to have gotten rich quick. This, in turn, can also mean that lies are seen like counterfeit currency, and it’s the greatest of offences to lie to a murin. Not because of feeling hurt or betrayed by a lie, but simply because they have no practical use for a lie.

The murins fondness for information has lead to them becoming the main source of news in the Outer Lands, where documented information can be very scarce or easily lost to predators eating the messengers. Because of how important information is to murins, they are expert wordsmiths and storytellers, and many develop quite a talent in being very persuasive, which can get them out of the trouble they tend to find themselves in.

Outside of their culture, they are a bit more flexible with their offers in exchange for their information, sometimes knowing the name of that infamous bandit leader is going to cost you something of value. A secret family recipe, food like fruits and nuts that can be carried home, or perhaps a shiny 20 reigel coin may be requested as payment.

## Predation

### Murins as Predators

Murins are known for being food to almost everyone, but this doesn’t mean they’re strictly prey. Murin have been known to prey on insects, though they keep the body parts of insects that can produce noise. These body parts are used to mimic other species during peak points like swarms or mating seasons where such noises are commonplace, a very advanced mimicry trick, and not the only one they have up their sleeves to keep predators away. They also like to keep the chitin and shells of insects as clothing to wear for themselves, it’s considered very fashionable and a great way to show off and be impressive to others.

On special occasions, murin may go out and hunt a small bird to catch for dinner to eat together with their family, but often this is a dangerous task since they need to send out at least three adults to overpower them, thus exposing more of their kin to predators.

Murin who eat live prey are rather rare, seeing as there’s very little they can eat whole other than themselves. Rumours circulate of murin predators who eat their own kind to steal valuable information for themselves, but it's considered unwise to so much as whisper these rumours.

### Murins as Prey

The murins are stuck at the bottom of the social and food chain amongst all the sapient species of Faria, struggling to be seen as people due to their small size and being an easy snack when caught. Thanks to their natural wiles, they know how to make sure they aren’t seen or caught first, and even if they are, their talent for persuasion is also helpful for getting out of trouble.

If their way with words fails them or isn't applicable, predators that are at least cat-sized will generally go after a murin for food, but the creatures that particularly favour murin are usually smaller predators such as birds of prey, felines, snakes and other such creatures that commonly eat small mammals.

Out of the sapient species, anurans particularly enjoy them as a snack to tease and play with before eating them or giving them to a partner as a gift to use for similar purposes. Ironically, lyres are also noted to eat them as a bit of a guilty pleasure snack when they want to feel more dominant for a change.

### Diet

The average diet of a murin mostly consists of fruits, seeds, mushrooms and nuts but they will eat most anything, they will also eat grasses, leaves and other leafy foods if they need to but they favour foods with more flavour to them. Since they are quite opportunistic eaters, they won’t turn down an opportunity to eat foods like meats or sweets, sweets in particular they are known to be fond of. Murins can often be won over with foods like honey, chocolate or peanut butter if you want to get information from them.

## Weaknesses

As is needless to say, such a small species with little social foothold has plenty of weaknesses to exploit if you really want to overpower one that badly, not that you need to since half the time they’ll have gotten away from you before you even spot them.

The murin ability to easily hide and fit into small crevices to keep themselves safe can also be their downfall, as they are ultimately helpless the moment they get caught in the clutches of a predator, not that it will stop them from trying to fight their way out with everything they’ve got vid words or their incisors to try to bite their way out.

Murins are talented wordsmiths who may be able to talk their way out of being food for sapient predators, but this can be turned against them. Murins are quite covetous when it comes to their currency, they’re unable to resist a good story or bit of info, which you don’t have to actually have, just convince them that it’s a really juicy story and you’ll lure them into being food. As an inverse, you might be able to convince them to give up information you want from them in exchange for a payment you can bluff your way into convincing them is too good to pass up, and get some potentially useful information and a meal in one go. This won’t work on every murin, many will catch on and make a break for it when their danger senses flare up, but these tricks have proven to work well time and time again.

Mouse traps, poisons, glue traps and other such means of keeping rodents out of your home are just as much of a danger to a murin as any other rodent. Murins generally learn to avoid such traps but sometimes less cautious or experienced members of their kind fall for them and meet an unfortunate end, or if they’re lucky, just left outside in the garden to find their way in again.

## Spirituality

Murin have very little interest in religion in the same sense as their distant lyre cousins, but they may pay attention to stories of the gods to use as information in case the gods turn out to be real, which would make murin who spread word of the gods very rich with information.

## Treating Other Species

### Overall

Murins have a fairly tense relationship with the sapient species of Faria. While they can easily live alongside them thanks to their adaptability to living just about anywhere, it doesn’t particularly mean they’re always welcome. In most people's minds, a murin is a delicious snack or a pest. The number one rule to living a long life as a murin is to keep ones head down and lie low unless other species have something you want. In terms of the impression murins leave on other species, people commonly consider the murins to be very covetous, abrasive and unscrupulous, since murins aren’t above partaking in actions like theft to get things they want and are often untrusting and rude towards other species. Some species also don’t trust the information from murins, which often offends the murins who work hard and risk their lives to get information from reliable sources.

People will accept the presence of murins in the home but won’t be happy to discover that the reason food and random objects have been going missing is because of murins stealing them, but the murins aren’t above this. As far as they’re concerned, everything in the home they share is fair game. Some people don’t like murins living in their home at all and will eat them when they get the chance or lay down traps for them. Murins are often embittered by the lack of acknowledgement they get of being capable of living amongst people, so while they don’t have the capability to make swift changes to this overnight, many still wear their grudges on their sleeves over this, while others make a lot of personal efforts to have their kind be seen as contributing to wider society.

Exceptions with these difficult relationships can and have happened, and murins can find themselves in unexpectedly high places in the world, at least by their species standards, by being friendly and cordial to the right people. Many murins have managed to find lines of work as minstrels, comedians and even writers if they have learned to read and write themselves, a surprisingly common skill amongst murins, frequently learned via reading books when peoples backs are turned. Rumours of murin running businesses for bigger species circle all over the Outer Lands, but not many are confirmed to be true.

Merchants are known to do dealings with murins they find hitching a ride on their caravans, some even taxi murin from one place to another to assist in the spread of information in the Outer Lands. While they get little recognition or credit for it, murins have an important place in the Outer Lands by keeping information on the move and helping it spread, the best the Outer Lands has to any real access to news about world events.

### Humans

Humans in particular dislike murins, since they often see them as pests and will very regularly keep pets to ward them off or set traps, or ask predatory friends to stay over a few days in wait for them to leave or come out to get eaten.

### Lyres

Lyres mostly have a peaceful relationship with murin, but some lyres have been noted to eat murin as a bit of a guilty pleasure snack, so many murins don’t trust them at all because of this. Another point of contest between them is the lack of interest in the lyres pantheon of gods on the part of the murins, though some murins take it on board to spread the word in case the gods turn out to be real for the potential fortune they’d have.

### Anurans/Deceivers/Etc

Species like anurans, deceivers and nagas, along with other large, dangerous creatures a murin doesn't want a thing to do with. Murins don’t trust species who they think have more of a mind to eat people they meet above anything else.

### Lacris

Not all of the relationships with other species are bad. Murins are known to get along well with lacris due to their similar lifestyles of living in the shadow of other races, but they have disagreements. Lacris dislike stealing anything being used so they feel guilty helping murin with theft, but the lacris are happy to accommodate murin and let them share their tunnels and ride on their backs to travel in safety. Lacris enjoy having murin stay in their homes for company, though murin tend to prefer homes with more comforts and less dirt.

### Dromos

Murins live alongside the dromos in the Dromos Settlement's underground lab or in the nooks and crannies of housing aboveground, providing a secure home from the dangers and heat outside. Dromos exchange information with visiting murins who hitch a ride on merchant carts to keep the supply up, along with travellers passing through. Murins have already made the dromos familiar with their information trade, so they get food in return for the news and knowledge they teach the dromos, but the species get along fine as the dromos don’t mind their presence, but do wish they’d partake in their regiment more often. Due to sharing the settlement with the dromos, murins are a reliable source of advice when dromos struggle to work out how to tackle a moral problem, but the lack of scruples that murins have on average means that sometimes dromos may be misled or taken advantage of as murins are opportunistic creatures in that way.

## Treating Each Other

Amongst themselves, murin are quite a sociable species, when they spend time together with family, friends or fellow foragers they are quite sociable with one another. These strong social bonds help to keep the murins tight knit and coordinated when out foraging.

Murins work hard to maintain close bonds with family and friends. The most common way is group activities like telling stories or singing folk songs they’ve overheard on their travels, using gathered materials to make clothes with children often helping out and cooking and eating meals together where more stories and rumours are exchanged.

Despite this, they also spend a lot of time alone. This is because it’s not safe for foragers to travel in groups as it draws more attention from predators, putting more of them at risk. While they do have a morbid way of seeing it, they believe it’s better for one to die in one instance than to risk several foragers dying at once.

However, some murins in the world do make a living off of spreading lies, or even spread lies amongst their own kind to guard their real truths and reap the profits of their information for themselves, this does however mean they’re not very popular amongst their kin.

## Reproduction

Like with any species, murins do need to mate in order to keep their species going. Before they can do that, males have to work to impress females. Males will go out on trips to purloin objects of their potential partners desires, this can range from favourite foods, soft materials to shiny rocks/gemstones along with any other personal favourite things. The male’s ability to use their words to win the females over will be essential, this can be through telling a favourite story or singing a favourite song of their partners with every ounce of passion they can pour into it, bonus points if they can play some music for them. If these are done well enough, they will be happily mated. Courting partners can take place at any time of the year, but females won’t be ready to reproduce until winter.

Murins have a very high reproductive rate, which like many rodents is their main trick to surviving in the long run as a species. Mating takes place once a year at the end of winter, then by the time the pups are born they will be present in time for spring, when the parents can start to scavenge plenty of food to feed their pups with when they are old enough for solids.

Pups take only a month to be born but need one year of constant care and protection since they are born blind, deaf and hairless. Pups are born in litters of about 4-5, but at times this can be lower for first litters, and rarely these litters can be as many as 10 at one time. It takes two months for them to be able to see, hear and eat solids, so parents will hoard seeds for when their children can eat tougher foods, though anything else that will last a long time is ideal.

## Life Cycle

Murin pups go through their growth cycles in extremely short amounts of time compared to other species, being able to walk and talk well at just under a year old, reaching their teenage years at 4 years old, and finally they reach adulthood at 8 years old. Once children turn 8 they're considered old enough to make the choice to either stay with their family and take care of their siblings, or leave to start their own family or life.

Since murins have so many children throughout their lives, they will use pretty much anything they can think of as a name, but a popular convention of names exclusive to them is to name their children in names like Ti-Ko, Pik-Pik, Go-Vi, Ju-Ju and other such simplistic names. It's very common for murins to borrow names from other species, either portions of them or using the names entirely, but very short names are generally preferred by murin so they can get a decent variety of names for their high numbers of children.

Murin live to be around 30 years old, some have lived longer than this, but many tend to die before this point due to the countless hazards their species face every day just trying to survive and claw their way up the social ladder.