Aricagua

Aricagua belongs to the East District but is really a transition between the terrain and weather of the East and Central Districts. The Ocaraba Channel lies north, the Acuan Gulf south, Awok to the northeast and Oguanabara to the southeast, and due west a narrow isthmus joins the East District's upper peninsula to the mainland. It is wild, overgrown rain forest with no human residents except a few roaming Choma from Awok; Makara haunt the northern coast. The dominant race is the Jaguar-People, fierce animal-men who shift between jaguar and human form at will.

Their home is the foothills of the western Huachamacan Mountains, though they roam far beyond. They get on well with Choma who follow the jaguar, many of whom see them as the embodiment of their ideals, and otherwise mostly avoid humans; unlike Mana's Andaman, they do not hunt people. However, only matings with humans give them shape-changing young, so they seek human mates, often among the jaguar Choma, though the chosen seldom survive the elaborate required ceremony.

Their fairly sophisticated society centers on worship of a Jaguar-God on the sacred slopes of Mt. Huila, where they gather to make sacrifices and, reportedly, hold their mating rites. Huge statues 14 to 21 feet tall, of jaguars, humans and half-transformed Jaguar-People, stand in a semicircle whose base is a cliff with several caves: one a mating chamber decorated with bright geometric paintings and gold, another a mine supplying gold for the statues and sacred objects. Inside the semicircle are sacrificial pools ringed by boulders adorned with gold and carvings of the usual victims, reptiles, amphibians and humans. Animals are offered at ordinary rites, but humans are said to die after each mating ritual, female victims only once they have borne young.

A high priest called the Great Jaguar presides over all rites with a few acolytes. Anyone bold enough may challenge for the office; at the next full moon the two begin a duel to the death that is really a hunt, tracking each other for days across wide country, won by cunning more than strength. If a Great Jaguar dies naturally or both challengers perish, every aspirant declares and joins a free-for-all hunt, and the sole survivor becomes leader.