Vyadhan

Who?
The vyadhan are a sentient race of octopodal hypercarnivores, resembling a cross between a centaur and a jaguar (or alternatively a wingless sphinx with a human face and a few additional limbs). the vyadhan are believed to be endemic to a single (if monumental) belt of tropical rainforest (a sister race, the olowuaru, live in an expanse of savannah to the north of this forest, and are physically similar with the exception of a few adaptations to plains living.)

Society
highly insular, the vyadhan lead primarily solitary semi-nomadic lifestyles based largely around hunter-gatherer practices, or otherwise operate in small familial groups; however, they possess a strong sense of kinship with other vyadhan in general and extended familial/pseudo-tribal groups in particular, generally maintained through gatherings held at least once every few months, to the point that their society can perhaps be best described as an interrupted or dissociated clan.

Religion
the vyadhan follow an essentially monotheistic religion, generally understood to draw heavily on their environment and way of life. one of the fundamental concepts is the simultaneous unity and multiplicity of all things, which may be best illustrated by a quirk of their language.

the name by which they refer to their home - vana - can most easily be translated as forest; this is, other than names of individuals, one of the only living organisms in the language of the vyadhan to be referred to by a proper noun not derived from a verb. their name for themselves translates most literally as one who hunts; other names might include saphara, for a fish which preys on other fish, or parasparāmisatā, for prey - literally, something which is the prey of (or something which is preyed upon by) something else. below the level of the forest, which can be understood in the culture of the vyadhan to be conceptually analogous to the world (or universe), everything is defined not so much by a fixed identity but by the function or activity it (most often, or most importantly [as far as the vyadhan are concerned]) performs.

thus, the deity followed by almost all vyadhan is known as vana, but although this entity is essentially central to (if not synonymous with) almost every aspect of existence in vyadhan ontology, it is ascribed very few defining attributes; it simply is. the focus of most religious attention or activity goes, instead, to one of vana's two primary aspects: amāvāsya - (she who is born and possesses the quality of being) night - and aharjāta - (he who is born in and possesses the quality of being) day. these two aspects are understood to be locked in perpetual conflict, although a better word might be struggle. outsiders often assume, as a result, that they're opposed, but vyadhan art and iconography is informative here: amāvāsya and aharjāta are depicted roughly equally often as two separate figures facing one another as they are a single figure with two faces gazing in different directions.

beyond the day/night cycle, the domains of amāvāsya and aharjāta overlap in a number of ways; the most obvious might be that both are (frequently glossed by external scholars as) gods of the hunt. this is technically true, but it drastically oversimplifies the centrality of the activity of hunting to the vyadhan way of life. a more accurate definition might be that aharjāta governs (or embodies, or is associated with) those activities which come before and after the hunt: preparation, including honing tools, ablutions, education, training, and then butchery, consumption, trophy-taking, and - arguably most importantly - the declamation of narratives of the hunt. amāvāsya governs (/embodies/is associated with) what to a non-vyadhan could be called the hunt itself: the search for prey, the wait, the ambush, and the act of killing.

perhaps fittingly, vyadhan religious worship generally takes what might be called an active form. the hunt is conidered to be a devotional act; a successful one is, in itself, a kind of prayer. more discrete forms of worship do exist, however, as well as individuals who have dedicated themselves more completely to what might be called the spiritual aspects of vyadhan cultural life. a central concept here is vinidratva, best translated as sleeplessness or vigilance. a devout individual śramana, or monk, might attempt to remain awake for a set number of day/night cycles, in order to contemplate the oneness and difference of aharjāta and amāvāsya; alternatively, both or either divinity can be found in careful, constant attention to specific things - the movements of prey through the undergrowth, the sound made by the sharpening of a trophy horn, the patterns of migrating birds. haruspicy and astronomy are common practices, as is praharana, or combat - a form of martial arts unique to the vyadhan. it's important to understand that the object of these practices is less to achieve a specific end - enlightenment, say - than simply to practice them. instantiating the world is the most harmonious way of greeting it. a common saying among the śramana: vana is that vana is.

other than specific deities, a number of semi-mundane figures occupy prominent roles in vyadhan cultural and religious life (and cosmology) - some historical and some legendary figures who are understood to best embody a particular quality fundamental to vyadhan society and worldview. (avatars, essentially, the most prominent among whom are associated with/are understood in some sense to be specific constellations.) of these, the most important is unquestionably the hunter, vyadhan. recorded as the first vyadhan (specifically, the first who hunted), this culture hero occupes a central role in the vyadhan oral tradition, with multiple cycles of tales following their exploits. perhaps the most important of these is the story of kali, or strife, which tells of vyadhan becoming vyadhan (the sequence of events here is a little unclear; most scholars [vyadhan and otherwise] interpret the story as detailing the evolution of the vyadhan from another group of tropical felines [there are several in the forest, although they have very little contact with the vyadhan, and none of them have eight limbs or remotely simian torsos]; it's perhaps telling that the vyadhan have seemingly always recognised their similarity - whether understood as spiritual, evolutionary, a combination of the two, or something else entirely - with both humanoid creatures and other felines, as well as the fact that they are historically speaking a more recent species. they consider themselves, generally, to be a sort of perfection, specifically in the act of hunting) and battling, and eventually defeating, dvisa, or the enemy - an external and predatory entity which, in the tale, mirrors certain idealised attributes of the vyadhan (power, ferocity, apex predator status) while hollowing them of their balancing or redemptive content in the context of vyadhan society: restraint, parsimony, a harmony between consumption and need (among other things).

(scholars are divided on this aspect of the tale as well, but it's generally interpreted as the invasion of some wildly destructive and aberrant force, disrupting the life of the proto-vyadhan and requiring some form of total war. the centre of vyadhan religious and cultural life - a temple structure built on a mesa deep in the forest - appears to be at least partially constructed from the skeleton of a tarrasque. other scholars have noted the presence in the temple, in the form of trophies and other decorations, of an uncommonly large number of naga skeletons and weaponry. as an anecdotal note, one of the final tests for a novice śramana is a semi-ritualised hunt for a worthy prey, which almost always takes the form of a giant croodile, lizard, or serpent, and while the vyadhan are generally suspicious of outsiders - sometimes to the point of open hostility - they are especially mistrustful of anything with reptilian ancestry, and upon encountering naga or yuan-ti have been known to go berserk.)