- "Bark grows thick on the branch twice-broken." - Shaji saying.
The shaji are a race of birdfolk hailing from Shaje. They are characterised by their capability for flight and their keen senses.
Biology and Appearance[]
Generally, shaji are human-shaped birdfolk with hard beaks, sharp talons and plumage in any colour imaginable. The variations in their appearances are as broad as those of terrestrial birds. The two kinds of shaji body types are categorised as ablacarpal and cornucarpal.
Ablacarpal[]
Ablacarpal shaji are tall (6-8 feet) with wingspans of up to 24 feet. Their wings and arms are separate and they have three-clawed hands and two-clawed feet. Their heads have mask-like crests and long plumage that falls past their shoulders, but it may be styled otherwise.
Cornucarpal[]
Cornucarpal shaji have clawed hands on their wings with a thumb and two fingers each side. They possess digitigrade feet, walking on two claws with an 'arch claw' supporting the foot and a vestigial claw at the back of the ankle near the knee. They have dense ruffs of fur surrounding their necks and often have pointed furred ears, along with long sensory fronds atop their heads.
Abilities[]
The shaji, as predicted, are adept flyers and can navigate narrow spaces at high speeds with ease. Their reflexes are sharp and a shaji can strike or stop in half a wingbeat. Their senses are also incredibly keen, from their sharp eyesight to fine-tuned olfactory and auditory senses used to sense surroundings in dark environments.
Culture[]
Honour is a large part of shaji culture and goes hand in hand with their trends for competition. Being a sore loser or bad winner is considered a huge faux-pas. The western continent values bravery as its core value while the eastern continent values compassion. Trust, honour and integrity are crucial social values that feature in much of shaji media. Despite this, shaji culture and folklore tends to imply that other non-flying races were denied flight due to some ancient crimes, and shackled to the ground by their non-hollow bones.