Jenet



The Jenet are a rodent-like sentient species, best known for their exceptional memories and their nature as scavengers.

Biology and Appearance
Jenet are often regarded by other species as ugly and quarrelsome. They have pink skin, red eyes, and sparse white fur which grows more thickly on their heads. They have prominent whiskers that twitch as they speak. As scavengers, they can digest almost any form of organic matter. Jenet have keen eyesight, hearing, and smell, and are excellent runners, climbers, and swimmers. They are also very flexible, able to squeeze through openings as narrow as twelve centimeters by disjointing their long limbs and separating their cranial plates. All of these advantages helped the primitive Jenet to evade predators.

Society and Culture
Jenets are temperamental and obsessed with trivialities, which leads many other species to regard them as irksome and obnoxious. Despite their dominance over their homeworld both politically and technologically, Jenets are unabashed scavengers by nature. They never discard anything: whatever they acquire is kept in their homes or in large piles in their community's warrens. These Community Heaps, filled with broken tools, leftover food, empty containers, and the like, are common property, and Jenets enjoy rummaging through them to find something useful. Life in these enclosed warrens leads to generalized acrophobia in the species; Jenets much prefer subterranean environments to elevated ones.

Perhaps the most notable Jenet trait is their extraordinarily accurate and detailed memories. Jenets never forgot even the most trivial piece of information. Though this holds many obvious advantages, it also means they never forget even the smallest insult, and therefore can hold grudges for a long time. In fact, Jenets cav even hold things against people they have never met based merely on hearsay about that person learned from a distant relation. Jenets care little for what other species considered tact, so they are not shy about airing their grudges in public. Since they can easily recall any bit of information about another person, Jenets freely insult each other, even when among close friends and family. Exchanges of insults are a common social interaction among Jenets, even a common greeting, since an insulted Jenet can usually recall some insulting fact about the first Jenet. When dealing with non-Jenets, however, this Jenet trait often come across as completely tactless. Jenet take pride in being worthy of an insult, for it proves they have gained enough notoriety to be worth insulting. Members of other species often interprete these quirks as the Jenets simply being argumentative, pedantic, dull, and uncouth. Some non-Jenets even accuse the species of fabricating some of the memories they claimed to recall as simply a plot to influence others. Nevertheless, the species have no tolerance for ignorance or duplicity. The Jenets had a tradition of ballad singing about ancient heroes, but non-Jenet consider the poetry doggerel.

These widely held beliefs mean that many species simply choose to avoid Jenets when possible. Nevertheless, most Jenets have a healthy work ethic, and their obsessive attention to detail make them useful workers. Nevertheless, they tend not to learn technological skills and prefer to automate as much of their production as possible in lieu of mass labor. Members of the species particularly hate working as miners.

Stats & Skills

 * Attribute Dice: 12D
 * DEXTERITY: 2D/4D
 * KNOWLEDGE: 1D+2/4D
 * MECHANICAL: 1D/3D+2
 * PERCEPTION: 2D/4D
 * STRENGTH: 1D/4D
 * TECHNICAL: 1D/3D+1
 * Move: 12/15 (running); 10/13 (swimming)

Special Abilities
Enhanced Memory: A Jenet that has at least 1D in any Knowledge skill automatically gains a +1D bonus to the use of that skill because of its memory.

Astrogation: Because Jenets can memorize coordinates and formulas, a Jenet with at least 1D in astrogation gains +1D to its roll.

Hearing: Jenet’s advanced hearing gives them a bonus of +1D for Perception checks involving hearing.

Swimming: Jenets can advance the swimming skill at half the normal Character Point cost.

Climbing: Jenets can advance the climbing skill at half the normal Character Point cost.

Flexibility: Jenets can disjoint their limbs to fit through incredibly small openings.

Story Factors
Tactless: Despite their memories, the Jenet have not learned the secrets of tact. They will freely embarrass or insult any other being which they encounter. Among other Jenets, this is of no concern, for the embarrassed or insulted partly usually possesses knowledge which it in turn can use to offend its offender. In the Jenets, this type of interaction is a measure of pride - if you cannot be insulted, then you have not gained enough notoriety - however, other beings are not as understanding.

Reputation Value: Jenet value reputations. When they introduce their friends, they will describe their friends’ accomplishments in glowing, often exaggeratory, terms. Their enemies get less favorable treatment. A few Jenet are sensitive when they are not introduced in the same way by their non-Jenet friends (their Jenet friends will always remember to do this). Sometimes, this presents difficulties for those seeking discretion.