Jack of Harts

The jaguar-descended cats of San Lucas originally came from the northern highlands of their western continent. They built a powerful civilization called the Uaithni Empire to rule their lands and crossed the mountain range to the south. They conquered the barbarian panther-derived cats, and held control for thousands of years. But as with all great empires of history, they became decadent and slow to respond to threats. What could threaten them after all? First they began to hire local Gangani to secure the southern lands for the empire, and then to supplement their northern troops. In time the Uaithni made up a distinct minority of their own military, though they jealously guarded the command ranks. That imbalance would prove fatal to them.

The two larger San Lucas continents were home to four other cat species that we had little to no knowledge of until one of them Contacted us decades after colonization. They were genetically modified from Earth’s panthers, with human-level intellect and hand-feet that could use tools just as well as humanity. They had dominated the western continent’s primary empire for hundreds of years, building it into what had the possibility of being the most powerful civilization on the planet. They were not the majority, though. That honor went to the jaguar-based felines that lived all over the western continent, and who had ruled for thousands of years in the past. Before the panthers took over in a bloody coup.