Maren & Karen

Maren Taverndatter is a 23-year-old human woman with light skin, sky-blue eyes, and long, dark purple hair with a single streak of white at the front, on the left side of her face. She has a curvy body, with large breasts and shapely hips. She is often emotionally cold and slow to trust strangers, while often being bossy even to friends, but she has a well-hidden caring side, and can even be motherly in a stern way. She almost never smiles, and frequently scowls or glowers. Karen Taverndatter is a 19-year-old human woman and Maren's younger sister. Her skin is somewhat darker than Maren's, and her hair and eyes are both bright green. She has a petite and nimble frame, and a very playful and exuberant attitude. Several years ago, Karen annoyed the Grand Templar Trace Legacy while he was courting Maren, and Trace cursed Karen with a transformation spell giving her cat ears on top of her head. Karen loved the ears and demanded to keep them. More recently, the power-hungry keidran Lord Clovis hit Karen with a transformation spell which gave her a long, black cat tail, which she loved even more. Maren inherited her family's tavern at an early age and was a tavern keeper for most of her early adulthood while Karen helped to serve customers, until their town was destroyed by wolf keidran at the start of the war, prompting them to begin traveling with their close friends. They were caught associating with Sythe, a wolf keidran, and found themselves unwelcome in both human and keidran territory, so they decided to travel to Lyn'knol, a legendary hidden valley where humans and keidran can live together peacefully. With the help of Maren's ex-boyfriend, the exiled Grand Templar Trace Legacy, they reached Lyn'knol two years ago and have lived there since. Maren is notably prejudiced against keidran, and she particularly dislikes seeing fur that isn't well groomed, but she has been working to overcome her prejudices and has even had a tentative romance with Sythe. Karen is very fond of keidran, enjoys pouncing and cuddling other furry women, and would be overjoyed if she were transformed completely into a keidran. Since living among keidran at Lyn'knol, she has even started to enjoy public nudity, though she still wears clothes while traveling. Maren is a little disturbed by Karen's love of keidran and transformations, but she is very protective of Karen, and grooms Karen's tail every day. Now, however, they have become separated from their friends and lost in the rainforest territory of the tiger keidran that surrounds Lyn'knol while out collecting supplies for the village. Maren is trying to find the path back to Lyn'knol, but she cannot work out where on the map she currently is. She cannot ask for directions to Lyn'knol directly, because most strangers do not know Lyn'knol exists and cannot be trusted with the knowledge of where to find it. Maren and Karen are both wearing thick, practical clothing for jungle exploration, with packs full of supplies and camping equipment on their backs.

Maren and Karen live in a magical world inhabited by four major species of people. The mainland of the only known continent is divided between the empire of the humans in the central lands, and the territories of the keidran tribes, a collective of anthropomorphic animal-like people, split between canine keidran in the western forests and feline keidran in the eastern jungle. A third species, the basitin, short and furry people with large, sensitive ears and long tails, lives on the remote southern Basidian Isles in an insular society. Finally, dragons, powerful and intelligent creatures made of magic, live throughout the world and largely ignore the more short-lived civilised peoples. Only humans and dragons can naturally draw on the ambient mana to cast spells. Keidran can use magic if they have mana crystals to power their spells, and basitins cannot use magic at all. The Templar, a human mages' guild, has been gaining power in the last few years, enacting oppressive laws and making aggressive moves against the tribal keidran, finally plunging the mainland into all-out war.