Foo of Jhrin

Greetings!

After being sidelined due to illness, I’ve finally made it back to writing. But what to write about? This was a hard decision, since there are many things that fit the bill, but today I’ll share Foo with you. Mostly because it’s just so darn fun to say.

Foo are similar to the Foo statues that guard temples in our world in that they are traditionally guardians.  On Jhrin they are creatures of the elements:  Fire, Water, Earth, Air, and Aither (We use Aristotle’s traditional spelling in Jhrin, rater than the more modern aether used in most steampunk literature).

Foo choose what to guard through bargain and negotiation. It takes a skillful and intelligent person to get the best deal. They have also been known to “adopt” a human who has tried to aid their kind without thought to their own safety or gain.
Foo do not vocalize human speech and their growl is a cross between wolf and great cat, but they are telepathic and will negotiate contracts that way. Watching a negotiation between an older Foo and a skilled human is somewat like watching two statues staring at each other for hours on end and occasionally stopping for niceties such as tea.

Their physical shape is somewhat like a wolf crossed with the muscled torso and shorter snout of a jaguar. Depending on the element associated to a particular Foo, it can have a full grown size from that of a small breed dog like a Welsh corgi, to upward of 10-15 feet at the shoulder. Rumors abound of some Earth Foo the size of a mountain, but there are no recorded instances in modern Jhrinian history.

No matter the element, all Foo have manes of lightning stone, which look like onyx or granite (it gets shiner as they age), and sparks with a bolt of electricity that will take most humans down like a taser. Their true defense is in their element, but rarely does a human get far enough for a Foo to need to use other than the bolt.

Hope you enjoyed meeting the Foo of Jhrin.