Race:Anouki

Anouki is a playable race on Hyrule Castle. As one of the fourteen common races, any player can choose to make a Anouki character. These people are known for their creature-like appearance or in some cases are unknown to common folk. The Anouki are often mentioned in tales of their fierce rivalry with a Yeti tribe who are referred to as Yook. Monsters who witness Anouki often mistake them for animals and ignore them. Because of this, they are universally accepted in any settlement across the world regardless of race, class, or culture. They are reviled in the Yook Outpost, the only exception.

Canonically, Anouki debuted Phantom Hourglass, and have since returned in Spirit Tracks.

Character Creation Brief

An Anouki begins with a PWC of 1/2/1, having a 2 in Wisdom. This starting PWC can be defied by using the Exception racial perk during character creation.

An Anouki can have up to three racial perks of choice. In addition to the general perks available to every race, an Anouki can also choose from:

• Amphibious: a useful trait enabling the Anouki to breathe underwater as well as above it
• Blizzard: an attack spell useful in mid-range combat
• Child of Frost: a useful trait which makes it easier for the Anouki to acquire treasures of the Ice field
• Fashion Sense: a useful trait which makes it easier to acquire certain kinds of magic items
• Ice Aura: a close-quarters ice spell useful in combat
• Yeti Tunic: Anouki wear a specific hide pelt to resist from cold weather, with pelts gathered from Yook

Recommended Origins

If you've never made a character before and intend to make a Anouki, it is highly encouraged that you base your character on one of the following origins. If you've made a character before, these example origins may provide inspiration for your character.

Master of Ice

Your natural skill with ice magic was impressive to begin with, and after years of study and practice, few can even hope to wield frosty spells at anything close to your level. You might protect your homeland with spells like Ice Aura, use Blizzards merely to flash-freeze some freshly caught meat, or create immaculate sculptures from solid ice. Regardless of how you employ your abilities, you have well earned your title as Master of Ice.

An Anouki Ice-Master begins with a PWC of 1/2/1. Its racial perks include Blizzard, Child of Frost, and Ice Aura.

Anouki Trader

You take great pride in your people, a social butterfly among them. Your race is known for its aesthetic preferences, and its charismatic thrift-seeker nature--two qualities you embody with grace. Your profession, whatever it might be, puts you right on the chilly streets with the Anouki everyman. Your aesthetic expertise and candor makes it a cinch to trade anything from personally-crafted weapons, to the seasons' most fashionable scarf, to freshly-caught fish. Whether you seek to travel Hyrule or remain home, you have an easy time both making friends and profit.

An Anouki Emigrant begins with a PWC of 1/2/1. Its racial perks include Fashion Sense, Yeti Tunic, and Business.

Hunter of the Great Ice Field

Almost all food for your tribe comes from animals, and you provide that meat. Whether fishing or hunting, you search for the rare, hardy animals that call that place home. You can catch anything and everything that dwells in the tundra without question. The wind and snow are old friends, and winter survival is your forte. Whether your prey is under frigid waves, in frozen caves, or scurrying through blizzard-ridden prairies, you will catch it without fail. Some of the hunters are more sea-lion like and may even be more likely to have tusks.

An Anouki Hunter begins with a PWC of 1/2/1. Its racial perks include Amphibious, White Hide, and Ice Aura.

Physiology

While not vital information, the following includes further detail on the race's appearance and biology.

Like Hylian and Gerudo, Anoukis are a mammalian race sparing of much fur, though their bodies can grow fuzz. Their race has roughly equal gender distribution, and they reproduce in a manner comparable to Hylians. The Anouki have comparable growth and aging rates are even akin to Hylians, and they maintain similar life spans of 80 to 90 years or more. However, not much is known about their true lifespan because of their reclusive society of elders.

An average adult Anouki stands at an average height of just under 4 to around 4'6" feet (or 120cm), though this can commonly vary by as much as a foot. A typical adult weights about 130 lbs (or 58 kg). Compared to Hylians and regarding most other races, Anouki have short arms and even shorter legs, with their bodies being relatively stocky and built for bundling up in the cold. Their heads are universally very round. Anouki faces feature large dark pupils, rosy cheeks, and featureless flat lips. They lack extruding noses, instead featuring small nostrils flush with their face, just above the lips. In all, this gives them all a relatively flat and simple-looking face compared to most other races. Their seal-like muzzles are a major part of their appearance and some may even exhibit tusks. Some rare Anouki display long snouts like an anteater, although this already markedly rare race does not have many.

Although Anouki grow small amounts to no fur, they are capable of growing particularly thick and dense hair, which is universally white regardless of their age. Some Anouki are even capable of growing lion-like manes of curly fur which surrounds their faces. This can happen regardless of gender, but is particularly common among males. They are capable of growing more straight and flowing Hylian-like hair as well, though in some cases this requires specific conditioning. Notably, elders are capable of growing huge amounts of coarse facial hair that can dwarf the beards a similarly aged Hylian could produce. A peculiarity of the the race is that they grow deer-like antlers, which grow larger and sometimes lighter with age, as fading and wear is common. A child's antlers are a dark brown barely larger than his eyes and sometimes come in other natural hues. An elder's antlers are can range to light brown to other pastels depending on the tone and can be as long as his or her forearm.

Whereas their neighbors the Yook have adapted to the frigid climate of their homeland with fur, Anouki instead rely on a combination of dense fat reserves comparable to blubber, combined with well-crafted pelt suits worn by practically their entire race. Their physiology is honed for swimming, hunting, and harsh climates that vastly differentiates them from Hylians. Their reliance on special pelt-suits makes them unique, but outside of their tight-knit culture an un-suited Anouki looks considerably different from a small Hylian with their odd rounded muzzles, oblong stature, and antlers. They appear to maintain their pelts by processing Yook hide with a particular detail in tanning and adorning the hide with bright colors. They also seem to store large amounts of densely-packed oxygen within their fat reserves, which they can slowly re-absorb over time, enabling them to dive deep to catch fish without needing to breathe for long periods of time. Their buoyancy and speedy swimming ability are enhanced by the quality of their hide and its water-repellant properties. The difficulty and intensity of holding their breath makes it a rarity among anything but the most dedicated of hunters, however.

Distinctly, any given tribe of Anouki usually all wear a very similar insulating outfit that is almost completely uniform across their village, save for a few personal tweaks or color alterations. Due to the obstructing presence of antlers, Anouki outfits are usually pulled up from the feet and wrapped over the head, like overalls, rather than pulled down over the head.

Anouki are capable of being omnivores, but their natural environment has relegated them mostly to the role of carnivores. Their diets are heavy in fish and meat caught through ice fishing and hunting. Although Anouki live largely as hunter-gatherers devoid of agriculture, they are as functionally intelligent as most other races, limited only by their environment, which has limited their ability to expand or develop advanced sciences or magics.

Culture & History

While not vital information, the following includes further detail on the race's origins, development, and society.

A Majority of Anouki society inhabits the Great Ice Field, separate from the bustle of the main Subrosian Glacier and further removed from other civilizations by the position of the Yook Outpost. Likely as a direct result to their living on the tundra, Anouki history is passed down entirely through oral tradition. Although they have a written language, their habitat makes it difficult to produce writing materials. Most of their traded writing implements are hoarded by each village's Elders so that they can keep records. Anouki appear to have adapted from some faraway land with a similar chilling climate, as their body fat and dense hair seems to suggest. At some point in time they migrated to their current homeland just as the Yooks did. It is unknown which race arrived first, but they have been in conflict ever since.

Where the Yook are large and powerful, the Anouki are small and resourceful. They have even been known to harpoon in massive narwhals for their bones. They developed a variety of bone weaponry and ice carving techniques which allowed them to fend off their foes until they literally split the island in two with an enormous wall, carved directly from the Subrosian Glacier. Utterly lacking in siege weapons, this effectively ended any chance of large scale war. Yearly raids still occur so that Anouki can stock up on their coveted Yook hide which they need to survive.

In modern times, the Anouki are as advanced as an arctic civilization can manage. They make heavy use of bone tools, as well as metal implements traded from the Subrosians, and live in villages composed of surprisingly sophisticated igloos capable of housing entire extended families. The impossibility of agriculture on the Isle of Frost limits the size of these villages, but Anouki are highly skilled hunters and ice fishers, equipped with spears, fishing rods, snowshoes, and ingenious hunting techniques, so they rarely go hungry. Unlike the Yook, the Anouki have domesticated several arctic species which help them hunt, provide meat, bone, and pelts, and pull their sleds, which are built from rare arctic wood or even carved by their exceptional ice-masters. They have been known to use everything from small reindeer to dogs or even Wolfos to pull their haul. Some coastal tribes even make use of Subrosian's intricately hammered alloy canoes.

Anouki society is mostly tribal, with most decisions being made by clan elders. Unlike many other races, Anouki gender equality is complete, with men and women working together on most tasks. The fact that gender roles exist in other intelligent creatures is inherently odd to them, in fact. Anouki even have town elections for their leaders, with the very best of them often winning. The Anouki do have the beginnings of an artisan-builder class which relies on its fellows for food in exchange for building their tools, their homes, and a wide variety of sculpted ice objects and decorations of varying usefulness. The least artful of the Anouki are also known dilettantes in the interest of stoking their culture as one would a fire. Indeed, Anouki take immense pride in the aesthetics of their creations, and different villages often compete in peaceful competitions based on the visual appeal of the villages' designed outfits.

In Anouki culture, honesty is of extremely high value -- and it is often said that Anouki never lie. This however, appears to be a front, as many shady Anouki businessmen immigrate to Hyrule proper. Their assumed sincerity leads them to be incredibly successful at selling rare and exotic products. The apparent noble nature of theirs has made them well respected by the Hylians who discovered their culture on the Subrosian Glacier in recent years, but simultaneously has made many of them them less than eager to merge into the "easier" lifestyle shared by comparatively dishonest and warring Hyruleans.

The offsets of Anouki who form communities on the Hyrulean continent are known to inhabit almost any climate. Larger groups of Anouki who insist on living in the new environment stick to the Snowpeak area, as they are accustomed to cold weather and environments and thrive on the daily life of hunting and crafting warm outfits. Their relationships with the reclusive Hyrulean Yeti are all but unknown, however. Because of this, it's not entirely understood how they acquire their pelts.