Base: Vanara
Tamarini are a race of monkey-like humanoids that hail from deep forests and lush jungles across the Weeping Reaches region. They are a active, sociable, communicative people with an innate love of jubilation, merryment, and celebrating the good things in life. Relatively scarce in number, the ubiquitous trait of the tamarini is the distinct impressions they make as they cross the paths of other sentients. Tamarini are outgoing and outspoken, which can work to their benefit or their misfortune.
Most tamarini stand around five feet tall, and weigh no more than 180 pounds. Though the tamarini of the Weeping Reaches have thicker coats than their southern-born vanara cousins, it still retains the characteristic softness known of vanara fur. One of the unique features of tamarini is the vast variety of secondary fur and mane growths displayed from family to family. Some tamarini have full, thick manes growing from their head and over the spine, while others have tufts growing from forearms, biceps, shins, and hips. As individual family lines tend to interweave with all nearby tamarini communities, a vast variety of these mane patterns exist, and some tamarini tribes are fiercely proud of their manes and their patterns of styling them.
Tamarini coats cover a wide range of colorations: ivories and creams, chestnuts and auburns, warm dark browns, blacks and grays, and even silver and golden coats are common. Tamarini coats are usually consistent in color across the entire body, with any mane or secondary fur growths being several shades darker, though some cosmopolitan tamarini may cosmetically alter some or all of their fur color for the purposes of fashion or entertainment.
While most tamarini eyes are golden or yellow in hue, a rare tamarini child is born with vibrant blue or green eyes. All tamarini have long, prehensile tails, and hand-like feet capable of articulated movement.
In the isolated, rural forest environments of the Weeping Reaches, tamarini are known to form tree top villages among the high branches of the old growth forests. Of all the dominant races in the Weeping Reaches, the tamarini perhaps have the best relationship with the world trees of the region. Thanks to the innate dexterity and climbing ability of the average tamarini, travel between tamarini villages can be accomplished via paths through the branches and boughs of the forest, only touching down on solid ground when safety could be assured. Though inefficient for trade, it is still the favored method of "walking" of many tamarini.
Tamarini settlements are often informal affairs with multiple families of hunters, gatherers, and crafters working together under the guidance of respected elders to ensure continued survivability of the village. Such villages will often span the tops of dozens of treetop structures, connected only by the extensive network of branches and old growth vines. These settlements engage in trade and social niceties with nearby non-tamarini communities, but non-tamarini rarely have business that involves actually going into a tamarini settlement. As such, non-hostile individuals or groups who happen to stumble their way into a tamarini town are usually warmly welcomed, and treated by the denizens of the town as a cause for celebration.
Larger settlements graced with tamarini population are almost more lively than those without. Tamarini commonly take up jobs as charming traders, entertaining storytellers, and dedicated priests. Though their mischevious nature can occasionally get prankster tamarini driven from a settlement, most socially adapted tamarini have a modicum of tact with which to diffuse tensions with neighbors and authorities.
Many rural tamarini tend towards chaotic alignments, as the natural heirarchy and cultural customs of tamarini societies generally lack law and edict, instead favoring social taboo and stigma, and ostrasization of individuals disrupting the social fabric over violent punishments and incarceration. Rarely, a tamarini may be lawful, but these individuals are commonly members of a specific class with a rigidified code of ethics or behavior.
Though urbanized tamarini families can drift from their culture's spiritual roots, most tamarini practice a religion or worship any number of deities. The tamarini pantheon is a tale of cosmic characters interacting in grand stories of joy and sadness, but it is in no way insular. Deities from the pantheons of other races and cultures find their ways into the tamarini pantheon by way of appearing in the stories of a tamarini god's adventures. It is not uncommon for the sum of an individual tamarini's religious or spiritual practices to very closely mimic those of a different race or from a different region, just by merit of the overlap of the tamarini pantheon with nearly all others.
Tamarini have no special detachment to their homes and families, nor are they struck by any particular cultural wanderlust. Nevertheless, many tamarini find themselves amused by the prospect of adventure, and of being a hero in a living story that might one day join the tapestry of tamarini storytelling culture. Tamarini culture teaches that there is little relative rhyme and reason for the inexplicable opportunities life throws one's way, and tamarini from many disparate walks of life find themselves called to a life of adventure by some amusing happenstance.