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| − | ==Tigers - The Nobility of Kartar==
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| − | The Torareichou are generally acknowledged to be the nobility of the Banbutsunoreichou. They tend to be more intelligent, more wise and longer-lived than any of the other five. Add to this their greater size and strength and the slightly higher probability of magical capability and even if history and mythology had not anointed them, it seems likely they would rule Kartar regardless.
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| − | The greatest flaw amongst this species however is their low fertility. It has always been rare for a pregnancy to produce more than two healthy cubs, and nowadays fertility amongst the greatest of the felines is dropping still further.
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| − | Historically, a cub that was not healthy would die young, in hours in fact. Nowadays, with the known, but unspoken decline in the species, an unhealthy cub is far more likely to receive the additional care it requires to grow healthy and strong. For this reason, midwifes among the Torareichou are exclusively elderly females of the species. The official story will always be of good health unless the mother actually dies during the birth.
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| − | ===WHITE TIGERS===
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| − | A white tiger is not an albino. It is merely a combination of the correct parents. It still has the normal stripe pattern although there are usually substantially less stripes in the pattern. A birth of such cubs is rare but hardly unheard of, and is as much an accepted variation as golden or blue tigers. A white tiger is mythologically considered more likely to be capable of channelling magic, but this is not borne out by the evidence.
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| − | True albinos do not survive childhood. They just aren’t strong enough.
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| − | ===MELANISTIC TIGERS===
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| − | Melanistic, or all black, Torareichou, with the stripes usually a strange ghosting above the black base colour, are considered demonic and evil. Any cub born exhibiting this colouration will be killed after a week if the colouring does not change. Mythology speaks of the evil that such creatures will wreak.
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| − | A cub born with melanistic colouring that does change will be a great mage. Or insane.
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| − | A cub born with melanistic colouring that does not change and somehow survives will be both.
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| − | There are perhaps five a century born black. In theory none have survived. In practice, the exceptionally long-lived black tigers, with easily five times the lifespan of even normal tigers, tend to feel the coming birth of a new cub and attend, rescuing the cub. The stories of cubs whose colouring changes are entirely the result of this changeling activity.
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