Mazjaru

Mazjaru
Base Information
Classification	Omnivore/hunter
Status	Minor race
Locomotion
Terrain
Body Form
Confluence
Bio-Identenoid
Size	1.3m
Weight	50kg
Culture
Languages
Social Structure
Technological Epoch
Psionic potential	Standard
Origin World
Homeworld location	Zjemu-ay (Kaa G!'kul 2912)
UWP	X000000-0 Starport X No Starport Size 0 Asteroid/Planetoid Belt Atmosphere 0 Vacuum Hydrographics 0 Desert World 0% Population 0 Barren (0) Government 0 No Government structure Law 0 No Law Tech Level 0 Pre-Industrial (primitive)
Primary Star
Atmosphere
Off-world presence	Yes
Zoetic individuals
Source
Reference	The Best of JTAS 46.
Canon	No
Also see

The Mazjaru (singular Mazjarã) are the best known K’kree subject race. They are ideal slaves, and acceptable personal servants, so they have spread widely across the Two Thousand Worlds.

On their home planet of Zjemu-ay (“earth” or “soil”), they evolved from omnivorous, fast-moving chaser-scavengers over a period of 300,000 of their Long Years. Despite being biologically omnivorous, they are culturally vegetarian.

Physiology

The Mazjaru are about 4’ 6” tall and have a pear-shaped silhouette. They are homeothermic, oviparous bipeds with strong legs, short arms, and blunt, toothy snouts. They have five-fingered hands with opposable thumbs, and thick, stubby tails. Their skin is covered with turquoise scales; each has a darker, feathery fringe, pointing away from the snout. A line of substantial, more feather-like scales runs down the spine from between the eyes to the tip of the tail.

This crest is yellow, cream, or white. It usually lies flat, but it can stand on end, displaying a purple and violet peacock-like pattern. The K’kree make the Mazjaru pluck their skulls bare, as a token of submission. Aside from when the female is ovulating, there is no external difference between the two sexes. Nearing ovulation, hormone levels rise and the female’s crest becomes full, stands erect, and becomes orange along its base.

Each short year, a female Mazjarã can lay a single egg, which hatches in a month. The chick needs to be fed on mashed, predigested food for a short year (0.64standard Imperial years). Physical maturity takes a long year (approximately 15 standard Imperial years), and adult life lasts for about two more. But for K’kree intervention, old age could last for a further long year, but is usually cut short.

Psychology

The main Mazjaru trait is fatalism. Even the ones who believe that they can free themselves accept that their remote descendants are the only likely beneficiaries. Tied to this are the determination to make the best of what is available, and a desire to ensure their children’s survival.

Both of these attitudes simply lead to displacement behaviors, which tend to distract the Mazjaru from the conscious realization that their lives are really dismal and stressful. This anxiety often surfaces either as a profound clinical depression or as an explosion into full-blown mania.

References & Contributors (Sources)

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Alain Dawson, Monica Stephens, Loren Wiseman. The Best of JTAS (Steve Jackson Games, 2004), 46.