In about the year 250 PO, a distinguished stranger, a human, wearing the garb of a Chielian elder, made his way through the forests of what is now the Merliad Military Confederation. The area was then under the control of the Woodsmen, a military force of humans whose goal was to seek human domination of Felinio, to the exclusion of all other races. The stranger was accompanied by two other humans, both wearing clothing unfamiliar to those who saw them. Arrested immediately, the three strangers put up no fight, insisting that they be taken to the Woodsmen commander.

No detailed record of that meeting remains even in the captured remains of the Woodsmen archives now in the Great Library at Felifur. After briefly meeting with the Commandant, word was sent to the Woodsmen High Command at Calioz, and a number of high ranking Woodsmen officials were sent to the Lake Merlias encampment. This delegation included the infamous General Algas Draat, and a number of wizards and scholars.

Rischio, the Chielian elder, and his two companions, known only as Redpath and Hunter, had come to join with the Woodsmen, but brought with them a highly secret series of documents, written in a strange language that only Redpath seemed to understand fully. The documents described mystical enchantments and unnatural physical alterations that would allow the Woodsmen to develop a race of invincible warriors that would be totally obedient to the leadership of the movement.

After much discussion, a project, known internally as Breedkill, was established in a little known part of the deep forest, far from any neighbors. Redpath, the leader of the project, came from a land far removed from Felinio and Chielio, where he was trained as a physician. Hunter, also from the same distant land, was a mid-ranking military officer. The Chielian, Rischio, was a respected, but highly feared, mage, with ties to the ancient people of Diapordo.

Because of the need to create an overwhelmingly physically powerful race, the existing Felines of the Central Clans, many of whom grew to unusually large size, seemed a good place to begin. A highly secret military mission into the area near Felafoxe succeeded in the kidnapping of two clan felines, a female and a male. Rendered helpless, they were transported to Breedkill Village where they were to be subjected to intense, painful, and degrading experimentation. Using dark magic as well as surgical techniques and a number of unknown herbal concoctions, the two felines were altered both physically and mentally. Using animal crossbreeding techniques, the female was then impregnated with highly altered genetic material from the male. The result was three offspring, two females and a male. The mother died in childbirth.

But all had not gone well. In their attempts to genetically alter the willpower of the offspring, they had induced a genetic insanity that made it nearly impossible for the children to consider even the short term effects of current actions. They were truly chaotic and uncontrollable in their mental processes, and therefore unacceptable to the Breedkill project.

In order to attempt to salvage what they could from their experiment, they conducted further experimentation on one of the female offspring, and were able to magically induce a self-destruct impulse, wherein any attempt to consciously disobey orders implanted by the Woodsmen leadership would lead to a massive physiological and mental disintegration that would result in sudden death, not unlike prophylactic shock.

The project then forced the natural mating of the programmed female with her brother, and the result was yet further complications. The third generation, with two genetic changes no doubt caused by the close inbreeding, was somewhat smaller than their parents and grandparents, though still notably larger than normal felines, and had a very strong and unpleasant natural odor. They were, however, genetically stable, able to reproduce among themselves, and were indeed a very physically powerful race.

Mentally, they were still, for all intents and purposes, insane, but were genetically aware that failure to obey their preprogrammed Woodsmen commands would kill them. However, there was a hitch. The original commands that had been preprogrammed into their genes turned out to reflect, not the official Woodsmen "patriotic" philosophy as intended, but the unconscious personalities of the Breedkill team that programmed them. Further, it was discovered that the original orders inherited from the ancestral programming could not be overridden by current orders, neither physically or magically. The preprogramming also had another more beneficial effect … it ameliorated somewhat the chaotic mental processes of the subject, allowing them to at least function in their own semi-organized society.

So, after nearly 40 years, from the project standpoint, the team had failed. They had developed a race of beings who were, in effect, stuck in time, unable to alter instructions given to their ancestors, virtually uncontrollable, and they were not even following the Woodsmen philosophy. It was decided that the project would begin again from scratch, that the current third generation would be destroyed, and that the original surviving male clan feline captive would be mated with his unaltered daughter.

It was here that fate intervened. The second-generation male, the father of the third generation offspring, attempted to escape the compound with his family. The resulting battle left all but two members of the team dead, with the former captives in charge. The original captive male barbarian was also killed. The two surviving members of the team were imprisoned and tortured for three years until their deaths. The dwellings, laboratories, and sanctums of the project team were destroyed, and the family of altered felines took over that area of the forest.

Emissaries from the Woodsmen leadership, who knew of the project, had come, found nothing of the team, nor any clue to its demise. The felines did not show themselves, and ultimately the emissaries returned to their leaders. The project was written off as a total failure, and records were destroyed to protect the surviving leadership from blame. The felines would live undisturbed for over 100 years. They hid from the occasional visitor, and those few travelers who encountered them never lived to tell the tale, obviously the victims of masterless men or the dangers of being lost in the deep forests. Indeed, as the reputation of that area’s dangers increased, few people ventured that way, even after the city of Trogan grew not too far away.

In the 350 years since their creation, many generations of Felinachoj have been born. Many additional facts have come to light. Although many have been killed in fights and accidents, the lifespan of the average felinacho appears to be about 150 years. Single births are the norm, and Felinachoj mate at random, with the females, who outnumber the males 2-to-1, caring for the children without male involvement. Most Felinachoj do not know their fathers, nor older siblings, as there is little or no extended family structure. They have developed their own language and culture, nearly incomprehensible to other races in Felinio who find it difficult to follow the insanity that threads through all aspects of their lives.

That insanity, being genetically based, has neither improved or degenerated over the 200 years. In fact, as it is the norm in their society, in their view, they are the only sane race they have encountered, and look upon the arrival of anyone else as a great danger … they feel surrounded by madmen and lunatics who have no goal but to destroy them. One thing that has changed is the magically-induced self-destruct mechanism. While the third generation felinacho would have died instantly upon the attempt to act independently, each succeeding generation seems to delay that death longer and longer, with the most recent generation (the 27th) hanging on to life for as long as six months before inevitably dying of mindplague, as they call it.

Finally, there was yet one more twist to the story. The second generation father, in addition to having over 40 children with his altered sister, had also 8 children with his unaltered sister. These 8 children, who had no built-in behavioral mechanism, were so totally chaotic, that they were unable to survive in any kind of civilized way. Among the felinachoj, they are known as the wilds. Matings between these 8 produced no living offspring, but matings with their programmed cousins resulted in a few successful births. The resulting offspring were seriously deranged, very violent, and are characterized by especially long fur, normally of a strange maroon color which they inherited from their 2nd generation female ancestor. They tend to live in more isolated areas, away from the majority of their kin. Their color and longer fur tends to breed true, although the seriousness of their dementia seems to reduce as their bloodline is more and more diluted by “normal” Felinachoj blood.

It is understood, however, that felinachoj with wild blood, are affected by the mindplague in very unpredictable ways. A few are simply not subject to mindplague, others are far more intensely subject to it, not unlike the 2nd generation, and in some cases, mindplague can affect the individual in ways short of killing them … transformations, deformities, and cataleptic states have been documented.

Today, nearly 350 years after the creation, the original Breedkill village area is still considered to be highly dangerous, but felinachoj have been sighted in many of Felinio’s more isolated forests and mountain valleys. Isolated sightings have been reported from the forests of central Gaiavio, as well, but none have been confirmed. Attempts have been made to befriend and civilize captured felinachoj, but such attempts, with a few notable exceptions, have been failures. Ironically, the exceptions have been almost all with younger wilds. The felinachoj remain as one of the most frightening aspects to travel on Felinio, especially within the Confederation.