THE TREE PEOPLE

A race of sentient but primitive, monkey-like humanoids with prehensile tails. Found in various Arcadian jungles. They organize in tribal "Pods" and do not have a unifying government of any sort. The only significant interaction between pods is the yearly "Took" - a gathering where they look for mates from other pods for their children who have come of age. There is much furious negotiating at these gatherings because they mate for life and one of the new couple will leave their Pod to join the other with very little contact with their original pod mates and family after that. Traditionally, females are the ones who leave their pod to join their new mate's pod, but more frequently males are also leaving so as not to badly diminish the numbers of any given pod. Much of the negotiating at the Took involves balancing the loss of pod mates and the politics and inter-tribe tensions around those numbers.