The Pangral were cat people that vaguely resembled Sphinxes. Maybe that’s a bad analogy. Their resemblance is akin to the way football resembles basketball – they’re both team sports and other than that, they don’t have much in common. Sphinxes had lion bodies, feathery bird wings, and human faces. Pangral had the body of a white tiger, stripes included, the wings of a bat, and feline faces. That’s as close as the similarities ran.
Pangral speech did mirror the sphinx’s fascination with riddles, but that was just their way of talking, a result of spending too much time gazing into Aux. Prophesy can bring out the cryptic in the most grounded pragmatist. Contrary to popular belief, visions of the future do not clarify thinking. They lead to sensory overload and muddled thinking. Aux’s visions were like fragments of the past, present and future all tossed into the same blender and then run through a puree cycle. Only the most accomplished could make heads or tales of what they saw.
Lazerai the Pangral Queen was the first of the Firstborn to land at Jahar and, ages later, the last of the Firstborn to take the Path and return to Heaven. I imagine there was quite a welcoming committee waiting for her at the Gates of Heaven after such a long separation from her people. After the Reckoning, Lazerai was the only Pangral to remain on Sangrar. She stayed because of what she’d seen in Aux, that’s the only possible explanation, but I will admit, I was surprised that she didn’t leave after Hali’s visit. I always thought that was her reason for staying, but she didn’t take the Path. She stayed on Sangrar until the end, making her long awaited reunion in Heaven all too brief. She had her reasons, I’m sure, driven by whatever she’d seen rippling in Aux.
None of the Pangral could beat Lazerai when it ccame to interpreting Aux’s visions, due in part to her Earthmagery and also in part to her training. No less than the Seeress herself trained her, in the early days after the Congress, while the Pangral Secondborn still slept.
The Pangral had many Earthmages, always with some minor power relating to prescience and prophesy, more of them in fact than they had channelers, making them similar to the Forge Folk. They weren’t powerful sorcerers, thanks to Harnor’s stinginess in the Pool of Life.
