The Cordillera of the Kethai is a north-western mountain range stretching for many hundreds of miles. For all of recorded human history, it marked the edge of the known world, as its alpine slopes were claimed by a nation of fearsome, catlike beings. Few humans ventured far into the heights, and fewer returned.

Attempts to negotiate with the kethai had always failed, due to the difficulties in finding a shared language or common frames of reference. Though an apparently civilized people, many concepts that humans took for granted, such as borders, rank, or personal property, were alien to them. They appeared to hunt humans venturing into the mountains as a form of play, rather than out of any specific malice.

When encountering alien cultures, the traditional human approach was to simply station warriors on the frontier and wait until the ongoing border friction inevitably fucked a half-orc, or a half-gnome, or a half-whatever into existence capable of bridging the gulf between them. Unfortunately, the Kethai had rejected all such diplomatic overtures and appeared to be one of the few known races entirely infertile with human partners. With the rise of the Empire and its insatiable appetite for more land, the mountain range began to be seen as a problematic obstacle to expansion.

Relations finally collapsed after the kethai knocked an entire legion - sent to subjugate them - off the side of a mountain, and ate a consul.

As a last, desperate attempt at peace, a spellcaster, highly skilled in the ancient human fertility arts of semancy, agreed to undergo transformation into a woman, and to be voluntarily abducted by the creatures. The man, having already overseen the first succesful copulation between an owl and a bear, was confident he could find a solution.

It is unclear what became of the semancer. Some say that he remains in the harem of some kethaian chief. Whatever his fate, the appearance of hybrid half-kethai offspring some twenty years after his abduction suggests that his mission was a success, and he is celebrated today as a hero of the Empire.

It has allowed diplomacy for the first time, and the felines have happily signed many a treaty and accord. Getting them to actually adhere to them has proven another challenge entirely.