Lacuni

The Lacuni, Saber Cats or panther men[1] that live in desert and mountain regions, especially in the Borderlands and in the Aranoch desert.

Lacuni are commonly refered to as "cat people" by the D3 Team, for obvious visual reasons, since they are the Eastern continent version of the Saber Cats found in the desert of Act Two in Diablo 2.

Appearance

Lacuni Huntress

Lacuni Warrior

This cat people are humanoid in shape with strong feline lines, looking more like cats walking on their back paws than humans. Their faces are completely cat-like with a glimmer of heightened intelligence, similar to man. The main difference is the existence of a tail and an animal-like knee, causing their upper bodies to be hunched forward.

The female is significantly smaller in size than the male, even more than the size difference between male and female lions.

Besides their heritage from the cats, they do have areas where hair continues to grow, as opposed to how fur normally works. On the head region, what can be described as normal hair is present, and on their forearms, an elongated fur patch is visible.

Society

The Lacuni live in cliff dwellings in desert and mountainous regions of Sanctuary. They are aggressive towards humans, and can be very dangerous to meet face to face.

The society primarily consists of women, dealing more with the hunting, while male Lacuni are significantly larger, and protecting the herd, similar to how lions and many other large cat animals organise their packs.

Not much is known about how they actually pass their day-to day life, but they are proficient in many types of tools, including weapons.

Both male and female Lacuni have been seen using weapons such as whips, javelins, throwing potions, and swords (although only male Lacuni have been seen using swords). Some of these weapons have even appeared magically enchanted, hinting at a quite advanced society. They have also been seen wearing different types of armour and other tools.

Regardless of gender, Lacuni are very quick and quite acrobatic. They can attack with somersaults and other rolling manoeuvres, and spinning to strike with their weapons in rapid succession. They are quick to the chase, and enjoy the hunt. They rarely retreat and generally attack in large, well-organized groups.

Background

The Lacuni tribes are indigenous inhabitants of Sanctuary, as opposed to the magically created Khazra (goatmen). They have been hostile towards humans for many hundred years, and no source of information tells of a time when humans and Lacuni lived in peace.

Well over 400 years ago, they were considered such a problem for Caldeum that the great military city of Lut Bahadur was built to keep the Lacuni safely away from Caldeum.

As more entries of the Writings of Abd al-Hazir are published, we hope to get more insight into the Lacuni.

Lacuni History Speculation

Encyclopedia Sanctuaria [2] mentions the Lacuni as "once found only in the jungle environments of Kehjistan, trading freely with the cities there."

According to Encyclopedia Sanctuaria, they have always been considered somewhat "aloof and untrustworthy," but never before behaved in a threatening manner toward human society. This aggressive attitude apparently started about the same time as Diablo travelled west, over the Aranoch desert when they started raiding whole caravans upon.

Whether Encyclopedia Sanctuaria or the Writings of Abd al-Hazir are conflicting, or just describing different sites of their evolution remains to be seen. The Lacuni closer to Caldeum obviously disliked human society from the start, or at the very least, the last 400 odd years.

In-Game Lacuni

Two types of Lacuni were commonly encountered as enemies in the BlizzCon 2009 demo, especially in the Howling Plateau area.

• Lacuni Huntress -- The Huntresses were lightly armored melee fighters who essentially served as quick-footed cannon fodder.
• Lacuni Warrior -- The Warriors were much larger and quite a bit more dangerous. These huge cat men wielded two glowing swords and fought with a variety of spinning and sumersaulting attacks. Boss groups of these were one of the more dangerous encounters players had to endure in the demo.

Diablo II

Read more about the Saber Cats of Diablo II.

Reference

• Writings of Abd al-Hazir: Entry no. 0009 - Khazra
• Writings of Abd al-Hazir: Entry no. 0032 - Borderlands
• Diablo II Manual