Northern Territories
One thing that might pop up from time to time is that Tlakanok hails from a territory in the north, from one of the northern most territories for Ertakar. Going back to what I mentioned in the last info post, Ertkar have a slightly lower body temperature as compared to humans, and they don't tend to favor colder environments. Bundling up for the cold is difficult and cumbersome with their wings, and the cold impedes their ability to fly both due to bundling up and the high risk of frostbite on their wing membrane. Because of all this, the settlement of the north was one made in desperation, it wasn't what anyone could consider their 'first choice'.
The time frame for when exactly the first trek to the north would be likely 'ancient' by Ertakar standards, I don't have the details for that and I might at one point but the point is more to cover the near-modern and modern culture that persists in the territory and how it got that way. What I do know is that it was the result of a war/territory dispute of sorts. The losers were either 'banished' or spitefully made a trek north as far away as they could from other Ertakar to establish a settlement with no competition. The north was largely untouched aside from a few nomadic groups during the warmer seasons. Despite the snow and cold in the winters, the upside was that the north hosted larger megafauna, so at least as long as they could survive the winters they wouldn't be competing for food sources like the territory the had just left.
Adapting to the harsh living conditions lead to a culture and society that very heavily centered around resource conservation and survival and their language changed to reflect this. One of the most prominent elements of this is the emergence a sliding scale of protected to expendable categories of residents which resulted in a unique pronoun structure. Those considered most 'protected' were children/teens/young adults. Next were the ones considered most virile, capable of producing strong children. After that were doctors, certain tradesmen, and hunter/soldiers, the Ertkar that the loss of which could cause a huge blow to the survival of the society. Then there was an 'Expendable' category of Ertakar, this includes the elderly, the disabled, and anyone considered difficult to take care of that would be unable to 'provide' for the colony. When resources were tight, this categorization of individuals resulted in who got priority in resources, first children, then breeders, then the workers, then the 'expendable'.
These territories might have had a 'Leader' in that same category but this wasn't common in many of the colonies that splintered out. The idea was that if their survival hinged on the leadership of a single individual then they had a poor structure, they needed multiple people that could serve the purpose of being leaders and most of them were of the mindset that they needed multiple leading forces of different skills. However there was the emergence of a special additional honorific on top of the usual one to indicate that individual was exemplary in their field and this often was regarded as a 'leadership' title.
In the current modern day, this practice is long since discarded. Advances in technology and housing made survival in the north significantly more easy, still unfavorable, but no longer at risk of decimating the population of an entire town due to one bad snow-in. As the need to conserve resource to survive through the winter became obsolete, the need to keep a protected/expendable structure faded but the remnants of it still remain in the native language of the northern Ertakar. The pronoun used for the young still remains as a sort of diminutive, the pronoun used for the virile just became the general adult pronoun. The pronoun used for doctors/soldiers/tradesmen became a sort of honorific, used to express admiration or praise of skill. The Expendable pronoun became one of an insult, not dissimilar to how we would call someone garbage or worthless but it certainly has a much more poignant cultural sting, and depending on the context used in is regarded as a slur.
The Northern territories used to be hostile to the idea of integration of new members, every new person was a new resource drain unless they had a skill or trade that could provide for the colony and level out the burden a new member would place on them. Some groups were of course, genuinely xenophobic, but even when they weren't, this caution to drains on their establishments were read as xenophobic even when they weren't. However, even from the beginning they had very good relationships with the nomadic groups, finding them a vital trade source both for goods, medicine, and news. They only visited in the summer when food and resources were abundant, they knew how to preserve food like they did, and were often removed from the political conflicts that drove those Ertakar to the north in the first place.
Where many other Ertakar cultures have a preference for fresh/raw foods with little cooking, the northern territories relied heavily on food preservation to get them through snow-ins and harsh winter months. Hunting was more than possible during these times due to hibernating animals that were easy prey, but the trek to search for them could result in Ertakar hunters loosing wings or digits from the frostbite risk of the hunt itself. This meant that those from the north have more in the way of cultural dishes and cuisines.
Towns in the north have wholly different structures from most any other Ertakar territory. Because of their need to bundle their wings in the winter, they did not make tall structures that required flight like other Ertakar did. They either created large communal housing so to help better keep warm in the winter and assist others, or they had more individual huts and used a tunnel system to avoid being out in the biting cold, which was good both for warmth and for when snow was enough to block doors and windows. (come to think of it, being grounded for the winter means the coming of spring is probably a huge deal to them, they probably have some big spring flight celebration, both to celebrate surviving the winter and stretch their wings properly after several months)
Despite the thousand year difference from the cultural structure of the ancient society to the modern day, many Ertakar from other territories regard northern territory Ertkar as 'barbaric'. Insults or references about how they're cold (hah), unfeeling, ableist, are not uncommon. This underlying negative perception makes a lot of northern Ertakar hesitant to leave the north which results in the further assumption that they are prideful and elusive and don't want to mingle with other Ertakar. But because of this 'isolation' it only makes rumors and misconceptions more prominent about Northern Ertakar culture, even in the modern day with all it's networked communication.
For example, while desperate cannibalism isn't unheard of for Ertkar during war-time, (in conflicts where Ertkar would over-kill and spoil the local fauna to starve-out the competition, resorting to eating dead Ertakar was not uncommon, not desirable. There was practiced knowledge in how to cannibalize without making oneself sick taught among Ertakar soldiers even in the modern day) Rumors were spread about how Northern Ertakar were uncharacteristically cannibalistic, about how they used their 'expendable' class to cannibalize deliberately during the winter due to their 'laziness' to go out and just kill one of the hibernating fauna instead.
The foundation of the colony migrated from the arid environments, specifically, so their phenotype goes all the way back to them, this means they share a lot of genetic characteristics with arid Ertakar. Head crests are characteristic in both Arid and Northern Ertakar, but Arid Ertakar tend to range warmer colors of white/grey/black and browns, while Northern Ertakar range more muted colors. Because of the visual similarities, Arid Ertkar might go out of their way to insist they're 'not like them', as they get accused from being cut from the same cloth. Other Arid Ertakar might instead be defensive and advocate for compassion, finding kinship in their 'cousins'. But because of this, the Arid territories can be mixed back of extremely disdainful and extremely accepting of their Northern Ertakar 'cousins'. Though sometimes the acceptance can be it's own insult, as some see it as a form of 'saving' them from a 'barbaric' society.
There are of course, positive biases. They get framed a survivors, stalwart, hardy, capable to live and preserver through anything. Sometimes there's even admiration of their ability to survive the cold year after year. But this can sometimes get them 'type cast' into soldiers, guards and forms of manual labor, regardless if what their skillset actually is.
Though admittedly it's worth noting that these biases subtle. They're very old ones so it's not as strong as they once were. But it's not gone and can still color a person's perception subconsciously.
Also in addition to everything, while the classification system no longer apply to current modern-day northern societies, some remnants of it exist in different ways, mostly in the form of rigid expectations of what one is supposed to do for the colony as a whole. For some of the smaller colonies, if you were good a fighting, strong, and aggressive, you were a soldier/guard, if you were skilled at textiles or leather working, that what you would provide, if you were good with children you spent your time with caregivers and so on. Sure you could dabble in something outside your core job, but you couldn't make that your assigned contribution to the colony. If they needed you in something else, they couldn't afford to delegate the resources of your skills elsewhere. This is one of the elements that prompted Tlakanock to leave her home.
Tlakanok was large, strong, and a skilled fighter even before volunteering for the Teotkoa project. She very much wanted to adopt, to be a mother, she had no desire to have a partner and get pregnant, she wanted to be part of the child-rearing coven (they participated in communal child-rearing, people that weren't assigned care-givers but had children, could live there while their child was in infancy, but would need to leave the communal house when the child passed a certain level of independence. The child would be left at the communal home when the parent worked, and could go back home with the parent after.) but her home town insisted they were in desperate need of her skill as a soldier/defender instead, they had enough caretakers. Instead finding a new home in another northern colony, she ventured to one of the largest cities known on the continent. She suspected there would be a far greater demand for adoptive parents in a city, especially the one where these new human aliens were that seemed to breed very fast and die very early. However she wasn't expecting the roadblocks in accepting her, a Northern Ertakar, as a mother of children. When the war between human and Ertakar started, she volunteered for the Teotkoa project to prove she would sacrifice and defend the home even if she was an outsider, and she was prepared to die to do so. However, things turned out very differently than expected.
This stigma against Northern Ertkar, especially Tlakanok, what she was, what she represented, is all tangled into why there was so much political weight wrapped up in her both being alive when she was ordered to be executed for the sake of peace and her having a biological child. These elements absolutely pass on to Talon being half Northern Ertakar, half of the 'berserker', her mother, specifically.
It's worth noting that there are plenty of other biases and stigmas for other Ertakar, I just haven't developed them all quite yet to be able to write it out, but these things will always be peppered in the undertones of conflict and dialog because they're just as much a moving, learning, adapting species as any of us and there will always be biases, bigotry, and misinterpretation with any group.
This entry was originally posted at https://armaina.dreamwidth.org/781284.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
The time frame for when exactly the first trek to the north would be likely 'ancient' by Ertakar standards, I don't have the details for that and I might at one point but the point is more to cover the near-modern and modern culture that persists in the territory and how it got that way. What I do know is that it was the result of a war/territory dispute of sorts. The losers were either 'banished' or spitefully made a trek north as far away as they could from other Ertakar to establish a settlement with no competition. The north was largely untouched aside from a few nomadic groups during the warmer seasons. Despite the snow and cold in the winters, the upside was that the north hosted larger megafauna, so at least as long as they could survive the winters they wouldn't be competing for food sources like the territory the had just left.
Adapting to the harsh living conditions lead to a culture and society that very heavily centered around resource conservation and survival and their language changed to reflect this. One of the most prominent elements of this is the emergence a sliding scale of protected to expendable categories of residents which resulted in a unique pronoun structure. Those considered most 'protected' were children/teens/young adults. Next were the ones considered most virile, capable of producing strong children. After that were doctors, certain tradesmen, and hunter/soldiers, the Ertkar that the loss of which could cause a huge blow to the survival of the society. Then there was an 'Expendable' category of Ertakar, this includes the elderly, the disabled, and anyone considered difficult to take care of that would be unable to 'provide' for the colony. When resources were tight, this categorization of individuals resulted in who got priority in resources, first children, then breeders, then the workers, then the 'expendable'.
These territories might have had a 'Leader' in that same category but this wasn't common in many of the colonies that splintered out. The idea was that if their survival hinged on the leadership of a single individual then they had a poor structure, they needed multiple people that could serve the purpose of being leaders and most of them were of the mindset that they needed multiple leading forces of different skills. However there was the emergence of a special additional honorific on top of the usual one to indicate that individual was exemplary in their field and this often was regarded as a 'leadership' title.
In the current modern day, this practice is long since discarded. Advances in technology and housing made survival in the north significantly more easy, still unfavorable, but no longer at risk of decimating the population of an entire town due to one bad snow-in. As the need to conserve resource to survive through the winter became obsolete, the need to keep a protected/expendable structure faded but the remnants of it still remain in the native language of the northern Ertakar. The pronoun used for the young still remains as a sort of diminutive, the pronoun used for the virile just became the general adult pronoun. The pronoun used for doctors/soldiers/tradesmen became a sort of honorific, used to express admiration or praise of skill. The Expendable pronoun became one of an insult, not dissimilar to how we would call someone garbage or worthless but it certainly has a much more poignant cultural sting, and depending on the context used in is regarded as a slur.
The Northern territories used to be hostile to the idea of integration of new members, every new person was a new resource drain unless they had a skill or trade that could provide for the colony and level out the burden a new member would place on them. Some groups were of course, genuinely xenophobic, but even when they weren't, this caution to drains on their establishments were read as xenophobic even when they weren't. However, even from the beginning they had very good relationships with the nomadic groups, finding them a vital trade source both for goods, medicine, and news. They only visited in the summer when food and resources were abundant, they knew how to preserve food like they did, and were often removed from the political conflicts that drove those Ertakar to the north in the first place.
Where many other Ertakar cultures have a preference for fresh/raw foods with little cooking, the northern territories relied heavily on food preservation to get them through snow-ins and harsh winter months. Hunting was more than possible during these times due to hibernating animals that were easy prey, but the trek to search for them could result in Ertakar hunters loosing wings or digits from the frostbite risk of the hunt itself. This meant that those from the north have more in the way of cultural dishes and cuisines.
Towns in the north have wholly different structures from most any other Ertakar territory. Because of their need to bundle their wings in the winter, they did not make tall structures that required flight like other Ertakar did. They either created large communal housing so to help better keep warm in the winter and assist others, or they had more individual huts and used a tunnel system to avoid being out in the biting cold, which was good both for warmth and for when snow was enough to block doors and windows. (come to think of it, being grounded for the winter means the coming of spring is probably a huge deal to them, they probably have some big spring flight celebration, both to celebrate surviving the winter and stretch their wings properly after several months)
Despite the thousand year difference from the cultural structure of the ancient society to the modern day, many Ertakar from other territories regard northern territory Ertkar as 'barbaric'. Insults or references about how they're cold (hah), unfeeling, ableist, are not uncommon. This underlying negative perception makes a lot of northern Ertakar hesitant to leave the north which results in the further assumption that they are prideful and elusive and don't want to mingle with other Ertakar. But because of this 'isolation' it only makes rumors and misconceptions more prominent about Northern Ertakar culture, even in the modern day with all it's networked communication.
For example, while desperate cannibalism isn't unheard of for Ertkar during war-time, (in conflicts where Ertkar would over-kill and spoil the local fauna to starve-out the competition, resorting to eating dead Ertakar was not uncommon, not desirable. There was practiced knowledge in how to cannibalize without making oneself sick taught among Ertakar soldiers even in the modern day) Rumors were spread about how Northern Ertakar were uncharacteristically cannibalistic, about how they used their 'expendable' class to cannibalize deliberately during the winter due to their 'laziness' to go out and just kill one of the hibernating fauna instead.
The foundation of the colony migrated from the arid environments, specifically, so their phenotype goes all the way back to them, this means they share a lot of genetic characteristics with arid Ertakar. Head crests are characteristic in both Arid and Northern Ertakar, but Arid Ertakar tend to range warmer colors of white/grey/black and browns, while Northern Ertakar range more muted colors. Because of the visual similarities, Arid Ertkar might go out of their way to insist they're 'not like them', as they get accused from being cut from the same cloth. Other Arid Ertakar might instead be defensive and advocate for compassion, finding kinship in their 'cousins'. But because of this, the Arid territories can be mixed back of extremely disdainful and extremely accepting of their Northern Ertakar 'cousins'. Though sometimes the acceptance can be it's own insult, as some see it as a form of 'saving' them from a 'barbaric' society.
There are of course, positive biases. They get framed a survivors, stalwart, hardy, capable to live and preserver through anything. Sometimes there's even admiration of their ability to survive the cold year after year. But this can sometimes get them 'type cast' into soldiers, guards and forms of manual labor, regardless if what their skillset actually is.
Though admittedly it's worth noting that these biases subtle. They're very old ones so it's not as strong as they once were. But it's not gone and can still color a person's perception subconsciously.
Also in addition to everything, while the classification system no longer apply to current modern-day northern societies, some remnants of it exist in different ways, mostly in the form of rigid expectations of what one is supposed to do for the colony as a whole. For some of the smaller colonies, if you were good a fighting, strong, and aggressive, you were a soldier/guard, if you were skilled at textiles or leather working, that what you would provide, if you were good with children you spent your time with caregivers and so on. Sure you could dabble in something outside your core job, but you couldn't make that your assigned contribution to the colony. If they needed you in something else, they couldn't afford to delegate the resources of your skills elsewhere. This is one of the elements that prompted Tlakanock to leave her home.
Tlakanok was large, strong, and a skilled fighter even before volunteering for the Teotkoa project. She very much wanted to adopt, to be a mother, she had no desire to have a partner and get pregnant, she wanted to be part of the child-rearing coven (they participated in communal child-rearing, people that weren't assigned care-givers but had children, could live there while their child was in infancy, but would need to leave the communal house when the child passed a certain level of independence. The child would be left at the communal home when the parent worked, and could go back home with the parent after.) but her home town insisted they were in desperate need of her skill as a soldier/defender instead, they had enough caretakers. Instead finding a new home in another northern colony, she ventured to one of the largest cities known on the continent. She suspected there would be a far greater demand for adoptive parents in a city, especially the one where these new human aliens were that seemed to breed very fast and die very early. However she wasn't expecting the roadblocks in accepting her, a Northern Ertakar, as a mother of children. When the war between human and Ertakar started, she volunteered for the Teotkoa project to prove she would sacrifice and defend the home even if she was an outsider, and she was prepared to die to do so. However, things turned out very differently than expected.
This stigma against Northern Ertkar, especially Tlakanok, what she was, what she represented, is all tangled into why there was so much political weight wrapped up in her both being alive when she was ordered to be executed for the sake of peace and her having a biological child. These elements absolutely pass on to Talon being half Northern Ertakar, half of the 'berserker', her mother, specifically.
It's worth noting that there are plenty of other biases and stigmas for other Ertakar, I just haven't developed them all quite yet to be able to write it out, but these things will always be peppered in the undertones of conflict and dialog because they're just as much a moving, learning, adapting species as any of us and there will always be biases, bigotry, and misinterpretation with any group.
This entry was originally posted at https://armaina.dreamwidth.org/781284.html. Please comment there using OpenID.