Drykas

From Mizahar Lore

Revision as of 20:57, 7 January 2010

Drykas

The Horseclans of Cyphrus
Height	5'0"- 6'5"
Weight	120 - 250 lbs
Lifespan	80 - 100 years
Major features	Pale to Tan Skin, Light to Dark Hair, Wildly Elaborate Tattooing
Population	10,000 widely scattered
Most common in	Endrykas
Reputation	Horseman and Fighters
Racial gods	Varies
Racial bonus	+10 Riding

The Drykas are the fierce horsemen of the Cyphrus Grasslands. Nomadic and highly territorial, the Drykas believe that Cyphrus was a gifted to them by all the gods, and take their stewardship of the region very seriously. They know the Sea of Grass so thoroughly it is said that not a single footstep can be made within the land without them becoming aware of the invasion and moving to investigate. Outsiders claim the Drykas have woven powerful magics throughout the Grasslands that even the grasses themselves are part of, entwined together as if in some giant loom. And in their perspective, every single living creature upon the Sea of Grass is important, has a place, and is sacred. They waste nothing, and consider their horses as if they were just as important as any other member of the family. The Drykas believe all life is sacred, interwoven, and has a purpose. If it steps outside of the weave though, or breaks one of the strict Drykan laws, then it is fair game for elimination from the circle of life. Few outsiders understand the Drykas, and that is why travel across Cyphrus is terribly dangerous. Masters of glyphing, the Drykas people believe their whole existence can be explained in one of their powerful interwoven knotworks. Weavers, metalsmiths, and warriors, the people of the Sea of Grass truly own their element.

History

We live as our fleet brothers and sisters require us too. One with the Earth. One with the Sky. One with everything alive.

It is said that the God of Winds, Zulrav, once raised his voice in song and combined it with Semele's in a symphony never before heard on Mizahar. Within this union a claybank stud colt was born of the wind and earth in a song that did even Rhaus proud. Where the colt first put his hooves to the ground and ran, the earth flattened out and grass sprung up thick and lush creating the Sea of Grass. And from this colt who grew into a fine strong stallion sprang the rest of the Cyphrus Striders – a proud noble breed of horse. Rakivas, as the stallion came to be known, eventually chose a rider, Serifal Drykas. And together they gathered followers. Rakivas founded a herd and Serifal attracted companions… which bonded to each other. From those mares and stallions and their riders were born the Drykas and the Horseclans of Cyphrus. And like Serifal, the people who eventually populated the Grasslands were from strong Alahea stock, which simply meant their blood was touched by magic. They taught magic to their children, and their childrens children, until the Grasslanders were a force unto themselves, using arcana in unique and interesting new ways. Unlike some of the rest of the world, The Drykas held tight to their ancient magics – the gift of their ancestors – and saw it through even the Valterrian, holding magic near their hearts.

They, unlike so many other Alaheans, were able to survive the Valterrian because they held to their old ways, interwoven with their horses, and were carried safely away from the danger when the world collapsed. Once confined to a limited amount of land, mostly underground, they kept their horses close and saw their brother and sister spirits through the worst of it – emerging only when the world had calmed and Ivak had been confined. They found the grasslands changed. Rather than a simple plain confined in a far off corner of Alahea, the grasslands had expanded unto the Sea of Grass, dominating the landscape in a country that had vanished forever as it once was. To their credit, and even moreso to the great heart and commitment of their people, when the whole of Mizahar went underground, so too had the Drykas. Only, they took their great-hearted horses with them. Surviving nearly two hundred years underground, the people sacrificed so their horses could live. And the creatures themselves, held safely once more in their mothers womb, thrived. Instead of grass, they ate luminescent lichen and strange floating plants that thrived in underground lakes. And to this day, the purebred striders still hold a faint luminescent glow to their coats when they will it. This gives them the ability to be seen or to be invisible as the conditions merit it.

Biology

Physical Appearance

In outside artwork, the Drykas are almost always represented riding.

There are no actual physical stereotypes for the Drykas. One might be dark with warm brown eyes and another might be fair with pale blue eyes. They do however unite themselves in their love of tattoos. Even though one is born of the Drykas, that doesn’t necessarily mean that one will bear the tattoos common of one. The Drykas only get tattoed when they get chosen by one of their striders as a rider. Age has no factor. A child can be chosen anywhere from the time they learn to walk to the time they die as elderly members of the clan. It all depends on the right horse coming along at the right time. Once a Drykas earns their ‘windmarks’ as the tattooing is called, they become a full fledged member of the clan.

Common Traits

The Drykas share a love of long hair. Most women begin growing their hair at an early age and rarely if ever cut it. They tend to hang ornamentation from tiny individual braids hidden in their hair or wrap spiraling silken ribbon around individual strands called ‘wraps’. Wraps can be added to remember loved ones, battles, childbirth, hardship, or even death. Wraps often end in beadwork or charms dangling loosely. When a woman or man does wear their hair up, it is often in a complicated knotwork pattern that represents age, individual pavilion, or rank. The higher status a woman or man has is often indicated by the increasingly complex amount of braids in their hair. Slaves are not allowed to wear braids, wraps, or wear their hair anything but short and loose.

An example of complex knotwork in hair.

Men wear their hair long as well, thy they are not adverse to pulling it back with leather straps or ornamentation woven into knotwork ornaments to depict warrior status. They often go clean shaven though some will have trimmed beards or goatees. Some of the younger warriors might have moustaches, but full beards are frowned upon as dirty and unsightly.

The Drykas often wear colorful clothing decorated in complicated knotwork that is stitched or embroidered. They favor jewel tones and rich warm or cool colors that area often striking in their intensity. Masterful dyers well knowledgeable in the plants that bring out the most vivid dyes, the Drykas have been known to grow wealthy on trading just their powdered dyes to other cultures.

Found of jewelry and other ornamentation, the Drykas are well decorated. The wealthier a pavilion is, the more complicated the ornamentation of its members become. And the decorating does not stop with the people either. Collars on dogs and their large hunting cats are often decorated with individual pavilion knotwork and colors, while their horses often sport braiding of manes and tails that reflect their owners status. Tack is often tooled with knotwork signifying ownership and affiliation.

Psychology

The knotwork is exquisite.

The Drykas are fiercely passionate people. They live fast and hard, and to those that know them they are somewhat uninhibited. They are open with their emotions and for the most part extroverted. They argue loudly in groups, make great leaders, and tend to voice their opinions without keeping their thoughts to themselves. They think nothing of saying what they think and are extremely open about their fears and motivators. Because of this openness, the Drykas are sometimes seen as reckless, but that is not entirely true. The Drykas are not braggarts nor overly aggressive. They are raised to be bold thinkers and often question authority or leadership as if constantly testing those that lead them.

Those among the horseclans that are stupid or reckless often die quick deaths at a relatively young age. They are incredibly quick with their blades and often start learning weapons at a very young age. Parents teach their children not to start fights, but to be ready to defend themselves if one happens to be in the vicinity when a fight breaks out. Beyond being bladesman though, the Drykas are some of the finest horse archers that have ever existed. Bows and spears are some of their preferred weapons, though all sorts of arms and armor are found among the clans (always decorated).

The Drykas favor enemies they can see and confrontations they can view all sides of.

Reproduction & Aging

Like normal humans, the Drykas are considered mature at sixteen years of age and are often free to marry then. The Drykas have a normal lifespan of around 80 years, though most of the members of the horseclans live far shorter lives due to the harshness of their environment. Their lives are harsh, as harsh as the Grasslands themselves can be. Wild fires burn out of control. The Wind blows endlessly across the Sea of Grass. Food can be plentiful and scarce. Water can be nonexistent or overabundant, flooding the grasslands and turning it into an actual sea itself. Having on average two to four children, Drykas women are considered very protective mothers that often let their children stay with them in their pavilions until they themselves marry.

Society

Social Structure

Their knotwork decorates all their day to day useful items.

The horseclans of Cyphrus are divided up in a very specific way. The seven clans take their names after the seven precious gemstones that are found in locations throughout The Grasslands. Diamond, Opal, Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, Topaz, and Amethyst are the names of the seven clans. They each wear their own clan colors and tend to have their own traditions. The horseclans are further divided into pavilions comprised of family units. Pavilions are named after the elaborate and rather large portable tent-like structures the Drykas dwell within. Whole families live together in the same pavilions and young couples only move into their own pavilion after their family's pavilion reaches its capacity or they start having extensive children. Pavilions comfortably house ten to twenty people and a scattering of youngsters without feeling cramped. They are made of tightly woven weatherproof cloth stretched between sturdy beams. The pavilions are divided up into multiple 'rooms' designed for different purposes. Cooking is done in kitchen rooms over open fires with flaps in the roof to release the smoke. Floors are generally covered with rugs with furniture that is always designed to break down easily for travel. Seating is usually at floor level on cushions. Pavilions have sections that roll back that provide shelter for horses during windstorms. If a family looses its pavilion through fire or other sorts of destruction, it is considered the worst of luck. Without their shelters, it is incredible hard for the Drykas to survive.

Each Pavilion has a patriarch in charge of the entire household, called an Ankal, who rules his family unit with an iron fist. Males may have one or two wives but only rarely three with the first wife being in charge of the rest of the women in the pavilion. The Drykas protect their women fiercely because life on the Sea of Grass is harsh. Mortality among young males is high, commonly caused by accidents in hunting or predation via glassbeaks or young velipar. This phenomenon often leads to a surplus of females in comparison to males, which is why the men often take multiple wives. Wives live in their husbands pavilions and are not allowed to marry within their same pavilion unless the male is completely unrelated. Marriage is considered sacred among the Drykas, though unmarried females and males are well able to hold status within the pavilions as well. Status to those not married to the Ankal is established through the value of their skills. If a person is a good hunter, skilled healer, has extensive knowledge of horsemanship or dyes (30 points or more in a skill) are often treated with reverence. Reverence includes prominent places at the table during meals, choice foods, sleeping places near the fire, and an abundance of proffered resources like clothing, jewelery, etc. Those unskilled are often assigned the more demeaning tasks in and around the pavilion. Children are worked hard but shown leniency. They are expected to be skilled at a specific trade or craft when they hit sixteen or else they are expected to marry well. The family of the young women often provide a valatia (or dowry) for the young woman to aid her in finding a suitable husband. Valatia often includes horses, trade goods, skins, jewelry, weavings, dye secrets, or even precious gemstones and metal. A young woman that has her own pavilion is considered wealthy. Pavilions can be incredibly old and the most common way to acquire one is through inheritance via death. Crafting new pavilions often take years due to their enormously complex and extensive nature.

The Pavilions come together on a regular basis to pass news, trade, and socialize. This meeting spot is referred to as the city of Endrykas. City, however, is a loose term because the pavilions are constantly migrating and their meeting spot changes on a routine basis. In general, Endrykas follows a set migratory route called 'The Run' which is roughly a large circular route (counterclockwise) around the Sea of Grass from the Stardowns in the south up towards Riverfall in the west to the Cyphrus boarder in the north and finally back down the eastern coast towards Stardowns again. Because of the web, the Ankal always know where Endrykas is located at any particular time. Outsiders have an incredibly hard time finding the city without a webber among them as a guide. In that regard, Endrykas is one of the most secure places in Mizahar that people gather. Enemies must successfully invade The Sea of Grass without detection, and then find the city itself, and then approach without detection. As long as the web carefully woven over Cyphrus is in place, this is all but impossible to accomplish. It is probably the one benefit the Drykas enjoy on the Sea of Grass with all its savage predators, harsh wildfires, and intense snowfalls.

Language

The Drykas speak a language called Pavi. Outsiders swear their animals understand this language as well. Common is not uncommon to be heard spoken throughout Drykas encampments as well. Pavi has a written form, and the Drykas themselves are great lovers of poetry and theater. They do not often carry books because they find their portability undesirable in accumulations. Most of their history is oral as are their stories and folktales. The Drykas also know a complex sign language they use to communicate over distances visually, especially when riding, when sound does not carry well. This sign language is often referred to as grassland sign.

Names

A Child of the Wind.

The Drykas often name their children after natural elements. Sometimes they take a family name, but often they will take a name that is meaningful to them. This might be a special battle they witnessed when young, or the name of their first strider. Names are very meaningful to the Drykas and they take them with honor, sometimes changing them throughout their lives. If they have not had any significant events in their lives, they often simply go by their first given names until they marry or a second name finds them.

Family Life

A Warrior With His Wind Marks

Families are close on the Sea of Grass. Families that fight together stay together. Often fathers spend a close amount of time with their sons and daughters knowing that they have a finite amount of time to pass their knowledge on to their own children. Women often fight side by side with the men, hunting, fishing, and cooking. Men and women share equally in tasks, often cross training in various artforms. A man might weave and sew and be considered gifted at it the same as a woman can be considered a superior swordswoman and sent on patrol to care take their lands. All Ankal are required to know webbing and often connect their family members to a family web. They are also responsible for attaching their pavilion to their clan's web which in turn is connected to the overall webs throughout the sea of grass. The Ankal is also responsible for siring a male heir or appointing a related heir that he in turn is responsible for teaching Webbing too in the event that something befalls the Ankal. There always needs to be a backup male that can step forward and take over the family. Surviving spouses that are skilled can retain a high status in the pavilion household so long as their skill has value. They also have the option (if they are age appropriate) of marrying the new Ankal. However, if the replacement Ankal is already married, his wife or wives will instantly gain a higher status than surviving spouses of the former Ankal. Ankals' can be displaced via combat, even if the challenger is a son. However, families are tightly knit among Pavilions and there is a stigma attached to sons that usurp their father's roles and assume the Ankal position. A pavilion is considered 'tainted' or 'cursed' if such a thing happens. Because it means the family was not strong enough to work through their differences without combat.

Everyday Life

A woman and her windmarks.

The Drykas are not farmers nor do they trade much for food. Instead they are hunters and gatherers. Their days are taken up moving from place to place, gathering foodstuffs and tending their herds. Along with their horses (both Striders and Seme's), the Drykas raise wooly cattle called Zibri. They rarely eat the cattle, unless winters are exceptionally hard, depending on them more for their milk (to make cheese and yogurts) and wool for spinning and weaving. The Drykas are astoot hunters of rabbits and even occasionally take out large predators like glassbeaks. The Drykas raise both dogs and large hunting cats that the children often take out to hunt with. Dogs catch squirrels, rodents, and prairie dogs. The Cyphrus hunting cats often kill deer, elk, and antelope. The Drykas have a very diverse diet. Because of their extensive knowledge of plants and their widely varied diet, the Drykas people as a whole are considered incredibly healthy. There never seems to be a shortage of food, even in the winter, because they are clever about knowing what to eat when. They are great caretakers of the land as well. Because of their migratory habits, they often graze vast patches of the grasslands down just prior to winter, especially in the areas they will be returning too in late winter. This might seem counter productive to the outsider, but the Drykas understand that horses and cattle can starve on tall grass in harsh weather. It takes more energy than the animal acquires, often times, to digest the upper portions of grass that are very low in nutrition. Once grass is grazed down just before winter and has a chance to grow up several inches or even just a short foot before the first snow falls, it is tremendously nutritious and gives their herd animals far more energy for the work involved, keeping them fit and fed through the cold seasons.

Because of their extensive knowledge in herbalism, The horseclans of Cyphrus often produce exceptional healers. Their sages and wise men are among the finest. However, almost no knowledge is written down among the Drykas. Perhaps their only written records are the breeding records and stud books. Each Pavilion keeps meticulous records in those regards of both horses and cattle.

And while their daytime is filled with work, their evenings are filled with song, dance, eating, socializing, and embroidery. They mostly weave fabrics and carve leather in the evenings until the light grows too bad. Then everyone files away to bed only to wake early and begin work again. Life on the grasslands is harsh but really really filling.

Weapons & Equipment

A yvas girth section. The breast collar and pad is not shown.

The Drykas have no specialized weapons or weapon styles. They are master horsemen and tend to learn to fight from horseback. However, they are famous for their archery, and have produced a few historic swordsman and women from their ranks. They are known to use spears, pikes, thrown weapons and are handy often in dagger fights. Drykas warriors never wear metal armor for metal is rare on the grasslands and often is cost prohibited. They'd rather save their metalwork for their jewelry and harness decorations. Instead, they use toughened leather (often from their own cattle) that's layered with resin repeated times until its as hard though lighter than the metal gear seen more commonly in Sylira.

The Drykas use whats called a Yvas on their horses rather than bridles and saddles. A yvas is what equates to a girth with an attached breast collar combination hung with hooks and topped with a small flat hand grip that lays along a horses shoulders. The Yvas is often placed over a colorful pad that acts to protect the horse from the rider. The grip fits over a striders withers which holds the yvas in place. It almost looks like the type of thing vaulters used on their draft horses, though it is more functional than a vaulter's pad. The horses can free themselves from them if they got separated from their riders, and do not have tack to entrap or tangle them when they are running loose. The yvas has ring tethers on it for handling a set of wither bags and a waterskin and is often decorated in knotwork beading that identified the horse and rider as part of a specific pavilion.

Religion

Religion is a very open thing among the Drykas. They worship a wide variety of Gods and Goddesses, paying homage where homage is due based on the situation at hand and the skill or gnosis invovled. Healers of Rak'keli are as common as Stormwardens of Zulrav. They pay special allegiance to Semele and Caiyha, often thanking Lhex as well. They pay no particular attention to Laviku, other than to honor him as Avalis' mate. They enjoy Rhaus' music and Eyris' wisdom. On the whole, most of them have at one time or another given a nod to a deity based on the need answered or chaos caused. Their faith is celebrated in their knotworks, in their music, and indeed in their stories. Various Pavilions tend to follow various gods and goddesses more strongly than others based on that particular pavilion's history and origins.