So today we're going back 10000 or so years to ask the important question of: where did the Zora even come from? And why are sea-creature-shaped people living so far inland, what's up with that?
Read more for my attempts to rationalize vidyagame aesthetics choices~
As we know from Creating a Champion, the Zora are not actually native to Hyrule, as it is said that they "settled in Lanayru" more than 10 thousands years ago (let's save the question of "is 10k years of living in a place enough to be considered native to it" for another day).
I have major issues with the idea that basically nothing happened over this many years ( BotW and TotK seem to imply that the ancient era wasn't that different from the present day Hyrule), so I allowed myself to mess around with the world and such a bit more than I usually do.
Hyrule used to have a native Zora population - the River Zora. They inhabited wetlands and riverbanks and were semi-sedentary, travelling up- and downstream with the change of the seasons (basically they'd follow fish migration patterns). They could be found around Central Hyrule, Lanayru, Faron or Akkala, though the exact spread varied with climate fluctuations and flooding patterns.
They were roughly Hylian-sized, with the age span of 150/200 years, and lived in small communities of few dozen individuals (usually 2-3 families). They had okay relations with their Hylian neighbors (Hylians weren't too interested in wetlands and Zora didn't care about farmland or forests, so there wasn't much reason for territorial disputes) but would frequently fight each other for best fishing spots of the season.
The River Zora were quite well adapted to living on land - enough so, that aside from tadpolehood they'd rarely go underwater for too long, preferring to hang around in shallow waters. Because of this, their diet included stuff like plants, roots and mushrooms, not just fish and meat.
The River Zora had private homes (sort of, the main construction would be abandoned every season and possibly used by others in this time, but the expectation was that a family would be able to return) and had pretty strong sense of private property; fishing gear, tools, home furnishings etc belonged to an individual or their family and be hauled on rafts from one seasonal dwelling to the next.
They also wore rudimentary clothing, mostly simple capes and hoods, worn for the purpose of shielding from the sun and protecting the gills. Personalized handmade accessories would be crafted from leather, fibres and bronze and then gifted to other members in the community.
In general, save for internal squabbles, the River Zora were happy to chill in their wetlands and follow the patterns of nature. They very much lived in the present; while having extensive oral tradition of storytelling, they didn't really feel the need to create any historical records or even really write at all.
Now the ancient Sea Zora were a very different story.
I'll leave most of their biology for another time, when I go more in depth on saltwater Zora (contrary to River Zora, these guys are still very much around and haven't changed much), but the most important part is that they're Large and Sharp.
The Ocean-born Zora of the old times used to live in large hordes, freely roaming the waters, letting themselves be swept by the currents.
The group would be led by the strongest and most assertive individual and upon their death (or injury) would often split into 3-4 smaller ones, if there was no clear and worthy successor.
While for most it would seem like the Ocean Zora were just wandering aimlessly, they actually were in something like a perpetual state of pilgrimage, from one temple to another.
Now the concept of Zora temples is a whole thing itself that I will elaborate on more once I get to the Religion part of my lore series. For now, in big tldr, the Ocean Zora were (and still are) deeply spiritual, and they externalize it by building giant, elaborate temples. The purpose of the temple is 1. gaining favor with the deity; 2. marking the place as belonging to the Zora people; 3. establishing a fixed point allowing different Zora groups to meet and exchange information/resources/members; 4. storage of historical records; and finally 5. a mark of a Great Deed for the Zora leader who managed to complete a project.
A Temple takes anywhere from 50 to 1000 years to build, depending on location, size/skills of the group and available materials/tools (usually it's around 100-200).
Aside from Temples, the ancient Ocean Zora had little else to ground them, having very nebulous familial bonds and basically no concept of privacy or ownership.
At some point, couple thousands years ago, a group of Ocean Zora split off (succession crisis? territory conflict? not enough resources? who knows) from a bigger horde, went really far west for whatever reason, and made a landing on the shores of the Hyrulean continent. And then, of course, they set out to build a Temple, in the deep underground cave system of Lanayru province.
(The temple was for Nayru, as per custom of gaining favor with the local deity; the Ocean Zora subscribe to a very particular system of polytheism).
The construction took a long time, longer than anybody expected, for many reasons, and so, the new Zora had to occupy themselves with,,, living life in the meantime, which mostly meant getting acquainted with their River cousins.
By the time the Temple project was finished, the new generations of Hyrule-born Zora were no longer able to return to saltwater. If it was because of River blood, freshwater-developed eggs or Hyrule just being a cursed land intent on trapping its inhabitants forever, nobody can tell anymore. The reality was that the Ocean Zora had to suddenly abandon their free-spirited ways of life and find a way to settle in this new land forever. And so they did.
Over the years, they mixed even more with the River Zora, their traits combining into the Hyrulean Zora of the present day. The Ocean lineages quickly established themselves as dominant (they were bigger, stronger, had better weapons and were good at organising large groups) and slowly the River Zora either integrated completely or were pushed further and further out, until finally they were completely gone as a separate people. Eventually, the Hyrulean Zora community became as we know it today, concentrated in Lanayru's Domain, in the city that has since been constructed around the Temple that started it all.
The Ocean Zora also gradually lost their old ways of life, embracing parts of River culture (some sense of privacy & personal property, the idea of family units) and Hylian ways of managing things (such as establishing a royal line and a nobility class, having a specialized military and guilds etc).
While the freshwater trait seems to prevail over anything else (when a Hyrulean Zora has a kid with an Sea Zora the kid will always be freshwater, maybe with some salt tolerance), the Ocean blood seems to be almost equally as strong in terms of general physical appearance. The more specific Ocean traits such as extra fins, more vibrant colors or elongated features are less commonly passed down, but well-regarded if they manifest. All River traits (translucent webbing, face fins, dappling) seem to have disappeared completely, save for the little dots on Zoras' limbs and tails.
So yeah! The Hyrulean Zora are a mix between River and Ocean Zora, and thus kinda,,, uniquely neither. Zoras from other Domains call them Upstream (if they're nice) or Lake (if less so).
The Zora Royal Family looks so distinct from other citizens not for some magical royal reasons, it's just that importing foreign partners from Ocean Domains makes them have more Ocean blood and thus higher likelihood of manifesting Ocean-specific traits (size, unique features, uncommon scale colors). It is done on purpose, to justify the divine right to rule and stuff. Hence the arranged marriages and "you have to have a wife/husband to be crowned".
All the stuff about the Ocean Zora doesn't really apply to modern day saltwater Zora really, they've mostly transitioned to the Domain way of living. Some pilgrim-nomad groups still exist though! It's just much less common.
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