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Francis / 28
this is my art + worldbuilding writing blog (@taraxippos for reblogs)
Mostly my worldbuilding project "Blightseed" and its primary story The White Calf, occasional other stuff
Semi-frequent untagged nudity warning
eunuch lore question apropos of nothing: i'm curious what the social outcome would be for a normative Wardi man who loses his penis/testicles unintentionally, due to disease or tragic scything accident or whatever.
say a man is like 35, gainfully employed, sexually normal, married, has healthy kids, enjoys hunting and sporting with The Guys, generally the perfect specimen of Wardi masculinity; then a spider bites his dick while he's asleep and it gets the worst infection ever and the doctor has to chop the whole thing off to save his life. what happens to this man? does he get kicked out of the male gender space and reassigned as a eunuch, or has he successfully established himself as enough of a father/husband/brother to stick around even with his Biological Male Essence destroyed?
alternative scenario: this same man, with all his perfectly masculine interests and personality, gets his fateful spider bite like 15 years earlier, after he's had most of the expected male puberty but before he's fully taken on any of the social roles of a grown man. what does his family do? is he still considered a son for the purposes of inheritance? can he ever get married? what is life like in this society for a man who genuinely wants to have kids and be a dad and all that but is definitely, obviously, 100% infertile?
If you asked the average person, they would definitely say that men and eunuchs are at least a little different, and they would probably invoke an Essential Maleness That Is Stored In The Balls. Ones more enlightened in the ways of medicine could explain to you that having enough semen Stored In The Balls is specifically what masculinizes a body and has subtler effects on a man's health, character, and temperament; cutting off the source entirely makes one more akin to a woman in body and temperament. But the image of "a eunuch" in their mind is really less about what parts of their anatomy are present, and more about how and when and why these parts were taken away, and what role that action places them in.
The Eunuch in the cultural imagination and practice is a servant administrator in the court, or guards of female priests and royalty, the vast majority of whom were probably sold and castrated at approximately 9-14 years old at their father's behest and you can really tell they aren't Men. Or a specific body of priests who are gelded as the first of many autosacrificial acts. Or a criminal who was gelded in punishment and humiliation. Or maybe the natural kind who never saw a blade but still sounds like a girl at 30 and can't grow a beard or sire children. It's not the beloved friend of 20 years who just lost his balls in a desperate act of medical intervention after a horrific spider accident. He's technically a eunuch now, but he's not, like, a eunuch eunuch. If anything he's more akin to former warriors who made it into old age alive, minus a limb. If he was born without the limb he never really could've been a complete man to begin with, it's a pity. If he lost the limb on the cusp of adulthood it's outright tragic. But he had a full life and nothing about him has Really changed. Mocking him for lacking some of the traits of manhood would be like mocking the elder who's lived to the uncommon old age of 85 for not being able to hold a spear. It borders on absurd. Similar logic can more or less go for the spider victim in his late 30s, though there are differences in that losing your balls has much more specific baggage than losing a limb and people are likelier to giggle about it a little, or may evoke his loss of Essential Maleness if it's socially or politically advantageous to cast him as weakened and feminized.
But the average man clasps his spider victim friend's hands and warmly assures him he's lost none of his spirit, and from there on strictly avoids invoking his lack of testes unless the latter has found some humor in his circumstances. The average woman finds any desperation-tinged displays of machismo from the spider victim extra amusing and/or irritating given the literal lack of balls to back it with (some might even take a little vindictive glee), though her opinion on this behavior probably did not change with the loss of his testes. The respected, established spider victim goes on hunting with the guys and being the head of his household because Biological Male Essence Of The Balls is really only present or absent by social and societal consent.
The spider incident happening to a much younger man is different along a similar line of logic, he's not going to just suddenly Stop being a man to others around him, but unlike the older victim his his role Has materially changed. The chief economic value of a sons is as an inheritor of property and a guarantor of your family's future prospects by making more sons. That's not the ONLY economic value of a son (much less their only value in general), but that's their primary purpose when it comes to securing the collective family's future. The youth who has been mauled by a ferocious spider doesn't stop being a 'son', there's no law or taboo that Prevents you from treating him identically to your other boys, there's no (non-reproductive) stations in life he's forbidden from strictly on the basis of not having balls (there are many he will be passed over for in favor of an intact man if his status is known, though). But he's not going to be managed the same way as other young men, in the same way that you don't offer a post-menopausal woman in a political marriage. He unambiguously physically cannot do his Job, and this job is a major part of entering the world of adult manhood. This is complicated a little by adoption being a legitimate means of acquiring an heir (almost always of a family member along your same patriline) but that's Never going to be your first choice, especially not when the stakes are high, and you're unlikely to bank your family's future on your sterilized son's choice of adoptee. You're just going to rearrange your inheritance to position an intact son as heir (or adopt one if you don't have any), who will receive most of your property and eventually have sons of his own, and meanwhile your spider victim son gets whatever share is contextually appropriate, probably what the youngest would have gotten.
There's nothing preventing him from getting married, he can be head of his own household and adopt an heir and pass whatever he inherits to him, but the primary incentives for marriage are gone and the spectrum of marriage opportunities that will suit your family's socioeconomic needs (and marriage IS about benefiting the collective first, and everything else second) is much narrower. It might just not be worth the bride price. He's not going to just Not Be Seen As A Man Anymore, but he may be unable to fully inhabit an adult man's role in his family and community, which will bring his Lack Of Essential Maleness Stored In The Balls closer to the forefront of the minds of people who know his condition.
I should note that 'receiving an accidental sterilizing injury where your balls are removed' is also an extreme outlier scenario so there's no conventions for how that Changes things. The analogues that have specific cultural baggage are being a 'natural eunuch' (usually describes undescended/absent testes, sometimes describes otherwise 'abnormal' male characteristics co-occurring with infertility, even if the testes are developed), or actually being Made A Eunuch By Intent To Make A Eunuch (the exact baggage of which depends, in part, on what you've been made a eunuch for). Both of these cases are likely to make you perceived as something that is effectively Other than a man by default, are commonly assumed to annihilate your sex drive, and are considered to make you physically weaker than other men.
General audience empathy trial by fire is three of the main characters being introduced in a segment where a dog gets killed for a funeral and this is normal
and also two ferrets
Do you have any sort of timeline or plan for releasing the white calf story? The immense amount of worldbuilding and character stuff on this blog is frankly a way of enjoying the story on its own but I am curious about the actual written work.
Answering this having spent the past few weeks working on it a lot more (part of the reason for my inactivity) I Do Not have a formal timeline but life is short and my intent is to share a beta version. Probably a 3rd or even just 2nd draft + proofreading. Though the intent is also to continue from there, hire an editor if I can afford it, and have something polished to self-publish later (which would still be available free).
This is an absolutely terrible way to go about things but I've never had goals loftier than 'self publishing and also hosting it free on fucking ao3 or something', so I'll drop a copy when its at the 'hosting it free on fucking ao3 or something' stage. Under the absolute most ideal conditions (unlikely) that could be a 4 month window at this point, it is a more Feasible goal to have an AO3-tier beta version done by 2027.
Might take a break to give the first few chapters an edit and share those, idk.
I'm trying to identify various extraneous scenes that won't make it past draft 1 to give myself a more realistic appraisal of how much I've written, here's a scene that accomplishes nothing and goes absolutely nowhere of Jaenys picking a fight with a camp follower (who is picking through the site of a battlefield for valuables, which he's extremely upset about because Faisa might be dead there) and losing because he has no fucking idea what to do with a lone elderly peasant woman being completely unintimidated by him
Bull wood bison being loud.
Wood bison are tiny, with most falling into the 4-4.5' range at the shoulder and only the very biggest bulls clearing the 5' mark. Their legs are long, their build is lean, and their humps are narrow and relatively undramatic. Their herds tend to be on the smaller side, consisting of 8-15 cows and young whose movements are directed by a single dominant cow. Mature bulls are predominantly solitary outside of the breeding season, though subordinate breeding-age bulls may form bachelor herds, particularly in more resource rich areas.
They tend to be extremely shy of people, often encountered only as the distant sound of lowing bulls or a blur of brown and red-gold crashing away through the underbrush with alarming speed. They are interfertile with domestic cattle and occasionally known to breed with them, but hybrids are exceptionally rare compared to crosses between cattle and their wild aurochs cousins. Bison/aurochs hybrids are semi-legendary and unlikely to occur due to mechanical difficulties of reproduction alone, given the disparity in size between the species.
Wood bison most prefer mid-density woodland with good opportunities to browse. They exhibit preference for leaves over grass, and mainly consume the upper portions of their favored plants. They are a keystone species in much of their range, most notably for maintaining patches of meadow. They assemble in clearings to socialize and wallow and for communal activity during the breeding season, and preferentially browse young plants along the edges of these open spaces. In many cases, this activity allows for meadows to be maintained where conditions would otherwise be more than adequate for full tree cover, creating microhabitats for grazers and pockets of biodiversity for low growing plants and their pollinators. The seeds of meadow plants stick to their fur, and may be carried long distances to other open areas.
In most Wardi dialects they're referred to either as 'pine cattle' or 'hill cattle' due to this animal's near exclusive association with highland pine forest and the lack of other bison to compare them to, though the species as a whole occupies much wider variety of habitats across its range. Their association with alpine forests in the hotter parts of their range is the result of populations who spread during the LGM becoming stranded as relicts within "sky islands", which may often be the only sufficiently forested/cool habitats to sustain these animals.
Could you put together some kind of summary of Imperial Wardi's history, including its origins? Having trouble piecing together the full timeline, esp. when retcons come into play
Yeah I'll fucking bet lol, your wish is granted I have a LOT of timeline for you. End count as of hitting post now is 10,300 words.
I realized that a lot of this timeline would be really annoying to read without a map for reference, and I have no current maps, so I decided to help by drawing this blob with words on it. This illustration vaguely gestures at how different places mentioned in this post exist in spatial relation to one another.
(note that I've only labeled things that come up in this post, and not all of them because I ran out of space) (Sorry I don't have an actual updated map, geography is my enemy and anything I make with hard lines will be outdated within two months max anyway)
Alrigh tthat being said here's the timeline (under the cut because this is the longest post I have ever made)
TIMELINE:
In the modern AU, would Brakul like to become a father?
He's the only one of them who actually Likes parenting + is good with kids + wants children on any level that extends beyond expectation/necessity, and is extremely attached to his biological children and laments not being able to be their father because they Exist and he's their actual father, but he could've gone his whole life ultimately being okay with the fact that he's in a position to be unmarried and childless. Or at least just focusing on feeling guilty about abandoning his firstborn but not even slightly wanting to start his own household to like, 'make up for it'.
So I think the accurate take for the modern AU version is that he kinda wants kids but not anywhere near to the point that it's a dealbreaker to be in a childless marriage, but also isn't at peace enough with being childless that he won't periodically check if Janeys has budged from his "no, ew" stance, but also kinda knows deep down that he doesn't Really want everything parenthood entails and isn't cut out for that level of lifelong commitment, and at some point would refocus into lamenting that he's not in a position to have much of a relationship with a niece or nephew or something.
It's also a "canon event" that he and Hibrides were in a relationship when they were younger before coming to terms that they were incompatibly gay, she terminated an accidental pregnancy and he guilt tripped her about it for weeks but tried really hard to make it sound like he was mainly upset about greater trust and communication issues and not that she aborted that shit without his approval
I’m curious about the moral status of animals in Wardi, especially non-sacred ones. Have serious religious or philosophical arguments against slaughter or sacrifice ever been raised, and do these ideas have any uptake? Are there any groups of people (beyond individual idiosyncratics) who practice vegetarianism for any reason (not necessarily a moral one)? Do domestic animals have any rights under civil or religious law or are they treated as objects/property? What about wild animals?
Should note ahead of this post that when I use "religious law" this refers to cultural customs and proscriptions that are Strongly socially enforced, often have communal punishment as a backing, and may or may not have backing in the legal mechanisms of the state, but this society does not have holy texts or strict doctrine to adhere to so it's a very mutable sort of 'religious law'. The code of religious law followed by priests (which are a state body) IS more solid but not 1:1 with various forms of common religious law (many customs of which are widely shared but some vary from place to place).
There is no vegetarianism beyond individual idiosyncrasies (and on the other hand, most people have primarily vegetarian diets as a matter of necessity anyway). This is a very unlikely society for religious/morally oriented vegetarianism to take root in, this is one in which veneration and consumption of animals is closely linked rather than viewed as contradictory. There ARE minority stances of cultural criticism against slaughter of cattle in particular (and the other 'hoofed stock', khait and to a lesser extent horses), this is an aspect of a sort of neo-traditionalist stances developing against perceived moral decay/erosion of traditional practices (the latter is True in that former tribal lines and unique customs are becoming increasingly intangible, especially of minority tribes relative to the politically dominant Wardinae and powerful Ephenni).
This specific idea first emerged in some segments of the northeastern Loberani population, and advocates that slaughter of hoofed stock was not an ancestral practice to their people (this is partly true, most eastern Wardi-speaking peoples on the plains around the Kannetod river did not slaughter their cattle under normal circumstances for a large chunk of their history, though like, an Archeological Examination would find evidence of routine horse slaughter) and that others should follow by this example. The claim here is that traditional religious law in which the flesh is not consumed after some types of sacrificial killing is meant as a proscription on livestock slaughter for meat in General, that the particular covenant between humans and hoofed stock entails sharing of the living body only, and that this fact is made obvious by lack of traditional khait slaughter under normal circumstances, in spite of them being ostensibly clean animals for eating. This stance does not advocate vegetarianism, however, just that hoofed stock in Particular should not be slaughtered for food (harvest of milk and blood from live animals, consuming testes extracted in gelding, killing poultry and wild game, and animal sacrifice is not up for question).
(Animal sacrifice is thoroughly embedded in tradition and religious worldview and goes unquestioned outside of individual idiosyncrasy. Barring shifts from external cultural influences, you'd sooner see a large scale religious adoption of full vegetarianism than more than incidental rejection of animal sacrifice)
Domestic animals have "rights" under both religious and state law for clean slaughter (techniques that are largely built around minimizing suffering of the living animal and its deceased spirit, in addition to ensuring that the meat is good to eat). In terms of actual slaughter techniques, this means killing the animal with a deep cut that severs the trachea resulting in death by suffocation, rather than by exsanguination alone (reserved for animal sacrifice) or by other Relatively efficient means of killing (such as piercing the heart, blunt trauma to the skull, breaking necks of poultry, etc). It also protects the animal from additional distress before slaughter such as being immobilized (defined here by having the limbs tied; securing the animal with a halter is normal) or wounded prior to killing. There are other, more immaterial aspects to clean slaughter as a form of cruelty reduction, such as slaughtering out of visibility of other animals, speaking a standard prayer of gratitude before the killing, and extracting the heart from the carcass to be disposed of uneaten (this allows the animal's soul to go unharmed).
Hunting of wild game doesn't need to/can't abide by clean slaughter, but does follow the custom of leaving the heart uneaten and buried, and a longstanding custom upon retrieving a kill is the dealer of the killing blow giving a (very short) formal speech that implies that the hunter was not the cause of the animal's death and expresses gratitude for the given body (I'm having trouble wording it but to frame it in a very cynical and unfair manner, it's an attempt to gaslight the animal into believing it offered itself to die so its spirit won't be mad. Though the gratitude expressed is culturally genuine, if individually a perfunctory act). In most places it's customary to offer something to the animal as its heart is buried, usually the hunter's own blood or default libations of milk/wine. A taboo against hunting nursing wild animals or their unweaned young is held in most places (not a social taboo but a spiritual one with perceived non-human consequences) as well as a myriad of other little taboos (which vary from place to place and sometimes are specific to singular families) that seek to avoid punishment from the wild animal's spirit. Killing albino wildlife in a hunt or under other everyday circumstances is also a broad taboo, as these are generally held to be embodied spirits (different thing from an individual animal's soul, these are generally the spirit of a landscape or body of water rather than that of an animal). A fear of angering greater powers does not prevent killing of nuisance animals (livestock predators, potential/known maneaters, crop pests, venomous snakes, etc), often proactively.
Hoofed stock have some specific legal protections against abuse (only ever really enforceable on any levels beyond the social in cities); a drover can be fined for beating their beasts of burden (as proven by bleeding wounds), this fine is one half bulo of grain or a barter equivalent (this is about a day's pay- goes to the city, or to the animal's owner if it's not the driver), or receiving a public lash to the hands. This is framed as maintenance of public decency.
There are broad cultural stances against cruelty to one's animals (generally defined around an idea of inflicting unnecessary suffering or harming an animal for no reason). A lot of typical and accepted practices would not match up against contemporary animal welfare best practices (ie: khait are generally saddle trained with sessions of an experienced rider mounting it and clinging on until it becomes exhausted and stops fighting, it's normal to cuff an owned dog for unwanted behavior and most people will kick or throw rocks at street dogs that are causing annoyances, there's a hazy line between using a stick or crop to gently guide livestock and whacking it to make it move, etc), but the average person is going to think badly of you if you show cruelty to an animal that isn't causing any harm.
Relationships with domestic animals are framed around reciprocity, and you'll see a notion of kindness towards even broadly disliked animals displayed as a virtuous behavior. For example, a fictional account of the first modern era Usoma (Haigmanitawe Erub) traveling his domain contains multiple moral anecdotes, one of which describes him preventing one of his guard from beating a skinny street dog that stopped in front of his litter, commanding that the dog is spared and even fed from the same supply as one of his own hounds. (the moral here is more that a strong patriarch doesn't need to resort to petty violence and anger to command authority, and is generous and fair to those beneath him, but showing kindness and mercy to even the lowliest of animals is at least used in allegory to display these qualities). One moral folktale motif involves a mistreated owned dog remaining fiercely loyal to its master in spite of the cruelty, saving its master's child from a threat and dying in the process, and the master experiencing profound regret for his treatment of the animal and making amends by giving it a burial outside his home's door (where it can continue to stand guard and be in the company of the living). Another common morality tale involves a greedy and ungrateful man who works his old plow ox to death, after which he finds himself haunted by its ghost and beset by misfortune, experiencing conditions that mirrors that of the ox (overwork, dehydration, starvation), with the story ending in him either learning his lesson and giving the ghost the last of his dwindling food and wine and removing the yoke from its back (at which point the ghost leaves him in peace and his suffering alleviates), or he just dies too and that's the lesson.
Bottom line is that animals are generally valued, especially domestic animals and ESPECIALLY cattle and khait, which are culturally beloved. The worldview classes them as sentient feeling beings and to have a sapient spirit (though the latter is not special to animals and also includes like, rivers and landscapes) and everyday religious practice and observed taboos bear this in mind. They are in no way considered objects that can be treated with however you please. Animals are still firmly property in the sense that they are owned, bartered, inherited, taxed. You're really not going to find societies with domestic animals that Aren't property (in an explicit legal manner or otherwise) because people need them to survive and absolutely no form of domestic animal management can actually grant them personhood-like autonomy, least of all among people living at subsistence agrarian scales where this relationship is one of profound dependence.
High altitude pasture at dawn in the Taijung ('blue belt') mountains, West Rivers country. These mountains comprise part of the broader Highlands region and contain its tallest peak and second-largest (semi intact) pine forest. These pastures are only inhabited on a seasonal basis by herders, while permanent settlements are mostly located in the range's foothills and its two major river valleys.
Ft. two unémeti does
Lioness dragging home an awitet drake in breeding plumage
Awitet and their relatives spend most of their lives at sea, but remain bound to the land for both mating and laying their eggs. Breeding drakes establish small shoreline territories and will spend a few weeks noisily squabbling and displaying, while hens come and go, only lingering to mate with sufficiently blue-flippered drakes and bury their eggs. There may be hundreds of awitet occupying a shoreline colony at any given time during the breeding period.
Most awitet breeding colonies are located on uninhabited islands, as these animals are exceedingly slow and clumsy on solid ground and have limited avenues to defend themselves against big land predators, beyond hissing and flopping themselves into threatening postures. The only mainland awitet breeding colony in Wardin is located within the coastline of the Hamacabe, the only true desert in this territory, and one in which large predators other than jackals and feral dogs (which pose a limited threat to an adult awitet) do not routinely occupy.
However, shifting human settlement and land use patterns in the broader northwest have put tremendous pressure on the regional lion population, and contributed to many of the remnants being driven into new territories with unconventional prey sources (doubly so with the contemporary drought slashing wild ungulate numbers). A small but seemingly stable lion population has emerged on Hamacabe's coasts over the past few decades as shoreline specialists. These lions still range inland in their foraging, but largely sustain themselves by scavenging beached marine life, hunting shorebirds, and capitalizing on the seasonal congregations of awitet. Awitet have been a particular boon to the lions (if only a brief, seasonal one), as they are much easier to kill than deer/gazelle/aurochs, are a calorie-dense treat, and after a couple months their unguarded eggs hatch en masse and provide a few more days worth of easy meals. The colony's numbers could already be noted as dwindling (mostly due to surplus killing of the chicks, who already faced unfavorable odds of surviving their first few hours without the addition of new predators to the mix), and this prey source may not last for much longer before it collapses or relocates to safer shores.
An old wémeta aro (Wardi name) cow showing off her baleen. This species is the biggest marine reptile (maxing out at around 14.5 meters) in the eastern inner seaway system, and is among the most successful in general with a distribution ranging from pole to pole. These are efficient pelagic cruisers and can move with remarkable speed for their size, though lack the dramatic breaching behavior found in some of their close relatives. They are apparently silent animals to human perception, but communicate with other members of their species via infrasound (sometimes visually detectable by a wémeta aro resting on the surface as the water boils with vibration around it).
Unlike many of their smaller relatives, wémeta aro (and the rest of their filterfeeding clade) give live birth to clutches of 6-12 calves and provide no further parental care. Usually, only a couple calves per clutch can be expected to survive to maturity. The calves spend their early years as suction feeding hunters of fish and cephalopods before fully developing their baleen plates and transitioning to filterfeeding. Adult cows migrate en masse to shallow, warm coastal waters to give birth. They may travel thousands of miles in a single year, but always return to their own nursery grounds for this purpose. Where this occurs, it is a predictable seasonal occasion and a prime time to hunt these animals, who otherwise rarely approach the coasts.
A smattering of dessert foods, dramatically sunlit for effect-
Top left: 2 honey and sesame coated dates (dried)
Bottom left: sesame/nut/seed honey balls (mostly sesame with some ground walnuts and poppy seeds)
Center: baked dessert dumpling stuffed with crumbled paneer, chopped dates and walnuts, honey; glazed with anise-spiced honey.
Top right: leftover paneer with leftover spiced honey.
Nut candies like these are made by toasting finely chopped nuts and small seeds (potentially also dried fruit), cooking them in honey and/or palm syrup, shaping them while still warm and pliable, then allowing them to cool before eating. They end up solid on the outside with a decent crunch and a chewy center. These are super easy to make and can be eaten year-round due to being composed entirely of shelf-stable ingredients. This same prep can also double as a crunchy coating for other sweets, as seen with the dates here.
This other dumpling-type dish is large, half-moon shaped, and usually made with barley flour. However, the two co-ops I went to had pretty much every type of flour imaginable save for barley, so fuck me I guess. I mixed durum wheat flour with masa (so at least something in there was accurate, these might be sometimes made with a mix of barley and maize flour as a way to stretch one or the other out) and decided to see what happened. This combination actually worked out alright, as did my intended fancy preparation of using yogurt and honey in the dough. (I actually measured shit this time, 2 cups of durum flour + 1/2 cup of masa + 1/2 cup plain whole fat yogurt + 2 eggs + unknown quantity of honey + enough water for the dough to be the right texture, this was enough to make 4 dumplings).
The glaze is just more honey reduced at high heat with some finely ground anise seed and a little cumin. I thought this turned out to be a nice combination with the pastry, which was otherwise very mild in flavor and only subtly sweet. In most cases, if this sort of additional sweetener is present, it would probably be taken on the side as a dip rather than used as a glaze.
A selection of 'small tachywa' found in the White Sea and parts of the eastern Inner Seaway.
Tachywa is a colloquial term that refers to toothed members of a broader clade of mosasauroid marine reptiles. These are significant among other marine reptiles for being fully aquatic (unlike tiviit, all of whom lay eggs and must haul out for nesting). These mosasauroids can be divided into three major clades: the beaked tachywa which are mostly on the small end of the spectrum and adapted for capturing small prey, the broadmouthed tachywa which are more basal and mostly target large prey, and a group of massive filterfeeders (often classed separately, though they are actually more closely related to beaked tachywa than broadmouthed tachywa are). All are endothermic, viviparous, and covered in tiny, smooth scales. They are primarily visual hunters with excellent eyesight, and many also possess acute directional chemoreception via forked tongues and an aquatically adapted vomeronasal organ (though this capability is heavily reduced in some genera).
Animals on display here (no names yet):
1. This tachywa is only distantly related to the rest seen here, being an example of a smallish broadmouthed tachywa while the rest are beaked. They are mostly found very close to the shoreline, primarily foraging within estuaries and occasionally traveling short distances up into rivers. They are not as fast or robust a swimmer as other small tachywa, but maneuverable and capable of moving very quickly in short bursts, and hunt primarily by ambush rather than pursuit. Of the animals shown here, they are the only one that poses a predatory threat to humans (albeit rarely). Most attacks on adult humans or elowey are actually investigatory in nature, as they prefer smaller prey items, but fully predatory ambush attacks on young children are known to occur. As with their much larger relatives, they handle food items that are too large to swallow whole by performing a 'death roll' to tear off manageable chunks of flesh.
2. This is a generalist predator that pursues a wide variety of small prey, notably foraging for small crustaceans by rooting around in the seabed with their sensitive snouts. These are the small tachywa most commonly pursued by hunters, as they are relatively slow among their brethren, mostly occupy shallow waters, have particularly thick blubber useful for oil, and their meat is mild, even vaguely sweet. They also exhibit the most complex sociality of the tachywa seen here, with related individuals maintaining longterm social bonds, foraging solitarily but often moving in groups. Cows provide direct protection for their calves for about ten months after birth, though the young must feed themselves.
3. This is perhaps the most familiar small tachywa to White Sea coastal communities, as they live almost exclusively in shallow waters and are a common site within bays. They breach frequently and are known to lie at the surface and slap the water with their tails, which appears to play a role in communication with conspecifics. They are notable for closely shadowing fishing boats in order to snatch fish from nets, and are often considered to be highly intelligent and a bit of a nuisance.
4. This species primarily occupies deeper waters near shelf edges, and rarely approaches the shoreline. They are exceptionally fast swimmers, though have poor maneuverability compared to some of their relatives. This is among the more social of these species and generally found in large aggregations, though they do not appear to form permanent social bonds or directly cooperate in hunting. They are known to be capable of capturing small seabirds by launching themselves into the air, and are claimed to sometimes kill fishermen in the same manner (at least in part rooted in accidental airborne collisions with people on boats).
5. This species is more often seen washed up dead than alive, as they spend most of their time foraging in deep water far from the coastline and typically keep their visits to the surface very brief and inconspicuous. They possess very large eyes and have phenomenal low light vision. This tachywa is a suction feeder that predates almost exclusively on cephalopods and other soft bodied animals. Their jaws are toothless save for a pair of small tusks in males, which play a role in sexual display and in reproductive conflict. Old bulls are often heavily scarred with injuries from conspecifics.
On this episode of Lore Friendly Cooking we have one of two Wardi 'dumpling' type dishes, this one being called awore a'wit (literally 'bird's ball', colloquially shortened from awore sedem a'wit for 'bird's nest ball') due to its nestlike appearance during prep. Top left photo shows a fried variant and a baked one I kinda fucked up (the big one), and top right shows the interior of the baked one.
These are made with a mixture of maga (fictional tuber vegetable with a cabbage-y taste; potato suffices) and flour, though cheaper/simpler variants (especially those found as street food) will leave out the tuber and the additional steps it entails in favor of exclusively using flour. The tuber is cooked down and mashed, then combined with a small ratio of flour and water (or with yogurt and egg in more elaborate preparations, which I did here) to make the dough. The dough is rolled into balls, then hollowed out by poking a hole with the finger and pinching the sides to form a cup, then stuffed, sealed, rolled in flour, and cooked (by frying, baking, or steaming).
Preferred stuffings vary regionally (also seasonally depending on ingredient availability), but this dish is most commonly made to extend limited amounts of fresh meat trimmings by combining them with vegetables, with lentils and other preservable/preserved ingredients during lean months, or as a dessert stuffed with cheese and honey. Simpler variants than the ones I made are common as street food in some major urban centers.
The stuffings for today were 1) minced """horse""" shanks (pork shanks) with onions and olives, and 2) minced shrimp with onions, garlic, cilantro, and leftover 'horse'. These stuffings were cooked before going in the bird's balls, but some preparations would have the stuffing be cooked along with the dumpling. The side is a standard hot yogurt sauce with finely minced garlic, chilis, and cilantro, very slightly cooked down in olive oil (left nearly raw), mixed with yogurt at a high ratio, and salted.
Progress photos:
THE SETTING HAS MOSASAURS???
Oh yeah I’ve been neglecting to acknowledge the oceans much but like. Unlike land fauna which is mostly familiar clades present in the pleistocene (with a few aberrent lineages that went extinct in like the fucking cretaceous irl), the oceans are composed more heavily of lineages originating in the cretaceous and none of the irl marine mammals (besides maybe sea cows) are present, it’s mostly marine reptiles in those niches. This is ‘for funsies’
We've obviously at this point seen how important being clean is in Wardi culture, and that made me curious about Jazait/Elowey in generals bathing practices? I know they're largely from different cultures, but it had me curious.
When it comes to elowey cultures in general you're going to see the same range of focus on hygiene and the concept of cleanliness as in human cultures, but less emphasis on inundation with water, more emphasis on brushing as a mode of hygiene, and about the same concern for hygiene surrounding excretory functions, on average. Their fur is a little more water repellent than the average land mammal but it still takes a while to dry and washing too frequently can negatively impact skin and hair health (doesn't stop some societies from insisting on it it as a matter of social acceptability or religious practice though). Brushing is very important for personal hygiene as a matter of removing excess oils, dead skin, dirt, shedding fur, etc, and you're almost never going to find a society where the average person doesn't have multiple combs of different sizes for baseline personal hygiene. Lice and fleas are also a ubiquitous potential issue for elowey (as they are for every sophont with integument, though fleas are less of an issue for humans with that bald thing they've got going on) and something that every person is going to deal with at some point in their lives (if not near-continuously). Combing is also necessary to reduce/eliminate parasite loads.
Elowey also shed their undercoat at a slow, steady pace without seasonal peaks, and living spaces can become clogged with fur without active intervention. Routine brushing for hygiene also helps control a person's shedding, and also allows the hair to be efficiently collected for use in some contexts (some elowey societies use the longer underfur of the mane as a textile source, either as a supplement for more fruitful animal/plant fibers or on its own for special items/garments).
You'll sometimes see people using their teeth on themselves/their children/etc in a pinch, but use of the anatomical tooth comb (flattened/projecting lower incisors) is not instinctual so much as something that comes to mind when no tools are available (or is a cultural practice supplementary to grooming with tools), is not as efficient as anything that can be done by hand, and is sometimes culturally or individually considered to be animalistic/unhygenic or otherwise a social faux pas (it can be kind of similar to using one's saliva for grooming, like how in some contexts it's normal for an adult to lick their fingers to do some quick grooming of their child or how you might resort to using spit to get something gross off you if you don't have water).
For Jazaiti society specifically, under ideal conditions a person should fully bathe with fresh water about once a lunar week (per Jazaiti timekeeping, this is every 8 days), fully dry comb every morning and wet comb every night (lightly dampening fur with water and other cleansers prior to combing it). Multiple different types of combs and brushes are used which have different names (I don't have the names), a wide and fine toothed comb for fur maintenance, a long and very fine toothed comb for deep grooming/louse removal, and a plant fiber/animal bristle brush used for wetting the fur and applying oil or other topical fluids. Combing yourself or others with your teeth is considered animalistic and unbecoming. For Elumuqi Jazait, where the average person may be in frequent contact with seawater, the fur is also oiled during daily wet combing to maintain skin and fur moisture (the traditional all-purpose oil source is from the blubber of small tachywa (dolphin-sized mosasauroids)). Nagualizimuqi Jazait mostly use olive oil for routine self care and reserve tachywa oil for ceremonial purposes. It is a baseline expectation that one comports themselves and represents their clan with dignity, part of which is a clean physical appearance and smell, fur that is tidy and unmatted, and not having fleas visibly jumping all over you.
Ablution of the hands and feet is where the more religious dimensions of hygiene reside. Saltwater and freshwater are both appropriate for ablution. A person with unclean feet can tread a pathway for demons to follow into otherwise guarded areas. One should never wear their outdoor shoes into the home or other protected spaces, and should wash their feet before passing through the entrance (people keep washbasins at the entrances of buildings. The method is to extract basin water into a cup, use this to wipe down both feet, then pour the rest over the hands and scrub). A person has two souls, one of which is continually molded by the world around you and molds it in turn. This one is located in the wrists and hands, and unclean hands can contaminate the people and things around you. Ablution of the hands is a routine necessity. This society is particularly touchy about excretion as a source of pollution. Latrines must be located outside of the home (though many Nagualizimuqi Jazait communities have culturally adapted to having strictly delineated areas of the home for use of a chamberpot, in cases where they're in mixed Jazaiti/Wardi settlements and the practices of the Wardi majority preempt having suitable public latrines), and one is supposed to clean the anus and genitals with water and smooth rocks kept for this purpose and then rinse the hands, or at the very least to not enter the home or engage in several other key activities until this ablution has been completed.