What is daily life like in Ayviah society?
If you’re a male, not much. You spend your days caring for children and providing for their needs. The men teach young boys how to care for the communal nest and future children and how to prepare the food the hunters bring back. Adult males are essentially a cluster of concubines. They don’t particularly belong to any one female, but are expected to submit to all of them.
If you’re a female, you’re a hunter or a scholar. Hunters leave to gather food (meat, mostly, occasionally fish depending on the season). They also fight to protect their territory and the communal nest. They pass down generation after generation worth of fighting techniques and combat magic specifically designed to hunt animals and destroy enemies. Scholars, meanwhile, study and memorize the nest’s archives of knowledge, pass down oral traditions, and conduct research into magic and the natural world - as it pertains to Ayviah, of course.
They’re very knowledgeable about medicines (that work for Ayviah), poisons (for everything), chemistry, biology, geology, magic, the elements... Ayviah are one of the few races who specialize in non-elemental magic, but good luck getting any from them! They don’t even conduct trades between the nests, let alone with other races. (A nest being something like a clan. It’s their community.)
Ayviah hatchings happen once a year. The birth rate of males to females is 1:10, but their childhood training regiment is so Spartan that less than half the female children of any hatching even survive to adulthood. Regardless of whether a girl’s gonna be a Hunter or a Scholar as an adult, they all go through the same kind of training as children. Any Ayviah woman is fully able to conduct herself in combat. Their fighting style uses mostly magic to strengthen their body or supplement attacks performed with their taloned feet and sharp beaks. When they use their wings, it’s to buffet and stun the enemy but not actually cause damage - an Ayviah’s wings are their life, if they were damaged it’d be as good as a death sentence. They’re very careful with their wings. (Most Ayviah do not have human arms and just have wings. It’s VERY RARE for an Ayviah to have wings AND arms unless it’s a hybrid, which are also really rare.)
They’re highly xenophobic. They hate ANYONE that isn’t from their own nest, even other Ayviah. Nests with Sleepers tend to become more tolerant (as the Sleepers get powerful and forcefully take over leadership of the nest), but traditional nests have a Kill On Sight policy.