Difference between revisions of "Dominion Era/Tretallë (Characteristics)"

Latest revision as of 18:02, 19 February 2016

Dominion Era Tretallë
Bone Elves
Istfet, The Strangers, Invaders, Deathriders
Imperial Standard of the Tretalleri Dominion
Land of Origin
Continent of Origin	Termalttë
Homeland	Teýrivellë
Capital	Ifatallë Cselvë
Racial Lore
Language	Tretalleri
Characteristics	Tretallë (Characteristics)
Culture	Tretallë (Culture)
History	Dominion Era
Government	Tretallë (Government)
Military	Tretallë (Military)
Stats	Tretallë (Stats)
Racial Relations
Allies	None
Enemies	Elledynnë
Neutrals	None

Though they may be pale, stoic, and unsmiling, there is no question that the Tretallë possess a beauty all their own. Contrary to what the High Elves—who find that the Tretallë are revolting on a primal level—believe, there is a strange appeal to the somber grace of the Tretallë and their Dominion.

It is no mere accident that the Tretalleri God of Death, The Stranger is depicted in religious texts and artworks as just another Tretallë. The Bone Elves are a people that have, over the many years of the expansion of their empire through fire and friendship, recognized the meaning that their appearances carry. As gruesome and morbid as that meaning might be for them, they embrace it and wear it as a badge of honour and of devotion to their patron: The Stranger.

Physical Qualities

The Tretallë are rather unique when it comes to their outwardly appearances. In fact, as far as the people of the Dominion know, they have not met any other people, apart from their despised High Elves, that are even remotely similar to them physically.

Flesh and Blood

The Tretallë are close relatives to the High Elves, sharing a common ancestor whose civilization has long since descended to ruin. While the Elledynnë are in general leaner and shorter, the Tretallë pride themselves of their height and much stronger musculature. Males tend to stand a full head taller than females of their age, but even Tretalleri females are significantly taller than their High Elfin brethren.

In addition, where the High Elves are fair of skin naturally—though those who are well-off in society tend to have bronzed skin due to sunbathing—the Tretallë are a different matter entirely. The Bone Elves are pale, and their skin-tone can range from alabaster to ivory. More often than not, Tretalleri skin colour is very light grey, much like fresh, undisturbed ashes. Because of their lack of natural melanin, the Tretallë burn rather easily in direct sunlight as children. Most adults are desensitized from sunburn, however, as the result of extensive military training so long as they are determined to have a healthy enough interest and body to participate.

Finally, it is important to note that unlike the Woodland and Rogue Elves of the West, the blood of the Tretallë and their sister race, the High Elves, is blue. Due to the general lack of iron in the environment on Di'Termalttë, for reasons yet unknown, copper is far more abundant and most creatures that arise from the East are blue-blooded.

Facial Features

One of the most characteristic features of a Tretallë, apart from the colour of her skin, is the shape of her face. Tretalleri faces are generally long, with prominent cheekbones and angular jaws. The pronouncement of the jaw is far more evident in males than in females, though the females of the race generally have longer and more slender faces.

Tretalleri eyebrows tend to be thin and long, often tapering to a point. The Tretallë do not have very large foreheads, and there is no difference of note in this area between males and females. Regardless of gender, however, the Tretallë often have widows' peaks centred on the middle of their hairlines.

Tretalleri noses are typically hooked, and their lips are often thin. Like most of their Elfin cousins the world over, the Tretallë possess pointed ears. Where male ears are sharper and generally longer than female ones, female ears often curve toward the back of the head and can sometimes even lie flat against the side of the skull.

All in all, the structure of Tretalleri faces contributes to the belief that they are rather cold and always somber, if not angry. It certainly does not help that seeing mirth upon a normally-stoic face is rather eerie as well. For all their quiet beauty, the Tretallë are often said to be possessed of an eerie kind of beauty that is all too often associated with death.

Eye and Hair Colour

There is very little variation in eye coloration among the Tretallë. Generally, Tretalleri eyes come in combinations of an array of different, but specific, hues and shades. Steel grey is the most common eye colour, with gold, green following right after. While there are no true historical accounts of Tretalleri individuals with crimson eyes, such stories have certainly survived as folklore. If these accounts of crimson eyes are corroborated by biological or historical evidence, red would be the rarest eye-colour, just after violet.

A Tretalleri child will typically have eyes of a middling colour between the eye-colours of her parents. However, it is not unheard of that children are born with eyes that are of an entirely different colour to their parents. Though rarer than the previous situation, there are also officially recorded instances of heterochromia iridum in the Tretallë. As with anything that is inexplicable to them at the moment, the Tretallë hold these deviations from the norm to simply be the will of the Nine.

Similarly, Tretalleri hair is not varied in coloration. A typical Tretallë will have silvery-white hair, though the colour often ranges from light grey all the way to platinum.

The Wisdom Bands

As distinctive as the colour of their skin might be, one of the most prominent features of the Tretalleri face are two bands of slightly discoloured skin. These bands are often darker than the surrounding skin, with a slight, subtle hue that is similar to the individual's eye-colour. These bands typically adorn the sides of Tretalleri faces. Male bands generally originate from behind the ear, sweep up to meet the temple, and then descend to touch the corners of the eyes. Female bands are slightly different in that they extend all the way down to the jaw and lower still to the collarbone.

Because the bands do not manifest until sexual maturity is reached, it is not unheard of that some males manifest female bands and vice-versa. Years of study by the leading scholars of the Dominion strongly suggest that these bands are tied to gender expression. As a result, it is widely thought that these individuals whose bands do not match their biological sex are the Tretalleri equivalent of transgender humans. Fortunately for these individuals, there is very little in the way of discrimination against them, and society at large welcomes them so long as they are decent people and contribute to the Dominion just as much as everyone else.

Physical Capabilities

The bulkier physiques of the Tretallë ensures that they cannot be as adept as their High Elfin brethren when it comes to stealth. However, as High Elfin society has evolved alongside the Dominion, it has quickly also become clear that the High Elves more than make up the Tretalleri disadvantage by wearing gaudy, impractical armour. Not that High Elves would be dead doing something so boorish as sneaking around in the dark to begin with. At the same time, however, the Tretallë also hold a significant advantage over the High Elves in the form of martial prowess, as, all other things being equal, their greater muscle mass means that they are generally stronger than the High Elves.

Where the Tretallë truly shine, however, is their ability to cover almost-excessively large distances on foot. Though Tretalleri endurance is naturally above average, martial training from an early age ensures that should the Tretalleri army march against an inexperienced foe, they would be likely to overrun the opposition simply by being much too fast for any normal army. That being said, unless absolutely necessary, most Tretallë men prefer to use their warhorses unless absolutely necessary.

Finally, where the High Elves are absolutely dreadful at navigating the craggy twists and turns of rougher mountains, the Tretallë are more or less right at home in such environment. The Tretallë are able to traverse mountainous or hilly terrain much better than most other peoples can, though these skills are very rarely put to use outside of regular military mountaineering exercises.

Musculature

Because most males are trained from an early age to be footsoldiers or cavaliers, the muscle density of Tretalleri men is generally concentrated around the legs, the lower back, and, most essentially, the core. This is not to say that all Tretalleri males have the same build, however. It is important to note that the men of Di'Talfinttë, the Hunter Corps of the Tretalleri army, maintain a more even distribution of muscle density. This is due to the fact that the Hunters require greater upper-body strength than normal in order to hurl spears further, faster, and with more acuity.

Females, on the other hand, are generally considered and trained to be masters of the siege and heavy ranged weaponry. They are welcome to join the ranks of the footsoldiers or the cavalry, of course, but most are content with building, managing, and running the massive machines of war that the Tretallë are rightly acclaimed for in history. Trained to be capable of lugging around heavy equipment, most females tend to have greater upper-body strength than males.

A rather humorous expression often spoken when someone seems to not be very well suited to their occupations, particularly because of physical shortcomings, goes: "If she can't punch you unconscious and he can't kick you dead, maybe she should have his crossbow and maybe he should have her lance."

Body Shape

Males possess shoulders that are slightly broader than their hips. Their torsos taper ever so slightly toward the hip. Females tend to have uniform muscle density all over the body, and as a result, they lack the hourglass physique of High-Elfin women. They typically have the same shape as the males, albeit possessed of somewhat wider hips in order to accommodate the stresses of childbirth.

Psychology

Though history and other peoples paint the Tretallë as a humourless race, the Tretallë are not. Surely, most of the time they seem to be somber. Their solemn bearing, however, is an artifact of the martial training that most of them receive from a young age. Any Tretallë worth his or her weapons is ready to fight for the Dominion at any time. Any visitor to the heartland of the Dominion, however, is bound to be pleasantly surprised by the presence of rather personable individuals.

The fact that Tretallë outside of the heartland, especially in newly-conquered territories, are generally cold and calculating is what contributes to the stereotype that the entire race is the same way. This caricature of the Tretallë persists because there is reason for it to. It is apparent in the historical record that territories gained through diplomatic means do not develop this view of the Tretallë until much later, when peoples from other lands—particularly ones attained through conquest—have had a chance to mingle with the local populace.

In conquered territories, Tretallë are told and trained to be alert and clear-minded, no matter how complete the conquest might seem. It is sometimes the most quiet conquered realms that eventually erupt in rebellions decades after the conquest. As a result of this, Tretallë outside of the heartland, and particularly in conquered territories, remain in their wartime mindsets and thus actively suppress expressing emotions while in public.

Reproduction and Sexuality

With regards to reproduction and sexuality, the Tretallë are once again relatively unique among the peoples that they have thus far encountered. Males are rarely, if ever, prone to promiscuity and in fact are possessed of a rather muted sex drive when it comes to the opposite sex. Whether this is a result of the long enslavement of the Tretallë at the hands of the early High Elves or a genetic matter is unknown to the scholars of the Dominion era.

Because the Tretallë have the longest natural life expectancy of the Elfin races, they do not see the need to procreate very often. In fact, they are rather opposed to the idea of having birth rates much higher than what is needed to maintain their military.

Needless to say, females of the race often find themselves bereft of any sexual pleasure should they depend on men. Fortunately for the Tretallë, very few of their number are in fact heterosexual and most lie more towards the centre of the spectrum of sexuality.

It must be noted, however, that males of the race can, in fact, lead rather sexual lifestyles with other males. This is a quirk in Tretalleri sexuality that has yet to be explained. It is, however, theorized that early on in the evolutionary history of the Tretallë and the Elledynnë, the genetic line that would eventually diverge into the Tretallë used to be as libidinous as the line that would become the Elledynnë. Lengthening lifespans exerted evolutionary pressure on individuals that mated and reproduced often, as the costs of rearing children would rise dramatically over time. This led to an eventual arrangement whereby males paired off with males and females paired off with females until such time that the males entered "heat" for the females and were thus available for procreation.

This theory, which is widely accepted as true in the academia, also handily explains why the Tretallë are prone to polygamy and polyamory, as a group of long-lived individuals working together to raise a shared group of children end up expending less resources over-all.