Dominion Era/Tretallë (Culture)

Known in IktOrryk as the Istfet, and in the Common Tongue as the Bone Elves, the Tretallë are the sister-race of the High Elves. Both these elfin races hail from the eastern continent, known as IldSond to the races of Man, and the Termalttë to the Tretallë. The true ancestral home of the Tretallë, at least, by the accounts of the High Elfin faith, is at the foot of the Shrouded Peaks. However, going by the history of the Tretallë, their oldest recorded home is Ifatallë Cselvë, the Ivory City, home to the Ivory Throne at the heart of the illustrious Forest of Bones.

Physiology

The Tretallë are close relatives of the High Elves. While the Elledynnë are generally leaner and shorter, the Tretallë are more well-built and taller. In addition, where the High Elves are fair and at times bronzed, the Tretallë are a different matter entirely. They are pale, and their skin-tone ranges from alabaster to ivory, to a very light grey, like ash. Most Tretallë burn easily in direct sunlight, but many of them are desensitized from these effects from childhood, if they are deemed to have a healthy enough interest in conquest to join the army.

They are less adept than their Elfin brethren in sneaking around in the dark, but a High Elf would rather be caught dead than caught doing something so boorish. Their manual dexterity, on the other hand, is quite unmatched in the East.

While generally speaking, their most common features make it more difficult for them to be stealthy in small places, unlike their High Elfin brethren, and the Woodlands and Rogue elves in the West, they are more than capable in larger chambers. They excel at covering large distances on foot and have extraordinary endurance, lending credence to the idea that they were originally from a mountain environment. However, they prefer to use their horses unless absolutely necessary.

The Tretallë are also very capable at navigating many different kinds of terrain. Again, lending credence to the High Elfin story, the Tretallë are amazing at managing mountainous terrain, which the Elledynnë are more or less terrible at.

In addition, males of the race are almost never prone to promiscuity. In fact, they have a muted sex drive. It has long been argued that because the Tretallë have the longest natural life expectancy of the Elfin races, they do not see the need to procreate very often. Needless to say, the females often find themselves bereft of any sexual pleasure if they depend on the men, and instead rely on other women to keep them company, save for when the males are, for lack of a better term, "in heat." Counter-intuitively, however, Tretallë males are not possessed of smaller-in-comparison genitalia than the other Elfin races.

Last but not least, like the Elfin races in the East, the Tretallë are blue-blooded. Haemocyanin is the protein that they use in their blood to transport oxygen, because on the Eastern continent, iron is rare, and copper is more abundant in the environment.

Facial Features

One of the most evident features of the Tretallë, apart from their skin, are their long faces and prominent cheekbones and jaws. The pronouncement of the jaw is more evident in males than in females, while the females generally have longer, more slender faces. Their eyebrows are thin and long, typically tapering to a point. The Tretallë do not have very large foreheads, though there is a pronounced difference between males and females. Regardless of gender, Tretallë often have widows' peaks centred on the middle of their foreheads. Their noses are typically hooked, and their lips are often thin. Like most of their elfin cousins, the Tretallë possess pointed ears. While Male ears are sharper and generally longer than female ones, female ears curve towards the head and in some cases, can even lie flat against the skull.

All in all, the structure of Tretalleri faces make them seem rather cold and always somber, if not angry. They are often described as an angular people, and said to be possessing of an eerie kind of beauty all too often associated with death.

There is very little variation in eye colour with the Tretallë. Generally speaking, Tretalleri eyes come in combinations of different hues and shades, with steel grey being the most common, to gold, green, and finally, most rarely, violet. A child will typically have eyes of a middling colour between his/her parents, but it has happened that a child is born with completely different-coloured eyes. The Tretallë often chalk this up to merely the will of the Nine.

Similarly, Tretalleri hair is not varied. A typical Tretallë will have silvery-white hair, but hair-colour ranges from light grey to platinum.

Finally, the most distinctive features of the Tretalleri face are the two bands of slightly discoloured skin(typically darker, and with the a slight hue that is similar to the individual's eye-colour) that run down the sides of their faces. Male bands generally run down from the temple and stop at the corners of the eye, while female bands generally extend all the way to the jaw. It is not unheard of for males to have female bands and vice-versa. These individuals are the Tretalleri equivalent of transgendered humans, although there is little in the way of discrimination against them in Tretalleri society.

Musculature

Because most males are trained from birth to run and ride horses into battle, the muscle density of Tretalleri males is generally concentrated around the legs, lower back, and core. It is important to note, however, that the Hunter Corps of the Tretalleri army maintain greater upper-body strength in order to hurl spears further, faster, and with more acuity.

Males tend to stand a full head taller than females of their age, but even Tretalleri females are significantly taller than their Elfin brethren. Males have slightly broader shoulders than their hips with a torso that tapers ever so slightly down to their hips.

Females, on the other hand, are generally considered the masters of the siege and thus are not trained as cavalry. They are welcome to join the ranks of riders, of course, but most are content with building the massive machines that the Tretallë are famed and feared for. Because of this, they are generally trained to be capable of lugging around heavy equipment, and thus have greater upper-body strength than males.

Female Tretallë generally have uniform muscle density as lifting often involves the entire body. As a result, they lack the hourglass, effeminate physique of the High Elfin women, nor do they possess petite stature of their Western cousins. They typically have the same shape as the males, albeit, they are slightly more curvaceous.

Psychology

Although they are generally painted as a humourless race, the Tretallë are, in fact, more or less normal as compared to any of the other races. Any visitor to the heartland of the Dominion are pleasantly surprised by the presence of personable individuals.

However, Tretallë outside of the heartland are generally cold and calculating. The stereotype persists because there is reason for it to exist. Tretallë who join the army are, from a young age, trained to be this way because the Tretallë value clear minds above all else during wartime efforts. Because of their reputation as conquerors, the Tretallë outside the heartland are often quelling rebellions and taking over land. As a result, Tretallë in conquered nations are generally still in their wartime mindsets.

As already stated, male Tretallë have a largely diminished sex drive. In truth, however, this is only true for most of the year. Every month in the Tretalleri calendar, males have a period of "heat," where the males feel a sudden spike in the desire to have sex. Most of the time, the females are more than glad to oblige them, but where there are no females to be had, males are more than happy to have a go at each other.

Tradition

Collectively, the Tretallë are neither as festive, light-hearted, nor superficial as their High-Elfin brethren. Though they have often been described as a grim people possessed of a morbid sense of humour and fascination with the macabre. The stereotype has been a long-standing one, and almost in vindication of the stereotype, the Tretallë can't care less about it. In fact, the Tretallë are normal. They are, admittedly, less prone to humour and more vulnerable to bouts of seriousness, but they are much like everyone else.

The Tretallë, however, do celebrate every so often, mostly in reverence to the Ivory Throne and their people's history of conquests and feats of war.

The Tretallë are devoted most to the one whom they call the Stranger, much to the chagrin of their Elfin cousins. Because of their fascination with the avatar of Death itself, sacred to their people are the heralds of its coming: bones and blood. To the Tretallë, ivory is the most sacred resource, and many of them are willing to pay fortunes for ivory of the highest quality. In fact, they call ivory 'Ifatallë' which means pristine bone in Tretalleri.

The Feast for Victory

This is one of the most important celebrations in Tretalleri society. It is a day dedicated to the celebration of the Pale Imperator, His throne, and His Dominion.

The feast for victory is a festival lasting a week that begins on the day of a Pale Imperator's coronation, and every nine years hence. This is one of the few truly festive occasions in Tretalleri culture, where both men and women and everything in between are expected to partake in joviality and debauchery. Each day of this week is, in fact, a day of religious obligation, and all men under the Dominion are required to supplicate the Gods, particularly the Warrior and the Stranger, for another nine years of victory and conquest for the Dominion.

As the sun sets upon the Dominion and the stars begin to shimmer in the skies, the food is brought out for the nightly banquets. All are invited, rich or poor, young or old, to partake of the bounty of the Dominion and the lands under its heel. On the first night, however, the banquet is filled with dishes from the motherland, which are hardy and less-than-succulent, in order to remind all of the Imperator's subjects of the Dominions humble beginnings. All of the other days are filled with food from many different lands, and the worth of a banquet is decided by how many people grow sick of having had too much to eat.

Jomdtallë

Known as the Day of Bones in the common tongue, the Jomdtallë is an annual day of obligation prominent among the members of the Blood, who have the resources to perform the day's duties. It is a day of solemnity for everyone, but the religious obligation is mandated only to the Tretallë. However, it has been an increasing fashion in some of the older colonies of the Dominion that any race under the Dominion's sovereign purview would participate in the day's observations.

When any member of a family dies, the matriarch of the family brings the body forth to one of the Priests for two reasons: anthropomancy, and a simple calculation. Based upon centuries of experience and well-kept records, the Priests have devised a way to determine how fast rot takes a body. Upon determining this value, the Priests bequeath a number of years to the matriarch. After this number of years has passed, the body of the dead will have decayed enough that only the bones remain, and even those are fragile enough to shatter and in some cases, crush.

It is on the Day of Bones when the interred bones are dug up and cleaned and prepared to either be ground into a fine dust for infusion and reinforcement of wooden weapons or luxury furniture. Alternatively, bones that are not brittle enough to be crushed are broken into shards for integrating into the family Bone Tree.

Jomdcorvë

This day is perhaps the bloodiest 'celebration' in Tretalleri culture. It is a sometimes downright-fanatical day of devotion to the Stranger that occurs every three years while a Pale Imperator sits on the Ivory Throne, or every six when one does not. On this day, known in the common tongue as the Day of Ravens, the rookeries set free their ravens for the day. There is no risk of losing ravens as they have been trained to return on sundown the same day. During the intervening hours between dawn and dusk, men and women alike are required to leave out scraps of meat, seeds, or any sort of food for the ravens.

Occasionally, especially in more fanatical domains of the Dominion, where the local populace has taken on the Averë Nenn, blood is spilt on this day. This bloodletting is done through a series of duels, mostly between young men and women, called Urvelladcorve, The Flight of the Ravens, where blood may be spilt, but lives may not be taken.

In religious centres of the Dominion, where the population is largely Tretalleri, darker rituals take place in the temples of the Nine. Most outlying towns and agricultural hamlets partake in ritual animal sacrifice and haruspicy, the act of foretelling future events using the entrails and viscera of dead animals. In larger cities, where there are decent populations of the Gallarë, and the death of one is not too big a burden, one of the mages is brought forth in a ritual sacrifice with much fanfare and pomp.

Gruesome as the Rite of Sanguine Benediction might be to the outsider, it is in fact a great honour to the Gallarë to be chosen for this task. When the sacrifice is done, and the blood of the magus purified of its iron, anthropomancy is performed to determine the fate of the city until the next Day of Ravens. After this, the body of the sacrificed is put to good use. The purified blood, painstakingly stripped of iron and collected drop for drop, is used by the Priests to create elixirs of strength, courage and fortitude, given to any who are willing to pay a hefty price for the upkeep of the temples of the Nine.

If the city where the Rite of Sanguine Benediction is performed has a High Rookery, the corpse is taken there to be picked clean by the Pale Ravens, large birds with ivory-white plumage and beady eyes filled with intelligence infinitely greater than the common raven. After they are fed, the Pale Ravens sleep until their next meal or until their services are needed. These ravens are a special breed meant for quick, long-distance flight, and are reared from birth to feed only on Tretalleri flesh.

When the feeding is done and only the bones remain, they are painstakingly dried, cleaned, fractured, polished, and carved. When the preparation is done, the bones are hung from the twisted and gnarled branches of the city's Grey Tree situated at the heart of the city's greatest temple courtyard. This ritual is a grander, more elaborate, and more beautiful version of what is done on the Day of Bones.

Finally, it is important to note that Blood Magic runs rampant in the streets on this day. Legend has it that the more Days of Ravens a Tretallë has witnessed in his/her life, the darker the stripes on his/her face will be, a sign of the Stranger's blessings of wisdom. It is also worth noticing that historically, it is after sundown on the Day of Ravens that the most successful military campaigns of the Dominion have been carried out.

The Arcane Taboo

For being a race of warmongers and conquerors bent on dominance over much of the known world, the Tretallë are surprisingly opposed to anything arcane. There is no specific document about why there exists a taboo against magic in Tretallë society, but nonetheless it exists. Scholars from other races, many of them under the umbrella of the Dominion, posit that this disdain for magic stems from the Tretallë's loathing of their High Elfin cousins.

To this end, much of Tretallë society is dedicated to finding ways to do things without having to resort to the arcane, not that many of the Tretallë are born with the spark to wield magic to begin with. Particularly powerful Tretallë magi are, counter-intuitively, taken to the Shrouded Peaks, and trained to use their abilities. At least what's left of them. They are trained, solely, in the art of delving for magic in individuals, and manipulating metals, Elledtrillë in particular.

These individuals are called the Trigallarë. The word translates, roughly, in the Common Tongue to "Bound by Metal-Blood." In Tretalleri society, these individuals are considered slaves. They are, however, the slaves with the most rights. They have many freedoms, and are not bound to remain in sight of their masters at all times. They are bound, merely, to serve the Ivory Throne for life.

While the blood of most Tretallë is blue, The Trigallarë have red blood. Iron, Triohrë in the Tretalleri dialect, is forced to run in their veins, through the only kind of magic that the Tretallë practise regularly because it does not require a spark for the arcane: blood magic. In addition, the Trigallarë are marked with iron tattoos all over their bodies, with the only sizable gap, where magic could escape, being around their wrists. This gap is vital for the Binding of other Tretalleri magic-users.

The Binding

Because the hatred of the arcane is so indoctrinated in Tretallë, individuals who realize that they are capable, or begin to manifest magical abilities, generally volunteer themselves in order to avoid bringing shame to their Blood. In fact, in many ways, this is considered the noble and "right" thing to do. This recognition, however, might as well be post-mortem, as once the Binding is performed, the individual is no longer a freeman and is dead by all rights to his/her family and the records.

There are two forms of Binding rituals: the first is for the magi who do not have the potential nor innate talent to become Trigallarrë. These magi are made slaves called the Galtë. The Bound. When a magus enters the custody of the state, either voluntarily or through capture, a Trigallarrë clasps Elledtrillë manacles and a collar made of the same metal to the soon-to-be slave. At the same time, the Trigallarë fastens an Elledtrillë band around his/her wrist.

In a long and painful process, both for the Trigallarrë and the soon-to-be-Galtë, the Trigallarrë channels the magus' well of arcane potential through the Elledtrillë. This process also siphons much of the Galtë's power and traps it in the Elledtrillë collar and manacles, with the band around the Trigallarë's wrist functioning as a control mechanism that allows its wearer to either completely burn out the Galtë's magic, or restrict and direct the Galtë's magic.

The Binding is different for the Trigallarrë, and it is one of the most well-kept secrets in the world. The temple at the heart of the Shrouded Peaks is accessible only to the highest members of the Bound Circle, the not-so-secret society that stands at the heart of the anti-arcane culture of the Dominion. In the centre of this temple is an artifact that is used to change the very chemistry and biology of the soon-to-be Trigallarrë. This artifact is called the Stranger's Embrace.

The process with which blue blood is replaced with iron-filled red is unclear, not even to the Bound Circle itself. Needless to say, the ritual is lengthy and painful. Most candidates pass out long before the blood magic working gets completely underway. When the process is complete, the candidate Trigallarrë is allowed a day's rest before the tattooing begins. Using tattoo ink with iron filings and iron oxide, a magic-inhibiting lattice is permanently drawn into the individual's skin. This process completes the Binding and after a period of rest, the Trigallarrë is educated in his/her new role in Tretallë society and trained in the requisite skills before being returned to the capital.