dice-domino:

The Tal

Residing in the northern mountainous regions of Othard, the Tal are easily identified by their painted masks; status symbols custom-tailored to each individual to reflect their role, rank, and spiritual identity. The Tal are one of the few tribes that welcome both Xaela and Raen, believing the color of one’s scales matters far less than how they can contribute to the clan.

Training fierce hawks to capture food during the day, and tigers to stalk prey at night, the Tal have gained a reputation for their resourceful hunting methods and kinship with their beasts. With food shortages rarely being an issue, the tribe is allowed more time to establish alliances and adopt aspects from other cultures, now branching out into the steppe and making their presence known.

Nearly every Tal has a familiar, a designated animal guardian to travel and hunt with. Tribe children undergo a blood ritual under the stars to determine which kind of creature they are spiritually linked with, and are then sent out to gain its trust. Within one moon, they must return to the tribe with the unfettered animal at their side in order to earn their first mask.

Due to the clan’s unwillingness to part with their familiars wherever they travel, they will often run into issues within big cities, markets, or establishments that prohibit potentially dangerous animals from entering. As a result, most of the tribe’s current traders are clan members who have much smaller, less intimidating familiars (a sheep, hawk, or bat for example).

Should someone’s familiar pass away, its name and symbol is tattooed onto their body, and they must wait at least twelve moons before finding another. Once this waiting period is up, if a person is able to gain the trust and loyalty of an adolescent animal from the wild within three suns, it’s believed to be a reincarnation of the previous familiar.

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Although pure blooded Tal no longer exist due to time and their adoptive nature of other Au Ra, certain ancestral features and body-modification traditions still exist in many today.

• Glowing eyes. Many Au Ra have naturally bright limbal rings, but for the Tal, this glow illuminates their irises as well, giving them a particularly piercing stare. Unfortunately, this genetic flaw can occasionally lead to a rare illumination of the inner lens, causing blindness at birth. Those born with this are called “Seers”, oracles believed to hold vast wisdom. The top Seer is given a soul crystal that’s been passed down for many generations.
• The unique curve of Tal horns are sharp, distinctive, and almost demonic in appearance. For ceremonial purposes, the women are known to decorate their horns and scales in vibrant colors, opalescent paints, luminescent patterns, or fine jewelry.
• Their tails are typically much longer, thicker and more muscular than other Au Ra. They learn to use this ancestral trait in combat to violently whip or slam their opponents off balance. It is not uncommon for Tal to armor their tails with spikes and blades.
• As a show of spiritual solidarity, tribe members who have predatory animal familiars will usually grow their nails out, then sharpen them into claws. They will frequently do the same with their teeth, filing their incisors to look much fiercer and more carnivorous. Hunters who apply this level of modification to themselves will often paint a sharp set of teeth onto their masks.
• One of the Tal’s rarer, but more fascinating traits passed down through the generations are elongated metatarsal bones, giving some Tal a very digitigrade posture. Children born with these feet are trained to be “Vaulters,” tasked to leap across wide ravines in order to construct bridges from one area to the next. They are gifted with the ability to run faster, jump farther, and take minimal fall damage.
• Tongue-splitting, horn-piercing, and scarification are some of the more prevalent body modifications seen within the clan. The purposes these mods serve are sacred, aesthetic, and sometimes sexual.

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The Tal are very egalitarian in nature, and do not force any social expectations on their people when it comes to gender identity and sexuality. It is just as common for the women to have multiple partners as it is for the men, and polygamous relationships are the norm. Adults regularly engage in levels physical intimacy that would make most outsiders extremely uncomfortable, but nothing is ever acted upon without solid consent. Should a Tal ever touch anyone without their permission, it may result in banishment. More extreme cases will result in execution.

Monogamous relationships within the tribe are not treated as bad or unusual. They are believed to be representative of a lost soul finally uniting with its other half, becoming one and helping bring spiritual balance to the tribe.