The Hunters of Nerlakia

Nerlakia is a place not for the faint heart or of the frail body. It is a brutal place where one mistake can cause one to be eaten, stung by venom, or worse fates. Large beasts like drakes and wyverns live within it, and nearly seem more brutal than any other region on the continent. Even the smaller things, from salamanders who use venom to paralyze a creature and lays eggs within, to flowers that release a poisonous seed powder if inhaled where it then allows it to grow once more, seem to be out to kill all living things. By all accounts, nothing should survive here, nothing could survive here.
The Hunters of Nerlakia survived and thrived.
From such extreme conditions came an extreme group of people. The tribes of the hunt, as they call themselves but outside they also have the name of Nerlakians, are just as brutal as their environment. If one could summarize their way of life, one would only need to say one sentence. They live for the hunt. For the hunt is not just a way of finding food, not just a way of survival, it is a way of life for those of the hunt. Each hunt is a spiritual journey that tests all their abilities, from their strength, to their endurance, to their reflexes, and to their intellect. Each kill is a personal journey that a person must make, it is what creates a true hunter in their society. It is not just about to show others one's ability, it is to prove it to oneself, and to the Chieftain of the Great Hunt.
For the greater the kill, the greater the hunter, and thus according to locals, praying to their various strange gods, the greater a hunter one is, the higher standing they achieve in the eyes of their most important god, the Chieftain of the Great Hunt. While different tribes may have different names for the deity, they always serve the same purpose. The greatness of one's ability to be a hunter decides how well one stands before their all mighty god, so one may reserve a seat in his Coven of hunters, for only the greats shall have a seat. There is a saying created by the more civilized folk that live outside the vast and brutal forests of the province; "as competitive as a Hunter from Nerlakia".
The few times one may meet a hunter from Nerlakia, which most likely is one trying to sell something in the great trade city of Boven or other such city, one will only get the impression of the environment they grow up in. They seem incredibly cold to people, if not emotionless, and seems to have a very brutal outlook to life, along with a very materialistic view of the world. They are difficult to persuade when it comes to bartering, most of them time they already know how much they want and they won't change their mind, and they never give up.
Perhaps because of their brutal environment, they exhibit a great control of their flow of magic, allowing them to easily sense magical presence and the differences between them when it comes to living beings, and allowing them some degree of magical abilities such as enhancing their own bodies for small periods, such as their sense of smell, or even more extreme modifications such as reinforcing their bones in the case of getting hit or attacked.

Naming Traditions

Family names

Family names are simple, all those of one tribe has the name of that tribe as their "family" name. This can change when one person born in a tribe travels to another to join it. Names tend to be very simplistic for the Hunters, who's name tends to come from their geographical location or some animal or plant, here is a list of some examples:
The White Drake tribe, the Gray Wyvern tribe, the Black Salamander tribe, the Green Hill tribe, the Brown Bear tribe, and the Dark Peak tribe.
To mention, the names do sounds strange, but that is more likely due to error in translation. Nerlakians speak various dialects of one language that due to its isolation has become very alien to any language of the drakens or any neighboring race.

Culture

Culture and cultural heritage

The tribes all revere the Chieftain of the Great Hunt, but with varying names for him between the tribes. It is not uncommon for some of them to believe that the Chieftain has various children that each represent an aspect of hunting, from start to finish. One could argue that it is quite strange that much of their beliefs are so tied to hunting, but in such a brutal atmosphere, meaning in what one does is important for survival.

Shared customary codes and values

All tribes share the same idea for leadership, where the one who leads the tribe is the person who is decided by the tribe to be the greatest hunter of them all, and thus are believed to help the tribe as a whole survive. They are believed to be the closest to their most powerful god, the Chieftain of the Great Hunt. The Hunt Master, as they are called, have a lot of different responsibilities within the tribe. Ranging from deciding when the tribe needs to move from where they are to a new hunting ground, to acting as a representative for the tribe when interacting with outside organizations. They also take a very spiritual role within the tribe, acting as a direct medium for the Chieftain to communicate to the tribe, through sending symbols such as flocks of birds or the specific death of a tribesmen.

by Fesbra

[Pictured: A Nerlakian Hunt Master performing a ritual]

Average technological level

The technology level is very simple when in comparison to anywhere else within the continent. The spears they use are still simple sharp rocks and strong sticks, with no metal of any kind. If they choose to wear armor, then it is the skins of creatures that they have already hunted, no plate or chainmail. Medicine is also very simple, but still effective thanks to the powerful herbs that can be found within the forest.

Common Etiquette rules

The most noteworthy etiquette that is most common among all the tribes is to hand one's weapons to the person's house one is to enter, to show the trust that must be established before one may enter another person's hut, which in turn puts pressure on the owner of the house to return the weapons afterwards, since a hunter is nothing without weapons.

Common Dress code

The dress of hunters are very simplistic and minimal, meant to be more for ritualistic or for effectiveness to aid a hunter rather than as glamour or to show one's wealth. Primarily, they use tribalistic paint on them to better help them camouflage into the forest or whichever environment they plan to hunt in. Thus, when they are in the tribe's gathering, then they most likely will wear trophies showing off the animals they have slain, perhaps wearing finger bones as a necklace or using the skull of an animal as a helmet. This is meant to communicate to other people that individual's prowess and how great of a hunter they are.
This is one of the few things that have however changed with their relations to the metallic draken of the old empire, where now those who live closer to Hunters Cove may instead have jewelry or other such decorations to show their wealth off, which matters more to those who live within the city than those outside.

Art & Architecture

The buildings the Nerlakians live in are simple, if one can even justify them as buildings, for they are closer to tents than anything else. The tents they build are built like the peaks of the mountain they live by, four corners, with a sharp top held up by simple long stick. Within them, you can find designs of things one may recognize, but in a very simple and resource efficient form. One can see a weapon rack, which is long sticks with stone sticking out of them to hold spears, or see a bed, which is just a collection of skins of animals the Nerlakian has hunted and colected to make a bed. On top of this, decorations are not varied and diverse, all people use flower paint to mark their hut and parts of animal skeletons to demonstrate the standing the hunter has within its village.

Birth & Baptismal Rites

A birth within a tribe is celebrated, not for the so called miracle of birth, but more in a materialistic view that there are more of them around. It is common for there to be some form of ceremony led by the Hunt Master of the tribe, but as usual, it differs from tribe to tribe. The ceremony is meant to be a ritualistic way to induct the child, some ceremonies being more spiritualistic where the child has a animal's skull put on its head, and then the mother and father hold the child with their hands, lifting up into the air and speaking some loud chant, at which point the rest of the tribe chants with them, signaling not only to them, but to the world and the Chieftain that another one of his hunters has been born.

by Rudy Siswanto

[Pictured: Nerlakian child traveling with his migrating tribe]
The parents are then tasked with feeding their child, which they do in duos, and thus leave their offspring with the Hunt Master who keeps it safe and begins training and teaching it how to hunt. Children grow up very communally, while they are of course taken care of primarily by their parents and the Hunt Master, it is common for children to be put into groups of others around their age as they begin to grow large enough to begin taking care of themselves. Thus, in these huts, they grow together, learning and training together and when they come of age, they tend to all be expelled into the wild one by one.

Coming of Age Rites

Once a child reaches the age of 16 rotations, they are told to leave the tribe and to find another one. Thus they must use all they have learned to not only survive the areas they must travel through, but also to use their senses to find where the nearest tribe is. Once they do finally reach one, it is not over yet, for they must prove worthy of becoming part of the tribe and show that they are a true hunter. They will thus be tasked with hunting a specific animal or even finding a specific plant that they are to bring proof of back to the tribe, then, and only then, will they be allowed to join.
Once they are allowed to join, the newcomer must then go through some form of ritual that initiates them into it, this can range from receiving flower paint from the hunt master of the tribe, or to where each and every tribe member puts their hand on them to become spiritually "linked". Thus, when these rituals are completed, the newcomer will be able to begin a new life with their tribe, completing their induction by adopting the tribe's name as their own.

Funerary and Memorial customs

Life in Nerlakia is brutal and can be very short, and thus death can come quick and unexpectedly. Since they hunt alone, it is very rare to find out if a tribesmen is dead, unless of course their body is found. Even if the body is found, it is usually left there, as whatever killed the hunter earned its killed, such is the brutality of death in their culture. Usually, if there has been a full cycle of the white star, then they can be assumed to be dead. There is some form of memorial custom in most tribes, but it is very simple, perhaps just carving their name into a rock, and placing it in a isolated place where the tribe uses to memorialize their dead.

Common Taboos

Killing another hunter is a unforgivable taboo, no matter the circumstance. Killing another hunter is not just killing them, the killer chose to go on a very specific spiritual journey where their heart turned to darkness and chose to kill another of their kind, and they have forsaken and misused the purpose to hunt in the first place. Such a crime is unforgivable, and they are then scarred in some way to show what they have done, perhaps on the face in the form of a unnatural cut, and then immediately exiled into the forest, never to return to any tribes on threat of death.

Ideals

Courtship Ideals

If one wishes to court a person to be a partner, it depends on the tribe, but the most common thing is to kill something for the person one seeks, which said person decides. Usually, it tends to be some predator, or other similar dangerous animal, with some of the most infamous examples being people asked to go hunt drakes or wyverns, which usually means the person being asked has no interest in the one who proposed. Rarely of course, people survive hunting the beast, which shows just how great of a hunter they are.

Relationship Ideals

Relationships for the hunter is all about the benefits it offers to both parties and the tribe as a whole. The partners must have as many children as quickly as possible, as life is fleeting and their children may die young, and so may the partners. On top of this, the two of them should be able to benefit each other, and are to hunt together to form a strong bond. Love in this case is optional, it's more out of benefit of joining together.

by Art--Tool

Related Locations

• The Hunters Cove

Despite the fact that they are chromatic draken, they were left in peace after the onslaught of the Drakarian Imperium, due to the danger of even attacking them in the first place, and due to that the Nerlakians generally kept to themselves and rarely ever left their forests. As time went on, the Golden Dragon himself would take an interest in them, and begin creating connections to them through roads and diplomatic envoys, with the biggest step being the Hunter's Cove, which became the capital of the province.