Scutora
The mythology of the Scutora claims that their creators – and in particular their primary god, the First Teacher – could not decide what they wanted them to be, so they made them the paradoxical beings that they are: They have a nomadic nature, yet with a gift for fortification; yielding, yet stubborn; gentle, yet powerful; mobile, yet defensible. They are an essentially peaceable and placid race, but utterly intractable to domination. They have never been ruled, but never sought to rule others either.
The scutora are sometimes called turtle- or tortoisefolk, but while they have heavy shells formed of interlocking scutes, these are not a permanent feature. Instead, scutors (scutora is the name of the lineage, scutors the plural for members of the species) shed their shell approximately every fifty years of a very long life, and this event is a core part of their ‘great journey.’ When this happens, a scutor traditionally retreats to a scutora holt - a massive, travelling settlement - where they reflect on their life, regrow their shell, then emerge with an entirely new identity.
Scutora live in mobile fortresses called holts, each of which is a community entire, including residences, workshops and even farms. The outer carapace of the holt is an accumulation of wood, metal and shell, built up over generations. They are driven by great lizards which work the treadmills deep within the shell, which are tended by populations of petari who share the holt. These 'Holtfolk' are the only petari to have completely abandoned the Seven Scales, instead following the tortle gods of their holts. They are free, neither slave nor serf, and typically occupy maintenance, beast-handling and crafting duties. Other petari consider them weak and idle, but they in turn see them as slaves or degenerates, although they have some contact and trade with the clutches.
The principle resource of the scutora community is their own shed shells and the shed skins of their beasts of burden. They trade food and decorative shellcraft for other resources, forage for them as they travel through unclaimed lands, or occasionally venture into the Elemental Planes. They also recycle metal, wood and stone until it becomes completely unusable, and some of the older holts make use of Arcane Mills.
The spiritual life of scutor is built around the concept of the Great Journey, a constant process of exploration and learning which takes the scutor out of their communities to gather knowledge and experience, and return it to the holt. They consider this process to consist of many separate lives, beginning with their 'egg life,' between hatching and the first hardening of their scutes.
When their shell is complete, they begin a 'ranging,' as they leave the holt of their birth and travel the world. After some fifty-to-sixty years, or on suffering grievous injury, the scutor will feel the onset of ‘shellfall’, the shedding of their entire shell, and return to a holt to shed. There they will spend a 'skin life' of three to eight years regrowing their scutes and passing on what they have learned, before beginning a new ranging. It is also during skin life that scutors mate and bear children, who are raised by the holt's community. Consequently, tortle names use the toponymic tak’[holt], meaning ‘hatched of [holt],’ in place of a parental family name.
Each ranging is considered a life. It is a microcosm of the tortle’s entire mortal span, which is considered a ranging from the Holt of the First Teacher, but is also a life in a more immediate sense. Each time a new shell hardens, the tortle adopts a new name, and chooses a new aspect of their personality to explore in their new life. On returning home they shed the shell, and along with it that life’s name, resuming their ‘skin self’.
In all, a typical tortle will go through seven shells, seven lives - a scutor will very rarely be drawn on which life they are currently living - before returning to the holt to live their final ‘skin life,’ although many seventh shellers choose to spend that life as a guardian of the holt. The elders of the holt are responsible for its administration and also maintain the written and oral history of the holt, including the accounts of every ranging undertaken by its members. The bards of the holt will be able to relate accounts back to the creation of the first tortle.
The gods of the tortle are archetypes or paragons of core tortle behaviour: First Teacher, First Singer, First Fisher, First Sailor and others. In tortle, the epithet ‘first’ – spoken as the suffix ‘-ik – is a fundamental concept. There is great honour in doing anything that has not been done before, even if it turns out to be a bad idea. A particularly good or bad action is dubbed ’first’ – e.g. ‘that was the first mistake’ or ‘that was the first song.’
Comments