Keylah

The Keylah is an amon's first or strongest mate. If anyone wants to join join her amon's family, they have to go through her. It is also her place to watch out for his well being.

Career

Qualifications

While an amona does not have to have any specific qualifications in order to serve as an amon's Keylah, it is preferred that she be trained. While each House has their own specific training regimen, House Nekki has the most prestigious and most thorough.
Keylic training is slated to take two years. In order to attend a House Nekki class, Houses must trade favors. The two years can be shoe horned between basic schooling and advanced schooling, or between advanced schooling and career schooling.

Career Progression

There aren't ranks as a Keylah, her prestige is linked to her amon's prestige.

Payment & Reimbursement

A keylah isn't paid for her services since she is in essence an Ammoian version of a stay at home mom, however, there are some perks.

Other Benefits

When an amon is staying as a guest in someone's home or manor, his Keylah has free reign of the kitchen (with some supervision of the "den mother"). She can also walk the halls at night or early morning without raising suspicion as it is her job to not only feed her amon, but also to look out for his security.
Benefits to being a Keylah, besides being able to go any place within a facility (within reason) also include another benefit. She is considered of equal rank to her amon as she is considered to speak on behalf of her amon or give lawful and legal orders in his stead. The higher the rank and status of her amon, the higher her status. This is another reason why some amona, of course not all, but some, seek to join with a higher status amon.

Perception

Purpose

Her purpose is to help balance her amon's needs while helping to keep other amona at bay. Without keylah society would be more chaotic!
She feeds Him primarily, but she can also bathe Him, shave Him, etc...
If someone challenges her to combat, they resolve the conflict at what is called a Nekkiture Court. She can only be challenged once a week at most. If her amon is a Duke or greater, she can only be challenged once a year!

Social Status

Aside from being of equal status to her mate, A Keylah is looked up to by other younger amona.

Demographics

This "profession" is sort of an overlaying profession, any amona of any occupation could do it, but it often falls in the hands of security personnel. Any amona can fill the roll, but only about 1 in 100 have actually been trained to be a "professional" keylah, if even that.

History

While the roll of "first wife", or "first mate" has been around since the dawn of the Ammoian race, the official position of keylah, hasn't been so old.
It was first developed or instigated due to the need of high positioned amon constantly being petitioned for the right to mate. This, needless to say, distracted them from their duties. Hence, he would pass the roll off to his head of security or his head amona to deal with the requests. Fights would sometime break out between the head amona's and the persistent wanna be mates. When one of these altercations almost came to killing blows, that was when it was decided something had to be put into place to make the challenges less dangerous, that was when House Nekki established the challenging rules.
Challenges were not to come to death blows, only to first blood, or if the challenger insisted, to first knock out.
Now challenges are taken to the Nekkiture court, or, once a year to the arenas.
Arena challenges are performed in front of large, live audiences. They are usually challenges against the keylahs of prominent males and are made into large productions.

Operations

Provided Services

A professional Keylah can cook; has a discernible palate that can detect poisons, toxins, and spoilage; and can fight bare handed. She knows proper etiquette in most social situations and combat etiquette in a Nekkiture Court.

Dangers & Hazards

The more prestige her mate has, the bigger of a target he is either with females seeking to join his household, and therefore she has to fight a lot; or, he becomes a bigger target for assassination!

Type

Administration / Management

Demand

Ideally, every amon would have a keylah, but trained keylahs are more of a luxury.

Legality

A Keylah can legally speak for her mate in all aspects of society. Generally she has to have something that differentiates her visually from the rest of his mates. However, her security credentials will also reflect her status as his Keylah. If an amon's Keylah should die in her duties, the male must designate a replacement.