Yori - Mni Ethnicity
"The Yorimni are the most widespread and least studied of the Mni. While the Alemni isolate themselves behind their Directorate and the Varlimni tangle their identities in forest roots and oral tradition, the Yorimni move, always.
They sail, fish, raid, trade, and drift from port to port across Arora’s coasts, islands, and sea routes, answering to no throne but the shifting wind and no law but that which they enforce among their own. They claim descent not from exiles or founders, but from those who “walked away” when Alem of the Clan Wars first gathered his followers beneath the banners of order. Whether that walk was taken in defiance or in desperation, no Yorimni would ever admit. What remains clear is that their identity formed along the shorelines, hulls, and stormfronts of the world, shaped less by nation and more by necessity. Though they are rarely seen in landlocked realms, Yorimni vessels and caravels dock in almost every major port. They often appear in human myths as ghosts, raiders, or eerie guides bearing ill luck. In truth, they are a scattered and pragmatic people whose survival depends on adaptability, martial skill, and tight-knit bonds of kinship and crew. Their culture is oral, ephemeral, and fiercely proud.
Among the few constants in their society are their reverence for the sea’s impartial judgement and their disdain for the arrogance of permanence. The Yorimni build no palaces, raise no temples that outlive their builders, and erect no statues to their dead. Instead, they sing them into the tides and carry their names forward on the prows of their ships. To study the Yorimni is to study an edge, where ocean meets land, where choice meets consequence, and where freedom is not a principle but a price paid daily in salt, blood, and sailcloth.
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Introduction
Among the far-flung descendants of the Mni, the Yorimni, often dubbed Sea-Elves by human traders, represent perhaps the most restless and unruly branch. Where their Alemni cousins pursued the cold clarity of law and their Varlimni kin wove themselves into the forests of Erothi, the Yorimni surrendered to the mercurial dominion of the ocean. Scattered across the storm-wracked archipelagos of Yurun and Nesua, and even the frozen shores of Cerulan, they have fashioned a culture not of cities and banners, but of salt-stained oaths and drifting hearths.
A Yorimni’s loyalty is seldom given to king or creed; it is pledged to the crew, the ship, the tide-bound family. Their societies are inherently fluid, rising and falling like the seasons of the ocean itself. Coastal settlements, strung like broken pearls across distant shores, often last no more than a few decades before storm or ambition scatters them anew. It is not empire they seek, but survival, freedom, and the small, fierce triumphs of the individual over an uncaring world.
In appearance, the Yorimni are unmistakable: skin weathered by sun and sea-salt to shades ranging from storm-grey to bronze, eyes keen and slitted against the glare, hair often bleached pale by the endless winds. Some bear the heavy markings of sea-rites, inked symbols of loyalty, passage, and remembrance, while others wear coral trinkets and shark tooth amulets as talismans against the deep.
Their traditions are pragmatic and hard-edged. Honour lies not in noble blood but in deeds: saving a shipmate from drowning, charting an unseen current, enduring a maelstrom without faltering. In their myths, the ocean is not a mother to be worshipped nor a tyrant to be obeyed, it is an adversary to be outwitted, appeased, and survived.
Though viewed with fascination and mistrust by the land-dwelling races, and often dismissed as mere pirates or vagabonds, the Yorimni endure. Like the currents that shape their lives, they slip between the cracks of empires and histories, stubbornly refusing to be fixed or forgotten.
"We call them sea-born, but even the sea bears its scars, and so do they."
Appearance and Lifestyle
The Yorimni, children of wave and wind, bear the indelible mark of their maritime lives in every line of their form and every ritual of their day. Their appearance, diet, ornamentation, and customs of settlement all speak to a people who have shaped themselves around the capricious and unforgiving realities of the sea. Though regional variations exist between those hailing from Yurun and Nesua, their physical adaptations, clothing, and rhythms of daily labour reveal a cohesive culture grounded in survival, craft, and salt-borne pride.
Below are the major features that define Yorimni appearance and way of life.
Yorimni are slightly shorter and stockier than their Mni cousins, standing between 1.5 and 1.7 metres on average. Their musculature is lean and wiry rather than broad, shaped by the demands of constant climbing, hauling, swimming, and balancing on rolling decks. Limbs are strong and flexible, particularly the forearms and calves, which often bear the wear of shipboard labour.
Their ears are pointed like all Mni but trimmed down by generations of salt and wind — more rounded and less pronounced to reduce drag in water. Facial features tend to be narrow and sharp: high cheekbones, sloped brows, and strong chins. Some lineages display webbing between the toes or fingers, while others are said to have sea-glass eyes that reflect light eerily at twilight — traits whispered of with awe and wariness alike.
Skin tones among the Yorimni vary by region, but always bear the weathering of salt, wind, and long sun exposure. Yurun Yorimni typically have paler grey or blue-tinged complexions, suited to cold and mist-heavy northern seas. Those from Nesua display richer bronze, dark olive, or sea-green hues. Regardless of origin, most adults develop freckling, crow’s feet, or salt-etched lines by early middle age.
Hair, often straight or loosely wavy, is commonly worn long and tied back for practicality. Pale shades — bleached blonde, silver, or copper — are most common, whether by ancestry or sun exposure. Dark-haired Yorimni are rarer and sometimes thought to bring misfortune or storm-bound fates. Tattoos are widely used to mark important passages: survival of storms, joining of crews, first landings. These are often made with ash or crushed coral and placed along the ribs, shoulders, or calves.
Yorimni attire prioritises function, weatherproofing, and subtle signalling of kin, rank, or voyage-history. Common garments include seal-cloth coats, short-sleeved tunics, wide-legged trousers, and flax-wrapped vests. Oilcloth capes or storm-hoods are standard for captains and pilots. Colours are kept muted — sea-greys, dark greens, faded blues — though ceremonial wear features woven silver thread, dyed sailcloth, or stormbone fastenings.
Adornments are minimal and significant. Rope-ties may serve both as decoration and emergency utility; beads and tokens are passed between lovers, crewmates, or blood siblings; and coral or shark-tooth pendants often denote bravery or survival of near-death encounters. Ear and eyebrow piercings are common, especially among Nesuan fleets.
The Yorimni are inherently itinerant, but their settlements, where they exist, adapt ingeniously to the shorelines they frequent. In Yurun, homes are built into cliff faces, weather-lashed and squat, often accessible only by rope bridge or carved step. Harbours are precarious, natural inlets reinforced by driftwood pilings and hidden breakwaters. In Nesua, villages are larger and more elaborate — stilt-houses arranged in crescents around lagoons or built among mangrove roots. Canals double as roads, and every village includes a high perch for storm-watching and tide-reading.
Some ships function as floating homes: trawlers, ferry-ships, and great multi-hulled family barges. These mobile settlements might dock for months at a time or vanish with the changing winds. The sea, more than any village, is their true homeland.
Beyond ordinary regional differences, some Yorimni are born with rare traits seen by their kin as omens or sea-given gifts. Partial webbing of digits, nictitating membranes over the eyes, or salt-silver hair from birth are regarded with quiet respect. Those who display such signs are often selected for navigator training, storm duties, or kept close to spiritual guides known as tide-mothers. Among land-folk, such traits inspire superstition or suspicion, but to the Yorimni, they are signs of fate speaking through blood.
Life among the Yorimni is dictated by tides, weather, and necessity. At sea, each day begins with a watch-call and a shared meal. Crewmembers rotate tasks: sail-mending, hull cleaning, rope coiling, net casting, and watch-keeping. Children are taught knot-tying and deck safety almost as soon as they can walk. Duties are assigned by skill, not age or gender, and those who fail to pull their weight quickly find themselves shamed or replaced.
On land, Yorimni work as shipwrights, net-weavers, wind-diviners, navigators, or salt-farmers. In mixed ports, they might serve as ferry operators, apothecaries, or bards-for-hire. Communities prize endurance and ingenuity: nothing is wasted, and each person must master at least three trades by adulthood. Even the most decorated storm-pilot is expected to sew their own cloak or skin their own fish.
Yorimni cuisine is born of scarcity and invention. At sea, meals are simple: smoked fish, salt-pickled greens, boiled roots, and dried bread steamed back to softness in canvas pouches. Aboard long voyages, fermented kelp or fish paste supplies nutrients, while stormbread — a dense, tangy loaf packed with seeds and root shavings — is prized for its longevity.
On land, cookery becomes more expressive. Fish stews thickened with crushed shell, fruit-dyed flatcakes, and herb-spiced crabs are shared communally around driftwood fires. Dishes are seasoned with dried sea-lichen, fermented seawater, or crushed sea-pepper. Every meal is practical, and waste is frowned upon: to let food spoil or discard fish bones without ceremony is a breach of custom in many crews.
"A keel cannot choose the storm, only how it bears the breaking."
Beliefs and Values
To understand the Yorimni is to grasp a morality unmoored from permanence. Their values are shaped not by temples or thrones, but by the sea — vast, untameable, and ever shifting. Honour is a current, loyalty a line that must be tested and retied, and love a fire lit in storm and salt. They do not fear change; they ride it. Their rituals, taboos, and expectations reflect a worldview rooted in survival, mutual reliance, and the ruthless clarity of consequence. Every oath carries the weight of salt and blood. Every misstep is a lesson, not a sin.
Below are the prevailing social, familial, and spiritual norms that define the Yorimni identity.
The Yorimni ideal of beauty is inseparable from proof of endurance. Skin weathered by sun and salt, calloused hands, and the lean poise of a seasoned sailor are prized far above youthful softness. To be attractive is to have suffered and prevailed — to move with grace under burden, and to bear the sea’s marks without shame.
Adornment is sparse and meaningful: coral shards worn as pendants, shark teeth mounted on leather, storm-glass beads braided into hair. Scent is achieved with brined oils or fermented sea-herbs, more to mask sweat than for allure. Presentation is not performative; it is testimonial — each scar and token speaks of a life shaped by tide and hardship.
Yorimni gender norms are almost nonexistent by the standards of mainland societies. While some ceremonial functions are gendered — such as certain rites among the Nesuan tide-mothers — practical life aboard ships erases distinctions. Anyone may captain, anyone may birth children, anyone may fight or fall. What matters is competency, not category.
Pronouns and names often drift over time with an individual’s changing path. It is not uncommon for a person to be referred to by different terms at sea than they are on land, or to shift entirely after a rite or voyage. This fluidity is not remarked upon. It is simply another current among many.
Partnerships among the Yorimni are formed through shared deeds, not declarations. Courtship often begins with feats of daring or skilled gift-giving — a net woven from storm-thread, a harpoon rescued from a wreck, a sea-chart memorised in song. Love is not whispered in alleys; it is earned in how one rows, sails, and shelters.
Pairings may be lifelong or seasonal. Separation by tide or duty is no cause for scandal. Fidelity is valued, but flexibility is understood. Among tight-knit crews, romantic entanglements are carefully managed to preserve the vessel’s harmony. Jealousy is treated not as passion but as dangerous instability, to be addressed or cast overboard with swift judgment.
Rites of passage are central to Yorimni identity. The most pivotal is the shipmarking: a tattoo, scar, or ritual burn earned after surviving one’s first great voyage or storm. Only then is a child considered seaworthy — not in age, but in proven grit. Before that, they are driftlings, half-formed and untested.
Additional rites mark each major life change: a new command, the loss of a kinmate, a voyage completed without landfall. Each rite is conducted communally, often with the singing of oaths or the placement of a token in the individual’s sea-chest — a container that holds their life’s markers and is buried or burned at death.
Death is treated with solemnity and speed. The sea does not wait, nor do the Yorimni. Corpses are given to the deep, marked by weighted sails or stonebound tokens. The final rites, known as breaking sail, include the singing of the deceased’s voyage-names and the recitation of their last known oath.
Among land-dwelling Yorimni, cremation may be practiced, with ashes scattered on tides important to the dead. Grave markers are rare — if they exist, they are driftwood staves carved with knot-script and planted at the edge of a harbour, always facing the open sea.
The Yorimni hold several hard taboos. Chief among them is the breaking of an oath. Even jesting oaths are sacred — to break one is to risk being shunned, or in extreme cases, cast adrift. Another serious taboo is abandoning a shipmate without cause during a storm or battle; such betrayal marks one as wave-cursed, and few captains will take them aboard again.
Waste is a lesser but widespread taboo. Food, rope, or tools must never be discarded lightly. Each has been earned with risk, and its mistreatment is a silent insult to those who bled to gather it. Finally, mocking the sea — by name, ritual, or story — is deeply frowned upon. Humour is welcome; hubris is not.
"A name, like a ship, is built for storms, not calm seas."
Culture and Expression
Yorimni culture flows like tidewater: ever-shifting, deeply patterned, but resistant to walls or stillness. Its essence is not written in books, carved in stone, or sealed behind parchment and law, but sung, chanted, woven into hulls and oaths, and passed hand-to-hand in the quiet rituals of survival. Art and language serve memory, not ego. Myths shape behaviour more than laws. Their past is not a single root but a net of stories, spread wide and knotted tight with wind and blood.
The Yorimni remember what matters — and discard the rest to the sea.
The Yorimni speak Yoric, a language group split into two main dialects: Nesuan and Yuru. Nesuan is brisk, clipped, and thick with nautical shorthand — ideal for shouted commands and rapid decision-making at sea. Yuru is older, slower, and favours melodic inflections and formalised phrases, used during ritual and negotiation. Both dialects remain mutually intelligible but carry their own cultural gravitas.
Written Yoric exists but is rare, usually confined to ship ledgers, oath-stones, and hull-etched prayer glyphs. Instead, stories and contracts are memorised, sung, and passed orally from one tide to the next. Fluency in both dialects is a mark of a seasoned mariner, especially among those who drift between Nesua and Yurun.
Yorimni art is ephemeral, useful, and always rooted in lived experience. Ships are the centrepieces: not just vehicles but living totems. Prows are often carved with ancestral motifs — storm-beasts, birds, coral spirits — and sails dyed with clan colours or personal oaths. Architecture in settlements follows similar logic: flexible, dismantlable, and designed to be rebuilt after the next storm.
Music is omnipresent. Drumbeats mark labour; call-and-response songs guide oar rhythm and stitch sails; mourning chants echo across low-tide inlets. Dance steps mimic gulls in flight, the tilt of a skiff in current, or the crashing violence of a squall. These performances are not idle entertainment but embodied lessons, stories turned to motion, warnings turned to memory.
Material goods are rarely ornate. A Yorimni knife may be plain, but it will hold an edge for years. A garment may be patched three times, but each stitch will be straight. Beauty lies in function; function lies in survival.
Yorimni myths centre not on gods, but on spirits, omens, and ancestral wisdom. Their cosmology acknowledges no creator — only the tides, and those who read them well. The Salt Mother is one such spirit: neither divine nor cruel, but relentless, the force of ocean that never forgives waste or pride. The First Mariner is a cultural hero, half-wraith and half-trickster, who charted hidden currents and taught mortals to follow stars and gut fish with equal reverence.
Other stories include tales of ghost fleets that punish oathbreakers, islands that vanish at dawn, and children born during squalls who never drown. These myths function as moral warnings and practical guides, delivered through chant and story aboard ship or around shared fires.
Yorimni cultural memory favours the deeds of individuals whose actions preserved many or proved a hard lesson to their kin. Foremost among them is Mara Tidebound, the matriarch who mapped the Great Crossings and established safe havens in Cerulan’s rim, still visited by Yorimni fleets generations later. Issa Broken-Spar, famed for forging a brief but legendary pan-Yorimni alliance during the Bloodreef Wars, is honoured in hull-markings and deck-chants across Nesua.
Other remembered figures include Kelran Driftwalker, the lone navigator whose secret logbook is rumoured to hold sea-paths lost to time, and Tovak of the Silent Shore, a mystic whose teachings on current-reading and wind-breath still inform Yorimni sailcraft.
These individuals are rarely worshipped, but their names are invoked at sea, their deeds recited before risky voyages, and their failings — when known — retold as warnings. In Yorimni life, to be remembered is to have mattered. That is all the sainthood one requires.
The Yorimni trace their origins to the Sundering — a split during the late Clan Wars of the Mni, when nine ships fled into the southern oceans, abandoning the rising order of the Directorate. The Nine Sails of Sundering — names like Storm Cutter and Heron’s Wing still etched into their oaths — carried those who chose drift and danger over law and permanence. Whether this tale is allegory or historical truth, it defines their cultural inception.
Their history is marked by movement and encounter. Conflicts with Seishi along disputed coasts led to practical treaties; bitter encounters with early Alemni colonists hardened their traditions of avoidance and attrition. Diaspora communities sprouted in Cerulan, Erothi, and even hidden bays of Valenfar. Each expansion preserved autonomy over unity — no Yorimni nation ever formed. Fleet alliances last years at best before splintering into new currents.
They maintain no single calendar, no permanent capital, no census beyond what each crew tracks. Their story is a trail of foam, interrupted by silence, remembered in bone and song.
"We call them sea-born, but even the sea bears its scars, and so do they."
Naming and Lineage
To name a Yorimni is to record an encounter — a moment of trial, triumph, or transition. Names are not possessions handed down from blood, but achievements won through deed, story, and tide-bound passage. A name may change over a lifetime: it may fracture, drift, be abandoned or reclaimed. In Yorimni belief, a name that has not weathered change has not yet lived.
Family lineage holds less weight than one’s ship-bond or crew-pact. Kinship is fluid, defined by shared voyages and sworn oaths rather than strict genealogies. Maternal descent is sometimes referenced, especially in Nesua, but it is the ship one is marked aboard — one’s first vessel of survival — that defines their true origin in the eyes of their people.
Thus, identity is a thing layered in motion: name, shipmark, deed-name, blood-kin, storm-oath. Each Yorimni walks the world bearing the memory of every storm they have survived, every crew they have bled for, and every truth they have dared to speak across the waves.
Yorimni naming tradition eschews inheritance. Instead, names are earned, often during a first successful voyage or in the aftermath of a formative event such as surviving a shipwreck or completing a storm rite. Until that moment, children are referred to by affectionate nicknames or maternal references (“Saren’s cub”, “little tide”).
True names are crafted from Yoric roots, favouring strong consonants and elemental metaphors: storm, salt, light, iron, flame. A Yorimni may also gain a deed-name, an epithet tied to a notable act (“Shark-Bait,” “Wave-Singer,” “Breaker-of-Ice”) that may replace or accompany their birth name for life.
Yorimni do not use hereditary surnames. Instead, identity is anchored in crew-bond or ship-bond. One might be called “Tarek of the Wind-Cutters” or “Arin, marked aboard the Silent Reed.” Among the Nesuan clans, maternal reference may be added in formal settings (“Kaelen, daughter of Mira”).
Crew allegiance can change over time, but the first shipmark — the name of the vessel on which one earned their first true name — remains sacred and constant.
Yorimni names tend to be short and memorable, often just one or two syllables. They are chosen for clarity in storm and battle, and for their symbolic resonance with natural forces, tools, and sea-creatures. Common names include:
- Feminine Names: Saela (wave-born), Miren (storm-blessed), Alari (swift-wing), Neyra (tide-singer)
- Masculine Names: Tarek (stone), Kaelen (oar-hand), Vorun (breaker), Selen (harpooner)
- Unisex Names: Arin (journey), Saren (wind), Calen (driftwood), Dovik (ember)
Epithet-names, often earned in adulthood, add flavour and specificity to identity. These might be used alone or paired with the birth name, depending on context and prestige.
"Home is not a harbour, but the strength of the rope that binds one ship to another."
Geography and Demographics
The Yorimni are a people of the edge — of shores, reefs, coves, and currents. Unlike the Alemni or the Varlimni, whose heartlands are sharply defined, the Yorimni spread themselves across the contours of the world like tide-carried driftwood. Their cultural heartlands are the twin archipelagos of Yurun and Nesua, which lie along the southern oceanic corridor between Valenfar and Erothi. These territories, though fragmentary and storm-battered, remain the crucible of Yorimni identity, memory, and myth.
Beyond them, Yorimni enclaves exist in countless forms: as smuggler ports in Cerulan, as trading colonies along the Medu coast, and as drifting populations of storm-blooded wanderers who leave no hearth but carve a hundred stories into the salt-soaked map of Arora. What follows are the key territories and diasporic patterns that define the Yorimni presence.
The isles of Yurun are steep, wind-blasted, and unforgiving — a cradle for hard folk and harder ships. Located southwest of Valenfar, they form a jagged barrier against the worst storms of the southern sea. Life here is defined by scarcity and resilience. The soil is thin, the cliffs sheer, and the ocean is both harvest and hazard.
Settlements are small and impermanent: mooring villages built into sea-caves, cliffside granaries lashed against the wind, and hidden anchorages maintained by oath-bound families. Most clans here are tight-knit and suspicious of outsiders, proud of their storm-hardened blood and harsh traditions. These are the Yorimni most likely to wear their shipmarks with visible pride, and to maintain the rites of the Nine Sails with quiet devotion.
Yurun remains the spiritual core of Yorimni mythos: it is where the Sundering is said to have begun, and where the Salt Mother's blessing still lingers on the tide. Yet its people are always leaving, always returning, their presence like the tides — temporary, and eternal.
Nesua, north of Yurun, is a gentler but no less vital archipelago of coral islands, shallow bays, and warm lagoons. Its waters are rich in fish and trade, and its shores are laced with mangroves, hot springs, and buried volcanic ridges. Nesua is the economic and political engine of the Yorimni — where shipbuilding flourishes, where herbal lore is traded with Seishi, and where sea-law is most actively debated and enforced.
The Nesuan Yorimni are more open to outsiders, more prone to federation, and more comfortable adapting foreign innovations into their seaborne lifeways. Some of the largest Yorimni semi-permanent harbours, like Kelthra’s Reach and the floating market of Saek-Hari, are based here.
Yet this prosperity breeds instability. Rivalry between clans can escalate swiftly, and interference from human merchant fleets has led to occasional wars over fishing routes and trade treaties. Still, Nesua remains a nexus — a place where stories converge before being scattered again on the next outgoing tide.
Though far-flung and often overlooked, Yorimni outposts and wanderers can be found wherever ships might sail. Along the icy fjords of Cerulan, small Yorimni enclaves endure among Seishi port-towns and whaling stations. Here, the Yorimni adapt by binding seal hides into their sails and carving ice-anchors to tether their storm-huts to shifting floes.
In Erothi, particularly along the Medu Sea and in southern trading cities like Firdan and Cienne, Yorimni free-crews and merchant-princes run courier routes, operate floating taverns, or slip quietly through smugglers’ alleys with secrets and goods in equal measure. These diaspora Yorimni face suspicion and exoticisation, but also command a grudging respect for their seamanship and adaptability.
Among the Seishi of the southern shores, bonds of marriage, rivalry, and trade have linked Yorimni and amphibious kin for generations. Their hybrid settlements along estuaries and reef-walls blur the cultural lines, and many sailors born to such unions speak both tongues and follow both tides.
The Yorimni diaspora is united not by place, but by practice. Wherever they dwell, they bring their own tides with them — names whispered in salt-spray, songs carried by gulls, and tokens carved from driftwood to mark the memories of those still sailing home.
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