Lashunta Social Taboos

While these items don’t get into profanity or sacrilege, many of these rules can cause pretty serious offenses.

• Trying to touch another Lashunta’s antennae is a sure and blatant insult. Duels get challenged. Assault charges get filed. Banishments may happen.
• Lashunta formal dining requires hands not be used for eating. Food is levitated into the mouth. Since alcohol has a negative impact on psychic ability, potent drinks are served sparingly on such occasions. Being too drunk to levitate one’s food and having to eat with one’s hands is considered the most boorish behavior. (In more casual circumstances where beverages are more prevalent, there are finger foods served toward the end.)
• Personal space between Lashunta tells much about their level of trust. Standing near enough that their antennae can touch shows a high level of trust. Casual acquaintances will stand further off. Standing further than six yards/meters off (where psychic powers start to become ineffective), is a sure sign of distrust.
• Non-consensual psychic intrusion of another’s mind is held as the worst form of assault. In terms of legal penalties, this may become a banishable offense, even for females.
• Since most Lashunta don’t wear footwear, houses have a footbath at the entrance. In ground-level houses, this is located at the foyer. In hometrees, it is located at a landing at the foot of the beamstairs. Tracking mud (in Lashunta, there is no difference between mud and dirt) into a house is a serious breach of form.
• Lashunta communally share beverage cups, including for things like tea and wine. Refusing to share a cup (as in insisting on your own) may be a grave insult.
• Lashunta hometrees all have a specific bough (which may be set with a hut and stool over a forked branch) under which no one is allowed to walk. The ground area underneath will typically be fenced off, often surrounding a pit. The reason for this is the specific tree limb is used as a ‘convenience limb’ for inhabitants needing to relieve bodily functions without the bother of having to climb a hundred feet or more down the beamstair to ground level.

…And since in a clothing-minimal/optional society, body posture becomes significantly more important…

• Lashunta females will salute by touching their breast (typically, the right hand on the left) as a sign of acknowledgement to higher authority. This stems from the Age of the Sage-Queens, when noblewomen were required to cover their breasts with their hands in the queen’s presence unless specifically granted leave. Conversely, the act of going topless or uncovering one’s breast (say, for example, by disrobing) while within a superior’s presence may be construed as a challenge to their authority.
• Lashunta males, in a formal setting with females will clasp their hands before their waist in a gesture of modesty. A display of overly overt interest could be taken as grounds for banishment.
• While grooming habits vary widely by location and social class, many Korasha males bodyscape their native hirsuteness (Lady Vaeol refers to this as ‘shearing the shoulders’). Regarding rougher, wilder fashions, the term ~monualas moalantas~ - hairy he-ape - is a common insult.
• Bending over at the waist, especially with the legs straight, is heavily frowned upon, especially without a loincloth or a skirt. More appropriately, knees should be bent, and the back should be kept straight until haunches are modestly resting on heels.