Cicera are often thought of as harpy people. They are between 7 and 10 feet tall, with speckled skin that covers the whole range of human colours. They have several pointed teeth, sharp claws on their hands, and often dark blue or emerald eyes. Cicera are almost never male, and their society is mostly women. New Cicera are made not in the traditional way, but by a magic ritual involving cannibalism. Such a deviation from how most races work means that Cicera live isolated from the rest of the world, with many people unsure about their existence. Those who have seen Cicera will have a skewed view of them, as most that leave the tribes are by exile and so do not represent their society's values.
Basic Information
Cicera are well built, and often have more fat than most races due to thier semi-aquatic nature. Their skin is patterned with spots that mark where feathers would have grown, and some Cicera do grow feathers on their shoulders or arms. It is possible for them to have another set of limbs on their backs where wings would be; usually these are only roughly feathered and used for tree climbing, but the occasional Cicera can fly. Flight can also be achieved for those who's arms are instead wings, although this is considered a lot less of a blessing.
Civilization and Culture
Cicera have a deep sense of community identity, that is the cornerstone of any spiritual beliefs. They live mostly in villages and small towns and do not use currency. They do not hunt mammals, and the more spiritual maintain an almost vegan lifestyle (other than at death feasts). Most villages incorperate some level of livestock alongside plant cultivation. Religion rarely plays a large part in ciceran culture unless a new cult clashes with their core spiritual ideas. Their only race-specific belief is a worship of Aegoni as the all-mother and a god of conflict.
The most distinctive tradition held by the Cicera is their customs around the death of a member of their group. After such a death, the body is carried in reverence to their temple of death, where flesh-priests prepare most of the body to be cooked into a stew, the other ingredients dictated by the will of the deceased. Non-edible organs are stored in a pot, except the head which is cleaned and placed in a wreath of leaves and flowers or fruit. The heart is also kept seperate, being rendered into a paste with herbs over which spells are said. The day after the body arrived in the town or village, a wake is held where those who cared for the dead eat them, believed to be a way of keeping them with the village and allowing their strength to persist in others. This does actually work in a way, as the Ciceran's can access more of their harpy heritage after they eat the flesh of others. Anyone who wants to have a child may take a sip of the heart potion, which allows the dead to become the biological parent of the potential child. The head of the dead watches over the feast, and at sundown is carried to a grave (or a boat) along with any other remains, to be buried (or set sail). This represents the acknowledgement that the dead is both with the living, and gone from them.
Eating any meat of a creature you will not grieve is considered incredibly taboo by the Cicera. This includes animals, members of your community you were at odds with, or someone you killed. While not on the same level, suicide is considered a socially taboo topic, as the Ciceran belief's about death have no way to deal with someone who might choose to not belong with the village, so it unclear if they wished to be eaten but to not do so would be disrespectful. Also, in such a community-focused environment it is considered a great disgrace to the village if they have failed so badly to support a member to the point that they killed themselves.
Cicera think of themselves as children of harpies, but also owe some of their ancestry to sirens (as do most modern harpies). Post wave, both creatures were created by the newly arisen monster Aegoni, a personifcation of shipwreck (who still lives in the Myrven Sea), to be her servants. Harpies were creatures of the storm winds who swooped down on ships in storms to tear sails and snatch sailors, sirens could sing to lure ships onto rocks. Fairly quickly, sirens began to use their charming abilities on harpies, developing intense relationships and creating siren-harpy hybrid children. After a few generations Aegoni realised her servants were misusing their power in this way and cursed the particpating sirens, taking away their feathers and flight and turning them into fish people who could not survive out of the water. As Harpies can't swim, this seperated them permenantly, and several fled Aegoni's reach in rebellion, into the jungles along the west coast of the qel'barala and southernmost Davmire.
{Ruth's note: this is an attempt to synchronise mythological monsters with the single dnd monster that exists called a harpy and isn't important at all apart from the fact that they are both female bird-people.}
In this new jungle-coastal home, these harpy-siren children encountered lost first people, who they realised they could use as servants rather than just food. In order to not eradicate the population of these new servants, they ate the male ones and taught the female ones a new way to bear children. This magic made the children into Cicera.
Eventually, new people stopped arriving in the Ciceran jungles, and the harpies turned on their own servants for food. But the Cicera were many and were strong, and the ensuing conflict killed or drove away the harpies, leaving the Cicera to build their own societies. As they inherited some of the unusual practices and abilities of their ancestors Cicera choose not to interact with the rest of society, protecting the borders fiercly.
