The Cave Peoples

Distributed over ten continents, and known for being excellent musicians, and living in large cave systems as they are named after, the cave peoples make the third most populous of the Seven Peoples of Noo. The majority of them live in subterranean states though mapping that it's a complicate task, and having the monopoly of mining and metal market, but there are also who still live independent in nomadic tribes and some others living in the surface.

Physical appearance

The smallest of the seven peoples of Noo, the cave people are by average one meter tall. Their skin colour goes between the pink colour of a bald cat and dark tonalities of purple, there's also variations with yellowish and reddish tones. However that's not how they see themselves, because of the absence of light under the ground, they only see in the infrarred part of the spectrum, and thus having thermal vision for objects between -50ºC and 140ºC (they can see hotter objects but the colour doesn't change much). This makes them difficult to live in the surface, because air shines creating the effect of living in a permanent fog, and also cold high air becomes opaque making them unable to see the sky and predicting weather. They also can't read ink documents or look at paintings, instead of that they draw on reliefs, and their scripts are similar to runic marks, gliphs or cuneiform. On the other side they are good at following heat traces and tracking, also by using their huge ears for that. They are very agile and capable of moving easily into the complex topography of their habitat, and also are adapted to travel long distances under water. They don't have circadian rythm aligned with the solar day, so they sleep way more time on average than surface people and their time conception is thought to be more chaotic in the past until they invented stalactite calendars. They also live between 90 and 150 years depending alimentation or where they live.

Habitat and social structure

Cave people origin go back to where they still live today, eolian limestone caves distributed around continents and artificially connected by long tunnels built millennia ago. Eolian caves are rare to find naturally, so tunnels are constructed in a specific way to mantain constant air currents avoiding oxigen loss but making the cave more exposed to erosion.
One important political factor in this particular ambient is isolation, despte all natural and artificial tunnel infrastructure there are many comunities isolated for centuries due to remoteness or ostracism, and the states formed may be big but they work more close to unions or confederacies than centralized empires and their functions are focused more on control commerce with surface civilization. There are few exceptions such the Seter Empire controlling the Ittou region deserts, but usually the villagers self-sufficiency and the difficulty to reproduce large army battles into a two meters by one meter corridor gives local authorities more independence, and also protection against big surface powers despite having relatively primitive military forces.
They live in villages of a few hundred residents by average, and local power may come by little aristocracy or assembly, with diversity of social systems, but we can identify big scale patterns, as a state ruler but with limited influence class made of financial and mine owner sectors and lower farming classes cultivating deep algae, plants at the cave entrances or at the exterior, or doing reverse agriculture which means for example of planting a potato and harvest it from below. That technique is very used because you can steal surface peasants' food instead of planting it, but enmities between the Seven Peoples will be developed in the future.

Some cultural aspects

As I've written here there's a lot of cultural diversity because isolation etc. For instance, it is estimated that there are more than four thousand cave people languages, many of them isolated and this without counting secret or sign languages. Most extended ones are szyzijszss (roman alphabet isn't working here, they have a lot of different sibilant sounds so I need an extension of the IPA. However surface people say sejisz), yijji and saetaeru. Religion is almost always polytheistic, and they often believe in mythological cave creatures as ghosts that do strange sounds (oshnur), giant worms (steluj), giant spiders (uq), or Regirock type entities (tseimia). Most of the myths reflect the dangers of living there, and because erosion is slower, ancient heritage preserves better making people more connected to their past and traditions. They write and draw most of their fiction works across the long tunnels that connect villages, in order to mantain entertained lonely travelers during routes that may last for weeks.
Clothing was imported of the surface, and they often adquire clothes as an exchange for metal, for this reason merchants, who dress themselves frequently, are known in many sites as "lul u szuge" which literally means false skin, and they are seen often as untrustable people (well, their fraudulent activities may also help but let's say it's because clothes). Despite tradition, young people is starting to buy clothes leaving the naked life of their older conservative population. The only objects they have worn for ages have been safety equipment such as helmets or armors, made of giant arthropod exoskeletons (not as big as the mythological ones, but still big).
Their cuisine is considered as the most awful of the world by the exterior people, and also dangerous because over time cave peoples have developed resistance to certain types of poison, coming of giant arachnids, and some fungus and algae. They are omnivore and often consume surface vegetables and sometimes hunt surface mammals, but people who live further from the ground have more sophisticated taste. It is famous for at least not being unhealthy to other people their ururitzu or centipede maki, though the original recipe doesn't contain rice. Also fcetze which comparing again to common food seems like taco but made from worm meat is common among travelers. Fire is considered dangerous for producing smoke so it's very rare to cook with fire except for some places where they make ceremonial barbecues at specific places where air current is well controled.
They become most visible on their funeral rituals performed at the surface surprisingly similar between cultures. Doing it in surface is better not only because burying or incinerating it's unfeasible underground; when someone dies, their family preserve the corpse in salt until one special day all the people get out to perform a massive incineration, believing in that date heaven, which is understood as an upside down world, is most close to surface (by close I mean few kilometers above their heads) so fire spirits help dead people who were nice to ascend in the smoke to the surface of heaven. This ceremony is usually safe and meticulously prepared to prevent forest fires but every year incidents happen and their calendars are not very accurate and independent of what hour it is, so surface people can't predict when hundreds of people will appear near their towns to make a big fire and call their gods with excessively loud horns, making another point to the list of why cave people are so annoying neighbours.
We can't forget about the ones that live in the surface. The majority of them being merchants, slaves or former slaves who were released time ago but remained living on surface despite difficulties and doing normal agriculture. They are also sued to spying and tracking jobs where their are very skilled, and also are apreciated for their music, being popular for their complex styles, instruments and their special ability to adapt to the acoustics of the room where they play. Surface people and specially surface rich people like their music so much that there are music schools in cities were people come from all of the world to learn it.

by Muunokhoi

Illustration of a delivery cave guy taking a break in an underground lake.

Geographic distribution: Across cave systems mainly in the First, Second and Third Easts, The Fourth and Fifth Wests, and small parts of the First and Third Wests, in any latitude below 70º.
Average heigth: 1m
Population: 3,000,000,000 estimated, 2,144,300,000 according all census.
Lifespan: changing geographically between 90 and 150 Earth years.