Yeti (Wild Men)
The yeti are a race of hairy men who live mostly solitary lives in the Hungry Gods mountain range, to the west of Daqin. They stand seven to eight foot tall and are nearly entirely covered in hair which ranges in color from white to a dark brown, only their face is bare. They live off the small number of buried roots and tubers buried in valleys between the peaks of their mountain homes.
Civilization and Culture
Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals
Yetis by and large prefer a solitary existence. These men are not hostile to one another, they simply avoid interaction except when seeking to reproduce. Even then a yeti couple will only produce one or two children and will separate once those young reach the age of self sufficiency.
There is one other except that only occurs in areas where yetis and more settled races of men live in close proximity to one another. In these instances it is common for very young or very old yetis to live within those communities. For young yetis this is a period of adventurousness before they mature and take up a normal solitary live, and for old yetis this is a form of practical retirement after they can no longer survive the harshest of winters alone in the mountains.
History
In the distance past there were many races of hairy men, with similar diversity and number to the smooth skinned men of today. There were the sasquatch of the deep forest, the yeren of the southern valleys, the skunk ape of the swamps, and the basajaun of the low mountains. But in the modern day only the yeti and their murderous kin the fen maulers remain.
In the year 413 AS, during the reign of the Cracked Earth Emperor of Daqin, the land was afflicted by drought and a plague known as the bloody sweats. Oracles prophesied that this disease would land so long as "monsters who walk as men" were allowed to roam the land. Believing these prophecies referred to the hairy men the Emperor led a campaign of genocide killing even children of his own people born with hirsute features. Five years into the slaughter, hairy men had been driven to only the most remote regions of Daqin and the drought showed no signs of subsiding, but the Emperor persisted. It was only halted when one of the emperor's own bodyguards came down with the bloody sweats and attacked his lord in desperation. With the Cracked Earth Emperor's death the land was immediately inundated with rains and all those afflicted were cured, but it was too late for the hairy men. The only survivors were the yeti, saved by the remoteness of their home territory and the skunk apes, now known as fen maulers, who pledged their very souls to dark spirits of the swamp in return for survival.
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