Caač people

The Caač are a people living in the Pillar Mountains and the nearby Irin i heš (Snake's Back Islands).

Habitat

The Pillar mountains is a dry wasteland, dotted by the huge totem pole-shaped rock pillars, near the Northern coast of the Southern Continent. Even though the hot and dry plains are inhospitable at the first glance, they offer a wide variety of small and large game for a hunter who can outrun it. Unfortunately the wasteland is also a home to man-eating dragons.

Culture

Major language groups and dialects

The Caač speak the Caač languages. These languages are highly mutually intellegible, due to regular contact and outmarrying between the tribes. However, some divisions between the languages seem ancient, suggesting that the Caač tribes have had stable areas of control for a very long time. The major groups detected are the coastal tribes (specialising in fishing), inland tribes (specialising in gathering resources deep in the desert), and the highland tribes (living in the higher elevations near the Serme Mountains and usually inhabiting natural caves).

Average technological level

The Caač are hunter-gatherers. Most of the tools are produced from animal parts, local plant materials or stone, although metal objects and fabrics are traded from other peoples. They hunt with blowguns using darts that they poison with local venomous beetle larvae. They are also very skilled slingers, to the extend that they've been hired into militaries of the surrounding nations.

Common Dress code

Their main piece of clothing is a loincloth, and they rarely wear more than that. They make a variety of jewelery from wood, bone, pearl, stone and feather. They use bodypaint especially to paint protective symbols on the children.

The Caač have also been observed producing special protective clothing for collecting the fruit of the Desert Poxbush. The plant produces spores, that attach to the skin on contacy, causing a severe infection that is often lethal to humans. The Caač produce full-body leather suits and special salve for protecting their skin, and skilled collectors seem to be able to avoid the infection with a good success rate.

Art & Architecture

the Caač build small shelters from tree branches or hay, or live in the caves where they are available. They do not build any permanent settlements, because they travel after the herds and plant-based food sources over the year.

Cave paintings are painted on the walls of the living and ceremonial caves, and symbolic figures of arranged from rocks are also left in the desert. Body paint is an important part of everyday art. The Caač also enjoy singing, and make small flutes and drums from animal bones and skin. In the absense of writing these songs are an important way of spreading the Caač cultural knowledge.

Foods & Cuisine

The Caač hunt the herds living in the desert and fish and gather sea-based resources on the coast. In the desert, they gather a wide selection of roots, leaves, and fruit produced by the desert plants. The ironwood trees provide bean like fruit, that can be fried and ground into flour to bake flat bread. The trees are also the main source of fire wood.
While they are near the coast, the also use a wide variety of sea based resources such as fish and sea weed. The diet of the tribes on Irin i heš is more sea based than on the mainland.

Common Customs, traditions and rituals

Food culture

Coming of Age Rites

The men spend some time hunting in all-male groups before returning among the women and children.

Funerary and Memorial customs

Tribes in the middle parts of the desert bury their dead in the sand as they go, and rarely leave permanent monuments. On the highland, with semi-permanently inhabited caves, the dead are usually buried in dedicated burial caves, where the dry air often turns the bodies into natural mummies. Memorial rituals are performed in these caves, but the outsiders have not been permitted to participate.

Ideals

Gender Ideals

The men usually hunt while the women gather and take care of the children. The meat is more highly appreciated food, but the women produce more calories for the tribe, and the genders are essentially equal.

Relationship Ideals

Some Caač live in small mobile tribes, rarely consisting of more than a few dozen members. The men often spend a lot of time time hunting together, and are sometimes travelling even weeks, while the women raise the children together. Especially young men can spend sometime living permanently in these small hunting groups, before finding a mate and settling into a tribe. Both genders have very strong internal relationships.

The Caač practise outmarrying, that is, spouses are usually found outside the birth tribe. Usually young men permanently leave the tribe of their mother, and find a partner in another tribe. The wealth and status of a person is thus mostly passed on matrilinearly. Caač partnerships are usually not permanent, and the most important social unit is the whole tribe rather than a nuclear family. Mates are usually chosen based on personal interest, however, good skills in daily work are also appreciated.

Languages spoken

• Caač language

Related Locations

• Irin i heš
• Pillar Mountains

by Tuisku

Relations

The mainland Caač trade with Tasalians and the Faren settlements in the Ardawána region. The Caač sell them meat, hides, wild spices and handicrafts. They buy fabric and metal tools.
The most of the Caač of Irin i Heš are currently under a Zeribian. Many are forced to work as slaves in their mines, or are transported to work as slingmen in their armies.
Traditionally the mainland and island Caač have traded with each other, but that has reduced after the beginning of the Zeribian occupation.