Tuquet
Enigmatic Inventors
The Tuquet are as strange as clockwork machines, and their society is just as intricate. Hailing from the high plateaus of the Jigirasasa Mountains, much of the civilized world consider the Tuquet to be a young people new to the history of the world. However, any careful explorer who has spent even a little time with them will tell you otherwise - the Tuquet are old in experience, if not in presence. While most seem content to remain secluded from the wider world, their presence remains a curiosity for some outsiders to enticing to ignore. As darkness has faded from the maps of the world - the mystery of the Tuquet served as a beacon for explorers, scholars, and merchants. In a short time, the marvels of Tuquet artificing became world renowned, both for their aesthetic as well as their quality. Such items are commonly referred to as a and are often traded in exchange for goods of all kinds from enterprising merchants willing to make the trek. While the Tuquet have been happy to trade wares, attempts to learn the secrets of the Tuquet’s skill have met with little success - and those who have learned anything of note seem content not to share. What is known is that the Tuquet communities remain opaque to outsiders, save for key trade cities known as . It is clear that the Tuquet have a unique way of life, and with the help of the mountains, do not intend to let outsiders discover anything more than is necessary.The Khyim
The story of the Tuquet cannot be understood without first understanding their unique communities. A Tuquet Khyim is an organized network of communities that mutually reinforce each other to form a sort of living machine spread over a region. Born from desperation due to the hostile nature of the Feywild, the Tuquet Khyim serves to provide an effective, if delicate means to gather & refine resources in order to maintain a large population in an otherwise hostile environment. Known as Itba-tu-Ijib, which roughly translated may mean “Hub and Spoke”, the Khyim consists of one or more Ijib (Spoke) communities that collect and process raw resources and a Itba (Hub) community that serves to educate the population and process resources into refined goods and commodities. Unlike a normal province with cities and towns, a Khyim risks some stability and redundancy within each Ijib in order to maximize efficiency related to certain jobs or tasks. This means that a given Ijib located around a farm or mineral deposit usually has at least three out of five Tuquet dedicated exclusively to that task. As one can imagine, this makes such communities heavily dependent on their Itba - but the Tuquet have managed to maintain a unique culture that allows for this communal balance to persist. As the aggregate of this network, the whole of the khyim of what the average Tuqueti relates to as "home". A Tuqueti is either khyim-itba, meaning they spend most of their time in the hub of the khyim, or they are khyim-ijib, indicating that they spend most of their time in a spoke of the khyim. This is often ephemeral, as spend much of their lives moving around between both hub and spoke. Though Tuqueti adopt the name of the detshon of doganpa as part of their name, this will not necessarily indicate where the individual comes from. The Bramze Detshon, or other "information" detshons, often serve as a coordinating bureaucracy of the khyims. Though less common in Iho Khyim, by tradition and function the Bramze Detshon works to have their members stationed wherever Tuqueti gather. They are attached to most known Ijibs, and nearly omnipresent in the Itba, and even have a presence outside outside in public facing spaces called Rigpa Klongs.Itba
The itba serves as the economic and cultural heart of any khyim, and by extension, any Tuquet community. At their core, a kyhim is divided up into three parts: communal dwellings, workspaces, and monasteries. It is rare to find physical space within a khyim that is occupied by a single individual or tharig (family) - instead most of these regions are overseen by either a Doganpas (University or Monastery), Detshon (Work Groups or Guilds) or else the Khyim’s Dziskyon (Assembly). The itba of a khyim is the gathering place of its community. The Bramze Detshon coordinates the efforts of workers by need within the itba, as well as out to its related ijibs. Unlike ijibs where conflict and mediation between inhabitants often comes down to a council of local detshons, an itba is too big of the Dziskyon to directly rule, and detshons often have overlapping representation. Assisted by the detshons like the Bramzes, the khyim's dziskyon will generally divide the itba into districts, appointing small councils of detshon leaders or resected residents to decide issues as they arise.Ijib
With an average population of a few hundred, and rarely over a few thousand, an ijib is a common experience within the Conclaves. Established and named by Detshons, the enterprise of each ijib is typically focused around only a few specific tasks such as sheep herding or iron mining. Ijibs with a fairly narrow focus tend to be mostly utilitarian in nature, with children being a less common site. However as an ijib ages, they can grow to be vibrant, more permanent communities. The likelihood of becoming such a community often depends on how close the ijib is to the itba, or the suitability for long-term living arrangements in the space. The population of ijibs tends to fluctuate through the year, with many Tuquet rotating through the communities based on work and need. Those Tuquet that do stay long term are often veteran workers, skilled task managers that guide newer apprentices and newer members in the intricacies of the ijib's focus.Rigpa Klong
Rigpa Klongs, or “Visitor’s Space” is a designation given to certain ijibs within Tuquet. These ijibs are reserved for visitation and commerce with outsiders, and as such are not governed under the normal rules of the khyim. While outsiders often refer to all Tuquet towns as Ijib, most Tuqueti know that life in a Rigpa Klong is quite different than any ijib or the itba. Private dwellings are more common, children exceptionally uncommon, with even law and order being something handled in a much less forgiving manner. Rigpa Klongs are overseen most commonly by the Gribmatse Doganpas, a monastery dedicated to foreigners and foreign relations. Unsurprisingly, the Gribmatse Doganpas exists in part through partnership with the Bramze Detshon.Description of Location
Tuqueti are taciturn when it comes to talking to outsiders about where they specifically hail from. If pressed for a location, a Tuqueti may say simply to an outside they are they from Dzinma Khyim, and leave it at that. However they are much more descriptive with other Tuqueti, where they may indicate not only their khyim, but also they are living within it. A phrase such as, "I am from Dzinma Khyim-sa-itba," tells the listening that they are staying in Dzinma Khyim's itba. When staying primarily in the ijib, a Tuqueti speaker may also indicate the specific ijib they are in. A phrase like "Most recently I've been working out in Dzinma Khyim-sa-ijib Rtsoshelka," would clearly tell any informed listener the that the speaker is from the Dzinma Khyim, but has been living in the Rtsobraka Ijib, and is likely doing mining, blacksmithing or artificing, since that ijib was founded by detshons focusing on those trades. Rigpa klongs are rarely referred to so formally, especially with outsiders. Attarapana, a rigpa klong attached to Dzinma Khyim and often believed to be the capital of the Conclaves by outsiders, may be referenced in Tuqueti-to-Tuqueti conversations as "Dzinma Khyim-sa-rigpa klong Attarapana", but such locations are often so notorious that they are just referred to by their name, so "Attarapana".Territories
The Tuquet Conclaves claim a wide swath of the Jigarasasa Mountains, Jigarasasa Plateau, and related highlands. While the itbas and most of the ijibs of the Tuqueti tend to be hidden away in taller mountains of the Jigarasasa region, the rigpa klongs tend to sprawl along valleys or in places of good soil. The rocky terrain of most of Jigarasasa makes farming difficult, but the plateau and and valleys of the highlands allow the Tuqueti to find habitable purchase in the open world.
Agriculture & Industry
The deep, fresh water lake of the northern plateau, Gshamto, is natural drainage basin and is surround by fairly fertile soils and gently sloping land allow for intense agriculture to take place. Sloping away from the plateau, the valleys of the Jigarasasa highlands allow for additional farming of a variety of crops, and settlements sprawling out from associated rigpa klongs. Rice, barley, wheat, and bacalapis vines are the principal products they tend to grow. Where the climate allows, tea and coffee is grown in the higher elevations.
In some of the rigpa klongs, but mostly within the hearts of the khyims, industry is hard at work. Tuquet's greatest industry tends to be traditional Tuqueti artificing, but they are prolific producers of education as well.
Cosmological Views
The Tu-Quet have had millennia to explore while they lived and survived in the Faewylds. While their understanding of the universe may be imperfect at times, they have spent time, effort, and lives trying to better understand the world in which they live. They do not object to working with such deities, but it is less common for such deities to be worshipped actively. It is, in fact, arguably more common for Tuqueti to develop such relationships as part of their research, or exploring some concept that access to otherworldly powers makes easier.
In general, cosmological understanding among the Tu-Quet relies less on explanations of "a god did something" but instead focuses on the raw power of intersecting planes. Their models of Rynn are informed by their experiences in the Faewylds, and their encounters with the Hermit. Tuqueti cosmologists argue that Rynn is the product of intersections of the Astral Sea and the Primordial Chaos. Where such intersections occur, they posit, a material plane is likely to form. Understanding how the ephemeral concepts of the Astral Sea give rise to shape and purpose when interacting with the Primordial Chaos has been the subject of entire lives of Tuqueti, and the Thanweft Dadpa Doganpa has stood for several millennia studying what could be observed about the universe.
Such research has had great impact on the development of Tuqueti artificing, derivation of mana, and involvement in fights between gods and demons. It is not the case that their power is deniable, as much as they are a force of nature itself.
Tuqueti also believe that the natural state of Rynn is as a single unified forest, much like the Faewyld. Their interactions with the First Kindred have left them believing that entities from the Astral Sea, Primordial Chaos, and even the Void have brought great cataclysmic changes to Rynn, splitting into three parts. These changes disrupted the presence of the wylds across Rynn, but did not change a core function of the inflow of power from outside of the material plane, through Rynn, and back into what the Hermit called "..the Great Seas."
Using these principals as a basis of theoretical thought, some artificers have started to speculate and prototype ways that the Great Seas can travelled. Though not yet confirmed, they expect that other worlds like Rynn exist where the planes intersect.
Type
Geopolitical, Country
Capital
Demonym
Tuqueti
Ruling Organization
Leader Title
Government System
Democracy, Direct
Power Structure
Confederation
Economic System
Command/Planned economy
Subsidiary Organizations
Location
Related Species
Related Ethnicities
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