Dryhtnar

Dryhtnar, the children of Dryht, also known as muteveq (the people) in their ancestral tongue and trade language, are a Teryn race almost as populous as humanity. They can be found on all the inhabited continents, though the Ylfari of Elynwar are less keen to share a continent with them. Especially when people call them "wild elves."
In fact, it's believed that the reclusive mardeltriya (forest people, "wood elves") and tūtriya (green people, "druids") are Elynwari Dryhtnar. A fact the Elynwari Dryhtnar find very amusing and have come to refer to themselves as mardeltriya instead of the traditional muteveq.
While the continental groups have local cultural differences, they mostly maintain overarching similarities. For example, most Dryhtnar view war as a ritualized version of the natural struggle of life. Conflict and battle are a form of growth, as individuals and as a people, and something that the humanoid races do.
Unlike many warmongering nations, however, they also look to the balance of nature and find their place in it. Hunting and war are important parts of their culture, but so are health and healing. Knowledge of medicinal plants, animal components, treatments, and therapy are shared communal treasures.
Drythnar communities have a greater knowledge of mental health, and a greater system of treating mental illness, than any other race on Teryn at this time. While many of their therapies contain ceremonial or ritual components linked deeply with Dryhtnar spirituality, many communities openly invite outsiders to partake in their traditional therapies. After all: "The healthy foe is the worthy foe."

Civilization and Culture

Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals

Punlanade

Many Drythnar communities observe a form of tattooing known as punlanade or bloodlines. While each goes about it differently, using different symbols and placements, the meaning is to paint a tapestry of history into the recipient's flesh. Their deeds can be remembered and celebrated, their accomplishments recognized, and the memories they wish to honor be kept forever.
The first tattoo usually begins after the child has undertaken some ritual or ceremony to mark their passing into adulthood. They sit with the ir community's wodras, who uses the story of the child and their own divinations to create the design. Once the child and wodras have agreed, the design is drawn upon the flesh with a dye that lasts for several days before wearing off over a few weeks.
During that time, the Wodras will tattoo the design with hand-carved racks of bone needles: dipping them in ritually prepared ink and tapping them into the skin. Depending on the design, this can take many days.
Some differences between the traditions are that Par'moran Dryhtnar tend to use a series of chisels to carve the design before applying the ink and medicine-soaked bandages. The traditional lénásh is made from steel, inlaid with gold in the metal and handle. Due to their using the burial goods of the dead Par'moran kings, it's common that the raw materials for the lénásh came from the tombs.
The Mardeltriya, Elynwari Drythnar, tend to wear jewelry bearing the designs of traditional tattoos. Most common are circlets, popular in Ylfari fashion, that can further blur the line between Ylfari and Dryhtnar to outsiders.

Biháhéh

The "soul-sheath" is a Drythnar tradition believed to stem from the old Teryn legion use of the signaculum; legionaries wore a small leather pouch about their neck with a lead identification tag. Many also would keep valuables, momentoes, or small gifts in them. It's known that, despite any negative perceptions by the Kingdom of Teryn's civilians, Drythnar were greatly valued in the legions. Their strength, courage, and knowledge of healing a warrior's mind were invaluable.
Your average Drythnar will have a biháhéh small enough to contain a few objects sacred to their community's traditions, said to bring protection and to hold great spiritual significance. Some also carry pollen or dried kohibah leaves to make offerings during prayers while about their daily lives.
A child who chooses certain paths of adulthood among their community might also create or be gifted a biháhéh unique to their coming profession. A wodras would have a larger pouch containing items necessary for conducting ceremonies, for example. An arahe, the warleader of a community, would have objects to grant strength and victory in battle or items taken from defeated foes so they could continue to have power over them in the future or remember a particularly worthy opponent.

Veyre

When the time comes for a Dryhtnar child to undertake their Shábeni, they're given a traditional veyre. This is a type of knife with a tang in the centerline of the blade that's inserted into a handle of organic material (wood, bone, horn) capped with a ferrule or bolster or copper or silver. The blade is single-edged, large enough to be multifunctional, and narrower at the base than near the tip. Some have spear-points, clipped-points, and drop points; all varieties have been seen.
The veyre is hardy enough to be a sidearm in battle, a weapon of self-defense in the home, a tool in the field, and an eating knife at the table. It's presented to the child with a sheath and a belt and is worn horizontally with the edge up in front of the body.
An adult with status in the community might choose to ornament his veyre, the sheath, or his belt to reflect that.
Giving another person your veyre is considered a sign of great loyalty and favor, and is sometimes done when one saves a Dryhtnar's life. It's not uncommon for seasoned Dryhtnar warriors to have exchanged weapons several times in honor of their companions' deeds and to reinforce their bonds.
This is rarely extended to muteveq-ja, non-Dryhtnar, but done if the other party has proven themselves to be a true friend or earned the title of "danāde," blood kin. More common is for the Drythnar to commission a new veyre as a gift for their friend.
In the same vein, loaning another your veyre is a sign of great trust.

Shábeni

Known as the Great March or Long Walk in lingua tin'ala, this is the ceremony that marks a young Dryhtnar leaving their childhood behind and ascending to adulthood. While the age usually varies between communities, most give the developing child a chance to have completed puberty before undertaking it.

Danāde

Most often used to welcome one from another community into a new one without them marrying into it; a danāde is "blood kin" to that community. The title is akin to other cultures' non-familial cousin or kinsman honorifics.

Historical Figures

• The Elder One: Also known as Dryht. Looked at sort of like the chief of all spirits, and viewed as a real entity that exists rather than a mythological figure.
• Helga: Mother of the Siegarans, known to them as Heilagr, and the first student of Dryht. She was the first named Satlāde: the spirit of war or red angel. All those named since are believed to be her spiritual successors, those who fight as they must but then lay down their arms and create life. Because of her, Dryhtnar and Siegarans are as close as two separate peoples can be.

Common Myths and Legends

Creation of the World

In ancient days, long before life dwelled upon this world, our realm was only chiwakha and chino'a. The great blue ocean of this world and the eternal black sea of stars above. Further still was Deno'avet, the Lands Beyond, where all the spirits that had ever been and will ever be dwelled. With them lived the Elder One, Dryht.
This is not to say that no life existed, for chino'a was home to great and terrible things. 
From their home behind the stars, Dryht sailed down the hidden rivers in his great iron barge with his crew of mighty te'inir to hunt the things beyond our ken who dwelled in the black. But this was no barge we would see now, for there is no wind in chino'a, and there was no wind yet over chiwakha.
It had no sails, but instead a great furnace at its heart. Not only did it cook the meat of their kills, make their weapons, and keep the barge warm, but the flames were directed out behind the ship to push it along. Where chino'a's current is weak, you can sometimes see the barge's firey tail cross the heavens.
On one of their hunts, Dryht sailed the iron barge down from chino'a to chiwakha and it was becalmed in the cold and still waters. He saw there were no currents to sail the barge back up upon.  So he reached below the water's surface and took great handfuls of the earth hidden there. He crushed the dirt, clay, sand, and rocks together between his mighty fists into a solid ball and tossed it into the furnace.
While he studied the endless horizon for any sign of his prey, or any life, the ball grew hot. When he checked on it, it glowed fiercely enough to hurt his eyes. Dryht stuck the ball with his spear and carried it to the highest point of his barge. He stretched his arms and spear high above and gave it a good shake to fling it free. And so the sun continues to cross the heavens, though its momentum has slowed in the untold ages since. His spear had absorbed much of the head, so the Elder One stuck it down onto the cold ocean and stirred it. Steam jumped forth and became the four winds, and the warming waters kept moving as stirred, making the ocean currents.
The earth below was agitated by the heat and stirring, hardening in the heat like clay in the kiln and thickening like rice in the pot. It swelled and became the land.
When the barge finally returned to Deno'avet, the spirits told their kindred who remained behind the great thing that had been created. The burning ball warmed chiwakha and the new land, and things began to spring to life. Many of the te'inir journeyed to see this new creation and found it so wonderfully different from their home. They chose to remain and became the spirits of the mountains, the valleys, the trees, grasses, rocks, and all things.
Lady Sulis made her home upon the burning ball, sailing across the sky each day and watching how the ever-changing world below developed. And thus, we call the orb itself after her.

Creation of The People

Given warmth and breath, the world sprang to glorious life with wild abandon. The forms of things weren't set, then, and so many things we've never known were born and died. After his hunts, Dryht visited this lively place more than his home. And the te'inir were with him but preoccupied with their own games. Earth and fire played, creating volcanoes and rivers of lava. Water and air made great storms and carried seeds and creatures all over the land.
But the Elder One felt loneliness for the first time. He was no tyrant to force them to entertain him, they were still his friends and brethren. So he took to sculpting little images, likened after him, each one different. He shaped them from the mountain clay, the river silt, the desert sand, and the fertile soil.
He made many and showed them to the te'inir.
"They have no spirit," they complained. "All things here do, but these miniatures of yours lack! Why?"
"I made them to pass the time between hunts," he told them. "While you're all playing, I worked on these alone. No te'inir lives within them because none of you knew."
They saw that Elder One was saddened by this and felt ashamed. They had always been as one until the world's creation and saw how they had drifted apart in their ways.
"What would they do if we did?" Some asked.
"Live, hunt, struggle. As I do in chino'a, but here in their own way," he told them. "Look,"
He pointed to the heads, crowned and ridged as if the skull was a helm. "They're already protected without needing a helmet as I wear hunting." They agreed the little ones looked like exaggerations of him in his fighting helm, with their hair flowing down the sides and rear like an aventail. "But why, then, the exposed and long ears?"
"So they can hear better than I while wearing mine to track all their various prey," Dryht answered.
"And what of those?" The te'inir asked, pointing to their four long canines.
"So they can get to the meat through the toughest hide, or whitebark through the toughest husk."
"And what do you call them?" They asked.
Dryht paused, for he didn't know.
"You make them in the image of your hunt-self. They would be your children. Why not call them so?"
Thus the Dryhtnar, the children of Dryht, were named before they were born.
"But who here would inhabit these small shells rather than the were they already dwell?" Dryht asked. There was no demand, for he wouldn't want to be forced to do so.
The discussion was long. Eventually, it was decided that the te'inir would have children of their own who would inhabit the Dryhtnar shells for a time. Once they had lived a span and grown, the shell would pass as do all things, and they would rejoin the others.
So all things would remain one. The spirits of the four elements made the shells solid, gave them breath, ignited the spark, and filled them with the water of life.
The young spirits were placed into their bodies, and the first of The People were born.
Soon Dryht and the te'inir learned that these spirits were different. They had never known Deno'avet as their predecessors did. Their perception and identity were formed around the static form of their Dryhtnar bodies. They were less the spirit in the body and more the spirit of the body.
They called these héh, souls, to celebrate their differences and the new experiences and perspectives they shared with the te'inir. Thus both the children and the progenitors were enriched.

The First Red Angel

Others among the te'inir strove like Dryht and created new animals and beings. They called the green lands above the great blue ocean e'sav, simply "our land." One of the other great spirits came to Dryht and presented an orphaned infant to him.
"This little one has none to raise her, I have found none other like her," he said. And the spirit men call Sigr was correct, for the infant was both te'inir and héh.
"She is not alone, for what created her still watches over her. I will take her under my care as I did my Dryhtnar, and she'll grow safe and strong," Dryht said. He suspected the child belonged to Sigr, perhaps trying to create children of his own, but Dryht said nothing. There had been no malice in his brother, just concern for the child.
"What should her name be?" he instead asked Sigr.
"Heilagr," said Sigr.
So the child was named, though she came to be called Helga by later peoples. She grew into a child and into a woman just as she grew with Dryht's teaching, absorbing his lessons with surprising speed. The master presented the student with gifts when he could teach her no more, armor and weapons like his but fitted for her.
Then the things that Dryht hunted came down from chino'a to chiwakha. Terrible things with no set form then swept up over green e'sav.
Master and student faced them, at first together, but couldn't stem the overwhleming tide. It was true that none of the formless creatures seemed able to destroy them, but they couldn't be everywhere all at once.
Heilagr suggested they split up to fight multiple things on multiple fronts.
They did, and she proved herself to be a greater hunter than her teacher. Heilagr would lose herself in the red haze of battle and become an unstoppable whirlwind who never slowed, never tired, never stopped.
When all were gone and only the beings with five fingers and set forms remained, Heilagr laid down her shield and spear and shed a tear. Dryht came to her and they spoke at length of what happened, through the hot days and into the cool nights. She purged her soul of the weight of the war, and thus the first ebra ritual took place.
The need for war passed, Heilagr settled down. She continued to train and hone her skills, but found her peace. Soon, she found a mate and they began to have children. Those children would become the Siegarans.