The Sundered Clans

The Sundered Clans are the divided and hostile peoples of the Scorched Plains. They are a stout, strong, and thick limbed people whose skin is likened to toughened leather. Yet even for these people, adapted as they are to these harsh lands, survival is a daily struggle against the odds. Nonetheless, they have yet survived, for they are mariners and seafarers who traverse the waves in low sailless boats similar to large canoes. They get almost everything they need from the sea with few exceptions. The wood they get from felling trees in the Cinder-wood Forests and the obsidian they knap from great deposits on the shore. Yet the sea’s bounty is not easily obtained even by those skilled enough to collect it. It is a treacherous expanse whose waters are scalding hot, it’s waves are violent, and the surface roils. Its winds blow hot and strong driving ships before it and blowing them off course. The creatures that survive in such a place are brutal and vicious. So whilst they are seafarers at heart, they do not love the sea, instead, they have learned well to fear and respect it and its creatures.

Religion

The Sundered Clans all have a similar religion yet it differs slightly between tribes, due to their long separation. Collectively they worship the great volcano, Aqshy's Heart under names such as ‘The Earth Mother’ or ‘The Great Creator’ or even just ‘The Mountain of Fire’. They see it as the one who created them, a being of immense power. Their creation story tells of how when the Earth Mother woke, the ground split and quaked and a terrifyingly huge eruption tore Aqshy apart leaving the ‘Eggs of the Earth’ in its wake. Ten perfectly smooth obsidian spheres from which the first-born emerged. The tribespeople who worship her - for they see it as a female - wear trinkets of obsidian or bone carved as a stylized flame or volcano which they pray to for luck and protection, especially before sea voyages. They also worship her in regular gatherings where they burn offerings of bone, meat, and other goods. Usually this is a portion of the spoils of the latest hunt or catch.

Hunting and Gathering

The only source of food for the tribes is hunting and gathering, it is near impossible to farm the Scorched Plains and very little grows there, so instead, they hunt and fish on the Scalding Sea, despite the myriad dangers. Whilst the hunters are largely male, in such a place, where lives are so fragile, strict cultural roles for men and women have no place, and as such women often become hunters and fishers too, for everyone must work if the Clans are to survive.

To the Sundered Clans, the Tuskux are their greatest prey, their most dangerous quarry, and their most important. They will hunt them no matter what dangers they encounter. After many years they have mastered the art of the hunt. They are efficient, fast, and deadly, and do all they can to mitigate the dangers of hunting such a prey. Yet they still many die beneath the brutal strength and wicked sharp tusks of the Tuskux. Flotillas of ships will disappear into the mists, their crews armed with long harpoons coated in oil. To kill a Tuskux, hunters row their boats towards a Tuskux colony like wraiths on the water, covered by the darkness of night. Then they mark their target, an isolated Tuskux sleeping on the shore. The hunters draw long harpoons and set their obsidian blades - coated in flammable oil - blazing. If all goes well the harpoon will lodge in the tough hair and the fire will begin to take hold. More hunters will then cast their harpoons into where the fire has weakened the matted hairs lodging deep and killing the beast. The lodged harpoons will then be used to drag the massive creature behind the flotilla as they row back to their village. Due to the size of the scalding sea, such a hunting trip can take days or even months, yet it is all worth it.

Once brought back the corpse will be skinned, processed, and butchered using obsidian knives. It is a difficult process and even the razor-sharp knives struggle to cut the beasts tough hair. Once they have though, its corpse is a bounty for the tribespeople. Its meat provides huge stores of food for the tribe which is then salted and dried to preserve it for times of scarcity. The heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, brain, and eyes are considered a great delicacy and are eaten on the spot by the victorious hunters. The bones are used for tent poles, weapon hafts, knife handles, and more. The stomach is fire-proof, water-proof, and very durable, so is used as bags by hunters and travelers. The thick hair is either used as armor or it can be woven into ropes for nets and or fabric for tents. However once it is woven into its final form it must be heated under hot water to cause the fibers to bind and mat together as it does when on the Tuskux. The skin is made into leather. The tusks are considered lucky and are carved into trinkets and amulets. Finally, the flammable stomach oils are coated on harpoons or burnt in lamps when wood is low.

Whilst Tuskux provides many things, they are dangerous and hard to kill. Therefore they do not make up the tribe's main source of food, which is the Silverfins. Beautiful, tough, and incredibly fast, Silverfins are small fish that thrive in the Scalding Sea. They have tough and shining black scales with bright silver fins, they feed off of the drifting Magmic Blooms (Huge glowing red algal blooms) and their shoals will follow the algae around. Despite their hardiness, these fish live only in the shallows, diving rarely more than half a dozen meters as the heat there reaches unbearable temperatures.

The fishermen of the Sundered Clans will follow these blooms until they catch some sign of their quarry, such as sunlight glinting off Silverfin scales. Then like a pack of wolves, the flotilla will corral the shoal and hem it. The final two boats then row quickly through it with a large net of woven Tuskux hair strung like a web between them to catch the cornered shoal. Once brought back to land the fish must be boiled - at temperatures exceeding those of the shallows of the Scalding Sea - until the hardened scales are loosened and able to be stripped, these can then be used for clothes and armor. The meat is then either salted or roasted to be eaten and so provides for the tribe.

Magmic Blooms - so named due to the algae’s strange red glow produced by bioluminescence - are a rare source of food for the tribes, but all the more valuable when they are available. The algae are carried around the Scalding Sea on the currents in huge groups known as blooms and are one of the few consistent sources of food for the creatures living there. As such they are often followed around by Silverfin shoals and other herbivorous creatures. When these strange phenomena drift near to the shore they are pounced upon by the tribes, hundreds rush out of their homes, wooden and bone carved bowls in hand to collect the algae.

When as much has been collected as can be, stacks of bowls and containers are carried back to the village to be dried when it can be eaten as is, ground into a flour-like substance to cook with, or roasted to be eaten.

Whilst the tribes have so far survived the inhospitable Scorched Plains by tapping the bounty that is the Scalding Sea for the food and materials it offers. Still, this is often not enough. The sea is treacherous and its creatures dangerous and to provide even the basest needs of their tribe's many hunters die in each year.

Raids

For many, raids, attacks, and war between tribes are an essential part of their survival. It allows their survival at the expense of others. In a raid, they attack like a great pincer closing, a twin-pronged attack from land and sea. They unleash a hail of javelins as a tide of silent warriors stab, slice, and tear with bestial ferocity. For armor, they wear stout jerkins of tough Tuskux hide, with a corslet of mail made from Silverfin scales. Raids do not only occur against their own, they will regularly send armed sorties into the Aqshian Forests to collect timber for their boats. However, they are deeply suspicious of the forests and of all green places. They believe them to be cursed, and will never stay longer than what is required when collecting resources.