Ve'tal

Peace With Nature

Long before the rise of the nations of the Western Lands, one people lived across it and lived in peace and harmony with the land, now forgotten by those whose ancestors had abandoned it. Yet some remain true to the old ways and live like those before them: the People of the Land, more commonly known as the Ve'tal. Who makes their home in what is known as the Great Forest, which is all that remains of the wonderous world covered with forests that their ancestor once lived in long ago. Yet continue to honor their heritage even though it could all come crashing down should the rest of the world seek to destroy them.

Naming Traditions

Feminine names

Taci Alsoomse Noya Mimiteh Noya Sipatu Ankti Osyka Inola Wuti

Masculine names

Onacona Askuwheteau Lanu Ohiyesa Matunaaga Mona Shishiesh Matwau Tangakwunu Matwau

Culture

Major language groups and dialects

Old Tongue: One of the oldest languages that Humans have ever spoken that is used by the tribes and those that honor the old ways may they be man or beast.

Culture and cultural heritage

Heritage of the Forest: For thousands of years, tribes have made the forest their home and have found ways to best adapt to their environment. This is mainly done by coexisting with it rather than fighting against it. They even take only the land and resources they need to survive rather than taking more to preserve the environment and avoid imbalance from destroying it. Resulting in a symbiotic relationship that allows all to prosper should they continue to follow it.
Path of Nature: The Ve’tal have a solid connection to the world around them, enabling them to better understand all things natural, from its animals to weather and even the stars. It even grants them ways of quickly traversing their homeland and remaining unseen when they wish. It has humbled them by teaching them the actual values of life, ensuring that they never stray from them by greed.
Wisdom of Ancients: Despite carrying very few records in written texts, much of Ve’tal history is passed down through oral traditions that speak of many stories and teachings that date back thousands of years. Even learning the ways of the spirit world by understanding that the land harbors many Spirits and old gods that inhabit the land to protect in from harm. Many of its tribes also have their histories and wisdom that used to have their understanding of the world around them, never allowing themselves to forget who they are with the knowledge they hold sacred.
Tribal: The Ve’tal is a collection of tribes that live on lands that their people have lived on for countless generations as hunters, gatherers, and farmers. They often live peaceful lives as they live off the land, yet they constantly face various threats and dangers that force them to adopt a warrior culture to defend their lands and people.

Shared customary codes and values

All tribes follow the teaching of the old ways through the land and the spirits dwelling within it to give guidance. That no one can truly own the land they walk upon. To take only what is needed to survive and nothing more.

Average technological level

Due to their tribal society, the Ve’tal is considered an underdeveloped people compared to most other cultures. Yet, they are known for their deep understanding of all things of the natural world, such as medicine, farming, building materials, and natural cycles. Much of their buildings are built using various means such as earth, wood, and animal furs that provide space and comfort to live in. Tools and weapons are made with wood, stone, and bone for durability and efficiency. They have even developed a way to create clothing and cloth from most animals and plants to be comfortable and durable for many uses. Their most extraordinary feat is the understanding of all things spiritual, being able to converse with them and gain their power through the teachings of the Shamans and Druids that practice them.

Common Etiquette rules

Elders are served food first before anyone else. Be respectful of an elder, be kind to guests in your home, give gifts, act with kindness and humility, always listen to someone without interrupting, and show respect for all.

Common Dress code

Men : For the warmer times of the year, men wear shirts or no shirts with fur pants or breechcloth and have tattoos to signify their tribe. When it became colder, they would wear tunics, shirts, and furs to keep themselves warm.
Women: Women wear well-crafted dresses made of cloth and animal skins, only showing their shoulders for the warmer seasons to keep them warm, and thicker dresses during the colder seasons. They also have tattoos to signify their status and identify the tribe they are from.
Status: Tribes often used feathers, jewelry, and tattoos to show their status within the tribe to determine Shamans, Druids, chiefs, and others to ensure their authority was respected and earned. This is also done with clothing during celebrations and ceremonies.

Art & Architecture

Most art would be sown or painted into ceremonial clothing and animal skin. Much of it displays animals, history, and patterns to symbolize their tribe and tradition. Tribal tattoos commonly represent themselves as an individual through deeds and status. Murals on animal skin to remember their history, such as times of peace, myths, wars, and hardships. Totem poles, shrines, and stone carvings represented different things, such as a tribe's lineage, recounting legends and events. This involved spiritual aspects or just creative artwork. Buildings are made of many materials, including wood, animal skin, and earth, and could be built in trees, cliffsides, and deep within the ground. These many designs are mainly attributed to the tribes and the environments they live in to suit their needs best.

Common Customs, traditions and rituals

Spirit Journeys: From adolescence to adulthood, everyone is given the chance to go on a journey of self-discovery and foretelling of events from the past and future. Often, a person will only experience this once or be given the gift of sight for their entire lives as Shamans and Druids.
Blessings of Harvest: Occurring during the spring seeding and the autumn harvesting, crops are blessed through rituals that ask the spirits of the lands to aid in their growth and to thank them when they are harvested.
Sacred Dances : A series of dance forms that are used by tribes for various means, such as celebrations or aid in times of strife. It often involves beating drums and singing to call up the spirits of their ancestors or the land to help them in the days to come.
Hukota Gatherings: A gathering of all tribes in one place where all may have a say in the peace circle, where no conflict can occur so long as all tribe leaders remain in the circle. This is often done for ceremonies to celebrate certain traditions, deal with issues, or prepare for war, which is done through a vote.
Offerings of Guidance : When someone or a tribe seeks the wisdom of the spirits or old gods, they will often do so by offering a sacrifice in their honor in the form of food, trinkets, or even a shrine if the need arrives. Many who do this will often be treated with dreams and visions to aid them in their struggle,
Lifegiver Hunt: Before every hunt, a tribe will, through a ceremony, prepare their hunters for success, asking for favored weather and the finding of food. It is also done to give thanks to the animal that has given their life to sustain them and see their spirit make a safe journey to the next world.

Birth & Baptismal Rites

The coming of a newborn birth is a time of joy and caution for the mother and the child as their lives are often in danger from otherworldly powers that seek to destroy them as Dark Spirits prey upon them. Therefore, they must be protected by the tribe as a whole. When the time comes close for the birth to occur, the woman is placed in a shelter to ensure they are not in the open, with only women being allowed to attend to her should she have complications and comfort them, often being family members or close friends. Men are forbidden to see birth as it is not their task, for there is the protection of their wife and child from harm.
They wait outside and are blessed by a Shaman or a Druid to grant them the power to chase the Dark Spirit that dares come close; it is here that the husband, his relative, and friends stand as the first line of defense with their courage. Should the evil spirit get through them, it will be the duty of women to stop it with their love for the woman giving birth. Should they succeed and the child be born, the boy or girl will be bathed in a unique mixture by the Shaman of Druid to protect them from evil spirits, with the whole community celebrating the birth in song and dance for the new life given to them. It would be sometime later when the child is strong enough that they would be bathed in blessed water to ensure their protection from all otherworldly beings and their foreheads pained to signify their gender, with boys being red and girls blue.

Coming of Age Rites

The rites for boys and girls to enter adulthood are different. Boys are tasked with carrying out a Spirit Journey in the wilderness for several days, mediating without eating or drinking, or even a hunt. Allowing them to transcend life and death to reveal their spirit, often as animals, reveals many things that may let them see the future or omens. Once completed, they would return to their village and bring before a group of elders and a Shaman to bestow a new name on them and grant the status of adulthood.
Girls are given several days of rituals to represent their journey to become women. All of them are to test their strength, wisdom, and willpower to become unbreakable to any hardship. Often drinking a special drink to awaken their spirit and transform them into women. They would also not eat or drink to avoid weakening the effect of the drink. On the final day, their faces would be painted and then removed by them to represent their passage into womanhood after a long dancing ceremony that last for hours. It is before their elders they are given their new names and sing to their ancestors to thank them for helping them on their journey. Both are sworn to take an oath to do their duty to the tribe, protect their way of life, respect their elders, and preserve the land.

Funerary and Memorial customs

Burial services are both personal and communal in tribal society, revolving around the deceased’s spirit, leaving the body to head off to the afterlife. The body is put in its best clothing with personal items of the deceased; their face is painted with sacred symbols to help release their spirit, known as a death face. The body would be warped in animal skin and placed in a tree or on a scaffold at least six feet from the ground. This way, the spirit has time to escape the body and return to the spirit world. A shaman would present the sacred rights to allow the spirit to let go of its earthly woes and be free to travel beyond. The body would remain in place for a year, then recover and burn. Men and women attending would not cry for the deceased since they believed in reincarnation, believing the spirit would return as an animal or tree once it settled down. The ashes would be brought to a burial site for all tribe members and scattered in piles of stacked stones. A child who passed would have the body burned, and a doll would be made with some of their hair would be carried by the mother for a year to show her grief. Most of all, it reflected how sacred life was and how easily it could end for you.

Common Myths and Legends

The Tribe of Bones : A wary tale of a tribe that thought itself greater than all of creation and was cursed with an insatiable hunger for all time.
The Necromancer : This is the story of how a Shaman became the first person to use dark magic for the sake of love.

Historical figures

Hesanowa: A warrior who unified the tribes as the first Catowe or "True Leader" and saved their land from destruction and destroyed the Kingdom of Frenik as a warning to all that would cross them.

Ideals

Beauty Ideals

Oils: Men and women use oils to attain a healthy glow to their skin, which makes them look healthy and attractive when they are looking to be married.
Hair: Hair is braided and combed to look as neat as possible, and it is never cut to signify their connection to nature and pride in themselves.
Tattoos: Tattoos signify many things amongst the Ve'tal from acts of courage and deeds of wisdom, all show the worth of a person who receives them.

Gender Ideals

While men of the Ve'tal have more power among their tribes, women have almost as many rights as men. While women still had the duties of cleaning, raising children, farming, and making clothing, they had as much of a say in their tribe as the men. They are even given positions of power as chiefs, shamans, and druids, to name a few. Some are even given the chance to go hunting and become warriors to ensure the survival of their people. Of course, many of these positions are still made up of men, with women following traditional roles. But when both reach the elder status, they are treated with respect and honor that their age and wisdom bring them to guide their people.

Courtship Ideals

For a man to find a bride is often a complex thing, as women have the right to reject them should they not meet their standards. It is why men use a variety of ways to win the woman's affection, often through music, gifts, and conversing with one another. Men will usually make themselves know that they are willing to marry with a musical instrument known as a love flute, believing that it can cause women to gain feelings for the man. If she is interested, they will begin to spend time together and further their budding love. Once the man feels confident enough, he will give the woman a necklace made of flowers and place it around her neck; if she does not refuse them, she has agreed to marry him. Once that is done, they must convince their families to marry and receive their blessing for approval. An elder was also needed to see to the marriage and the customs that came with it. During the marriage ceremony, the man gives the woman a blanket, signifying his love and commitment to her, with the woman, in turn, giving him a woven bracelet to signify their forged bond of love. During the celebration, both would dance together in unison to fulfill their marriage's right, be one with each other, and be blessed by an elder by wrapping their hands in cloth as they dance.

Relationship Ideals

Men and women had an equal say in their marriage about what they owned, their decision-making, and how they raised their children. While men did much of the task to see that their family was taken care of, women had rights in tribal affairs, and with both of their families allowing them to have more freedom, they just were around to serve their husbands. Should the marriage reach a critical situation causing tension between the two, the woman ould just leave or throw their belongings out of the house.

Major organizations

Forest Tribes of Ve’tal : The many tribes that inhabit the Great forest that live their live in peace. Though many of them are different, they continue to honor their shared heritage and the wisdom that it brings to them.

Encompassed species

• Humans
• Skin Walker

Related Organizations

• Akali
• Beres
• Cesti
• Dreamer
• Druidic Circles
• Forest Tribes of Ve’tal
• Garma
• Hetanka
• Isatwa
• Krae
• Lewa
• Mohanee
• Tisovo
• Urgan
• Verux

Related Myths

• The Tribe of Bones

Languages spoken

• Old Tongue

Related Locations

• Great Forest

Values

Community: All settlements that the Ve’talk have are often villages, with no large settlements under their control, meaning that they are often tight-knit groups that know one another and contribute to each other's welfare and survival. All look to one another for companionship and identity, as they have the same ancestry and beliefs. Giving a desire to help each other and celebrate their lives with one another through the good times and the bad.
Tradition: It does not matter how much time has passed or the world is changing around them; the Ve'tal do not let go or alter their culture in any way. To do so would be seen as corrupting their way of life and falling to the influence of foreign powers. It is all they have left in their way of life, having so little from centuries of war and destruction. Yet those who survived have ensured that it could be passed down from generation to generation to ensure that it remains the way it is. A way of life that very few people have been able to see going back thousands of years from a bygone age that is rarely remembered.
Spirituality: The Ve'tal have often known that the physical world was not the only world that existed, as there was a place beyond where spirits and gods claimed their place within the land and beyond. From this, they chose to live alongside them and commune with them to receive their aid and give back to them. It has allowed them to awaken a more profound understanding of the world around them with its true meanings and the
Equality: While cultures now often have a vast difference in the roles of gender, those who follow the old ways know that this is not the way it always was. All have a say in their society and can be helped in any way they can, and the Ve'tal know this well, with men and women having the same rights and opportunities as one another. It was never about being fair or having standards. Still, the very principle of it was to show one's worth, to prove oneself capable of taking charge and caring for one's people as a whole, as all are connected no matter how different they may be.
Nature: According to the Ve'tal belief, everything in life is connected, from the highest trees to the lowest insects. Through this connection, all living things can live and prosper without the need for destruction or the taking of land. It is for that reason their people make great strides in ensure that their harmony with nature is maintained and never disrupted to cause harm to all.

Taboos

Adultery: Marriage is considered one of the most sacred traditions of the Ve'tal. It is a union of two people into one in body and spirit. For either of the spouses to break, this union is often seen as a shameful disregard for the commitment being made by one another. It is seen as a sign of misfortune and pain for both families of the married couple. While no actual harm is done to either side, it often results in shame and ostracization from their community for such an act by the perpetrator.
Cannibalism: The devourer of the flesh of their people is considered one of the worst crimes imaginable as it is often surrounded by dark tales and myths of the price one must pay by committing the act. It usually involves them submitting to dark powers and transforming into monsters that will forever haunt those they once held dear to them. Many creatures that live in their homeland of a darker nature result from this act, and tribes take lengthy to ensure that it does not happen.
Ageism: The Elders of the Ve'tal are often held in high regard, no matter their age or position in the tribe, as they impart great wisdom and guidance to the rest of their community. Their years have also shown the years of duty and sacrifice they have given to their people through many trials and hardships that have transpired long before their current generation was even born. To look down on them or set them aside is nothing more than an insult to their lives and their willingness to help their people.
Sacrilege : The ways of the Ve'tal are the only path that they seek to live as they have since time immemorial, often seeing their way of life as pure and spiritual that gifted them everything that they ever needed. When other nations rose to power with no regard for the damage they were causing, they vowed never to go down that path as it would forever damn them from their way of life. This resulted in them frowning upon any teaching and values that go against their culture as nothing more than a way to corrupt their souls.
Xenophilia: All those who live outside of the culture of the Ve'tal are to be met with caution and suspicion, as their goals will often never coincide with the goals that they wish to achieve. This usually results in deals with outsiders who want to get something from them that they can get anywhere else or in attacks by them for various reasons. While some can be trusted, it must be earned to gain an audience with them, with all others attempting to do this being chased away or killed for trespassing on their lands.