The Rooted

The land we work gives us our life, and we will give our lives back to it.

This group of people got their name from The Wanderers and reflects their way of life as settled in one place. They are farmers and animal tenders first and foremost and mainly live in the fertile parts of Tosormi, in the south-east and along the coasts and rivers. Even though they haven't always been here they are widely accepted as part of the lands, even by the Wanderers.

History

The Rooted originates from another place on the other side of the seas. It is said that their former homelands was struck by a terrible famine, the cause long forgotten, that threatened to wipe out the whole population. Some families decided to try their luck in finding somewhere else to live, some place with more fertile lands that could support them. Little is known of this dangerous journey but the fact remains that a group of them managed to find their way to Tosormi.
In the few hundred years that have passed since then, they have managed to spread out across the land and they are now thriving. The initial meetings with Wanderers left both sides very surprised but they have learned to get along and there was a lot of trading and intermarrying going on between the two groups.
The peace ended with the arrival of The Lomians. The Lomian Empire were built on the back of slaves and when they started taking over Tosormi they needed laborers. The Rooted, stationary in their villages, became an easy target and within just a decade almost all Rooted in Tosormi were taken as slaves.
They were forcibly moved from their homes to wherever they were needed and a lot of their culture got destroyed in the process. Thankfully some communities of Rooted survived, much thanks to help from the Wanderers.
During the 560's and 570's an organization called The Strongest Link started working hard for the freedom of the Rooted, and in the 580's the slavery was officially abolished.
A lot of the Rooted tried to make it back to villages and farms no longer there and rebuild. The majority decided to stay in the towns and cities they were in, many being born there. They changed from farmers and fishermen to craftsmen, and this is what they are most famous for today.

Two Parts of a Whole

The main deities of the Rooted are The Twins, although they view them slightly differently than most other groups. To the Rooted, the Twins are a brother and a sister and are seen as the first deities. Together the Twins represent the world we live in. Despite accepting other deities as well, pretty much everything can be assigned to only the Twins.
The main idea behind their religion is that everything can be divided between masculine and feminine, both sides with their strengths and weaknesses, but to reach full power they must be united and work together. This idea seeps through their whole society. You are very much expected to conform to the gender roles in society. However, they do accept that sometimes parents can get it wrong when assigning a gender to their child and a person may correct this as they grow older. Straying too far from the gender norms are heavily frowned upon though, no matter which of the two genders (and there are only these two) you present as.

Tattoos

A big part of the culture for the Rooted all over Tosormi are their tattoos. It is treated as a craft and an artform and it's very rare to find a person without any ink on their body. It starts already as children when symbols representing the person's family and village, and if they're from a farming family they often have a symbol for their farm as well. Later in life people usually get tattoos representing important life moments, such as marriage, childbirth, deaths, winning something or anything the person find important really.

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Diverged ethnicities

• Modern Rooted

Related Items

• The Seeds of Plenty

Related Myths

• The Creation of the Universe

Related Locations

• Tosormi

Love and Marriage

One person is only one half. Whether male or female, a person can not reach their full potential without a partner of the opposite gender. The Rooted believe heavily in faithful love, so much so that a lot of people do pray to Taphri as well beside the Twins. It is seen as defying the deities to force someone into marriage with someone they don't love, although it obviously has happened from time to time as well.
However, a relationship between two men or two women is seen as unbalanced, with too much masculinity or too much femininity, and thus unnatural. Historically, homosexual people were often separated and sent away to another town or village in the hope of getting them to meet someone of the opposite gender. Today, traditional Rooted are still very homophobic, and people who are not heterosexual tend to move in to the cities where people tend to be a bit more open minded.