Ong
The Ong are a large, intelligent, primarily arborial race who reside on the plane of Waking Materia. They superficially resemble the more multiplanar Vanara, though their genetic closeness is questionable; there is no evidence of any significant Vanara population colonizing Antediluvian Materia, and surviving texts noting their resistance to the First Empires from "day one" of their arrival, further confirming the indigeneity.
Once populous before the arrival of the First Empires and the devastation of the Deluge, they are now on the verge of extinction, retaining only two small civilizations: one in the canopies of the far Voidwestern the Emerald Expanse and a more land-based population in the far-western forests of Aukslanding in the Broken Empire, who call themselves the Saska'atch.Appearance
See also: Ong & Baraka Image Gallery (External)The Ong are close cousins of the Baraka, though they generally lead different lifestyles and there is little historical record of the two peoples cooperating, and remaining civilizations are not mixed. They are larger and heavier-set than baraka, with longer and less bristly red-orange hair. The males develop puffy "flanges" of flesh around their faces in adulthood.
Culture
Both the Emerald Ong and the Saska'atch are a reclusive and distrustful people, so very little is known. Attempts by tribes descended from the First Age Iyō have made attempts to establish diplomacy with the Emerald Ong, but in all cases have failed.
There is one famous case of a Frankish friar from nearby Veenhuyzen who developed a bond with a tribe of "Birch Ong" (an Aedermarker term for the Saska'atch), but even he divulged little out of respect for their isolation. He often joked that even he didn't understand them, despite being friends: even when one knows the vocabulary, their spoken language nonetheless highly metaphorical and dependent on a deep understanding of their stories and beliefs.
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