Tigo Werayi: Place Culture

Nowadays, the werai are a minor race throughout Wouraiya, sharing living space alongside Kauaru and humanity. Evidence suggests, though, that there was once a culture generated exclusively by werai. Their architecture is perhaps permanently lost, as the territory they inhabited is now impenetrably overrun by forests. However, they traded extensively with the Yukuric city states and the island nation of Irewa. Neither civilization exists today, but both have passed luxuries and information onto their descendants. Among these are bare scraps of artwork and language, which currently populate museums worldwide.

Due to the werai's three planar eyes, Tigo art has no conception of bilateral symmetry, though radial symmetry is quite commonplace. They were the first recorded civilization to discover perspective. However, while humans use one or two points of reference to determine the horizon, Tigo uses three. Other sapient life didn't understand the meaning behind such construction and thus had to independently rediscover the craft even with the reference material readily at hand.

Another key indicator of culture was its language. Irewa's Irewom while functional possessed too many intricacies and oddities for outsiders to learn easily. Proto-Wokaiya, which could be spoken with a fixed jaw, was the easier alternative and thus the preferred tongue for trade. Irewom faded out of style as Irewa's descendants adapted the lingo to their own grammatical structures. One can detect elements of customs from the adopted vocabulary. For example, the phrase "t'kou ikong-ko," to bid passersby a pleasant morning, is the same string that responds to gratitude, which in Traveler's Tongue is "you're welcome." This might imply that thanks were so commonplace that replies were unwarranted or dismissive.

For all its influence, it remains the least studied of the ancient cultures, if simply because no faction claims it in ancestry. Keyrit and Ugo-yt are Irewan. Tuhra and Wlitowa are (albeit loosely) Yukuric. Nonetheless, it remains a fascinating point of intrigue for all species, not merely its heirs.