Scorch

The Scorched is a general term used by the ethnicity native to the Iron Desert to refer to themselves. The native word for Scorched is "Kshatrijé" but this word is hardly ever used, the people of the desert instead preferring to translate it into foreign languages they encounter. Nonetheless, the term is mostly employed by the Scorched themselves, neighbouring cultures instead having their own terms for them. For example, they are referred to as Gholan or "sun people" in the Saiännic language and Viuyquenzi in the Yeharene language, the former being a term which due to the literary prevalence of that language has become more well-known among other nations. It does not seem to concern them much what they are referred to as by other peoples.
The Scorched world is quite unlike that of many other cultures found on Amauvala, in large due to the extreme environment of their native land. The inhospitable nature of the Iron Desert would make one believe that the Iron Desert is uninhabited, as there are hardly any major settlements to be seen anywhere amidst the red crags and valleys. On the surface, one can mainly find small groups of nomads who travel about in clans of a few hundred, bringing with them herds of large, red camels and horses. However, the mainstay of the Scorched world lies underground, hidden from the burning sun and the lifeless soil.
In fact, in the Mír region alone, there are dozens of cities where the Scorched live together in the thousands, but they are all hidden under ground, some of them so deep that sunlight almost never reaches their eyes.
==Appearance==
The Scorched have plenty of distinguishable features making them easy to recognise. Despite living in a hot and sunny region, their skin is almost always pale white, sometimes bordering on gray. Their hair is exclusively black, coarse and is always kept long by both sexes. Their eyes are narrow, slightly almond-shaped, with steel grey and dark blue being the most common colours. Green eyes are generally considered to be a sign of great beauty and spiritual refinement. Some people have pointed out that the Scorched have many physical traits that seem unnatural in a desert environment, hinting that they are in fact not native to the Iron Desert. However, according to their own stories, the Iron Desert used to be a lush green land tens of thousands of years ago, and that their ancestors did not live hidden below the burnt red soil.
The Scorched are also notably tall, and especially Scorched women are famous for standing much taller than women of other ethnicities, often even taller than men. Scorched women are about 174cm tall on average with men averaging around 183cm. Most Scorched are also very thin, which combined with their height gives them a gaunt appearance.
Those Scorched who appear outside of the Iron Desert mostly come from the Mír region in the western part of the desert, where they generally dress in liberal amounts of cloth, usually dyed in somber colours, with very little difference between male and female garb. They commonly wear long robes with wide sleeves and flared trouser-skirts. While on the surface, they cover themselves in coarse cloaks and often wear wide, firm hats made from the plastrons of giant beetles to protect themselves from the sun. Their clothing is often adorned with jewellery made from silver, gold or more exotic materials such as insect chitin. Minute details on the costume will reveal the wearer's tribal or national allegiance. Caravans and envoys from the Shadowborn of the northern Mír region tend to garb themselves in distinctive dark blue clothing, making them easily recognised everywhere, and some other tribes have similar customs.
==Culture==
One would think that such a sparsely populated, lifeless region as the Iron Desert would not be able to support advanced cultures, but in fact the Scorched have created an incredibly rich and sophisticated world culture for themselves. Most of this cultural sphere remains unpenetrated by other nations, creating an aura of mystery about them that they seem very eager to maintain. What is clear though is that Scorched society is permeated by social codes that are extremely difficult to grasp for outsiders. The Scorched are highly reluctant on teaching outsiders their language and almost always learn foreign languages when forced to deal with other cultures. There are a few Saiännic scholars who have managed to decipher the language but even to them it seems a daunting task to pierce into the Scorched mindset. One significant reason to this is that nothing in the Scorched world is spoken plainly.
The Scorched language, and subsequently all facets of their lives, are highly dependant on hidden meanings. To the Scorched, everything has meaning; every word, every gesture, every breath of air can change the meaning of something if done in a certain way, and the art of saying a lot with few words is one praised highly. A scholar intent on deciphering the Scorched language will quickly notice that there are no words or phrases corresponding to simple concepts such as "welcome" or "thank you" to be found. Instead, offerings of gratitude or hospitality must be expressed through poetic analogy using certain key-words that will convey this emotional connotation. This makes learning even simple phrases a exercise in deciphering idioms or words derived from ancient poetry whose meanings are obscure to someone unfamiliar with them.
The Scorched have praised poetry as one of the highest forms of art since age immemorial, and it is still an incredibly important facet of their lives. Almost every Scorched, be they highly educated scholars or even humble nomadic herders, can recite important poems by heart and will indeed create their own. Every occasion in their lives will have a poem associated with it, making every Scorched individual's life a collection of poetry. The and there is a vast amount of literature circulating about the Iron Desert, though most of it has never seen translation and thus remains unknown in the outside world. They are also masterful craftsmen. They are perhaps alone in the world to master the art of glassmaking, and their metalworks, wool fabrics, carpets, pottery and bowmaking are famous.
==Religion==
In ancient times, most of the Scorched adhered to shamanistic religions that worshipped the spirits of the land, often in the shape of giant insects or animals. To some extent, these ancient beliefs are still practiced, especially in the more remote areas of the desert. In the Neolithic age, the worship of Insect-deities was prevalent in the Mír region, centrered around the ancient Mósharenja civilisation. This cult met its demise by the end of the Thousand-Year War and was largely replaced with the Ancestral Veneration Cult, centered around Vht'shjenjé. This religion is by far the most codified, reinforced by an enormous body of literature and commentary, most notably the great poetic anthology known as the Akhnjajeshtvá. Some states in the Mír region maintain theocracies centered around the Ancestral cult, but it is a rather heterodox belief system, where numerous philosophical schools and sects are all allowed to hold discourse, making the actual practice of the faith quite different among different segments of the population. The main tenets holding them together is the veneration/worship of Ancestor-saints, and the maintenance of the two precepts known as Shárv and Vshtjrtsárin', bloodline and tradition.
There are also plenty of minority faiths around the region, for example small amounts of fire-worshippers while others maintain worship of ancient moon and earth deities. Many of them have been absorbed into the ancestral cult, and the ancient goddess known as the "maiden of the vale" is accepted as a part of the ancestral pantheon. It is also said that there are various bizarre cults hidden in the deep underground, ancient death-cults frozen in time that practice human sacrifice and even cannibalism.
In general, the Scorched are a highly spiritual people and devote a lot of time to introspection and thinking. Meditation is also highly popular, likely a Saiännic import that has been embraced wholly and is practiced by Scorched of all walks of life.
==Society==
The different Scorched city-states show considerable differences in how they organise themselves and it is difficult to speak of any central pattern in how they favour to govern their lands. The most common forms of government throughout the desert are theocratic societies or aristocracies ruled by warrior-clans. There is also considerable differences between the Schorched who dwell in subterranean cities and the nomads who wander the surface. The nomads tend to maintain egalitarian traits, some of them even rejecting concepts such as private property, while the urban Scorched have clearly defined hierarchies. Most Scorched societies seem to be fashioned to maintain the individual's right to govern their families as they see fit, and there is also a strong meritocratic tradition among some states.
Another trait found among almost all Scorched are also matriarchical tendencies. Although no Scorched state can be truly called a matriarchy, women tend to often hold power in significant positions and religious leaders tend to be female. Some societies also have female warriors, although their numbers are significantly fewer than male ones as women are generally considered to be indispensible. Some Scorched societies, especially the nomadic ones, also practice polyandry, where a single woman make take several husbands to ensure that at least one of them will stay alive to raise their child. Other societies are more strictly monogamous, with the couple attaining a new name once they've had their first child. This name, called a Metsjenúr or "lineage" is their legal name in most matters and their child will inherit the name as a form of combined patronymic/matronymic.
==Scorched states==
Most of the larger Scorched states are centered around the western Mír region, which is also the only one to have proper contact with the outside world, but there are also some pockets of civilisation elsewhere.
===Ashkyrenjé===
The covenant of Ashkyrenjé is one of the biggest and wealthiest states outside of the Mír region, centered around the great chasm known as the Star of Ashkyrenjé. A union of different local tribes under a single dynasty, it is said to be fabulously wealthy and that their caves and clothes are studded with precious gems. They are run by an aristocracy who wear white silks and carry umbrellas to protect them from the sun. Not much else is known about them, as they rarely venture west to interact with other states.
===Assenjaré===
Assenjaré is one of the larger states on the east bank of the northern Mír river. Bordering Vht'shjenjé to the north, the two states have traditionally been engaged in an unstable alliance, beginning during the Assenjaré-Shjevrenjé controversy that led to the War of a Thousand Screams. The end of the war culminated in the annihilation of the Shjevrenjé states and the annexation of its territory into Assenjaré, something that caused anger among their northern neighbours. The Assenjaré are run by an elder council who all harken to the Ancestral veneration cult, though they do not admit the Shjevtyrín as a spiritual leader.
===Sh'varaith===
Sh'varaith is a a military powerhouse located in the south-west of the Mír region. A pariah among its neighbours, it is ruled by an autocratic royal family who famously live in immense opulence inside their capital, shaped like a giant cylinder hollowed out of the mountain. They are hostile to most outsiders and fought against the Assenjaré-Vht'shjenjé alliance in the War of a Thousand Screams. They lost, and thus had to guarantee the right of Vht'shjenjé caravans to cross their lands and trade in their caves, but it is said that they are waiting for a chance to extract revenge upon the Shadowborn. They have frequently expanded their territory through conquest, something that has led to waves of refugees fleeing north, but most of their northern neighbours are allied against them which have effectively deterred them from expanding further.
===Vht'shjenjé===
Vht'shjenjé is the descendant-state of Eshárenja people who once were the cultural and political centre of the northern Mír region during the Paleolithic age. Massacred by the ancestors of the Mósharenja, the few survivors fled north to the great cave by the end of the Mír valley which was then an insect hive. Through the sacrifice of St. Issvenkásht, the cave was liberated and became the city of Varvardnársh, the capital of the Vht'shjenjé and perhaps the largest city in the Iron Desert. The Vht'shjenjé and the Mósharenja fought a bitter war for over a thousand years until the former eventually prevailed and established a state around the base of the Mír river, spreading the Ancestral veneration cult throughout the desert. Vht'shjenjé is ruled by a theocratic council led by Shjevtyrín, an immortal prophetess that once rallied her people to war against the black-blooded. She holds her court in a grandiose palace in the heart of Varvardnársh, but she is elusive and is rarely seen by the populace. In practice, the state is run by the Upper Council and its clerical bureaucracy, but most segments of society have a lot of individual freedom. Vht'shjenjé is the cultural centre of the Mír region. They invented coinage, the Essjentine script, literature and technology that are now commonly spread out throughout the region. Their army once dressed in light blue uniforms and is thus known as the Azure Army, the oldest military institution in the world. They are powerful but rarely wage aggressive war, and thus the borders of Vht'shjenjé have not changed for generations.
Vht'shjenjé is largely a closed state that do not allow foreigners to enter its soil, the sole exception being the southern border fortress of Shtvakhír.
===Sh'vashtar===
Sh'vashtar is a small Scorched city-state a little way from the northward bend in the Mir river. As of the the early Fourth Century relatively little is known of it, although it is one of the states that has most contact with Talmoene traders. Saiene sources speak of it having a very impressive night market.
=== Khla'sjak ===
Khla'sjak is a very small Scorched state on the northern bank of the middle Mir. It's name comes down to us in sources because of several Talmoene merchants murdered there in the year 311.
It controls several inhabitable rock spires which rise from a broad point in the middle Mir, making it relatively important for trade. Despite sharing a long border with Sh'varajth in the north it has managed to avoid annexation.Category:Races
Category:Moaseraiana
Category:Moaseraianan people