Hattusas

The Hattusas are a semi-nomadic people of navigators, mercenaries and fishers. They inhabit the numerous pieces of land scattered around the Ophiotaurus Ocean, which the Hattusas cross far and wide in long painted canoes. Their cities are built on islands and are often abandoned before the storm season. For this reason, encountering a fleet of Hattusas ships is said to be a harbinger of perils: they are often the first signal of a terrible tempest approaching. The Hattusas are considered great drinkers, naturally inclined to unbridled pleasures. Among the Immortals, the two who they worship more than all the rest are Zephryos, to whom they offer human sacrifices, and Cirta, whom they call Gorguraroa (She of the All-Swallowing Underground River). For this people, the status of a prince or the prestige of a community along with the legitimacy of its claims to dominion of a certain region - all of these are tied to Daru Hatu (Beautiful Gifts), talismans of mythical origin, around which many epic cycles were centered. Although the importance of talismans is common to many civilizations, for none other is political balance so closely linked to possessing these objects. Furthermore, the Hattusas are the only ones among the peoples of Askedoria to honor the dead by letting them be devoured by seabirds. They believe that, unless their remains are ritually eaten, the dead’s souls dissolve in the water. Thus is chanted in one of their funeral prayers: ‘We call upon the mercy of heaven so that the white coursers keep our ancestors intact in their feathers!’ On some islands off the eastern coasts, the Hattusas practice funeral anthropophagy: the living eat the meat of the deceased, raw or cooked in a large pot which they call the Well of Hekas. This tradition makes the Etoi and the Iskuzai wary of these people of the sea. The Hattusas are said to know how to train dolphins to be used as steeds for their boats when there is no wind.