Kokhlidoi

The nomads of the Shell Desert are called Kokhlidoi by the Iskuzai, but they call themselves the Celestial Tribes since they believe to be descendants of the stars. In the fossil sands of their land, the Celestial Tribes build large mausoleums where they bury the mummified bodies of their fellow tribesmen. During important holidays, they return to those burial places and honor the memory of their ancestors, praying that their souls will soon be reunited with the “night fires” – the stars. What appears to an outsider to be a single culture is instead a wide group of tribes, different in appearance, language and history, united by the same religious practices. Just like the Iskuzai before the Pact of Aulea, the Kokhlidoi are often at war with each other. Apart from the stars, they worship such entities as the solar demon whom they call Hemshu, “Lord of Silence and Horses”, the Goddesses Strabia and Markunda, and Cirta, whose cult comes from their land. Every tribe of Kokhlidoi is divided into many clans, and every clan is led by a prince, a guide in times of both war and peace, and by a council of elder women called the Firstborns, who study the configuration of the skies in order to make predictions. In fact, every clan traces its origin to a particular star. Among the Kokhlidoi, marriage between brothers and sisters is permitted, mainly to minimize the risks that come with the custom of competitive gift exchange: following the wedding ceremony, families of the newlywed challenge each other to present the most generous gift, and the winner might pay too high a price for the triumph. Nevertheless, this tradition fills other peoples with disquiet and suspicion. In the coastal cities, saying that someone comes from the Desert is a way of suggesting that they are willing to trade their body as ware. Poets say, the Kokhlidoi built the oldest of all cities and its towers are now half- buried in the dunes, beyond the remote expanses of the arid Sea of Marble. Nobody remembers why they abandoned it, and why they now refuse to dwell in houses and behind tall walls.