Fwoarians

Interpersonal Reactions

In the Grim Countries the various peoples of the Inisa can have a wild parade of appearances and reputations. For Fwoarians, the reputation is a mixed bag. Most people believe them to be brutish, crude people who actively choose to live a backwards lifestyle out of stubborn refusal to change or primordial fear of it. Neither is the case and while Fwoarians are most certainly a vicious people used to a difficult life, they are still capable of compassion and softer emotions, yet all most see is a nearly eight-foot tall bruiser.

Firbolg suffer even more deeply for their semi-deserved reputation. Many believe to travel into Súilíneach Péine, north of Lwyg-Rath further than the western pass into the Unknown, is to be trespassing in Firbolg territory. The punishment for this is death and consumption. While the Council of Dòchas Ùr has endeavored to curtail the rumors of cannibalism prevalent in local myths about Firbolg, but the rumors of general executions stayed. Firbolg will most certainly keep their privacy through violence, but only if their warnings go unheeded first. While they typically all agree a warning is verbal, not all Firbolg believe it to be the mandatory way.

Origin Archetypes

Fwoarians actively choose to forgo the trappings of their more civilized neighbors. This leaves little in the way of career choices. Most Fwoarians take up some form of hunting, gathering or menial tasks such as simple industry. The exception to this is the Firbolg who are much the same, but are heavily interested in metalworks:

• Enlisted Soldier, Fell Hunter, Forager, Gladiator, Herbalist, Iconoclast, Menial, Nomad, Ritualist, Survivalist, Unusual Upbringing.

Character Archetypes

There are very few endeavors that do not benefit from the presence of the moorland striders. Fwoarians are bigger, tougher and have old knowledge of the wilds. They tend to fulfill those roles, both because it is what they know and keeping in line with their spiritual concepts of strength through adversity:

• Barbarian, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Shaman, Totem Warrior.

Common Names

Feminine Names

Ainle, Aurick, Breata, Cassair, Edith, Sheela

Masculine Names

Bretan, Cane, Eoin, Gilmere, Nevyn, Yvar

Family Names

Fwoarians share a singular surname that is based on the region of their lodge. Such as the Íseal from the Low Muck or the Keyll from the Greenvolk. They're not often used in conversation and are usually just a way to explain a fwoarian's place of origin succinctly. Most don't even place much merit on tribal names, preferring their own words and deeds to have the weight necessary to carry their conversations. Though, this isn't to say fwoarians place no pride in their tribal communities. While they may not bear them as names, necessarily, the pride of the lodge is built upon the foundation of the individual members deeds. Heroes, hunters, craftsman and warriors of renown go far in raising the spirits of these passionate and grim people. Though, obviously they favor the more violent walks of life.

Culture

They were the first non-fey on the inisa and if you ask any fwoarian, by the ancestors, they will be the last. All fwoarians seek to enkindle passion in their daily lives and its hard to smother the zest for life a fwoarian exhibits, let alone demoralize one. Everything a fwoarian does he does with a hunger for life and will rarely not put forth maximum effort to a given task.

They are a people much used to the cold and the darkness if their own tales are to be believed. They survived long into the endless winter from before the Arduids and so it seems that their culture developed means to beat back the oppressive darkness and biting cold by lighting a fire in their souls.

By and large, however, fwoarian custom and culture has slowly dwindled, taking on more and more of the surrounding social pressures of the nearby human settlements. Many fwoarians decry this, especially their Unknown and Staraí castes, which push back against the encroaching loss of their culture in, sometimes, extreme ways. Fwoarian cultural identity is a confusing thing, especially for the younger tribesmen, who neither fit seamlessly into human society and struggle to be more than the "reckless swamp savages" the other mortal tribes portray them as.

Native Language

Fwoarians usually speak Moni. The Fwoarian's original language of Cawr is a dead language and very little of it remains save for in the naming of some places and things. Its possible the language was pushed out by Moni and the Fwoarians just kept with whichever language was most used at that time.

This has changed, however, in AoA 2809 RE, following the Year of Invasions when a codex detailing the Cawr language in great detail was recovered on Inis Míol Mór somewhere near a temple to the Ardruid Unknown. The intrepid adventurers, the Fianna Mór, returned it to Lwyg-Rath where it was kept safe until after the Fomorii were driven from the shores. Afterwards, the reigning Ard Banríon & Ard Righ, Cian and Cassair an Nathair were able to learn it then disseminate the codex among the Unknown. It has once again become the spoken language of many fwoarians.

Customs & Values

Taboos

Fwoarians have little tolerance for laziness and have a zero tolerance policy towards cowardice and betraying the teachings of the ancestors.

Art & Architecture

Fwoarians have minimalist art similar to cave paintings or Neolithic carving. Much of what artistic means fwoarians may have exhibited was lost to either the battles with the Ardruids, the pressure of human culture or perhaps they never had such things and discarded them for more practical or simple art. However, recent discoveries would indicate the fwoarians have always had a rich cultural skill as stone-carvers and painters. Often, these examples are found in far, out of the way locations. Great stones covered in ochre and woad paintings with especially impressive specimens carved with surprising detail directly into the stone and wood.

Fwoarian architecture is usually unadorned; they tend to keep symbolism and ornamentation only for spiritually important places. Even there its minimalistic and depicts strange or contorted versions of animals and fwoarians embroiled in hunting, war or festivities. While they seem rather simplistic, these ornamentations server an important purpose. Whether its a spiritually significant site, a Draoi Lia's yurt, a Staraí's hearth or a Unknown's longhouse, they record in simple but breathtaking images the stories most important to the lodge.

They work at a lower technological level than most of the Inis seemingly stuck in an iron age by preference alone. To them it keeps their people strong and wild, not softened by modern convenience, and left cold and hard like the lands they roam. Fwoarians are just as likely to use stone tools and hide clothes as they are iron weapons and woven fabrics. Some choose this impracticality as a way to test themselves. To others, they disdain the machinations of civilized life, where even forged metal is a luxury a fwoarian does not need to beat the world at its own, cruel game.

Clothes & Dress

Fwoarians wear leathers, furs and tartan textiles. They prefer to emulate the dangerous and wild beasts that haunt their moors, donning the ferocious appearance of the predators they compete with. They are rarely without a myriad of weapons on their person at any given time and very few wear armor. What armor they do wear is mostly practical and its only ornamentation are trophies claimed from the hunt or battle..

When they must adorn themselves in a way other tribes feel is appropriate they will wear flamboyant colors or earthly hues. Reds, greens, blues and browns. Again they rarely cover their chests or heads, but are known to band their waists with girdles and kilts or drape heavy mantles about their shoulders. These open-styled garments are meant so that the intricate woad they paint themselves with cannot be hidden or go unseen.

Food & Cuisine

Fwoarians prefer rough-cooked foods; meats over an open flame, roasted vegetables and heady spices. As such, they do not have many dishes of note. However, there is the matter of their preferred beverage; Serpent's Ale. Said to have been first brewed in the Serpent's Hollow within the Low Muck, this ale is potent even to a fwoarian's unique anatomy and more than capable of poisoning the blood of weaker peoples. If it doesn't nestle in the gut like a coal from a bonfire, then it isn't Serpent's Ale.

Coming of Age Rites

The day a Fwoarian sees his thirteenth spring he is gathered with others of his age and brought to the a small ring of stones outside the village. There his mother gives him his weapons and his father draws first blood with a small knife. They are bereft of clothes save for a loincloth. From there, he must fight a beast or captive enemy, or die trying. To avoid this ritual is to be cast out of the tribe, turned forever from not just their people, but their afterlife and an honorable death. The creatures they fight are myriad, but the favored foe is a spriggan. Fey creatures that haunt the higher places in the haunted moors. These fey are often kept agitated and starved, because when a spriggan becomes enraged it grows to thrice its usual height and strength, making for mighty first-foes for the Fwoarian offspring. Other creatures, when spriggans cannot be found, such as for the Keyll and Greenvolk tribes, are no less dangerous. Wild cats and man-eating wolves. While the trials are designed to be dangerous and challenging, they aren't one-sided, as the elders often keep the gladiatorial sport starved and enraged which leaves them weak and reckless. This fosters cunning in the soon-to-be-adult Fwoarian, or tests their raw might. Though, it ends in tragedy far too frequently for the other mortal tribes to even begin to consider this a "civil" tradition.

Funerary & Memorial Rites

Fwoarians cremate their dead in a violent throng of celebration. Drums pound, women keen and men roar into the sky above as the cinders rise like black stairs carrying the Fwoarians Awen to the glen of their ancestors where the Unknown open great oaken doors and admit him to the clamor of battle, the raucous roar of drunk celebration and the calm slumber of an easy afterlife well-earned.

Beauty Ideals

The Fwoarians are a stern and tenacious people with an anatomy that builds muscle early, quickly and incredibly. Fwoarians see severity and wild expressionism as a form of beauty. Shaved heads, braided beards, painted skin, mohawks and dreadlocks are standard measures for personal expression. Anatomically a Fwoarian prefers well-built and stocky figures over those of traditional measures of human beauty. Rippling muscles and thick limbs are the preferred features of a partner, anything that reminds them of wild strength of the primeval world.

Gender Ideals

All Fwoarians work for the tribe's communal good. No job is less important than another. Females take advisory roles, motherhood and combat specialists in equal measure. Childbirth is as heroic as shedding blood on the field of battle and often lauded as having one's blood spilled for the honor of the tribe. Likewise a man who can cook and weave is considered a benefit for a household since that means what work there is gets done twice as fast.

Fwoarians are far too pragmatic to place the niceties of gender roles on their culture. It would be too convenient to place the weight of battle on just the men or the tedium of the hearth on just the women. If you are Fwoarian then you exalt and suffer just the same as anyone else in your home and they refuse to have it any other way.

Courtship Ideals

If a Fwoarian wishes to court someone, they will be fairly direct in their approach. It's a simple matter of facts; they are either requited or not. To pursue this too far is seen as unhealthy and an unnecessary expenditure of time and energy that could be used more productively. However, a lack of passion could be seen as a jape at the others' expense and may cause offense, which, may be lethal. While Fwoarians tend to thrive on the wilder passions of their whims, they prefer these unabashed acts to be free of restraint. Pining for one particular persons affections leaves a strain on their personal freedoms, and so, is usually avoided.

Relationships

Fwoarian couples are, first and foremost, bonded warriors and hunters. Regardless of anything else respect and mutual understanding are paramount. They will defend each other even if one might be obviously wrong. Little can break the emotional ties a fwoarian feels to someone except, perhaps, death. Even then one might expect their fwoarian lover to rend the Gates of the Glen and wrestle their lover free of the afterlife, if such a thing wasn't considered ridiculous by them.

A Fwoarian requires passion in all things. Love and life should be met with a zeal like fire coursing over hot coals. Their world and region is too dark and drab for half measures so they treat love much the same. They throw themselves into it with all they have, raw and open to one another like a fresh wound.

Great Moot

Most of the time, the Fwoarians settlements are left to govern themselves based on the respective needs, traditions and beliefs of their individual occupying tribes. However, when the Fwoarin lodges need to convene on global matters, they do so at Ynis-Gwysrin and form a council of tribal chieftains. Here, even the Chieftain of the First; the ruler of the Bulthron, is placed on an even ground. Every member of the Unknown shares equal power and decisions must be reach unanimously. Chieftains are allowed to refuse attendance, if they so choose. This is rarely done, however, as its seen as a mark of shame to not be invested in the Fwoarian peoples' best interests.

Toscaire of Dòchas Ùr

The Toscaire at Dòchas Ùr, also known as the Council of Dòchas Ùr, are the ruling body in Inis Mona. Here, representatives from all the tribes that have agreed to join the council convene to discuss, deliberate and conduct matters of state under the watchful eye of the Ard Righ or the Ard Banríon.