Anzilaq

The legendary sandworm-riders of the deep Mahadi deserts.

Basics

• Taxonomic Order: TheFolk

• Alignment: Aetherial

• Energy: Hamasat al-Sahra

• Lifespan: 1,200 years

• Diet: Nutrients from the sands

• Habitat: Deep desert

Origins

Evolved from the Iniseli elves.

Description

At birth and until they are about 100 years old, they appear to be swaddled elven babies (called pods), but their swaddling is made from a strong, fleshy shell. These grow into one of three forms: mon'tessaq, where they have the lower body of a worm and the upper body of a desert elf; zef'tessaq, where they have are anthropomorphic sandworms, standing about 7' tall, with golden skin that blends with the sands, and a massive golden crystal hook for their non-dominant hand; or taq'tessaq, a full worm form with an Iniseli face.

Procreation

Anzilaq procreate sexually with one another. Outside their own species, reproduction is only possible with supernatural intervention.

Powers

Anzilaq are very strong. In the deserts, they are swift and agile. They are empowered by the sand itself, and all anzilaq can control sandworms at will.

Form Powers

Anzilaq have different powers in different forms: The mon'tessaq can shape the sands at will, using their ashar and hamasat al-sahra. The zef'tessaq can extend their hook-hands like grappling hooks, and, if they have been fully charged by the sands, can surround their hooks with a small sandstorm. The taq'tessaq are mildly clairvoyant and can merge (permanently) with full sandworms.

With empowerment from the sands, all of their powers can become stronger. As they age, they gain more capacity, thus making it possible for a very old hul'tessaq to have stronger powers.

Weaknesses

Brown aether can kill them. Pure water is poisonous to them if they drink it or bathe in it.

Nations

The only anzilaq nation is that of the Hul’tessaq, which is the evolution of Iniseli culture.

Because they cannot drink or bathe in pure water, they use salt water. It has become a central part of their lives. They choose their adult forms in the ceremony of bonding instead of a bonded animal. And they have abandoned their cities for underground warrens. The desert tribes mostly remain above ground - though they all build mountain warrens - but the city tribes have taken their whole wealth and civilization into warrens just below the dunes.

Culture

The Hul'tessaq are very proud beings. Their socieites are full of complicated ceremonies that convey the proper respect to the others involved. Because of this, even the smallest slight is reason for a feud, and intrigue dominates the Hul'tessaq courts.

Furthermore, because resources are spare, even amongst Hul'tessaq, in the desert, there is fierce competition amongst Hul'tessaq for dominance and control. This adds another layer to the intrigue in their courts, the constant conflict and backstabbing. Hul'tessaq are often seen as vicious and callous. Their communion with the desert defines their deceptions: they are a nation that honors the mirage.

Sandworms are sacred to them, and they possess the ability to ride them.

When a Hul'tessaq is born, a ceremony is performed. The first thing they experience is a ceremony. The umbilical cord is cut. The afterbirth and other fluids are gathered to be cleaned and the water saved for the child’s first non-milk drink. The child is swaddled in goat wool. The mother, if she is conscious, must nurse the child. If she is not, the father must milk her and feed the child. If the mother has died, her body is taken to be drained of water and the child is given to the closest nursing mother, if she is amenable. If not, it is given to the father, who must decide whether the child is worth raising.

The child is raised by the entire village. Play consists of rough games with other children, various learning games involving animals, plants, and survival. From the moment they are born, the Hul'tessaqs are trained to conserve water. They are taught to revere the animals of the desert (each of which has a function). They are taught which plants are good and which are bad. They are taught how to find oases and how to listen for sandworms. They are taught to trust no one, and they are taught to be proud and honorable.

At the age of 10, just before they begin their proper education, they go through the worm ritual. When the child turns 10, they are put into a room with a floor of desert sand. The child is introduced to the room, and then a worm is called. The child must survive the encounter and show a clear bond with one of the worm, which will dance for them but not kill them unless they react in fear.

At the age of 12, the child is put into a school. There are several types of school: religious, martial, social, political, leadership, mercantile, craftsman, scholarly, medical, assassin, hydrological, prophetic, and very rarely, artistic. The schools are either village-based, house-based, family-based, politcally-based, or guild-based.

The social schools focus on the myriad ceremonies Hul'tessaqs must understand. There are four main social occupations amongst the Hul'tessaqs: the Keeper of the Rolls, who knows the families; the White Dune, who knows the political parties; the Golden Hand, who knows the houses; and the Master of the Tasks, who understands interpersonal ceremonies.

There are 12 political parties in the Hul'tessaq nation. Mi’ialah, the ceremonial conservatives; Pyloi’iah, the unity party; Shahn’nah, the religious conservatives; Vadaqua, the military supporters; Ysmali, the desert-bonding party; Balla’hayak, the xenophilic party; Eshmeen, the religious progressives; Halla’am, the survivalists; Kanaquim, the powerful worm-connected party; Noni’illah, the obscure artists’ party; Quallarah, the water-conservation party; and Thah’allaam, the radical separatists.

The leadership of the Hul'tessaq consists of nine major groups: the Sultan and the nobility; the Guilds; the military; the Washeem, the council of tribes; the Seers; the Water-finders; the leaders of the Houses; the matriarchs of the families; the religious leadership; and the Wormsingers.

The major mercantile groups are the Guilds: the spice merchants, the fruit merchants, the cloth merchants, the goat merchants, the olive merchants, and the menagerie suppliers. The craftsman Guilds are the glass makers, the enchanters, the tapestry weavers, the goldsmiths, the leather-makers, and the paper makers. The artists are mostly blood painters, sculptors, singers, and dancers.

The scholars study all aspects of Hul'tessaq life and the world. Hul'tessaq healers and medical figures are magically focused. The Water-finders and Seers are extremely important and powerful for obvious reasons.

There are several different social structures in Hul'tessaq society: families, tribes, houses, parties, guilds, and faiths. Families are blood-relations. Tribes are groups of families who live together in a village. No one can change their tribe or family. The Houses are large social structures composed of various tribes with malleable associations. Parties are political groups, and individual can belong to different groups. Guilds are groups of merchants, artisans, or artists. Faiths are the religious structures, which are complicated, because a single individual can belong to multiple faiths.

When a Hul'tessaq comes of age at the age of 20, they go through a coming of age ceremony in which they must survive for three days in the desert. They are given two flasks of water and a tool to call a worm. If they do not survive, they were not capable enough to be a part of the family and trackers go out to find their bodies to salvage the water. If they do survive, they are deemed ready to be adults and thus have adult responsibilities. At this time, they gain another name.

At this time, they may also join political parties, voice their opinions on matter of tribe, family, and House, and work for guilds or engage fully in the faith. They are also at this time required to observe the proper greeting rituals.

All greeting rituals revolve around sharing water. There are many different ways to greet someone, all based on familiarity and respect. There are several ways to share water with someone in greeting:

1. Wipe the sweat from the brow and place it on their open palm: the most informal greeting, meaning, “I acknowledge your right to drink water.”

2. Spit upon their open palm: used for those you are more important than you as a gesture as an offering of one’s water to a greater person, essentially, “I trust you to protect my water.”

3. Kiss their open palm: a more humbling offering of trust and humility.

4. Wipe the sweat from the brow and place it on their lips: a more intimate gesture of respect and trust, used amongst family, tribe, and lovers.

5. Kiss their lips: a gesture amongst equals, meaning nothing more than, “We share water because neither of us is more important than the other.”

6. Offer cleansed water (usually blood or urine) in a bowl or cup: a gesture of hospitality when someone is in your home or private space, meaning, “You are here and I am allowing you to live.”

7. Open-mouthed kiss their lips: a gesture of co-dependence, an acknowledgment of mutual need.

8. Bleed into their open palms: an open vow of fealty.

9. Offer salt water in a bowl or cup: a gesture of hospitality that says, “You are here and you are worth something precious to me.”

10. Bleed into their mouth: a gesture meaning, “My survival is your survival, but yours is not mine. Be merciful and just.” Often used to announce service to another.

11. Drink salt water and kiss it into their mouth: a gesture meaning, “I choose to share with you that which would give me life.” It is the most intimate of gestures, only exchanged between lovers or parents and children.

These are the basic interpersonal rituals. For inter-family, inter-tribal, inter-House, inter-guild, or inter-faith rituals, there are variants on all of the above. Failure to perform these in the right circumstances is an insult to the honor of the intended recipient. Hul'tessaq bodies are more efficient than normal, but they still must expel waste. All fluid waste is saved to be cleansed and reused.

The variations are as follows:

1. Inter-family: add a bow.

2. Inter-tribal: add a salute.

3. Inter-House: add a clasping of the hands.

4. Inter-guild: add a handshake.

5. Inter-faith: add a short prayer.

Inter-political party interactions have no added gestures.

There are many gestures of insult as well:

1. Spit on the ground: rude, “I have no respect for you.”

2. Bleed on the ground: mostly a matter-of-fact, “You will not receive my fealty.”

3. Regurgitate water on the ground: vile insult, “I would rather die than show you respect.”

4. Piss on the ground: relatively mild, “I deny you the chance for my water.”

5. Intentionally spill offered cleansed water: “I reject your hospitality and hope you suffer.”

6. Intentionally spilled offered salt water: “I reject your hospitality and wish your family death.”

7. Spitting back out water that has been taken in: “I refuse your gesture of respect and would prefer death to your presence.”

8. Slap one who is depositing water in your open palm: “You are not worthy to serve me.”

9. Turn away from an offered kiss: “You are not my equal.”

10. Bite the tongue of one giving an open-mouthed kiss: “You are less than I am and I take from you.”

11. Throw sweat on the ground: “I will not give this to you.”

Hul'tessaqs in the hard life of the desert do not own slaves (because they are not worth the burden), but those who live in the cities sometimes do.

Once the Hul'tessaq is into their adulthood, they are tested repeatedly to find their place in society and whether they are worthy of survival. After some time, between 20 and 40 years, they are declared “worthy” and asked to perform the Ceremony of the Cups. In the Ceremony, the Hul'tessaq is taken into a desert cave and given a series of cups to drink from. The cups contain the following: cleansed water, scorpion venom, goat’s milk, sand viper venom, hyrax blood, drake blood, succulent plant juice, wormblood, and salt water.

They must drink and retain the cleansed water. They must survive the venoms, and each will make them better able to survive the rest. The milk will soothe them. The hyrax and drake blood will strengthen them, the juice will calm their stomachs. The wormblood will give them visions and potentially kill them. The water will restore them (indeed, only pure water can stop wormblood from killing someone). The visions the Hul'tessaq has will tell them what they will face in their life, though few remember it afterward. They will later gain flashes of their vision as they grow. When the Ceremony is over, they are expected to make their oaths of fealty.

After they have sworn fealty, they are allowed to join another in the Rite of Joining, which is essentially marriage. The two Hul'tessaqs in the ceremony (of any gender) will tie their hands together and dance an intricate dance, officiated by leaders of the faiths, and ending in love making.

If a Hul'tessaq becomes pregnant, they are expected to continue their roles in the family, tribe, and House (the political parties are always malleable in these situations). Survival of the tribe is more important than the survival of the child. If the child cannot survive on the parent’s usual ration of water, it is not worth birthing. As such, the mother usually stops needing to eliminate waste during pregnancy, as their already efficient body makes do for two.

During middle age, Hul'tessaqs must prove every day that they are capable of contributing or they risk being ousted from the tribe or the family. If ousted, they die alone in the desert, and their families come back to find them and take their water. If they prove thems truly worthy, they are held in reverence as elders.

There are twelve Houses of Hul'tessaq society: Golden Sand, High Sun, Great Desert, Sand Eye, Red Corona, Hand, King Scorpion, Wind Crown, Forgotten Rain, Honor’s Blade, Shining Mirage, and Black Night. Golden Sand is the Sultan’s house and the most powerful, but they are considered soft by the most hardcore of the Hul'tessaqs. High Sun is controlled by the wealthy, and membership requires wealth. Great Desert are the survivalists, the hard-bitten tribes who refuse to live the “soft” life of the cities. Sand Eye is composed of families who are more closely knit than most, resisting change. Red Corona is a very territorial and savage House, and Hand are the xenophilic House. King Scorpion are focused on agriculture, and Wind Crown are nomadic and fluid. Forgotten Rain focus on water to the exclusion of all the other parts of the culture, and Honor’s Blade resist the more cunning and dangerous aspects of Hul'tessaq culture. Shining Mirage are nationalistic, and Black Night, the most ancient House, is focused on the prophecies of the seers.

Hul'tessaqs in the cities view those in the deep desert as fanatics who won’t move with the times, and those in the deserts view the city-dwellers as soft and weak. City life, while not as focused on water and survival, is still cutthroat. Questions of honor and pride in the desert are as much about survival as in the city. In the city, though, it is not the threat of abandonment, but assassination that one should be concerned about. The more powerful you are, the more important it is to be seen as powerful, and the only way to ensure that is to kill those who make you appear weak. And that is why the Scorpion-stings exist. They are ruthless, cunning, powerful assassins who know poison backward and forward.

In the deserts, the most important thing is the sandworms. The sandworms make life in the desert easier, being able to make a three week journey in a single day. They can carry hundreds of gallons of water while a tribe of Hul'tessaqs can only carry a few dozen at best. They can intimidate even desert behemoths and render lesser threats like scorpions harmless. Anyone can be a mutasabiq--all you need is a hook. But to be a Wormsinger takes a special talent, a special skill. They can summon the worms, they can tame the worms, and they can predict them. That is life or death in the desert.

There are several kinds of Seers amongst the Hul'tessaq. There are those who invoke the faith, but most of those are minor Seers. There are those that have natural ability, and their skills vary depending on training and power. But the most revered and the most consistently powerful are the ones who can stomach the wormblood. The wormblood gives them incredible visions, and the Scribes copy down what they describe. When they awaken, they remember nothing, but thousands of years are recorded on scrolls in the desert caves.

Similarly, Hul'tessaqs believe that mirages (actual ones, not the etherion race) have mystical properties. There are special mages and some faithful amongst them who specialize in finding mirages and discerning their meanings, portents of the future, tales of the present, or warnings from the past. They also take hallucinogenic substances to augment their experiences, and their words are treated as nigh equal to the wormblood in terms of respect.

The Water-finders in the tribe have obvious importance. Of similar importance are the keepers of the water rights, those who know which tribes access water where and who has a right to it, and where the oases are.

In Hul'tessaq society, honor, pride, and dominance are important concepts as well. One’s honor is how one is perceived by others, whether one is thought to be fair and reasonable or ruthless and dangerous. A slight to one’s honor is something that someone else does to suggest the one you don’t want people to think (either is acceptable in Inisel if it’s the one you prefer). Pride is what one thinks of one’s self, and damage to that is a dire insult. Dominance is how much people fear and/or respect you. In the desert, these things are settled with the ruthless quest for survival. In the city, it’s settled with duels or assassinations.

The families are led by matriarchs, the oldest female with significant dominance. The Houses are led by the most powerful matriarch that is a member of the house. The leaders of the Guilds are the most wealthy members of the Guilds. The leaders of the Seers are the eldest of them, and the leaders of the religious groups are chosen within each religion. The Water-finders are not a unified group. Each tribe has at least one, and they are independently powerful. The Wormsingers work similarly. The military’s leaders are chosen by merit, for the most part, and the Washeem’s leaders are politically created (through debate, assassination, and influence brokering).

Esoterica

Hul’tessaqs are beings of and the greatest users of hamasat al-sahra, the aether of the desert. They also wield ma’dhahabi, lahab al’qalb, kazaddarean, kiiric yihi, the bright, lunar aether, nzwara murazvo, true shadow, arcane shadow, sterisi, d’qiarsea, b’qar, fuinneamh, poioumenon, oalkhaylaoataa, mashoaab, kakaraohy, bijalee, bailaohu jinghua, menab’e, spirit energy, ambrosia, various celestial and infernal powers, blood energy, mijjit, flux, fate, symbolism, and cu’ucuch’ik.

Religion

There are several Divines that the Hul'tessaqs honor. Chief amongst them is the Mother of the Sands, whom they honor as their maker and the source of all life, and of all strife. They honor the Mother of Water (as they call her) as the source of the scarcest of resources, and they also call her the Rain-Bringer. They honor the Winds, which sweep the deserts and change them. They honor the Father of the Quiet, who keeps their secrets and protects the silence of the deserts. They honor the Mother of the Moons, who lights the nights when it is cool. They honor the Seer and the Historian, for both the future and the past are written in the sands. They honor the Singer and the Artisan, for both have central parts of their culture, and they honor the Wormfather, who brought them the beasts of the desert. They honor the Master of Boundaries, who defines the borders of their territories, and they honor the Sunbearer. They recognize the One-Winged God, whom they call the Dry God, as their worst foe. They call their Pantheon “the Hard Gods.”

Gender

Hul’tessaqs have better things to think about than gender. They are worried more about survival. As such, they let anyone be whatever gender they say they are.

Economy

Hul’tessaqs live in a blended feudal-mercantile economy.

Military

The main military groups are the Legion of the Worms (military wormriders called mutasabiq), the Scorpion-stings (assassins), the Dunerunners (special forces), and the Eternal Blades (elite warriors). There is no basic military.

Language

Their language is roughly like Arabic.

Trade

Hul’tessaq trade with other desert peoples, sharing their crafts with others.

Occupations

• Crystalshapers - those who work the crystals.

• Mutasabiq - basically super-cavalry and teamsters.

• Wormsinger - those who can call and control the worms.

• Seer - those who drink wormblood.

• Scorpion-sting - poisoners.

• Prayer leader - a local religious leader.

• Sultan - the head of the nobility.

• Mirage-finder - one who seeks mirages and hallucinations.

• Water-finder - one who finds water.

Outside View

Outsiders assume the Hul’tessaq are brutal, violent savages to be avoided, and they are often accused of cannibalism.

Notables

• Da'sabash Iftidara and Khalmaqua Iftidara, the Hul'Tessaq Manifests

• Ghef'fhardim, General of the Eternal Blades

• Katha'ane, Wormguard of the Manifests

• Jash'mali, Warrior-Healer

• Varda'aralaas, Dunestalker

• Mal'aquim, Dry Worm

• Scy'thaen, Desert Guard

• Phalad'riel, Sunbringer

Estimated Populations

• Hul’tessaq: 150,000

• Other: 50,000

Sample Stats

PRO 12
ATH 12
STR 12
AWA 12
WIL 12
PRS 8
STH 10