Uninetsv

Those who speak the words of yahas and lead the dances in order to build bonds with others and create communities that protect one another and share powers. "Uninetsv" is a nunnehi word; the term is often corrupted outside their culture for different kinds of leaders of the bonding ceremonies.

Gadugi

Gadugi refers to cooperative labor or working together, and it applies as much to actual collective work as it does to the work of the uninetsv, but it is fundamental to the work of the uninetsv. In order to generate yahas, one must live in a cooperative, communal environment, working together with the people around and living in communion with the world, rather than in a hierarchical structure or with dominion over others.

Bonding Ceremony

The role of the uninetsv is to guide the bonding ceremonies of the community to bring them together and create the bonds between them. They are usually adorned in special clothing (varies greatly by culture, but in the nunnehi culture, they often wear tunics with ribbons or cotton skirts adorned with ribbons and shells). The ceremony must take place at the right time, in the right place, and with the right accoutrement.

Wild Onions

When wild onions grow in the spring, they are gathered for special communal meals. This is the signal to the uninetsv that it is time for the bonding ceremony. New bonding ceremonies can be held once a week until the start of summer, but for practical reasons, they happen usually once a month at most.

Townhouse or Councilhouse

Every nunnehi community has a townhouse or councilhouse that is a central gathering location for people in the wider area. It is usually large enough to hold hundreds of people, even if it only needs to hold a few dozen. The community leaders gather here to speak and listen; people use these places for feasts, festivals, and ceremonies. The bonding ceremony is but one of many these are used for. Within each house is a raised structre on the central ceremonial grounds wherein the dance takes place.

Mounds

Long ago, the mound-builders were a clan amongst the nunnehi who were driven into hiding. They dwell within the mounds and are part of the greater nation of the nunnehi, but they are apart as well. They form their own communities and thus have their own bonds and bonding places, which are the mounds rather than the townhouses.

Riverwash

All uninetsv must bathe in the nearest river before the ceremony, washing away impurities, infernal energies, and old bonds. To do this last part, the old bonds, they must wash and use special stones and sticks to scour their skin. They must also abstain from alcohol or drugs for a week beforehand.

The Dance

Every communal bonding happens via dancing together. Among the nunnehi, the dances are stomp dances. These dances are on the central raised structure intended for the dance - which vary by community - and occur in rounds throughout the night. They start before midnight but after sunset, and they end at dawn. Those who are to be bonded must participate all night and touch medicine (see below) multiple times.

The uninetsv will either be a man calling upon different people to lead the dances with song, or a woman wearing shakers (shells or boxes or other materials) who dances with each dance. If they are of neither gender, they may choose which role they take. Whatever role they take, they will be speaking/singing the poetic words of bonding (yahas) throughout the night.

The song is call-and-response, always in the tongue of the local community, and the woman with the shakers creates the rhythm. The dance leader will lead four songs as everyone dances around the sacred fire in the center of the raised space. At the end of their four songs, the dance leader will either choose someone from the dancers to enter the fire or do so themself. The person in the fire alls and is responded to, then steps out purified. After this, everyone rests until a new dance is called.

By dawn, everyone who will be bonded must have been transformed in the fire, including the uninetsv.

Masks

Every participant should wear a mask. Those who wish to bond must wear special masks made of gourds, hornets' nests, buckeye wood, animal skins, or poplar wood. The mask will burn away in the fire during the dance, transforming into being a part of the dancer.

Sacred Fire

All fire is sacred to the nunnehi, but other kinds of uninetsv may use a different kind of fire special to their community. The sacred fire is lit by the uninetsv right before the dancing starts and is tended by them throughout the night. If the fire goes out before dawn, the bonds die.

Medicine

Medicine for bonding ceremonies is made from special plants and their roots by the uninetsv and/or their helpers the dawn before the dance.

Forming the Bond

During the ceremony, the uninetsv guides each bondee to make sure they perform correctly. Everyone in the ceremony makes rolls on each important aspect of it - dancing, singing, mask creation, medicine creation, and bond creation in the fire - that they are part of. Every success adds points ot the final total, every failure takes from it, leading to a tally that determines the length of time the bond lasts.

Some rolls have significant impact; if a medicine roll is failed, every time the medicine is touched, that degree of failure is added to the final tally (i.e., if someone has a normal failure in creating the medicine, the final tally loses a point for the failure and each subsequent touching of the medicine during the ceremony). This is why the uninetsv must be vigilant on every aspect. Since the medicine must be made the dawn before the ceremony, there is almost never time to remake it. Therefore, it must be made up for throughout the ceremony with better singing and dancing. If the medicine is not touched at all during the ceremony, the whole ceremony fails.

Furthermore, if the uninetsv does not wash in the river properly, everything they do will bring penalties to the final tally, often leading to a complete failure to bond.

The determinants are

• Gadugi: all members who are bonded must have participated in gadugi beforehand, generating yahas around them while doing so. The amount they generate depends on how much gadugi they have done - it must be sincerely done, as part of being part of the community, not done specifically for the ceremony. A little extra right before never hurts, but this is truly a measure of how they contribute to their community. This forms the basis of the final tally, giving them an automatic score of the combined gadugi scores of each member. On average, a member of the bond will have 8-10 in gadugi; an elder will have 11-13. A special community member will have upwards of 16. A uninetsv of exceptional experience will have upwards of 19, but this is very rare. Most are in the 13-15 range.
• Timing: no rolls required. If the wild onions are in bloom (or cultural equivalent elsewhere), the ceremony gets a +1 to the final tally on all rolls.
• Place: the construction and sacredness of the building or mound is a roll made at the construction of the place that will add a range of -3 for exceptional failure to +3 for exceptional success to anything performed there as a base to the final tally. However, the sacred place may be tainted by infernal powers, bad ceremonies, or other events, and therefore must be cleansed by fire and riverwater to be revived. If not cleansed, it will be a -6. If cleansed, success rate is the same as at construction. This is a maximum of +3 total to the final tally, not per roll within the space.
• Riverwash: failure to abstain from drugs or alcohol beforehand will lead to a -6 on washing in the river. The wrong implements mean -1 to -3 depending on how wrong they are. The uninetsv rolls their ceremonial skills against their own impurity for riverwashing. Their impurity is determined by whether they have been a good member of the community and participating in gadugi beforehand. If their gadugi is high, the difficulty is low. (25-gadugi determines the difficulty).
• Making medicine: the uninetsv and/or their helpers roll their medicine skills to make the medicine. A normal success is +1, a normal failure is -1, a tie is +/-0, a special success is +2, a special failure is -2, an exceptional success is +3, an exceptional failure is -3.
• Outfits: each bonding participants' outfit is rolled for when it is made, giving it a range of -3 to +3 for the wearer for every roll during the ceremony. These bonuses are for their skills, not the final tally.
• Masks: masks are rolled when made, giving it a range of -3 to +3 for every roll during the ceremony. These bonuses are for their skills, not the final tally.
• Calling the dance: the uninetsv or their chosen calls the dance, calling people to lead out. Every time they do this, they roll their singing and the power of yahas for a range of -3 to +3.
• Rhythm: the woman who dances the rhythm rolls for each dance (not each dance leader), for a range of -3 to +3 for each roll.
• Dance-leading: the one chosen to lead the dances for each round must roll for each of the four dances, for a range of -3 to +3 per roll.
• Maintaining the dance: the uninetsv's work is to make sure the dance keeps going apace throughout the night until dawn, timed perfectly. They roll for each round of dancing, for a range of -3 to +3.
• Touching medicine: every time medicine is touched, the gadugi of the toucher is rolled for a range of +3 to -3 per roll plus the bonus/penalty generated during medicine creation.
• Sacred fire: creating the fire is a roll for the uninetsv's ceremonial skills score, for a range of +3 to -3, and every participant rolls based on their gadugi when entering it, for a range of +3 to -3.

Every ten points is an hour of bond.

Balance

All bonded groups must have a form of balance. This can be a balance in what genders are bonded (men, women, third gender); in what roles they take (hunter, healer, planter, caretaker, warrior, etc.); in what species they are (human, nunnehi, tortoise folk, pit viper folk, swift folk, bluebird folk...); in what kinds of weapons they use if they are all warriors (bow, spear, club, etc.); in what kinds of plants they work with if they are all planters (corn, potato, onion, etc.), and so on. It varies greatly by bonding ceremony. At the center of this balance must be the uninetsv.

The Bond

Once the bond is formed, all members will share certain qualities as determined by the uninetsv. The uninetsv's role is to be a filter as much as a sharer, making sure that no one shares too much. If, for instance, a warrior wishes to share their own health and strength with a fellow warrior, the uninetsv would prevent them from sacrificing their own life to save another. This may require stopping the sharing of health at a certain point, drawing it from others, or using the uninetsv's own strength instead. At times, this means someone dies, but whether a life is saved or not, it means a whole community is saved.

Sharing

Those in the communal bond may share powers, stats, skills, thoughts, emotions, information, and more. This makes it an excellent medium for communication and for collective actions. The goal of the uninetsv is to ensure no one is left out and that everyone has a role to play. They have some control over what is shared, as it all goes through them, but they may be overriden if the whole group disagrees.

Communications are the most difficult to filter - they may turn it on or off, but may not mute or block someone while the communication is on, unless they sever their bond entirely.

Powers, skills, and stats are much easier to limit, as they may control the number of points of each that get through. This can be a general filter (1 pt/rd for anything) or specific (STR is limited to 1 pt/3 rds) or even character-specific (Inali may only share 1 pt of Hunting skill per day). Any shared point is lost to the original user unless shared to all users. However, sharing to all users weakens the bond over time. For every point shared amongst the entire group, the bond loses an hour of time (10 points) for every 10 seconds of use. Universal sharing may be refused by the uninetsv at the time it is attempted.

Every individual in the bond has the right and the ability to refuse to share or to refuse to accept something shared. If a universal share is refused, it is not a universal share. Sharing to multiple people eats up multiple points if not a universal share.

They can, however, also convert points from the hours into points shared universally or individually, thus lessening time but adding points to stats without sharing. The uninetsv has veto over this.

Permanent sharing is impossible. Once the bond is over, it is over until a new dance.

Special Bonded Groups

Some notable bonded grups include

• Ahnawo gusgi: embroiderers bonded together to create special fabrics that represent the whole community, embroidering words of yahas into it such that it creates a protective blanket for all who are part of the community.
• Alastalidohi: special warriors or hunters who wield bows or throwing spears who are bonded together by a uninetsv for a special mission or hunt.
• Analisdawadegi: a group or individual who bonds with the awahi deer of the western Palhuric wilderness - the deer are members of the bond and thus share their qualities with the analisdawadegi.
• Anidohi: a special group who represent a community spread across a wide area. Each of them bond for a long-term period and live far apart, using their bond solely to send messages between parts of the far-flung community.
• Atsasgili: an elder woman of the community who is bonded to certain members in order to advise them at will or share knowledeges, lores, or skills.
• Awisvnv: those whose bond connects them to plants and lets them apply their powers and skills to the gardens they grow.
• Ayasdi: a uninetsv who is tasked with investigating something within the community, bonded to certain people in order to use their skills to lead the investigation.
• Dideloquasgi: a uninetsv who is bonded to specific members of the community with the best memory, thus allowing them to recite or record the oral history of their people.
• Ditlihi: warriors of the community bonded together who wield spears and clubs for special missions.
• Uku: the First Beloved Man, the leader of the entire nunnehi nation, who is a former or current uninetsv with a bonded council of advisers.

Variations

There are some wider cultural variations:

• Verkisto: in a modern setting, someone who uses a variation on the bonding ceremony to form a communications team in a professional setting.
• Yamazaki: freebooter pirates who bond with yahas on the wide seas.

Persecution

Actual uninetsv amonst the nunnehi face national oppression just as the rest of their people do. Those who use the powers in other cultural settings are often scorned as enslavers or witches by powerful governments or ruling classes who view their bonding powers as a threat, because it goes against their divisive intentions of the ruling classes.

Skills

Uninetsv have many skills, but these are some common ones:

• Medicine/medicine making
• Ceremonial skills
• Singing
• Dancing
• Sewing
• Carving
• Crafting
• Costuming
• Decoration
• Fire-making
• Oral history
• Regional lore

Stats

Modifiers from base of nation/species:

PRO /
ATH +1
STR +1
AWA +3
WIL +3
STH /
PRS +3