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Language
Name
The first race of Komadas, though now the second in numbers and strength, the Aoru are a people plagued by compromises of the past, and haunted by dwindling visions of the future. Their name means Lost People, and reflects the changed state of the formerly great Aoruishan island kingdom.
Epithets
The common people of the archipelago have devised several slang terms, most notably Ru and Aolings.
Spoken Language
The Aoru speak a fluid tongue called Aoruisha. An almost singing language, the melody and phrasing of Aoruisha is tonal, high, and colorful.
Written Language
The Aoru are a primarily oral people. They do have a common written language, also called Aoruisha, which is used for casual written communication. In cases of law, they use the scribed character language Sen. However, due to the enormity and complexity of Sen, only governmental officials and scholars learn the complete language. Even the high Ran and the royal family learn only a small amount of Sen.
Aoruisha is phonetic.
Sen is formed of thousands of characters, each revealing a situation and a meaning. When these characters are placed side by side, meaning is formed through the melded understanding of phrasing. However, due to the complexity of the language, sometimes hundreds of different characters must be placed in order to understand the meaning. Pictures and illustrations to give visual hints to the character’s meanings often surround Sen texts.
Foreign Languages
The Aoru are trained in the human Cirathian tongue and the common islander tongue. Because many Aoru live with the Cirath when they grow of age, they learn these tongues in youth, in schools specifically designed to teach other tongues.
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Appearance
Physical Appearance
The Aoru share basic stature and bone structure with the Cirath. They are a people of rounded angles and soft features, with high sloping foreheads, small fleshy noses and large almond-shaped eyes. In infancy, Cirath and Aorushian children are almost indistinguishable from one another, a fact that is not lost on either people in their mutual island habitation.
The chief difference in appearance between the Aoru and the Cirath is the Aoru feature of being almost completely hairless. Indeed, the only hair they possess is a Mohawk-style mane of soft, frizzy fur that begins at the peak of the forehead and travels in a line down the back, ending at the base of the spine. These locks are earth-toned, and run the spectrum from the pale, sandy yellow to deep black. Skin color follows in ranges, with many varying into the deeper colors of the forest in which the Aoru live.
Environmental Adaptation
Rumors persist, despite vehement protests from both sides, that the Aoru and the Cirath share some common ancestry. However, if that is the case, the split was so far back in time as to render both peoples separate in appearance, lifestyle and location, and to create such a rift that before the landing of the Cirath on Komadas shores, the new arrivals were totally unaware of the Aoru’s presence.
The Aoru coloring and adaptation to life in the trees are most likely due to the dangerous predators that roam their forests. The predators are large, fast, and deadly, and hunt by vibration and sight. The earth-toned coloring of the Aoru serves them as camouflage, both when clinging to the trunk of a tree and when on the ground. The most effective way to avoid the predators is to remain still, or scamper up a tree. The predator can jump about six to eight feet, but cannot not climb a tree.
The bone structure of the Aoru hand developed as a clawed, cat-like hand. They have greater tactile pads on their fingertips, and pads as well on the heels of their hands. These adaptations, combined with an overall lightening of the skeletal weight, enable the Aoru to grip onto the tall camphor and myrtle trees of the island of Komadas.
Lifespan
Aoru live to be between 70 and 85 years of age.
Home Environment
Most of the Aoru live in the scattered camphor and myrtle forests of Komadas, in extensive tree cities high above the canopy floor. The greatest cities are those in the Great White Forest, the expansive white myrtle forest, where the cities of the Aoru are not bound between, but instead built into, the trees. Many Aoru live with the humans in the coastal and plains cities, and many Aoru choose to become sailors and travel to distant lands to trade Cirathian and Aoruishan-made goods.
Views on Nature
The Aoru believe in an inner well of power they call the Lai. This core of strength is a magical source of energy said to be existent in all living things, and Aoruishan sages pride themselves on their ability to draw out the Lai and channel the surrounding environment.
Harmonies in nature, and living in harmony with nature, are two tenets strong in the Aoruishan mindset. When they first encountered the Cirath, the Aoru attempted to impart this wisdom, though the effects on their new island neighbors were negligible. The web of life is a legend of Aoruishan lore, and is rumored to exist inside the greatest of the white myrtle trees, in the deepest part of the home forest, behind barriers of magic impenetrable by the impure.
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Home Life
Dwellings
Aoru homes are elevated above the canopy floor, built in circular rings around the trunks of the largest trees of the forests. They are made entirely of wood, save for their windows, which are paned with thin sheets of pierced parchment. It is said by many that Aoru cities at night are among the most beautiful sites in the islands – in the evening they flicker like fireflies among the darkened leaves.
Family Homes
One Aoru family per dwelling is the norm, though many dwellings may rest in the same tree. It is customary for newly married couples to build home-rings in the tree of one side’s family, with staircases connecting the units.
Family Organization
The Aoru live in family units of husband and wife. If the couple is fortunate enough to have children, the children live with them.
Attitude Towards Children
Part of the dismay of the Aoru, and part of their great sorrow, comes in that they have very few children. Children are not born with any consistency among the Aoru, and those that are born are revered and treated with great love and fondness. The saying, “it takes a village to raise a child,” is certainly true among the Aoru. Entire families – aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and parents – all work to provide care to young children.
Attitude Towards the Elderly
The elderly Aoru are the decision-makers and local authorities for each tree-ring village. Their authority is based on experience and respect, and it is not uncommon for the chief elder of each township to be the eldest among the aged.
Kinship Ties
The Aoru live for their families, which are a basis for everyday life. They live in the same trees as their close relatives, they care for each other in times of sickness, they worship together at family Lai shrines and they help one another in building new homes and repairing old ones.
Extended Family
Families among the Aoru operate like a web. Each family touches the others by connected strands, and each holds up the others at definite points of strength. Though immediate families are most important in daily life, to the Aoru extended families are equally necessary, and they strive to include as many family members in their lives as possible.
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Nourishment
Food
The Aoru do not farm in the conventional sense, and have no large tracts of farmland or grazing areas for herd animals. They provide much of their own food through a program of tree-grown plants, cultivated wild foods, and managed forest animals. The Aoru live off what they grow on their trees, what they collect from the surrounding forest, and those animals they kill out of their forest-roaming herds of livestock.
Food Production
Farming for the Aoru is done at home. Tree-rings are constructed with many porched vegetable baskets, and with lattices and hookings for climbing vegetables. The Aoru’s favorite vegetable is a vine plant called the jabor, which resembles an eggplant, but is dark green and grows in small bunches.
Meat dishes include wild birds, small animals such as rabbit and fox, and large game, mostly boar and wild deer. The Aoru take care not to overhunt the forests, and practice a hands-off form of animal tending of cattle, deer and boar. They also gather eggs, and trade with the Cirathians for items like rice and soybean to supplement their diets.
Special Dishes
A favorite dish of the Aoru, commonly served at birthday celebrations, is jabor with bamboo shoots and wild mushrooms. The jabor has a meaty, sweet taste, and the bamboo shoots and mushrooms are softened in hot walnut-seed oil. The dish is served with crusty bread and fresh strawberries for dessert.
Unpalatable Dishes
The Aoru are superstitious about eating food that they have not prepared themselves, though most overcome this fear if they decide to go into the outside world.
Tool Use in Eating
The Aoru eat with wide-bowled spoons and knives. Most food is prepared in small pieces to fit into the spoon, or to be lifted to the mouth with the knife.
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Personal Adornment
Clothing
The Aoru prefer garments made of leather, and wear leather almost exclusively. Their attire is frequently embossed with patterning, and decorated with embroidery and fine metal studding. Colors of both the main garments and the decorations colors are somber, mostly earthtones of green, black and brown. Metal jewelry is favored, though no great importance is placed on what type of metal is used – nickel, copper, and iron are common.
The Aoru have one article of clothing that they consider the most important, their sada, or tree-climbing shoes. These shoes are made of a leather pad fitted with tiny short spikes on the instep, attached to an open-topped foot-form with ankle-tying thongs. No Aoru, even those outside of the forest homelands, is ever seen without their sada.
Symbolic Clothing
The clothing of the Aoru is not symbolic, though it is indicative of one of the main bents of their society. Form follows function in Aoruishan clothing. Leather is the preferred material because it can be waterproofed, does not snag on treebranches, and can be dyed in close approximation of the forest colors. It is also attractive, and can be easily decorated.
Clothing Reflecting Status
The only way to tell a rich Aoru from a poor Aoru is by the degree of extra ornamentation on their clothing. The poor wear the same type of garments as the rich, the only difference between them how many decorations have been sewn, stitched and studded into their leather clothes.
Social Status
All Aoru are considered to be equal, save for the royal family and the Ran, the elite guards of the royal family. They are higher because it is believed that Lai favors them, and this is seen as acceptable and ordinary.
Social Stratification
The only variation in social status comes between those Aoru who stay in the homeland, and those who venture out. The travelers are seen as a bit peculiar, but not overally strange, and quickly readapt to high-tree society when they return home.
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Men and Women
Primary Caregiver
Both women and men work in Aoru families, though more often it is the woman who works in crafts outside the home, and the man who is responsible for hunting, gathering, tending the gardens, city defense, and childcare.
Gender Relations
Men and women are not isolated from one another in youth, and in adolescence are trained together in the arts, culture and societal norms of the Aoru people. It is not until marriage that men and women begin to separate into different roles, and even then, those rules are not forced upon them. Aoru men truly enjoy the procuring food and defending the city, and women the crafts that they practice, and those that feel differently, act differently as their hearts want.
Roles of Men
The only Aoru men seen outside of the homelands are those who have acted against culture to become traders, or who have not yet married and taken on the more traditional male roles. Men work the home gardens, hunt, and provide food, they tend any children born, they defend the city, and they keep the home secure and maintained.
Roles of Women
Aoru women are the artisans and workers of their people. They are the weavers, jewelry fashioners, leather-workers, hunters and traders. Because Aoru women have children so rarely, they are not often confined to home and bed, and are free to make a living and a reputation for their skills.
Marriage
Marriage is a solid institution for the Aoru., they take great pride in the matches their children make, and great joy in the new families that they can lay kin-claims to. Aoru reach puberty around age twelve, and are considered ready to marry around age twenty, though most marry at around age 25. Marriages are binding, and at the time of wedlock, males and females separate out into the traditional family roles.
Marriage Ceremonies
The Aoru marriage ceremony celebrates both their secular love of family, and their spiritual love of Lai, the life-force of all things. It takes place in the home of the groom’s father, and is overseen by a Lai Priest, and by as many family members as can fit into the tree-ring. Each family member present says something positive about the bride and groom, until all have expressed their love for the couple. The Priest then channels the Lai, “infusing” the marriage bond with the blessing of life.
Visible Signs of Marital Status
The Aoru regard tokens as beneath the sanctity of marriage, and only those Aoru who marry outlanders gird themselves with symbolic items, more for the benefit of their partner than themselves.
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Education
Education
Education is a two-pronged process for the Aoru. Fathers see to the education of their child or children, teaching them in the home. There they learn to read and write basic characters, to prepare food and tend house, the relationship between Aoru and Cirath, and a some information about the other races of the archipelago.
At around age ten or twelve, Aoruishan children begin to have their education supplemented with studies instructed by the local priesthood. The Lai priests give them knowledge of religion, trade, government and the outside world, placing a great emphasis on harnessing the Lai for the good of the people.
Religious education is taught by Lai priests, who make little mention of outside spiritual beliefs, focusing mainly on the system of Lai that the Aoru base their faith on. The Aoru believe in a spirit inherent in all living things.
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The Arts
Art
The Aoru value art for its own sake, but are practical and understand that their art can command great prices to outside races. They decorate everything they own, from the tools that they eat with to the beams of their houses. Carvings are their chief form of art, and wood their chief medium, though they also work in leather and gemstones. Chief exports include wood carvings, wooden puzzles, toys, and dishes, leather clothing, leather harnesses, leather braidwork, leather quivers, and exceptional wooden bows.
Artisans
Artisans among the Aoru are usually female, and are specialized in one form of craft. These crafters are organized into loose confederations, and each group has their own set of outland traders. At the head of every association is an elder female, usually the woman who has practiced the craft for the longest amount of time. These women sit on a council, called the Peiji. The Peiji sets many aspects of Aoru life, and the chief among the Peiji is the Aoruishan queen.
Music
The Aoru play two forms of music, one a percussive drum that comes in various sizes. This drum, called a retis drum, is carved from hollowed out wood, with a leather top. The retis is played with the flat of the hand, and makes a tone that varies with base size.
The secondary Aoruishan form of music is their love of song. The Aoru sing frequently, and often their tree homes ring out with hundreds of voices raised in shared melody. Aoru sing at births, at weddings, at funerals and all the hours of the day and night. They sing to each other and to the Lai.
Crafts
Among the Aoru, whistles and retis drums are the most popular crafts. However, these are not sold often outside of the treelands, as outlanders have their own favored instruments and musicmakers. Wooden scabbards and sheaths are consistent good-sellers, as well as quivers, carved gemstones, and bows and arrows.
Commodity
The favored Aoru gemstone is obsidian. They prefer red over snowflake, and snowflake over black. These stones are smoothed into orbs and used as currency on Komadas.
Wealth
The Aoru religious philosophy teaches that wealth is not a desirable thing, but that religious philosophy does not stop some individuals from accruing and enjoying wealth. Family, they would say, is more important. Children, education and the Lai, they would say, are more important. But wealth, despite that, is still desired, and the Aoru do not dabble in trade, they pursue it with great vigor.
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Social Issues
Physical Impediments
The Aoru feel compassion for those with handicaps, and greater compassion for those that do not have the family to care for them and provide them with aid. Aoru families regard all members as loved and important, and physical infirmities are taken as just part of the package of loving a person.
Mental Disease
The Aoru attempt to correct mental illnesses with strong doses of love, affection and Lai. Those who show signs of mental problems are loved and cherished, and those who are more stable might join the priesthood, lacking the ability to master other skills.
Slavery
The Aoru do not practice slavery, and do not tolerate it among other races. It is one of the only issues they become incensed about, and many Aoru have been lost going out into the world to attempt to purge the islands of the slave trade.
Murder
The occasional murder does happen within Aoruishan society. When the offender is caught, and in the close-knit society they are always caught, they are given over to the priesthood for reconditioning. Most murderers are released back into society, cleared of their crimes by virtue of spiritual redemption.
Infanticide
Because of the rarity of Aoruishan children born, infanticide is not practiced. The Aoru are too small in number – their population dwindling – to be selective about which children to keep and which to lose.
War
The only war the Aoru have any collective memory of is the war between the Naktul and many of the free peoples of the archipelago. They have no civil war to compare that conflict with, and most do not truly believe that Aoru could ever be involved in any great battles.
The Aoru keep a well-armed warrior class that is used to protect the towns and villages from the predators. This is their first and only line of defense if they were ever attacked. However, the aoru cities are up in trees, and geographically located up in the northernmost third of Komadas, so the humans would be affected by an attack before the Aoru get involved. The humans and the aoru have a treaty, so it is unlikely that they would ever be attacked by the humans.
Taboos
The Aoru have both incest and infanticide taboos.
Punishments
Rehabilitation is overseen by Lai priests, and is the main method of dealing with criminal and antisocial acts committed by Aoru in Aoruishan society. It is a process of spiritual reattunement and social realignment, marked primarily by group sessions and private therapy in the ideals of Aoru culture. Aoru regard crimes as the fault not only of the individual, but also of society, and strive to correct behaviors through education and counsel, instead of imprisonment and death.
A typical period of rehabilitation lasts a month for a petty crime such as theft or vandalism, three months for acts of violence, and six months for acts of murder. It is important to note that the Aoru also practice banishment as a punishment, and all criminal acts committed by foreigners are punished by exile.
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Politics
Political Organization
The Aoru are an egalitarian society, with a monarchial figurehead family ruled by a Queen and her King-consort. The royal family, with their elite guards, the Ran, function largely in ceremonial positions.
Political Figures
The Aoru are composed of three political groups. The first are the Peiji, the guild and artisan women. The second are the Lai priests, who oversee the spiritual needs of the people. The third are the royal family.
The current members of the Peiji are:
Mori Greenleaf, Chief Weaver
Hei Thorne, Chief Woodworker
Bijan Prika, Chief Gemmistress
Ylian Jaiblossom, Chief Leatherworker
Petija Katermi, Chief Instrumenteer
The royal family consists of:
Lady Ett Red, Queen of the Aoruishan Empire, First Lady of the Peiji, Keeper of the Staff of Greenroot and Holder of the Throne of the White Wood
Lord Jinn Red, King-consort of the Aoruishan Empire
Priestlord Nann Red, Brother to the Queen, Head of the Lai Priesthood
Priestlady Aija Red
Princess Yii Red
Princess Wilan Red
Other prominent figures are:
Commander Oluian Blueoak, Chief of the Ran Guard
Bew Few, a prominent trader and personality in Komadas
Kisa Myrtlebough, a bardess of fame and ill-repute
Ambassador Teidheath Dia, Aoruishan consult to foreign governments
Religion in Politics
The majority of power lies with the merchanting and craft elements among the Aoru, though there is political power to be found among the priesthood. Those priests closest to the Queen’s brother, who is head of the Lai faith, are frequently in the presence of the royal family, and are called into their personal service when the need arises.
Wealth in Politics
The Aoru do not view wealth as a precursor to power, though they understand the role of money and wealth within other cultures of the archipelago, and have learned to work within that system.
Kinship in Politics
Kinship ties play heavily into the political power of the Peiji and of the artisan’s guilds. Who one knows and who one is related tooften determines which traders will sell one’s goods in the outland market.
Caste
The Aoru are egalitarian, and do not have a caste system.
Attitude Towards Other Races
The Aoru are a non-aggressive, shy race, but that they adapted to the humans who came to their island and set up a strong relationship with them. The peaceful, non-aggressive aoru have a harder time relating to races such as the Qurshan and Naktul, with their violent ways, but get along well with gentler races.
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Cities and Towns
Cities
Wealthy families usually have their own trees. Other trees might house single-room tree-rings in which many single aoru live. Poorer families may share a single tree with several others, simply building out rooms on their own levels. Some trees might be used for civic buildings. A city would be an entire grove of trees, some built up very extensively and connected to each other with catwalks and bridges.
Public Works
The Aoru have very little public space, as most of their labor goes into building their elaborate tree-spiral homes. The only spaces specifically allotted for the general population are at the tops of the trees, where large wooden platforms are built, decorated with hanging gardens and brilliant flower displays.
The family or families constructing the tree’s transformation into home space builds the Aoru’s treetop platform gardens.
Public works are for the general population; the priesthood and artisan associations have their own private workspaces.
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