Archived: Common Culture of Feyfolk

Statistics

OC Name: Common Culture of Feyfolk
IC Name: N/A
Age: 6000 years
Demography: Feyfolk
Size: 1 million
Area: Long ear forest , Damp Forest , Undain woods
Religions: Tahordyn
Languages: Dobêdja , Southern Trade , Northern Trade
Symbol: N/A

Cultural Dimensions

Power Distance Index: 4
Individualism versus Collectivism: 2
Masculinity versus Femininity: 5
Uncertainty Avoidance Index: 2
Long-term versus Short-term Orientation: 4
Indulgence versus Restraint: 1

Common languages:

  • Dobêdja
  • Southern Trade (Dutch)

Common societal structures:

  • Tribal village

Example female names: (Note that many feyfolk are genderless or intersex and have genderless names)

  • Bellu
  • Wastel
  • Dïga
  • Mustila
  • Pulms
  • Elfre
  • Melps
  • Polli
  • Peeli
  • Tuli

Example male names: (Note that many feyfolk are genderless or intersex and have genderless names)

  • Welto
  • Mustil
  • Pulm
  • Melp
  • Pelr
  • Folt
  • Fermi
  • Tulp
  • Gest
  • Wort
  • Mipk

<img src="imagecache/small/images/41384672065_144d4fc530_o.jpg" alt="left" />

Feyfolk culture is a polar opposite of the shanata culture. Feyfolk communities are geared towards teamwork. Every feyfolk has his or her task (and a form to match it). Although this would suggest having a very communal mindset, the feyfolk are not Tellurian and would never sacrifice individualism for the greater good. "No person left behind" comes closer to the feyfolk mindset.

Feyfolk wish to give everybody, especially the weak and feeble, a good life. Where shanata would give up on such individuals, feyfolk try to find the good in any person.

Most nomadic feyfolk live in treehouses they build from old birds nests and stuff they "find" in or adjacent to their forest. Other might live in natural caves.

Feyfolk culture focuses on fun and lighthearted living. The small forms have games like flying contests, sitting on tiny swings, roleplaying (they take on the rolls of various animals and hunt each others, males usually take the roles of hunter animals and females usually take the roles of prey. This is often an excuse for simple courting.) team robe pulling, dress up and capturing bees on little strings.

Adult or large forms play just as many games as children, sometimes the rules of these games (if they even have rules) are adjusted to fit the forms of the participant Feyfolk. The children often stay with their parents until the parents die, and even then the children often start living with the parents of their spouse. They usually marry and have children when both their parents have died.

Feyfolk don't take life very seriously (unless directly threatened) and often play pranks on everything and everyone, even demons and angels. They do hold the highest respect for angels that help the weak and would rather help this angel than prank or otherwise hinder it.

Feyfolk, in their carefree mischievous ways, often get themselves into dangerous, sometimes even deadly situations. They learn from experience and do evade similar situations in the future, but there are always other risky stunts to pull.

The feyfolk take care of the forest by healing or protecting weak or sick trees and animals (or occasionally even other forest dwellers) sometimes even with the help of primordial magic. More than half of the feyfolk, especial the northern once, posses the spark which they use to produce slight primordial power but only few have the patience to train this talent long enough to produce actual useful spells.

Sometimes the caretaking of the feyfolk extent towards families outside their forest territory. Feyfolk swap around babies in order to "help" them grow up in an environment more suited to the needs the feyfolk think the baby has. They are often wrong. These kidnapped children are called changeling.

They love technology and are very curious of how it works, they often visit gnomes to trade new technology. Feyfolk villages feature simple technological devices such as counterweighted elevators. Larger communities will feature increasingly advance technology. Feyfolk cities can even features such devices as a water powered smithy. These technologies are used to bridge the advantages, between different forms of the race. Drawbridges and slopes for instance are build so that feyfolk forms that have lost their wings, and even the once that have trouble climbing are able to come all places the flying feyfolk are able to come.

The interior of a feyfolk house is not that different from a human house, featuring beds, cupboards, stoves, etc. There are 5 existing feyfolk cities. Most of the feyfolk outside of the cities have a nomadic lifestyle.

Forming and size

This is essentially a long ritual (called klalôndja), rarely performed alone, sometimes with the help of friends but most of the time under guidance of an elder.

The form they choose depends on what sort of task they want to complete for the community and the Feyfolk often debate with parents, friends and relatives about their choice of form. The final choice is made by the feyfolk self. If a feyfolk would ever take life seriously it is during it's choice of form.

Feyfolk are only 8cm to about 40cm tall in their original form and about three quarters of the population stays that size, rarely ventures out of the forest and takes on a small form to better help the forest from the bottom up. The rest of the population doesn't stay that size however. They melt together with various death organism, and bio-waste to add mass during their forming, they also consume allot of food during this process. In rare cases Feyfolk melt together with other feyfolk to create one larger organism, the personalities merge and are lost in the process, and a split can never again happen. The material needed is often lifted from dead tree that litter the wild forests, giving most large forms a tree-like appearance. If a task needs to be done outside the forest, almost always a large sized Feyfolk is send.

Because of the shapechanging ability, it is often thought by other races that there are many kinds of feyfolk. Many efforts have been taken to take inventory of all the different subspecies, only to discover new types the next time around.

Lorekeepers have recorded both the theory of shapeshifting or mysterious illusionary powers, as undertaken various efforts to record all subspecies. Proof of either is yet to be found.

Some puritan feyfolk philosophers have come to the conclusion that being born in a form already geared towards a certain task, predisposes the young feyfolk towards this task and therefore might rob the child of a choice. This has led to some tribes only birthing feyfolk in their original form; giving the child free reign on his or her own development later in life. Other tribes have chosen to give their children a larger form specifically because they think they will be able to better choose a form when they have a larger brain capacity.

A lot of feyfolk forms don't have reproductive organs, although most of them will choose to have genitals.

Language

Feyfolk speak both northern and southern trade and frequently tell stories to each other. Their racial language ( Dobêdja ) still sees daily use. In stories, rituals and the rulesets of roleplaying and educational games is always used, but in tribes that frequently communicate with outsiders the language is less and less used in daily life. The tribes that live in Damp forest still use this language the most and children in those tribes are taught this language before any other.

As with many languages on Heimr many dialects exist and it could be that feyfolk from different forests have trouble communicating.

Art, music and literature

Feyfolk have a love for art, they like being creative. Most feyfolk prefer experimental art that pushes established boundaries. They have an exceptional love for wood sculptures.

Music and dance are a large part of feyfolk festivities. Music is usually happy and fast tunes. They appreciate both simple "natural" instruments next to highly advanced overly engineered music making machines.

Because some feyfolk have the ability to fly, several tradition folkdances among the feyfolk incorporate both standing and flying variations of the manoeuvres.

Some dances incorporate both. For example, there is a dance that of slow and on the ground but quickly picks up pace and often ends in a wild swirling motion in mid air.

Magic

Many feyfolk, especial the northern once, posses the spark which gives them slight primordial power. Only few however, have the patience to train this talent long enough to produce useful spells. The ones that do however add a powerful weapon to their arsenal of tricks and pranks.

Religion

The feyfolk worship Tahordyn as a form of standard worship .

Feyfolk that have lost their happy carefree nature, seeing to much of the cruelty the savage races of Heimr inflict on nature, sometimes turn to the church of Ganinisum for comfort and a chance to heal their carefree nature. This is a form of situational worship . These feyfolk are often called "Gani fey".

Clothes

When feyfolk wear clothes, their clothes are most often made to be practical. Some tribes recycle materials from their old clothes to fix, or make new clothes. As a result, feyfolk clothes often have a lot of patches.

Customs and Cultural Habits

Things people do because the culture teaches them to do it, also includes the ages of consent, legal maturity, etc.

marriage

An old fey story tells about the marriage of the first Feyfolk. The story describes a ceremony preformed during the wedding. There are tribes that still preform this Ceremony. Marriage ceremony: The bride and groom are placed separately at the far ends of a field/forest. During the ceremony they have to cross the field/forest to find each other. De tribe than tries to misleed the bride and groom so they can't find each other. They use tricks and booby-traps. At the start of the ceremony a member starts making a wreath. The longer it takes the couple to find each other, the more beautiful the wreath will be. The wreath is placed around the joined arms of the couple. After the ceremony there. The ceremony will be closed with a great feast.

Funeral

Most tribes reuse the body of the departed Feyfolk for a klalôndja (shape change ritual). Some of these tribes believe that by reusing the body parts, the departed Feyfolk lives on. They find it an honor to use the body parts in their ritual.

Politics

Most of the tribes are led by 3/5 old Elders. They form a small council that discuss problems when necessary. They also decide how the tribe runs.

Superstitions

Non-religious things people believe because the culture teaches them to believe it.

Architecture

How does the culture build its buildings.

Names

When a Feyfolk is born, it's name is a combination of the word 'Snîs' wich translates into child and the first thing the parents see. For example: Snîs Leaf, or Snîs cloud. The reason Feyfolk parents give there children this kind of names is that the young Feyfolk won't keep it, so the parents don't put much effort in it. When the young Feyfolk has completed his klalôndja ritual and has enterd his adulthood, he gets a new name. In some tribes the Elders decide the name, but most often the Young adults pick there own names. These names most often cite to the task they want to preform for their tribes. It's very common for the Feyfolk to use their own language for their names. Example: Kiriôt. Kiri comes from the word kirida, wich translates in healer and 'ôt' wich translates in the word men.

Diet

Feyfolk are biologically vegetarians. Some feyfolk extent this culturally to veganism.

Most feyfolk forms have a digestive system geared towards the local flora and might have trouble when relocating quickly.

Eating meat is a popular challenge among young feyfolk in which they try to "gross out" each other.

Tags

Last updated Mon, 30-01-2023 22:16 by Brian Bors
Created Wed, 24-02-2016 21:23 by Anonymous

Recent Changes