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insearchofthesuns · 2 months ago

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On Speakers

Speakers, or Gote’van in their native tongue of Ziman, once had stable forms. What researchers have discovered so far is that the Gote’van once had humanoid forms, and dwelled in a palace they refer to as Xane, the Oasis Beyond. They possessed a culture of brilliant scholarship and exceptional occult understanding. According to their songs, Xane possessed great feats of engineering we only now grasp, inventions such as chemical tranquilizers, pressurized fluid conduits, and mechanical looms. The Speakers were peaceable peoples in that time, and spent their days focused on the pursuit of yet greater artifice.

And yet they are a people given over to speaking in metaphor and lush poetry. This fact is largely a result of the Wer’an-Kir-Rin, the Great Devouring Dark. At some point in their distant history, the Gote’van reached out to a power from the deeps, which many speculate might have been one of the mythic Sovereign Demons (though any speculation is just that, until such a time as either the Princes of The Pit refute the idea or the Speaker Conclave offers material proof of the claim.) Regardless of its nature, the Great Devouring Dark assaulted their mythic homeland in a total war of annihilation, scouring them with icy winds and “flensing songs,” slaying a great many of their people in moments.

Those that survived however, did so under the guidance of the Qiral, the Great Maker. This prototypical god-sovereign taught them the method of tricking the Great Dark by shedding their skins like serpents, leaving behind hollow bodies to sate its hunger while safeguarding their Ruh-Aquir, their Soul-Light. This method seems to have been successful, for there are still Speakers in the modern Night, though their Great Maker disappeared (there is no known method of killing a Speaker, even amongst their own people, so all assume he left or was taken, all Speakers assume the Qiral still lives, and will at some point return,) at some point in their long odyssey from lost Xane, leaving behind the six Bir, the memory-keepers. These Bir each had their own method of carrying on the teachings of Qiral, a poetic document no outsider is permitted to see known as the Koda-Axaft, and thus once safe, the Bir separated their followers into the modern Families. It is these Families that have redefined what it means to be Speaker in the modern age, while deftly keeping their histories and lore in the form of poetry, art pieces, and even a surprisingly robust food culture.

All Speakers are similar in form when seen “bare” of their clothing. Their physical forms are formed from scintillating shades of vivid color compressed loosely into the form of a delicate humanoid. In their unbound form, Gote’van can speak, can see (by whatever strange sorcery allows them to function without recognizable organs to speak of,) and can locomote by gliding in an uncanny parody of a walk, but are incapable of interacting with the physical in any meaningful way. All six Speaker Families have a vested interest in being perceived and interacting with the tangible world however, and so they compress their forms into various wrappings, garments, and armored suits. These exterior “shells” lend them the ability to physically interact with the world and help conceal the light of their glowing forms, a safety measure that remains quite necessary in the otherwise dark expanse of The Evernight.

House Baz consider themselves the rightful inheritors of the Koda-Axaft, and express the legacy of the Qiral through exemplifying his service to others. House Baz believe that honor and sacrifice are the only true method of honoring his sacrifice. To this end the Baz are often seen in elaborately worked suits of armor, serving as bodyguards and protectors for hire. It is commonly said that a Baz once hired will stop at nothing to defend their charge. For those that can afford them, the warriors of House Baz are worth every coin. Despite the astronomical fee, Baz guards also protect hospitals and temples free of charge, enforcing neutrality on their grounds as the only real fee. They maintain that this is their method of “giving back” to society, and by keeping the healing of the body and spirit free of factional squabbling, they nurture their own Fire in turn.

House Zih are merchant princes. They interpret the code of the Qiral through their sharing of his many gifts. All sorts of enchanted devices and mechanical marvels pass through the stalls of Zih brokers, for exceptional prices of course. The Zih maintain from behind their elaborate silken veils and robes that nothing in the code forbids profit, and that the gifts of their people are best served by those who have the coin to appreciate them. This mercenary approach to the sacrifice of their people has led to a general mistrust of the Zih, though none can dispute that their goods are always genuinely excellent. The Zih want a bank charter more than anything, and petition the People’s Parliament for one every few months, only to be soundly rejected each time. Banking is a bridge to far many argue, for these reclusive merchants to be trusted with, especially as their own people seem to avoid them wherever possible.

House Mar are scholars and artists. Following the original legacy of their people, they dwell in elaborate incense clouded riads and practice their poetry, their music, and their beautiful calligraphy. Mar provides scriptorial services to those without access to (or respect for,) the new mechanized printing presses, recording or copying documents, illuminating manuscripts, and binding books for a surprisingly modest fee. The real payment, as they take care to explain, is that any document that passes through a Mar scriptorium is copied again, that copy making its way to the House’s own archives. In this way the Mar retain a neat advantage over other scholarly groups, and practice their most beloved art. Which is not to say the jewelry covered Mar value their other gifts less. Mar musicians and singers perform at many of the most lavish functions in the realm, and Mar made fine art is considered some of the most beautiful and imminently collectable of its kind. The Mar in recent years have begun to move into the business of the honey trade, not as investors, but as competition, unveiling a wide variety of inhalant drugs of their own proprietary design. This has displeased the Honey Barons, but every night another smoking parlour opens hanging the golden knot of the Mar above its doors.

House Seh see the lesson in the deceit. They gave up their physical bodies to dupe the Great Darkness, and now they seek to repeat the trick on a much grander scale. Seh is a house of spies and secret brokers. On the surface, the elegantly appointed Seh operate upscale dining halls and taprooms for the beautiful, just below, every bottle could hide poison, every plate covers a coded message, and every tilt of a Seh waiter’s elegantly masked face is a conversation. The Seh see and hear everything, but see their work as a great game. They display no great ambition, they do not bribe the powerful, they do not seek public office or authority, they sell their secrets to anyone willing to pay for them with no care paid to who they do business with. To the Seh, the act of learning the secret is the point of the thing, what happens after is of little importance.

House Sik are almost a sister to House Seh. House Sik also derives their method from the great duplicity that allowed their escape from Wer’an-Kir-Rin, but to them, the message is in the safety that comes from having shed their forms, not the trick itself. The Sik are changeable. They cycle between the latest fashions, feathers, beads, bells, yard upon yard of imported silk, chains and nets, even (one memorable season) Human teeth. The Sik are mercurial by nature, seeing the idea of remaining one thing as anathema to their teachings. Their kin change clothes, genders, addresses, even names at the drop of a perfectly made hat. Nothing that has become stale is permitted to remain, nothing is precious save one’s own Fire. To this end, the Sik are at the cutting edge of fashion, and operate countless businesses that help to enable their natures. They haunt clothing shops, cosmetic companies, hair salons, even more serious operations such as tattoo parlors, piercing houses, and medical clinics specializing in a unique, house specific blend of alchemy and surgical craft that allow others to enjoy the same mutability of form and expression that they enjoy.

House Rev are peacekeepers. While the other Bir saw division, Bir Rev’Annil called for union. It is a union she continues to call for to this very night. The Rev operate in all things to bring unity to disparate peoples. Humility and service are the hallmarks of their house, and while the Rev are by far the poorest Speaker Family, they are some of the most universally beloved. Rev operate as counselors for those in need, mediating marriage disputes, helping to navigate grief, offering advice, and generally offering a listening form to anyone who might need one. The Rev keep no records, lest the unsavory attempt to breach someone’s deep fears and concerns. They ask only what a person can pay, and seek only the funds needed to sustain their lifestyle and pay their rents, relying on donations by the willing to afford any small luxuries they might accumulate. The Rev often masquerade as other Speaker Families as well, so as to better assist those who may be threatened by going into a house of healing; nobody thinks anything of a chatty bodyguard after all.

While the Speakers as a whole seem overt in their goodwill, it is as always important to remember that no culture is a monolith. There is little stopping a Rev who seeks to weaponize someone’s fears, save the outcry of their own peers. There is little to stop a Baz from slaying their own protectee if offered more by a rival, or to stop a Mar from taking persistent advantage of an already weak addict. This is not to say the Speakers are malicious either! It is only to urge that in all things, one must make informed decisions about who they trust based on the character, not the reputation, of the People in question.

Until the pages next turn…

#Worldbuilding #Posts from The Evernight #Speakers of The Evernight

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hemo--goblins · 4 years ago

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What’s in his room at Evernight?

His room is pretty sparsely furnished. He doesn’t have a whole lot of hobbies, and a lot of forms of entertainment are sort of.. lost on him.

He has a messy bed against the far wall of his room that is hardly more than a mattress on the floor. It has sheets, but also a few shirts he’s stolen from team members [mostly Hazel and Arthur]. The windows are blacked out, and the only source of light in the room comes from when he decides to light a candle. He has a nightstand that’s technically a vanity, although he rarely ever uses it as such, that has all manners of candles, matches, and incense on it, along with a hairbrush and some hair ties. The mirror is slightly cracked.

The walls are “decorated,” albeit in a very disorganized manner. Newspaper clippings and photographs are stuck rather haphazardly to the walls; most detail accounts of disappearances and missing persons, but there are a few that are outliers and seemingly unrelated to the theme. Crime scene reports, a few photographs of seemingly random people- some are marked over, and others aren’t. There’s even a picture he found of Qrow that he has pinned to the wall with a knife.

There are several knives embedded in the wall, actually. Only some of them serve to hold up decorations, others are seemingly just there for the sake of having a knife in the wall. On a related note, there are several holes in the wall. Most seem to be from blades, but others seem to be holes that were punched. A few of them got a little too big and have been covered up, but many of them just remain open. There are also scratches on the walls. Some are just scrapes from a repetitive motion, while others are more akin to carving designs.

He doesn’t have very many possessions. He’s got a little speaker system to play true crime podcasts [which he treats like most people would treat a cooking or fashion show, commenting on people’s methods and pointing out rookie mistakes] and a decent collection of weapons that he’s “borrowed” from huntsmen that aren’t using them anymore. A few different grits of whetstones, some bones, maybe a few wet specimens in jars just for funsies sit on bookshelves with maybe 2 actual books on them. Needless to say, the atmosphere is incredibly ominous.

#tyrian callows #he doesnt spend a whole lot of time in his room #mostly just for sleeping or when he needs to be alone for whatever reason #misstankandspank #hc #hemo.txt

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