#The Mawkin aren't All War All The Time. but producing skilled warriors is one of their prime directives as a people

[molagboop]

Been thinking about penguin Chozo. They're affiliated with the Thiloo tribe, who hail from the unforgiving planet Brumalgor.

More information (+ images) about penguin Chozo, their culture, their physiology, and their allies below the cut.

Like other Chozo, the Thiloo possess wings: however, their wings have adapted for swimming rather than flight. The bones in Thiloo wings are shorter and stouter, and the wings themselves take on a distinctive paddle shape. And powerful swimmers they are! Thiloo Chozo cut through the waves with ease, and can hold their breath underwater for up to eight hours. Good set of lungs on that one.

Thiloo Chozo don't fold their wings when not in use: instead, they lay against the back.

Many of Brumalgor's aviform inhabitants are large and husky. They're built like real-life penguins: a thick layer of subcutaneous fat and numerous layers of densely-packed feathers keep these psychrophilic people from freezing to death in the glacial caves of their home planet. Thick clothes help too, of course, but plenty of Thiloo would feel right at home fishing in the clothes they were born in!

A snowbound outpost situated near the mouth of a cave. Brumalgor's surface is comprised almost entirely of glaciers and ice caves. The metropolitan center of Thiloo society is situated upon (and within) Gintu Nas, the largest of these glaciers.

Any Chozo can be big no matter the tribe, but Thiloo warriors especially have a reputation for being built like an excavator. And they're just about as strong as one, too!

Their natural bodylines tend to be a bit wavier than Chozo from other tribes. Their genes can produce some impressive elliptical shapes (not pictured above).

More genetic variation!

Culture

The Thiloo value tenacity: it takes a certain kind of stubbornness to set up shop and survive on a snowball planet, and they've got the guts to thrive in extreme conditions! They're not classified as a "warrior tribe" like the Mawkin (and Thoha, at one point), but they do produce stalwart warriors. The Thiloo and Mawkin are longstanding allies who share a sense of mutual respect for each other: while Mawkin warrior philosophy is long-winded and just as contemplative as it is physical, Thiloo warriors value the capability to hunt, endure harsh conditions, and defend their neighbors. Thiloo martial philosophy is more practical than it is esoteric, though the power suit is no less sacred to them just because the warrior lifestyle takes a backseat!

Housing

Thiloo homes are insulated and warm. Inhabited locations carved within glaciers are either uninsulated or warmed with technology to make the room comfortable enough for the occupant while preventing the ice around it from melting.

I won't go into the nitty-gritty scientific specifics of how it works, but I'll give you the short version. The rooms are enclosed in a shell. The heating mechanism is inside the walls of the room, and the shell outside the wall is full of algae that is suspended in a coolant synthesized from high-salinity material harvested from one of Brumalgor's underwater rivers. The algae consumes the byproduct of the reaction from the heating mechanism and "glows cold": some chemical reactions produce heat, but the algae exudes a compound that supercools the liquid around it.

This process allows the room to be as hot as the occupant finds comfortable without sacrificing the structural integrity of the glacier around it. Visiting diplomats from other tribes are often housed in these supercooling melt-proofed rooms. In the midst of his (pre-Warlord) career, a young Raven Beak once spent a lovely evening with a Thiloo warrior-friend in one of these dorms. He'd tell you about it if you asked him.

Philosophies

The Thiloo take great care to preserve their planet's unique environment as they reap its hidden bounty. There is only one Brumalgor, and they're living on it. They think they should take care of it if they want to keep doing so! Building living quarters within and on top of towering glaciers isn't something they just do because it's cool: the surface of the glacier provides the tribe with a convenient airfield, and they might as well make use of the structure's interior: inhabiting the frigid natural tunnels and carving their own in carefully considered hunks of solid ice.

If they're careless with their heating, they're not going to have an airfield with which to park their vessels and welcome visitors. Not to mention the living spaces would become a lot less private: no one wants the wall between their bedroom and someone else's kitchen to evaporate!

They also try to preserve their older traditions: fish are a staple of Thiloo cuisine, and there are many ways to catch them. Individuals dive to feed themselves (such activities are also part of Thiloo coming of age rites), but there's also spear-fishing, which has remained a popular sport for centuries. Most fishing spears have energy blades, and some can be fired from the pole they're affixed to: the construction of the latter is a sort of tethered-harpoon style, or "a javelin, but it's a crossbow". People compete to see who can pierce the furthest target, or who can lance (and subsequently fish up) the deepest target, or who can catch the most fish of the highest quality in a set amount of time.

The Thiloo also try to maintain survival-oriented skills and crafts, despite their advanced technology. Sure, they have fancy machines and space flight to help them survive the cold with ease and travel the furthest reaches of space at will, but what if they didn't have all that? It sure would be useful to know how to keep the dwelling warm in the absence of heating mechanisms, or how to light a fire when the electricity's out.

And how dull would life be without their ancestral arts? It's nice to have a woven basket or a fancy pot around: it livens up the space and can hold things to boot. You don't need a reinforced metal trunk for everything, and the skill it takes to make something by hand is worthy of admiration. There's nothing better than a heavy coat made from the skins of blubbery creatures by familiar hands: it keeps you warm and it's skillfully and lovingly embroidered!

The Thiloo are like space rednecks: they work hard, they value their labor, and they believe the fruits of said labor deserve to be shared among the community and the hands that made it. They value knowledge and the technology they've created through harnessing Brumalgor's abundant resources, but they're not keen to forget the simpler things in life: a good meal. A warm coat. A death-defying experience. All of these things have their place in the world.

The Thiloo and Their Allies: Parallels

I thought I was done with this post, but I observed another link between the Thiloo and their allies while writing the tags.

The Thiloo bear a few cultural similarities with the Mawkin, another tribe that has proudly carried their oldest traditions with them to the modern age. The Thiloo maintain a blend of tradition and technology that the Mawkin vibe with and practice themselves, to an extent. Again, their differences lie in the realm of the philosophical: the Thiloo have a tendency to be more animistic, while the Mawkin value ancestry, heraldry, and honoring the unseen.

The Thiloo teach their children that the fat mammals that provide them with blubber, meat, and skins have a place in the world: that the coats they stitch, the oils they use, and the meat they eat serve a purpose, and they do so gladly, for what else would they be used for? They frown upon waste for this exact reason: the animal that fell to feed you may not have "wanted" to be killed, but prey animals generally try not to die so they can proliferate anyways. Now that it's dead, the animal is bound by duty to serve: it would be foolish to turn one's nose up at the gifts it has provided.

These beliefs also tie in with their environmentally-minded culture at large, and they try to find a use for everything. The Thiloo way of life is to respect the planet they live on, to venerate the plants and animals they eat, and to thank the world and its inhabitants for providing their tribe with the means to survive.

The Mawkin also teach their children to respect the animals they hunt, but their cultural view of it is less "the animal would want you to live on in its stead using the bounty it has provided" and more "this creature's life has been sacrificed so yours may continue: be thankful".

Where the Thiloo see it as their responsibility to avoid waste by using every part of the animal, the Mawkin spin on things is painted with a heavy and solemn sense of duty. The Thiloo celebrate their prey and pay their due respect to the things they take, while the Mawkin venerate the slain beast's death with an almost religious air.

The Mawkin put greater emphasis on the sacrifice moreso than the idea that it is generally beneficial to avoid waste. They also try to use everything they can reap from a kill, but it's more important to them that this thing died so they could live.

Recall that the Mawkin venerate the cycle of life and death as a ceaseless and inevitable constant: death comes for all things, and they are not exempt from this rule. By killing the beast, the Mawkin hunter puts off their own death and the deaths of those they are feeding by a limited sliver of time: delaying the end for themselves by bringing the end to another.

Upon the successful completion of a hunt, the Mawkin thanks their ancestors for giving them life, carving the path through history that led to this moment, and shaping the warrior (indirectly) through the elaborate culture they have built to cradle their (people's) hearts. They give thanks to the planet for feeding and cultivating the beast whose blood has been spilled, and they thank the beast for its sacrifice, which will sustain the hunter and several others.

The Mawkin outlook on waste avoidance is simply gloomier than that of the Thiloo: "This thing died so you can live. Be grateful that it's dead and you're not." versus "Life is a collaborative effort, and we are thankful that this creature was a part of our journey."

Anyways, that's the gist of it: I don't think I missed anything.