48 lines
No EOL
4.4 KiB
Markdown
48 lines
No EOL
4.4 KiB
Markdown
![[tul-people-banner.jpg|banner]]
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> [!infobox|right]
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> ## Tul People _(Common)_ / _Tul-Dar’in_ _(Native)_
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> **Also Known As**: “Trueborn,” “Skybloods,” “Mortal Men” (by spirits), “Drybones” (by Tlaxcal)
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> **Classification**: Humanoid
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> **Origin**: Natural, believed to descend from the mythic Tul-Dar
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> **Lifespan**: 70–110 years depending on lineage
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> **Language(s)**: High Tul (archaic), regional dialects (e.g., Mentralian, Pharosean)
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> **Typical Alignment**: Culturally lawful; highly adaptable
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> **Homeland(s)**: Mentralian Heartlands, Anderon, Pharos, Golden Coast, Reaches
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> **Population Level**: Widespread / Dominant
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## Overview
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The Tul People are the dominant humanoid lineage across the known world of Vaelora, descended - at least in legend - from the vanished Tul-Dar, the “People Who Came Before.” They are a diverse species with an array of physical features and cultural expressions, often mistaken for separate peoples entirely by those who dwell far from the centers of power. What unites them is ancestry - distant, diluted, and mysterious. They walk the world as farmers, rulers, warriors, scholars, and slaves alike. Though countless generations removed from the mythical age, the Tul remain shaped by a legacy they half-remember: a dream of order, stone, and stars.
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## Physiology
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Though varying greatly across subgroups, Tul people generally share a bipedal, humanoid form with soft skin, internal organs, and a skeletal structure adapted to a wide range of climates.
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**Mentralian** types tend to be fair to olive-skinned with almond-shaped eyes and varied hair color.
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**Anderonians** are larger-framed, broad-shouldered, often blond or red-haired, and marked by northern resilience.
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**Pharoseans** carry sun-rich hues from olive to bronze, with dark, curly hair and thick eyebrows.
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The **Sachran** are lean, dark-skinned, and tall, with strikingly pale eyes that gleam like moonlit stones.
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The **mountain folk** of the Reaches - often mistaken for a different kind - are compact, tough, with storm-hued irises and windburned skin.
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Tul people reproduce sexually, with a gestation period of around nine months. They reach maturity around age fifteen, though different cultures set adult status between sixteen and twenty. Aging is slow and steady - by fifty, most show their years in hair and joints, though the wise and fit often live well past a century.
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While they have no exotic mutations or magical organs, the Tul are often adaptable to magic, neither highly resistant nor naturally conductive. Some bloodlines - particularly in Anderon and Pharos - show unusual resilience to poisons or minor talent in channeling spiritual forces, though this is often attributed to ritual or environmental factors rather than innate biology.
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## Mentality & Culture
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The Tul are highly sentient, diverse in thought and language. They range from tribal mountain clans to bureaucratic empires, and from wandering traders to reclusive scholars. What they value shifts with geography: honor among Anderonians, ambition in the Empire. Across all cultures, family, tradition, and social standing weigh heavily. Class is often a stronger marker than ethnicity.
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Most Tul societies are patriarchal or patrilineal, though matriarchies exist among the mountain folk and in certain noble houses in Pharos. Gender roles are present but shifting, and in cities especially, flexibility of identity is becoming more accepted.
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Coming-of-age traditions differ by realm: a sword-duel in Anderon, a river-fast in the Reaches, a day of silence and reflection in the desert. Funerary rites likewise vary - sky pyres in the north, entombment in the Empire, and sand-wrapping in the desert realms.
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## Role in the World
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The Tul are the builders of cities, the crafters of law, the wielders of armies and ideas. Their empires sprawl from [[Anderon]] to [[Lao-Shan]], from the golden temples of [[Pharos]] to the frozen footlands of [[The Reaches]]. They fight each other more often than other species, driven as much by ideology as territory.
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They coexist uneasily with other sapient species: enslaving [[Myou]] and [[Sachran]], fearing the [[Akumei]], exoticizing the [[Tlaxcal]], and rarely seeing the true self of any of them. Wherever the Tul go, they bring civilization - and with it, ambition, order, and blood. They are the heirs of a forgotten age and the authors of a new one, always convinced of their centrality, always teetering on the edge of remembering what they lost. |