While it is late for it to be included, I wanted to put in writing an idea for an addendum to the wovenmen, as I am not a huge fan of continuing human sacrifice as before. I had this idea earlier, but couldn't actually write it down earlier.
Wovenmen - Self sacrifice of the Woven
Not every surviving human being in the vast forests to the south of Monsoon Point was a member of the Ziggawatt Alliances. After the initial apocalyptic eruptions which cast the northern lands under ash, many of the Monsoon Point peoples had initially sought cover further inland, within the forests - famously, of course, including the first sacrifice of the Thirsting Wars, the Novice. However, while most of them either died or sought shelter in the cities as ecological conditions worsened, not all did - completely unbeknownst to the Ziggawatt Alliances, a minority of the original inland survivors managed to seek survival within the Choladaic Rainforest, within the Evergreen Riverway, and within the Frosthollows.
These inland survivors ultimately engaged in a highly nomadic way of life, traveling to the coast, engaging in extremely occasional WhaleSlaying (able to get away with this thanks to their extremely low population). They would store their gains in Ichor Jars, and then travel back inland. But they didn't slay whales to subsist - WhaleSlaying was still far too rare for that to be remotely possible, and the air would still have killed them. Instead, whereas the Ziggawatt Cities were led by their circumstances and sociopolitical order to sacrifice each other, the much more solitary inland survivors were driven to to become far more radical in the traditional way of self-sacrifice, using the products of the whales they slayed to heavily alter themselves beyond the limits of their human form, a process performed across their whole lives.
The lines of tattoos across the bodies of these rural survivors became incredibly, increasingly complex patterns that covered nearly one's entire skin by the time one was a mature adult, often looking as if they were shrouded in an extremely detailed piece of red fabric - hence the term "Wovenmen" they came to be known by. Further, pieces of organ, pieces of blubber, pieces of flesh from the whales were often implanted into these Wovenmen, seemingly at random, but very much intentionally - the Wovenmen came to understand that they could use whaleblubber to store cetrical charge (usually acquired through Storm Dancing far inland, far from the cities, and find particular ways through their tattoos to have these pieces of charge interact with whaleflesh and whale organs to produce certain effects. Further, through time living inland, some Wovenmen found that they could create implants out of other objects within the other regions of the world they lived in, using strange fruits, seeds, or minerals.
For the most part, given the extreme survival environment, these effects imparted the Wovenmen with a certain vitality, as if they were being driven by the charge itself - making them faster, making them stronger, but usually just making them less hungry, less thirsty, less lethally poisoned by the air (even if Wovenmen didn't usually get incredibly old). Some Wovenmen, using a substance called "xocolatl" produced from the seedpods of the rainforest, are said to have been able to expend this energy in rare bursts of speed and strength when they were not in survival mode. Some Wovenmen, implanting a mixture of pine tar from the Riverway and whale-flesh, are said to have been able to rapidly climb trees through a strange attractive cetric force. Some Wovenmen, implanting crystals from the Frosthollows, were able to quicken their reflexes to practically instant levels.
(I tried to keep all the clearly mechanically relevant pieces above this line.)
For many in the Bay Twelve Confederation, the end of the Thirsting Wars was seen as a clean slate - the rains opening back up to quite literally wash away the blood of the most horrific era that essentially anybody of the Monsoon Point people or their descendants had ever seen. A new time in which to move on towards new beginnings, new constructions, new lives, with the sins of the old days forgotten (or at least forgiven) with the end of the ash and the return of the rain. However, history is full of irony - it was only years after the Thirsting Wars ended at all that eerie strangers showed up at the walls of the Bay Twelve Confederation's cities. Worse, these strangers had skin seemingly entirely the color of whaleblood tattoos, and unrecognizable flesh-colored lumps lodged halfway into the outsides of their bodies - it was usually quite clear to the city guards that these were in fact the vengeful wraiths of their sacrifice victims, wearing their own flayed skins and carved-out hearts. The first response was usually absolute terror and violence.
While the cities had been unaware of the Wovenmen during the Thirsting Wars, the reverse had not been the same - it's pretty hard to miss large cities constantly bringing down lightning onto Ziggawatts, and also very frequently on fire during wars. The Wovenmen had obviously figured something had been wrong, and had kept a distance anyway simply due to the cities leaving very little charge for them to draw from the skies. However, with the end of the ashes and the return of the rains, a renewed optimism filled many Wovenmen - they had had to sacrifice much to survive, out in the harsh wilds, but as much as most Wovenmen venerated strict self-sacrifice, the idea that their brethren had had to sacrifice less was appealing. History is full of many ironies, though. Being met instead with violence was a harsh wake-up - and in the cases where the cities' guards could be calmed down and an explanation could be provided, the realization that the cities had turned to truly horrifically sacrificing OTHER people to survive usually made the Wovenmen, harshly traditionalist, much angrier.
The result rapidly turned into larger-scale violence. Despite the difference in scale between the Wovenmen and the Bay Twelve Confederation, the fighting went in the former's favor for a few reasons. Firstly, the gradually improving conditions allowed Wovenmen to meet and coordinate far more easily than they had previously been able to. Secondly, the Thirsting Wars themselves had so exhausted the Bay Twelve Confederation that even after some years of recovery their size was far smaller than the twelve cities should have supported. Thirdly, the Wovenmen were joined by many defectors from the Bay Twelve Confederation who had grown incredibly embittered with the rule and actions of the priesthood and Ziggawatt Alliances and craved a change in leadership. Fourthly, the electrical weapons left from the Thirsting Wars were completely useless against the Wovenmen, who were almost entirely covered in tattoos. Thankfully, even this "larger-scale" violence was still very small, given how few people... existed, in the North, and ultimately the twelve cities that were only mildly diminished by the fighting.
With the Wovenmen, those who so prized self-sacrifice over the sacrifice of others, victorious over the bloodthirsty priesthood of the Bay Twelve Confederation, those who had so happily opted to tear the skin and hearts off and out of their own kin and subjects, one might think that things changed dramatically. And in a way, they did, over time.
The practice of brutal sacrifice of other people was quickly forbidden, but after proving so effective during times so difficult it was hard to dispel the notion that it was needed and as such tensions kept high, with times of crisis resulting sometimes in mobs seeking to sacrifice someone. Faced with the choice of abandoning the principles they went to war for or continuing to fight unrest for years or decades, the ruling Wovenmen chose a compromise of sorts: they were not, after all, extraneous to the idea of sacrifice, as long as it was self sacrifice.
With a cultural push and encouragement by law, the notion was established that if you want the favour of gods, you should give something of yourself, an offering of sorrow, of pain, of struggle in some form. A gift freely given rather than forcefully taken, a way to actually earn the benefits you seek.
Over time, gentler methods were used to deliver the offering, chief among them sky lanterns with an ichor jar mixed with the offering, be it the tears of a grieving mother, the blood of the wounded hunter, or in some cases even body parts severed. In very few cases across history, tales tell of times of desperate crisis in which somebody performed the ultimate sacrifice, offering their own heart and life for the safety of the town.
The ichor would provide heat and light lifting the lantern as a small star lingering in the sky waiting to be accepted by way of lightning or wind, or to fall refused. This led to the air above the cities to be filled with floating lights casting a sombre glow on the streets carrying the pain, sacrifice and hopes of its citizens.
To reflect the great and yet limited changes in culture and administration, the Bay twelve confederation came to be known as the Twelve Bays Confederation, something that historians assure was indeed very important for the people of the time.
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