Yalvake

Life as a Yalvake

The Yalvake are a small race of people that live in the Deprin Dunes wandering throughout it and traveling to its various reaches avoiding Land Movers that come through the dunes often. The group cannot farm due to the sand so they instead employ all of the people born when the sun is out as hunters or gatherers. The people born in the day are the sunborn and people born in the night are moonborn. Moonborn Yalvake tend to be used as craftsmen or one of the 5 leaders of domain. Yalvake rarely travel outside the Deprin Dunes and once a Yalvake travels out of the Deprin Dunes they are culturally shunted and labeled a dirt dweller. It also proves very hard to find the Yalvake again due to their nomadic nature. The Yalvake are semi-nomadic, traveling as little as they need to but moving the entire town once a Land Mover is spotted. Due to the intensity of the weather and difficulty living in the Deprin Dunes, the Yalvake remain extremely small in number. The only settlement the race has is Marcada.

Food Finding in the Dessert

Food in the Deprin Dunes is extremely scarce and as such food is kept on a strict rationing system kept by the keeper domain and enforced by everyone in the settlement. Taking food beyond your lotted amount can be in some cases punished by death. Food is often found by the hunting and gathering domains and certain foods like the meat from a Tractmite which is often eaten on Domatradon by the child turning of age.

Rituals with Death

The dead in the Yalvake are often eaten unless the person died via poison or was deemed a traitor. The bones are also used as tools and given to the family of the deceased person. These tools are often passed down between generations as heirlooms. To be allowed to craft a person's bone into tools is a task given only to the leader of the Maker Domain. As a pleasent side effect to this system the Yalvake never run into undead.

Domains of Yalvake

The Yalvake split their life into 5 domains each managed by a domain leader. All of the domains are seen as equal in power but those that do the best in their domain have more control over the domain. Being the best in your field does not make you a domain leader but domain leaders respect and often follow the word of the best in the domain.

Leaders of domain

Leaders of domain are moonborn people that control one of the 5 domains of the Yalvake life. Each leader decides where resources are distributed and what people are assigned to which task more importantly though they act as one of the votes amongst the council that decides larger decisions for the race as a whole. To become a leader of domain you must be moonborn and either be voted in by your domain as the new leader of a domain and you must accept or in the case of the hunter and gatherer domains, you must beat a hunter or gather in a Day-Night Trial which often takes several years to accomplish.

The Hunting Domain

Tied with the gathering domain as the largest domain the hunting domain is often one of the most vital since it is the primary way food is gained in Marcada. The success of the hunters then becomes vital to the survival of the entire race and the death of a good hunter is grieved by the entire village. Half of all sunborn are in this domain and it must remain at the same number of people as the gatherer domain although people cannot switch their domain (except moonborn becoming a domain leader of the hunter or gatherer domain). This often can result in several newborns in a row becoming hunters due to the dangerous work. The hunters job is to travel into the dessert and hunt creatures that fly in the sky over the desert or things living beneath the surface of the dunes. This is most often accompanied by Sand throwers used by the hunters.

The Gathering Domain

The gatherers live a very consistent life since their main job is to collect roots buried underground. This involves a lot of digging and moving sand with large very circular shovels called Scrapers. The gathering domain share the same dayborn as the hunting domain and often gripe about the lack of new children in their domain.

The Helper Domain

The helper domain is where moonborn that rarely cry as a baby are chosen to enter and are the miscellaneous helpers of anyone who needs the help. This often amounts to them being doctors and builders. They are almost never seen standing still and for a Yalvake in the helper domain to refuse a request is seen as a denial of their own life. This does not stop helpers with vendettas from altering the request slightly though which is often why they are not asked to deliver important messages.

The Maker Domain

All moonborn children are given a special wooden puzzle box as a child shortly after their birth. If the child is able to open the box before they are 3 then the child is deemed a maker domain. This overides any other domain the child may already be set to do.

The Keeper Domain

About one fourth of all moon born are in the keeper domain which is in charge of maintaing logs of the amount of supplies in the village and arrange deals with foreign nations. They are the only ones that ever come in contact with people from other nations and are often taught to be quite shrewd and untrusting. Additionally when the keepers are not taking logs they act as the spotters for land movers.