Duranese

You can't harm my people more than we have been hurt before. We've served our time. Leave us be.

— Chieftain Kyo Leung of the town Jijon circa 1222TF

The Duranese are commonly referred to as the Sand Elves by the Elenori and are the descendants of the elves that had occupied Sofea before banishment. Suffering from exile, their culture became nomadic and relgated to the desert. Despite this, they survived and migrated south, where a large amount of Duranese settled in the towns and cities on the coast. There still exist travelling families in the Omriccan Desert that carry the same traditions and live a nomadic lifestyle.

Naming Traditions

Family names

Seung, Feung, Wae, Lae, Tae, Fo, Bo, Go, Jin, Lin, Tin

Culture

Major language groups and dialects

The Duranese speak their language of the same name. The dialects and accents differ between those that travel across the Omriccan Desert (the 'Sailing' dialect or 'Trading' dialect Golaa), those that work the more fertile foothills (the 'Laborer' dialect Notun), and the dialect of the southern coast (the 'Bulo' dialect or Noma)

Common Customs, traditions and rituals

A tradition among the travelling families is to tied their hair with a band or ribbon for every captain they have served. This is to signify experience. Such experience can be important for electing a new captain within a family.

Coming of Age Rites

Often a Duranese child, when coming of age, will obtain a tattoo. Common places of choice are the chest, shoulder, upper arm, or the neck. These initial tattoos detail themselves as a person, often being a way to attach meaning to their name, and after that they may obtain more tattoos to represent accomplishments, or their own interests and beliefs.

Funerary and Memorial customs

When perishing in the desert, it was common practise to leave a body in a peaceful manner. Due to their nomadic nature, this was to allow the body to decompose as best it could amongst the sand. As technology developed, fire has been commonly used to reduce the body to ash, often on a pyre, but this is only in settled families.
In the travelling families, instead a body will be wrapped up in cloth to preserve wood, a valuable resource in the desert, and then dropped to the dunes to eventually be buried in the same, or hopefully decompose.

Common Taboos

Never should a Duranese man or woman cut their hair. Their hair is seen as a gift of their lineage and not something to lose. Having ones haircut is an offense to their blood. Having someone else cut their hair is a huge act of rudeness and is the same as spitting in the face of their heritage.

Ideals

Gender Ideals

There is no expectation on a Duranese male or female to behave in a specific way, apart from their respective involvement in reproduction. Apart from the obvious biological differences, both genders of the Duranese have been found to act almost identically, with the same ideals for power, strength, responsibility and so forth carried between the two.

Related Organizations

• Queendom of Omrik

Related Locations

• Omrik