Schwürn (She-wu-urn)
Alkan-born Tieflings and Axions of Urro, generally of Kyton descent. Like all of the Cosmic Races, their appearance and abilities can vary wildly, but they generally have a snow-white appearance, exuding a strange leathery smell. They often are supernaturally cold, greatly chilling those who touch them.
Culture
Major language groups and dialects
The Schwürn mostly speak Urrok Common, Alkan, and Infernal.
Average technological level
Due to living near the pain-worshiping Kytons, the Schwürn have master the art of inflicting pain and torment. They have devised many cruel tools to try to impress their cruel masters, including ones that can inflict torment on the normally pain-resistant infernal beings.
Common Etiquette rules
The painful and rough lifestyle of the Schwürn have left them gruff and with no patience for subtly. Thus, the best way to deal with them is with direct action and speech, instead of attempting to work around them with caution.
Common Dress code
The Schwürn usually wear tight-fitting leathers that are designed to conduct their inner cold out and retain whatever warmth they gain. These leathers have been described as extremally uncomfortable to wear, but the Schwürn simply view that as another challenge to overcome.
Art & Architecture
The Schwürn love to craft dark buildings with jutting and spikey elements, as well as incorporating many chains into the buildings designs.
Foods & Cuisine
The Schwürn are strictly meat-eaters, and they often like to bite into their prey while its still alive, in attempts to "taste its pain".
Birth & Baptismal Rites
Carrying a Schwürn baby to term is incredibly difficult for a mother to survive, as their supernatural and infernal cold often leads to health problems. This, along with their penchant for avoiding any care that aids the ease of birth, means that the birthing process is incredibly painful, but profound experience. If the mother survives, they often use their teeth to cut the umbilical cord, then carve a familial birth mark somewhere on their body to ensure that the baby gains the first experiences of blessed pain.
Coming of Age Rites
To prove their commitment to their kyton masters, when a Schwürn comes of age, it must sacrifice some part of their body by their own hand. This usually takes the form of a finger or an eye, but the more intense this sacrifice, the greater the commitment shown. If a Schwürn survives a great sacrifice, such as an organ, they may become blessed by a kyton and receive some dark boon.
Funerary and Memorial customs
Many Schwürn donate their bodies to be used in antomical experiments or given to Kytons to use in their profane rituals.
Common Taboos
The Schwürn view suffering as growth, and thus don't hold back or coddle. They despise those who can't act on their own as weaklings, and will never help others do something that they can achieve themselves.
Making fun of a Schwürns scars will likely cause them to attack you in a fit of rage, at which many foolish outlanders have found out the hard way.
Common Myths and Legends
The first kyton, Velsrac, was imprisoned in Zutorn in ancient times, when it was an area of immense abundance, and was freed from her bonds in the age of conflict. While it is highly debated on what actually freed her, it is widely believed that the nobles of the Schwürn where once tasked as her guardians, and were the ones to free her in exchange for dark power. Her emergence caused the entire area to freeze over, becoming a frigid taiga. The Schwürn now believe that this act as blessed them with power, and those who perished in the great freeze were unworthy of survival.
Ideals
Beauty Ideals
Due to their ideals on pain, the Schwürn find beauty in scars and signs of damage. A Schwürn who has no markings of their battles will be shunned as a coward.
Gender Ideals
The Schwürn only place value on ones ability to survive, adapt, and endure pain, and thus gender plays little role in their society. Females are viewed as slightly more powerful, due to their ability to endure the pain of childbirth, and thus extremely important conflicts are often deferred to a female opinion.
Courtship Ideals
Courtship between the Schwürn often begin with a fight or duel, devolving into a brawl that then eventually leads to a mating.
Relationship Ideals
Schwürn mothers who survive childbirth have intensely close relationships with their children. Due to their strange ideals, pain is given out as a reward, seeing it as an opportunity to become stronger. Thus, a child who succeeds in a hunt will be rewarded with a minor beating from their mother, often with their bare hands, so that they may share their pain together.
Major organizations
The Schwürn mostly live in the frozen Zutorn Tundra, living under the rule of the masochistic Kytons.
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