Fal (Fahl)
Overview
The badlands of Ithara (the Spires of Song and, formerly, the Rukh's Garden) are the ancestral home of the Fal people, and they have mastered the high plateaus, mesas, and buttes of their homes through a mixture of mountain climbing, flight, and engineering. Their settlements can be found anywhere from sea level to the highest peaks, with carved stairways or rope bridges connecting places that geography would normally make impassable. Everyone in a Fal settlement is trained in the use of pitons and rope to navigate the sheer cliffs of their homes, and their stables are much more likely to hold tamed giant mantidflies or the odd kongamato or makalala than they are a simple horse or camel.
Despite developing alongside and sharing borders with the warrior society of the Hathi (or, perhaps, as a cultural response to their neighbors' ideals), the Fal have always valued intellectual ventures far more than martial ones. With defense of their settlements largely covered by the treacherous terrain of their homeland, the Fal have developed a rich history of arts and sciences, from literature and calligraphy to mathematics and aetherophysics. This fusion of art and science is credited as founding the modern principals of aetheromechanical technology, both in its mechanics and the basic principals of its design. The first airship, in particular, was invented by a Fal engineer, and the city of Bad-Sahr to this day holds the premier school for airship pilots in all of Ithara.
The Fal have a strong cultural affinity for birds and similar flying beasts, seeing in them the same adventurous and soaring spirit that drives their people. Falconry is a common passtime, either with falcons and vultures or the obnoxious olitiau, and many Fal settlements have historically welcomed or even merged with those of nearby harpies. It is this affinity that has led to the rumor that the Fal were responsible in ages past for the creation of the first anzu, perhaps as a countermeasure against Hathi aggressors or other aether-transformed beasts. If the Fal ever held the secret to controlling the anzu, however, it was clearly lost to time: the Rukh's Garden, once home to an ancestral Fal kingdom, is now little more than ruins that serve as the anzu's nesting grounds.
Naming Traditions
Feminine names
Anahita, Elaheh, Fereshteh, Jahanara, Laleh, Mahtab, Mozhgan, Nasrin, Niloufar, Parastoo, Shirin, Zhaleh
Masculine names
Abbas, Bakhtiar, Farhad, Farrokh, Habib, Jahan, Jamshid, Kianoush, Mehrab, Mirza, Parviz, Shahin, Siavash, Zartosht
Unisex names
Baran, Delshad, Gohar, Golshan, Khurshid, Mehr, Omid, Roshan, Shahnaz
Family names
Attar, Charmchi, Darzi, Farzan, Kadivar, Saatchi, Shahzad, Tafazzoli, Yazdani, Zadeh
Culture
Common Dress code
Art & Architecture
To the Fal people, art is one of the cornerstones of civilization, and by fusing art with the sciences, the Fal have made their settlements into incredibly intricate works. From the outside, the rough stone of their badland environments is adorned with sculpture and rock reliefs depicting notable figures or wild beasts; the walls, domed roofs, and floors of their structures are adorned with intricate and vibrant tiling, most often using hues of blue and turquoise. On the inside, high vaulted ceilings create a sense of immensity, while everything from wooden seating to bronze dishware are adorned with delicate and mathematically complex patterns.
The Fal also have a rich history in weaving and embroidery, and Fal carpets and rugs are a highly valuable commodity in Ithara. Crafted from wool or silk, these rugs exhibit a wide range of subjects and patterns, but all are distinctly Fal in design. Some may display (relatively) simpler patterns, usually angular, which a skilled weaver can produce from memory; more complex designs, either with repeating curved patterns or depictions of creatures and plants, require preliminary graphing composition before weaving can even begin. The most intricate designs require so much mathematical design and weaving skill that they are used as royal gifts, valued similarly to some forms of aetheromechanical technology.
by Yu Yiming
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Details
Diverged ethnicities
Related Locations
