Alyri, People of the Sea

Journey to Canar and before you step foot on the black sands near Orda the souls you meet along the way will share the same sage bit of advice. "If someone sings to you in the night, it's impolite not to sing back."
Far to the Northwest of Canar and the Dyarchy of Silveis, across the vast deserts and the savannahs of Baruilden on the opposite side of the Rosari Sea, hail a tall folk with a storied past who are devoted to the arts of simplicity, sail, and song. This is the history of how the Alyri avoided the fate that befell the Aqein, how they came to be settled in new territories, and how they discovered ways to coexist with the sea.
Survivors
In the ancient past the coastal dwellers of Talus belonged to the Aqein, a culture of mountain people accustomed to harsh weather and rocky terrain. The Aqein were determined architects who built sheltered valleys, mostly using post, lintel, and corbel construction. When they could manage, they would anchor these buildings to the sides of the surrounding mountains. To set foot into their ancient halls is to witness the cunning of stonecutters when best left to their task. These monolithic structures withstood the Howl, a cataclysmic event which altered the terrain of the entire world of Prominence, but the Aqein did not. The wrath of the Howl stripped forests, sheared mountains, and the exposed valleys were then scoured by black sand. The buildings stand, weathered by the sand, and the Aqein are no more. After the Aqein collapsed, the survivors branched off into a distinct group of their own known as the Alyri. They became the ethnic stock from which sprang the Talusians, the Omond, the Soriandish, the Pergalls, the Osken, and the Indmost peoples.

A brief historical entry from the Vrolua treatise, Civilisation, describes them as a short people in conversation and height, slow to anger and, "... determined, with an affinity for the sea and the creatures that reside therein." The treatise maintains several racist inaccuracies pertaining to foreign peoples, particularly those not native to Rowem, but the veracity of this text is contested by most historians. The Vrolua had no ships and conquered no lands in those ancient days. But as it is the first written account of these seafarers, it bears noting. In reality, most Alyri are tall, the women, the men, and those inbetween. A collection of the first primitive words of Camri, a language unique to the Alyri can be found scrawled throughout Talus. Far away, along the Ice Trod, carved into the base of one of the lower mountains is the first song of the Alyri. It is a simple tune about watching the moon, a song that Alyric women sing to their newborns in hopes that the Howl might spare them. This song has been passed down from clan to clan and the melody persists in each place graced by the Alyri. If the uninitiated do not understand the Alyric language of Camri, then they may be at a loss when conversation ends or begins in a melodic yell, lending to the opinion that most of the ethnic group are rude, when in actuality it is merely a case of miscommunication.
Talus, the original continental homeland of the Alyri lies far to the northeast. Conquered by the Aqein, the mountains are riddled with the remnants of their temples carved into the living stone. The Aqein believed that they lived at the edge of all that is observable. It is a land of sharp white mountain peaks and glaciers that groan in the afternoon sunlight. It is a location of darkest night at winter's arrival.
That unforgiving land bred a hardy people who were not yet seafarers, not until they had to be. The legend pieced together from spoken and sung historical accounts and folklore tells of a fierce wind that shrieked through the Ice Trod, bringing with it a mighty squall of sand, snow, and ice which froze the heart of Talus and nearly destroyed her people, the Aqein. The Alyri, a coastal dwelling faction of the Aqein, survived the winds by clinging to the southern shores and hiding within sea caves uncertain if the howling would abate or of what would be their fate. Here, the history of the Alyri may have met its climactic end if not for the heroine, Uldi. She brought together driftwood and began to fashion a boat. The rest of the clans followed suit. They pushed their improvised crafts out onto uncertain frigid waters under the cover of nightfall. Uldi did not survive the dangeorus journey to Rosk, but the Alyric people managed to float their crafts south, and on that bitter, rocky soil they thrived where the winds fell quietest.
Much of what is discussed here reveals the aftermath of that decision, but the passage of time described for each event of the Moonless Migration is suspect. Some songs recall movements taking place over a scant few days when clearly they took place over several quarternions. The closer that Alyric history approaches the period of post migration, the more accurate the portrayal of the passage of time becomes. Those who are Alyric yearn for sea travel. They are natural swimmers and sailors even if untaught. They have a fondness for clothes that can weather any condition, preferring to protect their garb with waterproof solutions often improvised from the elements. Though these people have become scattered since their migration, they share a common history, a taste for clean food harvested from the sea, and an eagerness to find a place for themselves in the world. That first settlement of wayward folx, as much of an experiment as it was an attempt at survival, taught the fledgling Alyri about the sea and the things that dwell within it.
The Settlement of Rosk
The mountain people had been brought low to the coastline of Rosk, and the unfamiliarity of the area's terrain prevented them from venturing inland. Their farthest expedition into the Rosk interior is that of Gutha, another legendary figure of Alyric song. What he found was a mountain range which reminded him of his homeland, only it sheltered white cats the size of two men. Gutha returned to camp having slain one. He skinned the beast and placed its head outside of camp. The songs later tell of the bears that came to attack the settlement later that night. The beasts took Gutha though he fought like mad against the animals, determined to keep his kill. He returned at the break of dawn to the shock of the Alyri, bloodied, but with the heads of both bears in his hands. Here Gutha earned the name, Indmost, which means satisfaction.
During the first quarter, a period of 24 years, the migrants spent their time familiarizing themselves with the art of boat building. From the mountains of Rosk, they acquired strong lumber from old growth forests. Away from the threat of the Howl, the fishers of the Aqein took on a new name, "Alyri," which means survivors. The winter never darkened the sky permanently in Rosk and the people felt they had discovered their new home.
The seas of Prominence can be difficult to traverse but the Alyri experienced none of this on their first voyage, which consisted of little more than following a gentle southern current to Rosk. The people who would become some of the greatest known sailors in the world had developed little skill in their driftwood boats, which resembled not more than a child's curiosity, leaky rafts without sails. The songs state that the Alyri remained in Rosk for a period of one quarternion before the tides began to rise and absorb their settlement. During that time, they watched as each year the tides crept closer to their new home. When it seemed that the sea would soon reach the edge of the mountains, half of the group, now numbering 10,000 strong decided they preferred to take their chances on the Great Ocean. The Alyri view the seven seas of Prominence and the waters beyond as a waterway which connects all peoples. Some feared that a rising ocean would bring the Howl to Rosk. Their songs kept fresh the memory of the devastation of the Howl, and the Great Ocean's rise triggered their departure.
As luck would have it, several key advancements were made before the Moonless Migration took place during the quarternion that passed in Rosk, the first of which involved establishing knowledge in the fields of astronomy and ocean topography to determine the best times to sail. Secondly, with stronger trees and better tools, advances in carpentry helped the migrants build larger and better boats. The third of these advancements was tar to seal their vessels which could be found in abundance in Rosk. The ocean waves can batter even the largest of ship to pieces. If a crew decides to sail at the wrong time of year the voyage could leave their fleet devastated. The Alyri would learn this lesson time and again upon the Rosari Sea, one of the roughest seas on Prominence. On the grey beaches of Rosk, the migrants discovered that the sea remained at its calmest when the moons of Prominence were not in alignment, and indeed the sailing seemed best when no moon shone at all. Navigation was difficult on moonless nights, but the Alyri had a respect for that darkness, deep as the deepest coastal caves on Talus, and so with courage, half of the clans pushed off into Uldi's Grave, and those whom would become the Talusians stayed. Those remaining had intentions of sailing with the rest of their Alyric brethren and had even built boats to accompany them but as winter approached and provisions for a journey of inestimable length began to run lean, it was decided that half of the settlers would wait out the cold weather before venturing out into the unknown. In truth, the Talusians would never rejoin their people, but would instead sail north after the winter to resettle their old homeland, Talus.
The Moonless Migration
As the Old Alyric clans migrated westward they drifted alongside the northern Ice Trod. The currents pulled ice from the shelf along with the boats. The icy conditions claimed many lives. With no suitable place for burial, the bodies of kin were placed reverently upon floes and allowed to drift aside their boat until night came. The first losses at sea were hard for the new voyagers. It is here that the Alyri honed their skill for song. In their grief they sang laments. This activity helped ease the pain of loss, and had the added benefit of fending off natural predators from the newly deceased. They developed a technique for bending and dropping pitch when vocalising, a method they called Camri. Through the use of Camri, they could find each other and communicate across open water, their only words being the shrill melodic tones of their voices skipping across the still waters like thin black stones. Their voices echoed along the shelf, tearing the ice from the walls, and the songs say that the loudest of the Alyri, Fortrs, can still be heard there today. Fortrs lost their entire family to the cold of a moon filled night when a massive wave destroyed their boat. The family could not swim and Fortrs only happened to reach another boat by coincidence. The Alyri needed to make landfall soon or risk losing their entire fleet.
The Alyri would travel a distance of 12,500 nautical miles from Rosk to Baruilden. But they were only a third of the way through that journey when the seafarers discovered two islands, both unpopulated. They named them the Flats, though the Omeri later took them and renamed them the Dusk Seal Islands. The migrants made landfall at the Flats after the first 150 days at sea. The islands were not much more than black sandy beaches covered in seals. A temporary settlement was built from the recovered boats of the deceased and an assesment of the dangers of further travel was discussed. They built cone shaped cairns for those that died during these first days and after mourning their dead, and tending to their wounded, they waited out the moon above them for their next chance at calmer seas.
They found that the seals were plentiful and made for easy prey. When discussing the way ahead became an option, a few of the Alyri, most of them wounded from their ordeal at sea, volunteered to stay behind. Fortrs, having lost their family, remained with the infirm to tough out an existence on the barren landscape. In truth, the songs say that Fortrs was willing to do what needed to be done if the sea continued to rise. It is unknown whether or not Fortrs and their people survived, though Baruilese accounts recall a presence on the Dusk Seal islands. The people described match the Vrolua description in Civilisation. "The people were short and ill tempered. They wore coats of sealskin stuffed with moss and wielded spears made from the tusks of walruses and petrified driftwood. When they spoke to one another, they sang without any discernible language of their own. They are truly of the sea and not worth the effort it would take to conquer. We call them, Omond, The Abandoned."
The Alyri did not stay in the Flats. With the concern they had for the rising seas, they pressed onward. They carried what they could in seal flesh and made their way back to the ice shelf with hopes that the cold current might ferry them to more hospitable environments. The additional meat bolstered an already barren diet of fish and attracted larger prey. The Alyri tried whaling but the hunt never ended well for the hunters. Most lost their lives in the attempt. The oldest of the Alyri forbade the practice after a boat's hull was cracked open by an enraged stone whale.
The loss of boats became a seafarer's worst nightmare. They sustained damage from icebergs, fires, and waves. The Alyri began to look at their surroundings and wonder if the'd see land before they joined Uldi in her grave. Overcrowding and food shortages on land were the catalyst for their migration. At sea the same forces were drowning them.
This all came to a head when The Spark of Idren entered its full phase again. Before their voyage had commenced the Alyri had tracked the course of the moon, paying attention to its effects on the water. Leaving the Rosk during Midsummer guaranteed that they would spend two months at sea with the light of Idris and Idren lighting their way. With the Fall Equinox, the days shortened and the spark trailed into the sky. As it flared, waves tore into the boats. The losses were high enough. At the mercy of the waves they waited for the inevitable to happen, yet soon the sky cleared, the waves dissipated, and though the moon still burned bright, they were saved. This is called Uldi's Blessing. They were two months at sea when their boats were swallowed in the night. They limped south on the craft they had left, but it would be too late. One evening the sky darkened again and the waves broke the fleet, scattering it along the Rosari Sea. Of 5,000 they were numbered. A few hundred woke along the beaches of the Sorian isles. The rest joined Uldi.
The Soriandish
The Soriandish are distinct from their Alyric ancestors. Today, one could describe them as a physical blend of the Baruilese and the Alyri. The Baruilese are statuesque and strong like the Baruilden mountains of their namesake. The Alyri are tall and slender like blades of stana grass. Soriandish islanders, they tower over both. The Sorian Isles had no population of Baruilese at the time of the Moonless Migration and had the seafarers left their age of sail behind them, the isles may have remained that way. However, a restlessness churned within the Alyri and with better boats, and a few quarters to lick their wounds and try again, they continued where they had once left off, again leaving behind a small population.
They wintered in Sorian, which means water haven in Old Alyric, and began their journey after the Spring Equinox. Those that would leave headed westward with the wind in their sails and the salt water spraying behind them. When they saw the land before them rise up out of the ocean, many leapt out of their crafts into the water, prepared to swim to another island. Soon, a continent unfolded before them and at the sight of smoke rising along the coastline, they knew it to be populated. This is the first contact on historical record of the Baruilese with the Alyri. It foreshadowed the rising trouble between the two communities as each interaction would only add fuel to the ever burning fire of hatred between them.
The trouble began when the Baruilese did not welcome the outsiders and each attempt at approaching the waterfront was rebuked by groups of men, women, and children hurling light spears in the direction of the Alyri. The Alyri redirected their vessels and tried for landfall farther down the coast at a location they believed might be a safe distance from the hostile Baruilese. They underestimated the size of Baruilese civilisation. Though they were not there to take the land forcibly, the Alyri did fall into several skirmishes with the Baruilese. The latter lived a nomadic pastoral existence, raiding sedentary societies to the south for gain. To the seafarers, this type of lifestyle was foreign to them. Being first, people of survival, the Alyric custom was to be cordial to new visitors, to follow a spirit of mutualism that benefitted everyone living in a harsh climate. Yet, the time at sea had changed them. When the Baruilese made to expel them from the spoils of their efforts, the Alyri met their challenge. It would not be enough.
During the first strike, the Alyri were taken by surprise and many were taken prisoner to be thralls for the Baruilese. In captivity they learned that much of the continent was covered in mountains, deserts, and steppe regions, nothing like the Sorian Isles, with their balmy winds and calm interiors. The remaining Alyri mounted a rescue attempt which proved semi-successful. The Baruilese did not follow, at least not immediately.
After the altercations the Alyri retreated back to Sorian, this time with three captives of their own: two Baruilese women, and the first recorded interaction with a Baruilese niyen, a person of both genders. Not much is known about the history involving these prisoners but it is assumed that the women were taken as wives. The niyen went on to sail with the Alyri as far off as Oln and has a grave there. Their name in the songs is Wold, though this likely translates to a Baruilese name like, Wolr or Wolt.
Here in history the path of the Alyri is now harder to place. Baruilese record details more skrimishes between the two social groups. This may be Baruilese braggadocio. It's generally known that another distinct subgroup of the Alyric Panethnicity forms at this time known as the Soriandish. The Soriandish spread throughout the isles, continuing the boat building and sailing culture of their parent ethnicity, but remained north of the equator and never quite ventured into the Baruilden interior. They would turn the Rosari Sea, the Western coast of Sananrein, and part of the fertile crescent of Baruilden into multiple small kingdoms which maintain their scattered holdings through loose diplomacy and nautical supremacy. Some say they've outgrown their Alyric ancestry. Many Soriandish deny their Alyric heritage, refuse to teach the history of their ancestral migration, and insist their blood is Baruilese. It is clear both ethnicities had a hand in creating the Soriandish.
Ask any from a Baruilese tribe and they will excitedly produce a piece of vellum containing all of the family names of Baruilden, stretching back countless quarternions. The maintenance of this document of family names, none of which are Soriandish, excepting one, is a source of pride for the Baruilese, and the list is updated during moots every ternion. As it happens, being captured by an enemy is cause for the removal of the name of a lesser family. In most cases, the Baruilese family is then dissolved, its members exchanged during moot and any history of their past deeds vanish with their name. And yet, if the captured individual is from a greater family, the birth name is recorded as a permanent stain upon familial honor. The difference between lesser and greater families is further discussed in the book, Customs of Baruilden. Of the two women that were captured by the Alyri, one belonged to the Gidoshk family, the warrior princess, Avenkar. According to Soriandish legend, she and her servant, Arlis, came willingly with the "captors" having brokered a deal with them to travel the sea.
The Silveisean and Westward
The Alyric seafarers once again sailed away. The warm currents of southern Baruilden beckoned them. It began first with a gentle plain of seagrass swept up in the songs of the Alyric imagination. Calling themselves the Children of Uldi, they chased this field a few nautical miles westward and the bottom of the sea greeted them with bright corals and bales of lazy of sea turtles. Sailing northwest, the Alyri had their first encounter with the Silveisean. The interaction is one of history's significant mysteries. The annals state that the Silveisean were infected with cinderskin. And yet, in their own records, the Silveis accuse the Alyric travelers of afflicting their entire community. The question remains, who infected whom? The occurrence took place in the Shallow Sea on the Celintha isles. The societies clashed over the sickness as it claimed large portions of their populations and any confidence in building trust between the groups broke. Cinderskin is not contagious, but at the time ancient people thought that any illness of the mind or body might be transmitted from person to person because of mere association. Whatever the case may be, there was significant tension between the two on the matter which boiled over into animosity. By this time, the Alyri had mastered sailing the coastlines and so they left the Silveisean for the rest of the Celintha isles did call to them. Exploring the shallow warm sea brought them great pleasure. A few quarternions prior to their arrival, they had fought for their existence in dark caves during the winter months. Now, the world seemed to open up to them and they began taking what they could of their new found spoils. In Celintha, a new generation of seafarers with secondhand knowledge of their people's struggle began to get older and they wanted to set down roots. After many quarternons this ethnic enclave of the Alyri would travel again to Silveis.
When they arrived they discovered that the Silveisean were still alive, even welcoming them. Instead of allowing the outbreak to destroy them, the Silveisean, a curious people, learned what they could of the disease and how best to control it. Some of the population had even learned how to benefit from having cinderskin. These individuals were kept in positons of high authority throughout the Silveisean city of Xotin. Upon witnessing that the Silveisean had thrived, the Alyric enclave chose to remain on the island of Silveis long enough to learn from the people there. They would stay so long that they became known as the Pergalls. They merged with Silveisean society creating a blend of the two cultures, never quite healing the damage of their first meeting but somehow moving past it. Reintegration into Alyric society for these people was not possible, as the quarternons spent within another world outside of the sea had cast them adrift of Alyric customs.
The Pergalls would not remain in Silveis. Their Alyric blood spurred them ever onward. Choosing to build their own boats, they would migrate to the southern shores of Oln and the mountains north of it before the rest of their kin. These were eager youths ready to take on the world about them and they took on new names to reflect their zeal for adventure. The Alyri did not forget their cousins and instead keep their spirit alive in the songs known as the Song of the Soriandish and the Pergallic Edda.
The two newest subgroups of the Alyric Panethnicity, the Osken and the Indmost, are also the groups without a solid historical background. At some point a group of Alyri established themselves just north of Oln founding a city that bears the name, Osk. The Alyri that landed here spread southward through Canar and at present control the gap between Rowem and its neighbor. They have merged with the Olna, an old race that has lived in Oln since ancient times. It's not entirely understood when this offshoot of Alyri left the main group of migrants or for what reason, but they've retained the custom of Camri. The Osken have an innate talent for sailing and they can and do venture out onto the water. The natural glacial barrier of the New Talus Mountains prevented interaction between the Pergalls and their Osken neighbors allowing these two groups to become rather distinct from one another.
The Indmost have established themselves in the northern most region of the west on the island of Cerln. They insist that their background is the oldest of the Alyric subgroups, but in truth there are no songs about the Alyri sailing to Cerln. It's much more probable that the Indmost are actually Talusians that left after the settlement at Rosk became overcrowded, but the way in which they arrived at their current location is a bit of a riddle. They do not sing, and with no songs to hold the record of their past journeys, no one may ever be sure about their real heritage at all.
After all of the sailing, the migrant people had spread as north as their ancestors, and farther south than any but the Olna and the Soan (if the soan can be considered men at all). Six subgroups of Alyri exist today as offshoots from the original adventurers that sailed from Talus: The Pergalls, The Osken, The Talusians, The Omond, The Soriandish, The Indmost. But there is a seventh of these. The Alyri continue to sail the seas of Prominence in scattered flotillas and armadas. These people never settled and have a cultural aversion to life on land. They dread the dryness of land, and maintain floating cities upon the Shallow and deeper seas expecting at any time to welcome their kin, whom they call the Children of Uldi.
Post Migration
Those days of the Howling and the Moonless Migration have long since passed, and the seas have ebbed and flowed for countless quarternons carrying the ice of Oln away and submerging the lowlands on every major continent. Indeed the sailors have faired the better for their way of life is secure in spite of the growing depth of the Shallow Sea. The Omond abandoned the Flat Lands for the western coast of Rosk, naming the land there Essenbara and claiming the neighboring islands on which they already held a healthy population. This population has intermingled with the minor Talusian group across the mountains of Rosk and have built a salt mining empire. The Soriandish spread themselves among the hundred Sorian isles maintaining shaky control over the eastern Baruilese trade routes and a portion of the Urian peninsula's fertile crescent. In Silveis, a small community of Pergalls continues to heal the fissure between the Silveisean and the Alyri, while abroad the kingdoms they have created in the West continue to grow in strength and number. They have forgotten the skill of Camri but they have retained who they once were by retaining knowledge of ocean currents. On the western coast of Canar, The Osken and Olna have forged a dynamic nation of their own, known as Palispar. They claim that their Corsair Queen is a direct descendant of Uldi. The veracity of this statement has never been verified. The Talusians maintain trade connections with one of the most ancient cultures on Prominence, the Ela. Economic boons have since transformed the frozen hearths of Talus into halls of warmth. Talusians lead sedentary lifestyles compared to their cousins. Traveling the Talus countryside will reveal hidden towns, tucked between mountainous valleys, built to withstand and utilize the winter snow. A world away, their Indmost kin are rediscovering for themselves how to live in the North, both on land and sea.
Somewhere along the Shallow Sea, where the coral grows thick enough to block the tidal influences of the moon on a starless night, there rests a flotilla of boats and ringing through that night air are voices calling to one another, full of spirit and wit, singing the timeworn stories of the moon filled nights that came before this one.

Parent ethnicities

• Aqein