exiled women

In the present moment in the world of The River, tensions in the farthest village are high and a confrontation is inevitable. A drought in the near future will be the final straw, giving the radical women the impetus to challenge the traditionalists for leadership of the village. When the challenge escalates into fighting, the traditionalists win and drive the radical women out. With no assistance to be found in any other village, the exiled women will follow the river to find a new home for themselves, and in the process reshape their culture.

The biggest change the exiled women make is the recognition of grown boys as adults. A boy who fathers a child is given the same title, rights, and responsibilities as a girl who gives birth, and it is any baby--not just a female one--that grants those rights to its parents.

Naming Traditions

Family names

Inherited names are a new tradition, created to reflect the equal importance of fathers and mothers. A child takes her parent's names after her own, although in most situations she goes by only her given name. Over the generations these names stabilize, identifying a person's male and female lineage rather than her parents.

Culture

Major language groups and dialects

With the enfranchisement of boys, the language is undergoing a radical transformation. In the villages, women classified nouns by a system of tones according to the amount of respect they were due. Now that boys who have fathered children are elevated to the same class as women, they are spoken of in women's tones. In the descendant languages, nouns will be toned according to what action they belong to in the moment (regardless of actual sex) into four gender classes: feminine, masculine, combined, and neuter.

Birth & Baptismal Rites

In marked contrast to the secluded births practiced by village women, the exiled women give birth in the open surrounded by the rest of the community. Where a village woman was made to stay silent during the entire labor and delivery to keep herself safe from dangerous spirits, among the exiles she is encouraged to make as much noise as she needs to. The people around her shout and stomp to drown out her cries to prevent those spirits from finding her.

Common Myths and Legends

Although moon worship will continue out of habit for another thousand years, the legends used to support village practices fall into disfavor and are no longer repeated. In the coming generations, the exile itself comes to be treated as a creation story.

Parent ethnicities

• The Women

View from the future

200-12,000 years, The Ocean
Over the next couple centuries the exiled women successfully established settlements along the lower Ciiadociee river. The small population not only survived the bottleneck event but thrived.
The gift of water affinity, rare in the villages, is commonplace in modern humans and has given rise to an ability to manipulate water from a distance. Although the culture continued to change in different directions as populations went separate ways over the milennia, some customs such as public childbirth and lineage names are still universally practiced.