Zmaym
The Zmaym people of the wasteland are rich and varied and have not come close to species uniformity even though they are interfertile. They live in a broad and desolate plains area pocked with meteorite impact craters.
As a species, the Zmaym are closely related to a variety of farm and herd animals. When the Cataclysm happened, and the Invaders came, the farm animals were scattered and formed the wild herds that fled ahead of the dangers of the cataclysm. What is known is that the breeds of beasts that came through the Three Sisters are not the breeds used in the world today, selective breeding changed that. But those beasts - the first cattle, goats, horses, and sheep - those became the Zmai, and are simultaneously the ancestors of modern animals.
Because of their varied origins and mythical genesis, the Zmaym are a group of three very different subspecies. As a further oddity, each subspecies is interfertile both with each other and with every species with Kvuten heritage, even though the Kvuten species are not interfertile.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Zmai are stocky and tall, with broad features and a slightly protruding nose and mouth, reminiscent of the snouts of their ancestors. All have hooved feet and at least four limbs.
Civilization and Culture
Naming Traditions
Names are commonly two syllables, either guttural or melodic in nature, the first is given shortly after birth. The second is given on the day celebrating the child's first full year. After their tenth year, one of the Zmaym can undertake a journey to another Khaw (tribe) and be granted a new name by the elders there after a year of living with them under the title of Sujas (Wanderer). When their year is done and the elders have granted the name the wanderer returns to their tribe, visiting each tribe along the way to announce their name and be celebrated for having survived and completed their journey. The wanderer is celebrated because the tribal elders often have the wanderer do tasks for the good of the tribe that test their mettle.
Beauty Ideals
Musculature is important among the Zmaym, as athleticism means survival in the wasteland. Among both Tilloz (females) and Shrakaz (males), a person with curly or wavy hair that is kept clean and tangle free is considered beautiful. A particularly straight aquiline nose is prized by tilloz in their shrak mates, as is a long tongue, or strong teeth, or a particularly large sexual appendage. Shrakaz tend to value firm breasts, large eyes, and wide hips in their tillo mates. As clothing is nearly nonexistent among the Zmaym, these traits are on display near constantly, allowing the Zmaym to choose potential mates freely.
Gender Ideals
Zmaym live in tribal societies of gatherers, where the tilloz (females) manage the rach (lodge). Rach vary in construction and size and style, depending on where the tribe lives and materials available, but they are always portable as the Zmaym stay on the move, traveling the wasteland surviving on the crops they grow in the arroyos and the plants they gather and reseed as they move. As such, a tillo must be responsible, capable of managing a large brood of children, cooking filling meals from whatever is gathered, working together with other tilloz to erect or strike the camp, and artistic or creative enough to make music or dance.
Shrakaz (males) go on gathering expeditions beyond the rach. This can mean dueling other tribes for resources or fighting some natural beast who decided to make a home near the resources the khaw (tribe) needs. Shrakaz also harvest the golden powder from meteor craters and mine for metals in the desert caves. As such is the way of things, a shrak must be athletic, durable, a capable fighter, miner, gatherer, or harvester, and have strong interpersonal skills to work with other shrakaz.
Courtship Ideals
Courtship is a matter of going beyond. Feelings outside of what a person normally feels should drive them to actions outside what they usually do, you see. Because of this thinking, each gender acts like the other when attracting a mate. A tillo might try to fight and take a trophy from some beast or gather food or the golden meteor powder and then present it as a gift to their shrak of choice. A shrak might dance or cook or teach children something and be seen or do this for the tillo they desire. When the role reversal is deemed impressive enough, by the one being pursued, they go to the elders who perform the Vajash (bonding ceremony).
Relationship Ideals
After the vajash, a gi (couple) can mate. Usually this is about all they do for a solid tsam (month), and the mating gi is studiously ignored by everyone in the khaw. The gi is exempted from the daily tasks and thek (sex) is seen as their only job. Thekas (having sex) is seen as a necessary part of building the khaw up. After a tsam, the gi are roused from their frebaz (blankets) to rejoin the khaw as a thekase gi (literally: a couple that had sex) and are seen as one unit within the khaw, and only split for daily tasks.
Over time a gi can develop a routine or blandness, and if it happens, one of the pair will either try to court the other, or they will split apart and travel to a new khaw and court someone new. Courting someone new within the same khaw is prohibited. Children born from a split vajash will often stay with the parent who stays in the khaw, and the shrak or tillo that stayed is often courted by those whose mate has died or left them, usually culminating in another vajash.
Major Language Groups and Dialects
Zmie is the universal language of the Zmaym.
History
Once, there were Great Herds, the legend says. It continues saying that 'Among the Great Herds, a fire rose in the spirits of the First. They bathed in the Sacred Water and became more than others. They stood and bade the others to charge, and led by their own, they did.'
In the mythic past, so the legends says, the Herds were many species, many types of animal, and all were hunted or raised as food. Even the strongest. The lesson of this ancient story is simple: There's always a bigger beast. And sometimes there is a beastlier thing that is small. To eat living flesh. Barbaric.
Now there are many tribes, many forms, but still only the Kin, only the Zmaym. We are all Zmaym, Children of the Great Herd.
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