Stevie Lambert: (via JWB)

2026-05-10T12:40:56Z

(via JWB)

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{{Infobox:TwilightAgeGroup
|Type = Kin'toni clan
|Name = Tutes Kin'toni Clan
|Parent Groups = Unknown
|Descended Groups = Unknown
|Areas Controlled = [[Striamtan Sandpit Plains]]
|Date Founded = 4E 294
|Date Disbanded = N/A
}}

==History==

In the scorching deserts of South Taerel, where both zu’aan and kin’toni struggle with lack of food and nutrition, only few clans find ways to prosper and bloom like flowers in an oasis. The Tutes kin’toni clan are one of them, having inhabited the Striamtan Sandpit plains for as long as they can remember. The Tutes think that they have been destined to claim the region as theirs, that divine intervention led to them now having full control over South Taerel. It’s understandable that even the Tutes consider their success a miracle, since Taerel’s deserts are one of the harshest environments on the entire planet.

Of course, the Tutes’ settlements weren’t merely built in the middle of the desert. A clever eye might notice that every single one of them is in very close proximity to an oasis or another body of water. Having power over those key geographic points also led to them having power over the entirety of the region, since it’s entirely impossible to survive in the desert without a supply of water. After the Tutes clan became powerful enough, they started to use their oases as goods that they could trade with other kin’toni clans. Those desperate enough to be lost in the desert would be forced to hand their belongings over or perish from thirst.

The more kin’toni settled near Tutes’ land, the more kin’toni depended on them. With this philosophy in mind, the Tutes clan carved wondrous buildings and spread propaganda of the clan’s supposedly lavish and luxurious lives. The goal was obviously to get more kin’toni in the area, maybe even expand the clan itself, and gain even more power. The behemothic temples that the Tutes clan erected is what they are remembered for today. A ton of resources and kin’toni muscle power went into building them, yet one could say that the Tutes succeeded in attracting more kin’toni to an area that otherwise was hostile to life.

With more kin’toni fleeing towards the South in recent days, the little empire of the Tutes is more alive than ever, they take kindly towards visitors and plan to expand their reach in peaceful ways. The fact that the clan has always valued diplomacy and words to resolve conflicts instead of military strength is something that meant they got on the good side of many nearby kin’toni clans. Like many other kin’toni though, the Tutes clan has never been friendly towards zu’aan, seeing them as objects rather than fellow living beings before they turn.

==Psychology==

The Tutes kin’toni clan members are surprisingly civilized and intelligent, especially compared to some other kin’toni clans living in the desert. It is this intelligence that not only let them survive the blazing sands of the Striamtan plains, but to evolve into a whole organized civilization towering above primitive kin’toni tribes. The Tutes society is one of thinkers and strategists, it seems almost as if the Tutes are physically uncapable of spontaneous decision-making.

Every decision, from large political and economic choices to miniscule daily questions a kin’toni has to answer, every single action that a Tutes kin’toni chooses to make, has to be with full consideration of the consequences that shall follow. Tutes clan members that are faced with spontaneous decisions usually just freeze on the spot, the time pressure of such a challenge is one that brings them great anxiety. Tutes take great enjoyment in the company of other clanmates. Not only is companionship and collaboration two critical cornerstones of the Tutes kin’toni society, Tutes clan members that spend too long in solitude fall into deep depression.

It makes sense that a clan where the only way to overcome the challenges of desert life was to help each other to be so reliant on company and friendship. The near-perfect way that kin’toni of the Tutes clan communicate with each other has led some zu’aan researchers to suspect that there is some sort of telepathic bond between clan members. Of course, all of this is merely speculation right now. The Tutes kin’toni exhibit a greater degree of self-control than other kin’toni clans. While a lot of the latter will immediately get overtaken by their thirst for blood at the sight of a vulnerable zu’aan.

The Tutes once again prefer tactics and planning to careless primal instinct. This does mean that the desert zu’aan are afraid of them relatively less. Some zu’aan even get bold enough to create temporary settlements right on the Tutes soil, knowing that it will take them at least a couple of days to attack. When the clan does attack though, they are just as terrifying as any other kin’toni clan, not letting even a single zu’aan get away. Even though the Tutes kin’toni are cunning, one should remember that with cunning often comes cowardice, and it’s a significant weakness that the Tutes struggle against.

They have had to resort to diplomatic and political ways to resolve conflicts between them and other kin’toni clans countless times, partly because they are just afraid of death. The relationship between these kin’toni and death is complicated, they seem to be the only few clans to show signs of existential dread and fear of the unknown after death has come knocking on one’s door. It’s no coincidence, considering both their heightened intellect and spirituality compared to most other kin’toni. Despite this, the Tutes will take offence to anyone claiming that they are a coward, even when it may be true.

The clan views kin’toni from other clans as more reckless and primitive, but treats them with a lot of respect anyway.

==Biology==

The Tutes kin’toni clan have an entire list of adaptations that allow them to survive in the blazing heat. The most significant of those is of course that they require less blood and water on a day-to-day basis than other kin’toni. While others need a lot of those two things to function, the Tutes can allow themselves to be patient and go without water for days with seemingly no negative consequences. Nevertheless, the Tutes kin’toni don’t live on air. There’s a reason why they built their settlements near the Striamtan oases after all.

The Tutes’ eyes are great at protecting them against sandstorms. Dense eyelashes and specially formed eyelids mean that they can be outside when other kin’toni have to shelter themselves from the storm. Despite this trat seeming like it would give the clan a huge advantage, it’s slowly becoming obsolete as the Tutes start spending more time inside the town walls rather than out in the desert. Overall, the Tutes clan members are quite recognizable from a distance. They have sandy yellow skin which doubles as camouflage in the dunes and plains of the Striamtan region.

But as the clan is peaceful towards other kin’toni, it never really gets put to use. The Tutes kin’toni are fairly short, with the tallest of them only reaching a meek 165cm in height. Despite being on the shorter side on the spectrum, they are just as fierce as other kin’toni in battle, having some of the fastest-growing claws among all clans in Taerel. They, too, go unused. It’s fascinating that even though the Tutes kin’toni are perfect war machines in theory, they choose to only expand through diplomacy and peace.

A number of Tutes scholars are worried about what may happen to future kin’toni generations, if their biological strengths over other kin’toni go unused. Natural selection favours those who sit inside their homes, rather than the zu’aan hunters on the front lines. More concretely, they are worried about all those biological advantages slowly getting removed from the gene pool, and that future Tutes kin’toni will be weak, fragile, and more susceptible to the desert. All this is just theory and speculation though, as the Tutes don’t have anything to worry about in the short term.

The skin of the Tutes kin’toni is especially noteworthy. It doesn’t merely serve as a form of camouflage, as mentioned above. Firstly, their skin is twice as tough as the skin of the average kin’toni, making it much harder to pierce with sharp bladed weapons or teeth. It’s speculated that this level of toughness was developed to protect the early Tutes kin’toni from the venomous animals that the Striamtan plains had to offer. The Tutes have been nicknamed “the stone clan” by some neighbouring kin’toni clans, and while that’s partly because of their towering stone monuments.

It’s also because their skin both looks and feels like desert rock. While it could potentially give a huge edge to the Tutes in warfare, it once again becomes useless when combined with the extremely pacifist attitudes that the clan’s members have. Something else that is quite minor is that the Tutes clan, much like other desert kin’toni, developed nearly complete immunity to the poisons and venoms of most of the desert’s life forms. Certain plants that would sting a Northern kin’toni on touch do nothing for the Tutes. Therefore, poisonous vines are sometimes utilized to fortify the houses of the Tutes against unwanted invaders.

==Culture==

Ultimately, the culture of the Tutes clan boils down to a couple of virtues and qualities that they value above all else, and that those virtues should be celebrated in the society. One of these qualities is collaboration: being able to rely on another kin’toni, assisting others, just teamwork generally speaking. As a result, the Tutes clan is one of the most social among all kin’toni clans. The strong taking care of the weak helped the early Tutes prosper in a hostile desert where so many other clans simply perished, and today cooperation among clan members is placed high up on a pedestal in the Tutes society.

It’s expected that healthy kin’toni who could hunt and work would take care of the clan’s injured or weak members whenever they can, the Tutes believe that health is a blessing that one has to repay for by assisting others. Expectedly, any activities that the Tutes partake in as a group are also highly organized and with little conflict. Teamwork being such a crucial part of the clan’s culture was probably why they were able to erect huge statues and monuments that other kin’toni clans couldn’t even dream about. Another virtue of great importance in the Tutes’ society is intelligence.

Usually, the concept of intelligence or intellect among the Tutes kin’toni is actually merely a way to encompass multiple different skills that any respectable kin’toni should possess. Among those skills are strategic thinking, the ability to craft long-term plans, philosophy and diplomacy. The Tutes are repulsed by how a good chunk of other kin’toni clans let brute power and muscles determine one’s value in the society. According to them, it’s a primitive and barbaric way of life, and a kin’toni’s ability to accurately solve problems and question the world around them are much more valuable and impressive than just being of a robust physical build.

Because the clan considers intellect and knowledge to be very important skills, there is a constant pursuit of wisdom in the clan. Some kin’toni attempt to master diplomacy and politics as their main focus, other get into the theory behind tactics and warfare. Some research into architecture and what makes a monument not just pleasing to the eye, but unyielding to both the cruel elements of the Striamtan desert and sheer destructive kin’toni force. They hope that as centuries, perhaps even millennia pass, the structures of the Tutes clan remain standing; a reminder of an age long gone.

Something else that defines the Tutes culture is their pacifistic outlook on life. While they still feed on zu’aan, they have a strict etiquette towards treating other kin’toni clans with a degree of respect. A Tutes kin’toni may never deliver the first blow in a fight, and they should always seek to defuse confrontations rather than start them. Violence is taboo, even in self-defense. The only valid reasons for a kin’toni to injure another is if their life is in danger, or to protect another kin’toni who, too, is in danger. Those who break this code of honour are shamed for their actions.

And the worst offenders are banished from the clan and told to never return. A Tutes kin’toni may never let his primal instincts and anger cloud his mind, or so it is taught.

==Government==

Being an adequately developed society, the Tutes have decided that only having a single kin’toni ruling the rest isn’t a fabulous idea. Therefore, members of the Tutes clan have collectively decided that the Tutes government should consist of a couple kin’toni from each settlement in the entirety of the Striamtan Sandpit plains. Those few kin’toni should be elected by their own settlement via a democratic process. Then, the elected kin’toni would gather at the capital when important decisions had to be made, and they would firstly elaborate upon what the opinions of the kin’toni in their settlement are.

Then afterwards, they would hold a discussion which would always end in a vote deciding the solution to the problem. A member of the clan government was called a Taool. Such a system is miles more complex than what most other kin’toni clans in Taerel have thought of, yet it works for the Tutes as debates, persuasion and logic are their largest strengths. In practice, the kin’toni who wanted to become their settlements Taool, would all create plans for existing issues that the clan currently faced.

The ones who managed to handcraft the most elaborate and detailed plans, considering every possibility, would often be the ones voted to become Taool. Some have voiced concern over such a system being sustainable as the Tutes clan keeps expanding. Votes are cast with a specific gesture in the town hall, and all kin’toni do so at roughly the same time. Issues such as the inability to count a huge number of votes, the possibility of falsifying the counts and peer pressure have caused the system to be criticized. Nevertheless, due to the fact that the majority of kin’toni are illiterate.

And even fewer can write, it’s safe to say that a better voting system will not be put in place anytime soon for the Tutes. Some clan members have also been worried that a Taool will simply abandon their previous promises after they have been voted in, and instead decide on things that will harm the settlement. It wasn’t long before the clan took care of that possibility too, so now just as it was possible to vote a kin’toni into the government, it was also possible to vote them out at any moment if enough kin’toni in the settlement agreed.

Much like with the voting system overall, some kin’toni thinkers found problems within this as well. The majority isn’t always right, so maybe the Tutes would be better off with a single leader like most other kin’toni clans? After all, their government seems to work for them. It’s incredibly likely that the Tutes clan will see a complete and total reform of their government system in the very near future, because the discussions are steadily getting both more commonplace and tense. For a clan that prides themselves on good diplomatic relations with other kin’toni clans.

A new political system can either result in a great success, or a terrible catastrophe. As of now, both outcomes are very much possible.

==Military==

It should come as no surprise that the Tutes clan don’t exactly have a military. Such are the ways of a clan who prefer to talk rather than to fight. The closest thing that the Tutes have to an army are the numerous zu’aan hunters, whose job is pretty self-explanatory. In the case that the Striamtan plains got invaded by another kin’toni clan, they would be the ones battling on the front lines, as they are nearly the only clan members with any kind of combat training whatsoever. Even the hunters are relatively few though, and they are poorly equipped as the clan does not consider the manufacturing of weapons and similar war equipment to be something worth pursuing.

The lack of focus on the military doesn’t render the clan utterly defenseless though. As the Tutes are great at stonecutting and building, their settlements are fortified in impressive ways. Firstly, being in the desert is a pretty good way to deter most enemies. Surviving in the Striamtan region is difficult enough alone, and that’s still nothing compared to waging war in this same place, against a clan that have perfectly adapted to the desert climate and lifestyle. Secondly, the Tutes know how to build effective walls to keep any invaders out.

Like all architecture that the clan concerns themselves with, these walls can withstand much more than just a few dozen kin’toni, which is the typical size for an assault by a desert kin’toni clan. The walls that the Tutes clan put up aren’t ordinary walls though. It’s often for them to have huge stone spikes and poisonous vines attached to them, in order to make ascending these walls harder for any potential sneaky trespassers. The walls themselves are usually not even the first line of defense. The heavily populated Tutes settlements have a drawbridge which is the only way to get to even the walls of their fort.

Once someone has gotten within the clan’s walls, that’s not even half the job done, because the houses that the Tutes kin’toni build are also resilient against attacks, both those of the desert and those of other kin’toni. As the Tutes value crafting friendly political relations with other clans above waging war, the best place for them to stop an incoming attack is before it has even been ordered. The Tutes’ gates may be guarded, but they are wide open for any lone wanderer or traveler who’s interested in the clan’s way of life. If a foreign kin’toni wants to drink from the oases that the Tutes clan owns, they have to pay up.

But otherwise the two are treated with an equal amount of warmth and amiability. The fact that the Tutes will never attack you unless you hit first, is something that really separates them from other desert clans and makes them for great allies to have on your side as a kin’toni clan in the Striamtan region. They are not against kin’toni from different clans mixing with each other in casual situations, so the reasons as to why you would even think of waging war against the Tutes clan are very limited.

==Religion==

The Tutes kin’toni love philosophy and wondering about the meanings of things. It shouldn’t surprise that they also have a saturated record of myths and legends that a lot of kin’toni know off by heart. The Tutes believe in a single deity, whom they call Seuzal. According to the myths, Taerel used to be one endless desert with savage kin’toni tribes scattered around the place. Seuzal wanted to turn it into more, so he created the zu’aan to nourish the mindless kin’toni, and granted them consciousness as a gift. Seuzal didn’t give all of the kin’toni clans the same degree of advancement though.

But he chose the Tutes clan to be the rulers of the desert, so the clan was blessed with intellect and understanding of the world unmatched by any other kin’toni. They were also given a chunk of Seuzal’s power, and appointed a divine right over the Striamtan Sandpit plains, so it’s only the Tutes clan who are allowed to hold control over it. However, this is just the most popular creation story among the Tutes clan, while there are dozens of different versions with varying degrees of popularity. The clan’s kin’toni cannot agree on which creation story is correct, or even which one is the oldest of them all.

Debates, like it was stated before, are a large part of the Tutes culture, and debates about religion are too. There are a couple of facts that most Tutes kin’toni clearly agree on though, the first being the existence of just one deity, named Seuzal, and the second being the Tutes clan having divine right over the land of the Striamtan Sandpit plains, where they have set up their capital and continue to live in to this day. Having only seen a miniature chunk of Taerel’s surface, the Tutes are not aware of there existing anything beyond the desert.

Despite that, ancient clan tales tell of mountainous regions covered with snow, of charming pastures coloured pure green, even of kin’toni who settle deep underground. It’s suspected that these legends were spread by kin’toni migrating towards the deserts in South Taerel, and speaking of their own homelands, which seemed completely foreign to the purely desert-dwelling Tutes clan. In recent times, the existence of different climates apart from the desert on Taerel became more of a fact, with kin’toni moving about more than ever before due to the climate changes in the North.

Some groups of Tutes kin’toni are strictly against this idea though, because it would contradict the idea that Taerel was once nothing but an empty desert until Seuzal granted the kin’toni self-awareness. It doesn’t help that this story is the most popular one, so the Tutes clan will soon have to decide whether they believe religious traditions or wanderers’ tales of strange places beyond the Striamtan heat.

==Miscellany==

{{NearbyGroups
| Centre = {{PAGENAME}}
| North = Unknown
| Northeast = Unknown
| East = Unknown
| Southeast = Unknown
| South = Unknown
| Southwest = Unknown
| West = Unknown
| Northwest = Unknown
}}

{{CrossSiteAttribution
| User = [https://www.fiverr.com/piggytheastro piggytheastro]|
| Holder = piggytheastro
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[[Category:3rd-century Twilight Age kin'toni clans]]
[[Category:piggytheastro's contributions]]

Tutes Kin'toni Clan - Revision history

Stevie Lambert: (via JWB)