Coenem Tribal Zu'aan

History

The Coenem zu'aan tribe was first established around 3E 2860 as a communal regiment responsible for the production and trade of many products common in the Zu'aan diet; their biggest highlight being the Wookumkins, which is a delicacy that's consumed cold, composed of a sweetened base, created from the refining of milk along with a mix of aromatic plant compounds, such as the use of the fruit Huobuon, which was their most renewed flavor; the substance was then frozen and agitated under specific conditions to generate a firm yet soft texture, which was perfect to consume on hot days.

That sweet paste was then shaped into different shapes, sometimes into rectangles who were put into containers, that were better to preserve overtime, or in the most common way, often used in to-go stands which were spheres, these spheres were promptly placed over coned caising made from baked grains, the most common grain used called Hiaciann, which allowed zu'aan to hold the cone and also eat it after finishing the paste. Wookumkins production was also dependent on a number of technologies that were rare even during the Age of Awakening, a set of cooling mechanisms that kept their firm and consistent texture.

The job of keeping such complex production afloat was something that allowed a set of leaders to become prominent names, known for their many vital contributions. Between them, we had Koxisa Siyufup, who acted as a financial manager of the tribe, overseeing exchanges, resource accounting, and logistics of all materials needed for continued production. Protection of storage reserves, cooling mechanisms, and fabrication sites was assigned to brothers Lenilox Nizire and Sokunelu Nizire, military leaders responsible for guarding both stockpiled raw materials and complex equipment used in the creation of Wookumkins.

Another figure worth mentioning was Rarina Ganice, a young woman in charge of the organization in the commune, development of habitation infrastructure, distribution of basic needs, and coordination of work both in the production and sale of Wookumkins along the trade routes of the tribe. As a motherly figure, she was admired by many Zu'aan residents due to her compassion and empathy. The Coenem tribe arrived in Avera Valley back in 3E 3107. The landscape was lush and covered in mountains.

The mountains gave the impression that the fields were in a bowl. The tribe was able to concentrate on farming for their own sustenance rather than producing specific goods because of the good soil. They abandoned their old tools and trade routes, taking only seeds for Huobuon and Hiaciann. They even melted down their precious metal to make simple tools like pickaxes, hoes, and chisels. They used these to farm the fertile land, dig houses into the mountains, and fashion tables and chairs out of rocks.

This caused catastrophic losses, and very quickly eroded the tribe’s ability to maintain itself as it had done before. In a wave of attacks, several of the leaders who had become quite well-known were murdered. Koxisa Siyufup was killed in an attack in 3E 3103, eaten by kin’toni in front of her daughter, Rayas Siyufup, which would later define Rayas’s position in the tribe. A pair of brothers, Sokunelu Nizire and Lenilox Nizire also died during these early years of the fall.

Sokunelu, youngest sibling, was killed in 3E 3103 when one of the first production convoys was ambushed. In the year 3E 3104, there was an advancing Kin'toni force advancing on the Coenen, and as a result, Lenilox and his most trusted soldiers stayed behind to allow other Coenem to escape and provide a chance for the Kin'toni army to be stopped. Unfortunately, Lenilox died as a result of this decision.

Well, in the first years, most of those would collapse under pressure, and with the often unsafe sleeping places, a few Coenem were often found dead in the morning, be it by being picked off by Kin'toni attacks or by the unstable structure that would allow rocks to crush a few citizens. But over time, with joint efforts of the tribe, such excavations started to expand into a complex habitation network and turned the tribe into a society where routes were traced almost as if an entire country remained inside of it.

All sorts of protected tunnels, chambers, schools, and living areas focused on developing bonds and leisure, where activities such as Bunkerpoof and different kinds of artistic expressions were common. While all that was going on, fertile soils and the mild climate of the valley outside were harnessed for the cultivation of Huobuon and Hiaciann, staple food sources, which allowed the very creative Coenem to mix them into myriad meals. Over time, as the outside world became ever more hostile, Wookumkins was treated almost like a relic of the past.

Only two elderly members of the tribe retained fragmentary recollections of its making and flavor: Rayas Siyufup and Rarina Garice. For most of both their lives, they had been fully devoted to nurturing the lifes within the community, which was sadly still deeply marked by the earlier tragedies; which made it pretty hard for either of them to pursue their personal projects and passions. It was in the last years of their lives, as the inevitability of death dawned on them, that the two women began to write their remaining memories about Wookumkins on a small collection of scrolls.

They attemped to describe the production, properties, and cultural significance of the product with what strength remained to them. Within some weeks, however, both had passed away from exhaustion and age, dying at their writing desks. In the chaos that followed the death of such crucial leaders, the scrolls were mistakenly placed into their burial coffins along with their bodies. The last written records of Wookumkins were lost to the tribe for many years. By the time we get to the consolidation of the Twilight Age, the Coenem remain themselves.

They are an a relic, a memory of more simple times, a community driven by hospitality and an emphatic treatment of others. Their settlement, by focusing on constant survival, could never develop beyond that; it has kept itself at a moderate population, one that increases at a slow rate on behalf of the very Coenem and asylum given to whatever lost Zu'aan happen to pass by the Avera Valley. This simplistic yet creative nature, as well as their stable population, allows them not to call attention from the Kin'toni while still sustaining themselves within the walls of their mountains.

Psychology

The Coenem are driven by the maintenance of a collective balance, which emphasizes the need to circulate tasks amongst the group in a cohesive manner as a way to keep the collective well-being afloat. Due to always growing in this communally centered manner, their ideas of ownership are far from those commonly taught by many of the other tribes, often, when utilizing a tool or collecting food they do not regard such acts as a way to contribute to their own accumulation of wealth, but as an active need centered on the comfort and lives of their tribe.

They often regard their values as something which is lived together, experienced together, developing in the Coenem a sense of self in which you are complete when you are with others, forming a notion existence only actually begins from the moment you're a part of a group. These notions often developed into very understanding and emphatic individuals, who would always seek to bring more people into the group, share and learn about their culture, and have shared experiences together, this was something done constantly whenever the tribe served as asylum for other zu'aan.

Which is when their hospitality was highlighted best, showing how, regardless of previous identity, any individual who did not challenge the very acceptance that allowed them to enter is embraced fully. In everyday life, this often manifested itself by the rotation of labor roles, where the members of the tribe, regardless of their own attributes would distribute tasks in a manner where each and every single one of them would feel like they're contributing to the maintenance of that tribe.

They would often have their meals in shared places, and would often practice sharing meals directly from the same plate, if someone were to spill their food on the floor it was common for a group to rush toward them to see who would be the kind soul to help reintegrate the individual into being once more. Disputes often arose when an individual would attack this order directly by imposing a logic that sought to deprive another individual of being, this could occur, for example, when a Coenem was excluded by another due to their physical or intellectual attributes.

This would then cause the excluded individual to seek comfort within another group quickly, and the excluder would be condemned by their interruption of balance; However, they preferred treating such events via concealment, group endurance, and collective protection. Furthermore, the Coenem are known for their creativity, which is functional, adaptive, and quiet. Even though they were a tribe content with the simple, they'd still constantly seek to improve the living conditions within the community, making creativity serve a crucial role in reducing the strain others felt.

Even with their limited resources, it's possible to observe how since from their childhood that creativity is always seen as a joint objective to invent as a means to improve living conditions, be it via trying to develop new recipes, more comfortable furniture, or more adaptive means of leisure for injured individuals. This was even more expressed in the Coenem's treatment of withdrawal. Even though some outsiders say the Coenem demand an incessant will to work, the truth is, they support quiet labor.

They respect non-productivity as something needed for well-being. If a zu'aan was responsible for performing work for the community, they would have a half day or more to rest, for leisure and to spend time with their families.

Culture

The ontology of the Coenem's culture is one focused on care and a distraction from the constant efforts individuals have to make to keep society running; it allows for resting and curing even during the most distressing situations, which, due to their organization, are thankfully rare. Identity in those practices was often defined more by participation and the act of trying more than by a metrification of expression or status. Amongst their most famous practices, the Coenem developed a vast array of gastronomic productions..

Even while shaped by scarcity, these rely primarily on Huobon and Hiaccian as their main ingredients, allowing the creative nature of the Coenem to mix and match those two into many different adaptations, additionally, eating itself is a communal act, where people share their own creations in public areas throughout, and since their schools often have culinary classes, it's not common for a zu'aan to be disappointed. Speaking of their education, it was one where the teacher-student hierarchy seemed to be abolished.

It was overtaken by a sort of dialogue, where one learns with the other, instead of one instructing the other, which led to knowledge emerging from shared problem-solving. Children tend to learn by participation and by constant questioning, they learn how mistakes are natural and how they can be treated as collective learning moments. The education facilities are also where they come to understand their importance for the group, where they learn to cook, to clean, to tend to themselves and to the others, different faiths, and of course about their language.

The Coenem tribe taught since the early days about how their space was a multilingual environment, reinforcing their place as an asylum, though there existed one language which functioned as a centralized language that allowed for individuals to organize with each other regardless of their mother tongue, that language being Ychaith, which was a mostly directionally spoken language which was repassed through orality, as a matter to keep it as simple as possible to understand, though, it was still written about so it could be taught in technical scenarios, of course.

It was common for the different zu'aan to partake in acts to preserve their own languages, be it via song, theatre or stories. Furthermore, one key detail that the Coenem created was the sport called Bunkerpoof, which is a cooperative game designed to be played within the dwellings. All that needs to function is a padded poof, which here were often made with layered plant fibers, a few materials to act as markers, such as charcoal, or perhaps glowing fungi, whatever could leave a mark in the tunnels' walls, and the ability of mutual restraint between the players.

Bunkerpoof needs players to form small groups of six to twelve people, where the main objective is to keep the poof moving through the marked space without letting it rest, players are allowed to pass, deflect, or redirect the poof using any part of the body except the head, and the objective is intentionally redundant, it's to play until you're tired, in a way where neither victory nor a loss is ever declared.

Government

The Coenem's government is one that opposes formal authority as a recognized form of command, in which governance takes form through coordination and where, ideally, order emerges from care, participation, and mutual obligation within the community. Thus, while leadership may emerge, such as individuals well trained in the military or representatives of certain religions, there is no formal, centralized coercive power capable of expressing political authority within the Coenem tribe.

Since government here functions as a practice rather than an institution, decision-making might seem challenging, but it is actually carried out in a highly democratic, day-to-day manner, in which consensus-based assemblies meet frequently, normalizing decisions and distancing them from their usual formal stance; small matters are often handled locally, such as the arrangement of items, while larger issues involve wider participation, such as the fair distribution of food.

The absence of fixed political positions allows for the maintenance of a notion in which authority follows function rather than individual identity; thus, it is possible to observe a lack of permanent leaders, councils, or offices, which are instead replaced by a rotational and collective style of management, allowing many members to act as mediators without accumulating political power. Labor rotation, acting as a political mechanism, allows the governance of the tribe to connect itself thoroughly with both the education system and the plural culture for which the Coenem are well known, where non-productivity is considered normal.

This allows for the defense of rest and withdrawal among workers. This ensures that governance fulfills its purpose of reducing strain rather than maximizing output. It also ties itself to M'Ban by valuing preservation, survival, and presence. Many questions arise when attempting to illustrate how order is maintained without laws, but the Coenem's millennia-long functioning offers an explanation: norms are learned through participation, creating a vision of conduct strong enough to counter many of the forces that might enable unlawful behavior.

Whenever social correction seems necessary, it is handled through a collective response that relies on temporary distancing and role reassignment, allowing individuals to eventually reintegrate into society after the harm they may have caused; formal and permanent exile is extremely rare and is viewed as a failure of the collective's responsibility to care for its members. Critics of this governance model often point to the slowness of decision-making due to what is described as an “overly democratic” structure.

They cite its vulnerability to manipulation because of the absence of formal laws to prevent the puppeteering of individuals within the political system, the tension created by the secrecy surrounding the M'Ban scrolls, which conflicts with claims of transparency, as well as the apparent risk of informal hierarchies forming through labor reputation.

Military

The Coenem's military force carried the name of the Nizire family, famously calling themselves the "Nizire Forces", it evolved from a millennial history of well-trained and disciplined forces, which in such training a very well developed notion of belonging, as a group that, at its core, seeks to defend those who have no strength to combat harm, which led to the Nizire name being related to not only strength, intelligence, and strategy, but also a constant presence that served their social function in a concrete manner. Due to the Coenem's strategy of remaining hidden, developed with their arrival in the Avera Valley.

The years passed by and the Nizire Forces also adapted in order to remain serving those who live within the community. Their training, whilst still strongly focused on weaponry and its fair usage within the battlefield, faced a hefty number of adaptations, not only for the new terrain and vegetation, but in their strategies themselves. The Nizire Forces were now framed as a force whose primary training was very focused on preservation. Soldiers were taught not only fighting techniques, endurance, and discipline.

But were also taught to be a force focused on survival itself. Since the soldiers were amongst the few with courage and training to face a possible kin'toni threat as they go outside, they had a strong formation in agriculture, since they were now responsible for going outside, armed, and tend to the land, bring back supplies, and have regular exercises where they would be ready, in the blink of an eye, to switch from watering a garden to fighting a few kin'toni. Not only that, but they'd also be trained to use many stealth-based techniques.

This is something that emerged from the growing familiarity with the crops and the terrain. Soldiers were taught how to move within the fields without damaging growth, they were taught how to hide paths of travel in between planted rows, and one thing they prided themselves in was how they'd be able to read disturbances in the soil and leaves, allowing them to detect intrusions, allowing them to turn farmland into a shield and an alarm. Since any sort of labor outside the settlement ought to be dangerous, the soldiers were responsible for basically all tasks that required going out.

Be it leading other zu'aan into the caves, foraging, irrigation repairs, or doing routine boundary checks, which led to the Nizire soldiers to become some of the most aware, patient, and combat-ready troops in the region, often regarded for their endurance without a need for aggression. In prolonged conflict, their expertise was very noteworthy, they were well trained to survive in sieges, where they retreated into productive land instead of needing fortified walls, often disguising themselves with local vegetation to gain camouflage.

All of which allowed them to recover quickly despite limited technology; this and many other factors allowed the Nizire Forces to gain lots of prestige, known as reliable, adaptable, and always serving the motto of prerseving lives under pressure. In terms of political protagonism, the Nizire Forces have very little, as they are regarded as a group that is just as important within the cycling labor ideal that supports the community, but also as one that should not hold privilege in political power.

Contrary to what is defended by more militaristic societies, the Nizire Forces still possess the organized capacity to tend to the necessities demanded by the Coenem, namely fighting and working as a means to allow the permanence of peace within the community.

Religion

The Coenem's usual stance regarding religion is a very accepting one, as they allow for a vast variety of practices of faith to coexist in their community, which has developed a high mix of practices within their living spaces, be those monotheistic, polytheistic, or fully atheistic. The only condition being, of course, that these practices do not interrupt communal balance by establishing conflictual relations between members with different identities, leading to a core value where you're allowed to have your private belief.

While behaviour remains one centered on the group's well-being. All of this mix emerged almost naturally due to the tribe's place as an asylum; thus the Coenem became known as a plural and accepting society by those who became aware of their existence. Physically, this plurality expresses itself throughout many regions within the tribe, where small, shared shrines are built to allow the self-expression of whichever religion came into their living tunnels. Those shared quiet places, which would often be a repurposing of unused rooms or corners.

This allowed for each collective faith to have a space within those walls while allowing it to be a part of everyday life. It would be common for many different zu'aan to pray right next to others with a completely different set of beliefs, almost as if no barriers existed within those mountains. However, none of this stopped the Coenem from also developing their own specific set of beliefs within that society. In the year of 3E 3562, two young zu'aan, whose names were not shared, were participating in a set of delinquent activities/.

\smong these: grave busting; amidst such tomfoolery they came across the graves of Rayas and Rarina, finding next to the coffins a set of old, dusty, and ripped scrolls, which they brought to a section of the Coenem who prided themselves on the study of such old-world relics, which began a ten-year quest to decipher the productions of Rayas and Rarina, which quickly became known as the "Original Elders", due to not only the documents' age, but also to both of the women's apparently horrendous handwriting.

After those 10 years, the M'Ban was born, a religion focused on preservation, gentle continuity, and the very act of sustaining life. Its main figure is a one eyed sphere placed on top of a triangle with its tip rotated downwards, known as the Wookumkin (funnily enough, the only noun they were able to translate well), though it was interpreted as a figure of enlightenment through observation instead of plain command, thus the teachings that M'Ban would be seen more as a state, a principle, and a constant presence.

Instead of an actual imposing order, which also allowed different members of M'Ban to draw different valid interpretations, as long as they followed some of its main principles:

1. Balance over Fulfillment

2. Care is Sacred

3. Impermanence Is Truth

4. Memory Without Possession

5. Suffering is Shared.

6. Survival without domination.

7. Presence over Belief.

During the formulation of the M'Ban, it received a rising amount of criticism due to the fact that the contents of the scrolls were never revealed to the public, declared as a matter of security that was exclusive to a group of intellectuals to observe and document. It was also reported as a simple tool to maintain the collective-styled status quo the Coenem were known for.

Miscellany

Every year a contest would be held in their educational facilities to reward the kids who could develop the best creative representation of a Wookumkin

They also had a few remnants of the irony machinery used to make Wookumkins, though they know had no clue how to use them

During winter some children were often report to be able to recreate Wookumkins perfectly from snow, but they're usually ignored.