Aere Kin'toni Clan

History

The Aere are a powerful political clan that represents the province of Keltin Dry River in the central council of the Nara Kingdom, besides their large holdings in the Keltin Dry River, the kin'toni of this clan are also particularly powerful in the northern region of the Nara Kingdom, the section of the country that isn’t in contact with the nation of Zelan. The kin'toni of the Aere clan have been the political representative of the Keltin Dry river region since the past two centuries, when they first defeated the incumbent clan in a closely contested election.

Since the time of that last election, there have been no other clans that have been willing to stand against the Aere Kin'toni Clan in the election for their province, unlike the other regions of the Nara Kingdom that are now under the influence of the rich merchants of the neighbouring nation of Zelan, the Keltin Dry river region remains insulated from this influence. It is not like the Zelan haven’t tried to dispose of the leadership of the province in order to install a kin'toni clan that can be easily bought over with gold and other riches.

In fact, the Zelan had introduced a motion in the central chamber of the kin'toni, that was aimed at having the Aere expelled and removed from the Keltin river region on the charge of having intimated their political opponents and preventing fair elections from occurring in the province. It was an open secret that the kin'toni clan that had introduced the motion in the chamber was a kin'toni that had been thoroughly bought by the authorities of the Zelan nation, and thus it was quite ironic that the kin'toni were attempting to have the Aere expelled for a charge that everyone was aware that they themselves had been guilty of committing.

The motion failed to pass and this can be attributed to the kin'toni of the Aere clan’s significant skills at working the chambers of the Nara Kingdom for favourable results. The kin'toni of the Nara clan are undoubtedly corrupt as well, they like the other kin'toni clans of their ilk have been able to gather a complete understanding of how the cogs of politics work within the chambers. However, while the other members of the chamber of Nara are corrupt since they have been bought over by the members of the Zelan clan.

The Aere are corrupt but hate the merchants of Zelan more than anything else and so they work against those kin'toni that are in the pockets of the enemy nations. Although the merchants of Zelan have bought out significant portions of the chamber of the Nara Kingdom, they are still unable to completely control the business of the chamber, as their control over the representatives is anything but absolute. In the days of the past the kin'toni of the Nara kingdom were all seasoned politicians that genuinely cared about the fate of Nara and its people, now most kin'toni politicians are those that have been raised by the Zelan merchants.

Psychology

The Aere are certainly a very conniving group of kin'toni who significant experience in the world of politics has meant that they are almost impossible to outsmart, the kin'toni of the clan in all their dealings are always a step ahead of their opponents. They spend their whole lives understanding the intricacies of the extreme and sometime ridiculously outdated political system of the Nara Kingdom that dictates how the kingdom of Nara is ruled. This in depth knowledge allows them to abuse the institutions of power within the kingdom for their own personal gain.

And it is a rare thing indeed to see the Aere stand up for a cause that is close to the hearts of people, instead they win their support from the people by giving them unparalleled liberty and room to carry out corruption. The Keltin Dry river province for instance has been the least profitable province in the whole of the Nara Kingdom, and there are several instances where the province has been unable to even break even the expenditure they have had through the course of the year.

This failure is rooted in the poor tax administration of the province, the kin'toni of the Aere have created a very self serving culture in the province of Keltin Dry river, where neither the merchant nor the peasant feels inclined to pay the right amount of tax, and instead employ deplorable tactics to try and lower the amount owed through arbitrary excuses. This culture is certainly the product of the kind of administration that the kin'toni of the Aere clan have created, and it is by means of this lax taxation system that they have managed to retain their position as the representative of the region.

Unusually though the kin'toni of the clan are quite averse to each other’s company, and there exists a lot of enmity between the upper echelons of the clans own administration system. This unrest can be traced to the times of Shattering, prior to the time of the Shattering, Nara Kingdom was the dominant power in the region, and was far more powerful than the neighbouring Zelan nation. However this all changed with the Shattering, which in the Nara Kingdom came not only as sets of earthquakes that rocked the nation for nearly a whole week.

There wasn’t a lot of damage to the buildings since at the time the kin'toni had not truly built a lot of structures during their rule but had instead bastardised the structures that had existed at the time of the zu'aan and Xerea Empire. Even though there wasn’t really a lot of damage to the buildings, there was a lot of damage to the infrastructure, as the country is covered with hills, there were several landslides, and this cut off the supply of bloodstock to several regions.

The glut in supplies resulted into a particularly ugly civil war that extended well beyond he Shattering and left deep scars of the minds of the Aere clan who have yet to heal those wounds.

Biology

The Aere are haughty looking kin'toni, descended from a tribe of zu'aan that were the law keepers of a large part of the Xerea Empire and were considered to be descended from royal blood, although theirs was never an important bloodline for they had never been invited to the lands of the Shytia Flower Island by the emperor, and they thank their stars for the fortune of avoiding the massacre of the line of the zu'aan emperor which up until the present time has left a deep wound in the minds of the zu'aan that continue to wage a hopeless war from the confines of their tiny cities.

And most kin'toni agree that had it not been for the massacre of the Shytia Flower Island, many of the zu'aan would have come willingly to be converted to being kin'toni. But due to the tragedy that occurred at the Island, the kin'toni were painted as monsters that had killed their monarch and knew no reason. The Aere themselves have had very little changes in their own bodies since after the conversion, and most of them are still able to distinguish their zu'aan features that have continually changed with the passion of each century.

At least that is the case with other kin'toni. For the Aere on the other hand, there seems to be a failure in their body renewing mechanism, and they remain nearly completely unchanged since the time of their conversion. Being the leaders of a large province of the kin'toni, they have little or absolute no physical exercise for sometimes a span of several days and due to this aversion to physical labour, the muscle tone of the kin'toni of the Aere clan has been steadily dropping to the point, where except for their height the kin'toni are difficult to distinguish from the zu'aan.

This is rare since the frames of both the zu'aan and the kin'toni have undergone several changes since the beginning of the war, in general the kin'toni of Taerel tend to not only be much taller than their zu'aan counterparts but are also very well muscled. While the Aere are still able to tower over most zu'aan, their muscular frame can now be easily thought of as that of belonging to the zu'aan of the present city states, who have surprisingly continued to grow even when raised in the confines of their tiny city states that are barely a tenth the size of the Keltin dry river province.

On the other hand, though the kin'toni leave a lot to be desired for kin'toni in terms of physical ability, they certainly make up for it with their mental acumen. In fact on a good day the cleverest of the clan from the Aere can give even a Falang kin'toni a run for their money, but the Aere are not truly masters at any one mental skills, for example they can quite handily be outdone in figures and sums by the Falang and the Baruea leave them in dust in terms of mercantile ability. They have light red irises with white sclerae and vertical slit pupils. They have aqua blue skin.

Culture

The kin'toni of the Aere have at present a very combative culture, and this has existed since the civil war that was precipitated at the time of the Shattering, and primarily drove the Nara Kingdom into the abject poverty that it faces today, a situation so grave that it is expected the kin'toni of the Nara Kingdom to sell off a portion of their Southern holdings to the kin'toni merchants of the Zelan nation who wish to pass the land onto their king and have the land absorbed as a part of the Zelan nation itself.

As stated earlier the kin'toni of the Aere clan were throughly involved in the civil war, which was basically a competition for limited resources, evidently the nature of the war was such that there were no winners to it, both sides saw massive casualties in not only combat but also as a result of starvation. In fact the death toll of the kin'toni at time was very similar to the one the Itkali borne at the time of the Shattering, however, it is important to remember that nearly all of the kin'toni killed in the kingdom of Itkal were killed or rather died of starvation.

The difficult civil war in Nara was indeed tragic for the whole of the kingdom and for all kin'toni that call the kingdom of Nara their home, but it was particularly painful for the Nara who were practically ripped in half by the civil war, and this was due to how they had organised their clan structure It must be remembered that the kin'toni of Aere clan are the political representatives of the province of Keltin dry river, but it is by no means their home, which is based on the further northern parts of the kingdom that are particularly difficult to reach.

At the time of the Shattering, there were kin'toni of the Aere clan at both their northern holdings and those that had been posted in the province of the Keltin dry river. The mistake that the Aere had made was that the bodies that governed these two regions had always been segregated and they would only ever come together at times o crucial functions, while the guiding principles had been sound, the founder and the clan head intended to have different kin'toni bodies administering the same regions.

This was over a long time so as to ensure that the kin'toni were able to gain a thorough understanding of what problems had plagued the region and that would therefore allow them the opportunity to resolve these matters with the most efficiency. While the kin'toni were indeed able to form connections and bonds with the kin'toni of their region, they eventually came to have their own distinct identity and never really associated with the other group as being of the same clan.

Therefore when the kin'toni of the clan were assigned rations to give to their people, the Aere used them all in the Keltin Dry river and so the other faction rebelled.

Government

The kin'toni of the clan as explained earlier are very well implanted into the world of politics in the Nara kingdom, and although the kin'toni clan is not holding any particular executive office of the kingdom, they are able to retain their political standing and significant power since they have sol long been important players of the politics game of the kingdom of Nara. It could also be argued that the kin'toni of the clan of Aere are in one way or another responsible for the weakened positions that the kingdom of Nara finds itself stuck within.

This is because the rebellion of the northern faction of the Aere clan was the first spark of tinder that was truck and that eventually became a full fledged raging fire that burned away huge martial reserves of the kingdom, and also created the vacuum of power that the merchants of Zelan came to later occupy and that further weakened the kin'toni of the Nara Kingdom. In fact, not only was the northern faction of the clan the one responsible for inciting the violence that eventually converted itself into a full blown civil war involving other powerful clans that began to choose sides.

The kin'toni of the northern faction were outraged that the founder of their clan had chosen to feed and supply the kin'toni of the Keltin Dry river region and had completely ignored the plight of the starving kin'toni of his own homeland, and the picture that was painted of the founder was that he was merely trying to hold onto his political position in the chamber by ensuring the kin'toni of Keltin Dry river remained pleased with the kin'toni of the Aere clan and thus voted them back into power in the following collections.

On the other hand, the founder of the clan had clearly stated at the time, and indeed continues to do so even till today, the decision to send all supplies to the Keltin Dry river, was not a populist decision that he took in order to ensure his political power but rather one that was guided by logic an reason. The northern reaches from where the Aere originate and the region within which the Aere had maintained a northern faction, is perhaps one of the most difficult regions to reach. The habitations are placed on the other side of a mountain whose passes are difficult to cross even in perfect weather.

In the past the kin'toni of the northern reaches had been mostly self sufficient and relied on the support of the government in only the most dire of situations. Therefore, the founder claims that the difficulty of the road to the northern reaches was already one that had been thought of as nearly impossible for regular resupply in normal times. At the time of the Shattering when nearly the whole mountain side had been rocked with devastating earth quakes, it made no sense to try and resupply them through the mountains or rather conventional means.

Military

As stated earlier the kin'toni of the Aere clan are by no means gifted soldiers that have the benefit of centuries of experience in the battle field, instead they have spent a virtual millennia in the practice and perfection of the art of politics. This duration of time spent learning the finer points of kin'toni behaviour and trying to predict the kin'toni next courses of action would lead one to believe that theirs is not a skillset that would be useful in the battlefield. To the most extent this is an accurate conclusion that can be made about the combat ability of the kin'toni of the Aere clan.

But it certainly isn’t one that has remained true throughout their long history, in fact the kin'toni of the northern faction rocked the boat pretty hard, and if they hadn’t been put down when they were, there may not have been a Nara Kingdom left to discuss. They were the undisputed leaders of the faction that soon materialised out of thin air, and demanded the head of the king that had created a government so dysfunctional as the one that existed at the time of the civil war.

They began by attacking the towns nearest to the foothills of the mountain on whose other side they had lived, since the time of Shattering was such a crisis ridden time, none of the border towns were able to send to the capital for reinforcements. Nearly starved to death the kin'toni of the cities tried to put on a brave face and they were nearly completely wiped out, for the Aere from the reaches were also a desperate lot, and they had brought with them the kin'toni of their holdings who had not fed for several weeks, many of them were very close to death,.

And only able to fight due to a sporadic supply of barely edible roots that the foothills had in plenty. The Aere did not completely destroy the towns on the foothills, at least not all of them, it is said that the first two towns that the Aere had come upon had been wiped to nearly a man, and the supplies that had been found in those two towns is what became the seed of the rebellion that gained such a tremendous height that it rivalled the old wars of the kin'toni and the zu'aan.

The supplies from the first two towns was what allowed the Aere from the north to survive, and allow their followers to survive, over the next month, the kin'toni of the Aere began to mount attacks on the kin'toni of the surrounding country, and upon discovery of their small supply stocks, feigned sadness. They shared with them the little stock that they had gained from the first two towns, and by that small gesture won their first army. Their progress through the kingdom was like fire through dry grass, and within a few short weeks, the whole northern side of the kingdom was in open rebellion of the King.

Religion

Like the kin'toni of Zelan, the people of Nara are not paritcularly religious and believe very little in the supernatural, they are grounded in the physical world and for them it is much more important to determine a course of action on the basis of material wealth and physical experience rather than the spiritual aspects of life. Even the religions that the kin'toni of this nation follow are much more realistic and have little to do with life after death or another entity like god, they think very little about the after life and make decisions on the basis of how things will be impacted in the present time.

In fact, the religions that are found on Canlai can be said to be those that are completely based on the pretext of guiding a fledgling kin'toni through his life without carrying out any dramatic actions that would rock the boat or rather cause the administration any problems. A good example of such a religion is indeed one that is followed by the kin'toni of the Aere clan, or at least a section of the Aere clan, and it is claimed that it was devised by the king himself, who live secluded in the city of lakes.

The religion that a section of the kin'toni clan of Here follow is commonly referred to as the Religion of the Purple Blood, and is often criticised by the name of the cult of royalists. The purple blood in the title is referring to the blood of the king, since his royal colours and those of the countries flag are purple. The king is said to have come up with the religion once he had fully ascended the throne of the Nara Kingdom, one that must be added he had forged all by the strength of his character and the might of his armies.

Some aspects of the religion of the purple blood are inspired from the Way of the Shepherd, a religion from the northern regions of Erea, where the Itkali people rule. The way of the Shepherd, very much like the religion of the purple blood can be thought of as religions that are based around the personality of a single individual and are seemingly claiming divine powers to the central figure. However, the Way of the shepherd differs from the religion of the Shepherd in many ways, the firs being that the religion of the Shepherd pays heavy emphasis on a power beyond the Shepherd himself.

One that is refereed to as nature by the priests of the Shepherd. On the other hand, the religion of the purple blood only ever covers the history and travails of the King, who is said to have encountered several terrible situations throughout his life both as a kin'toni and as a zu'aan, and apparently was only able to live through them and come out on top, or rather victorious was with the spirit of service burning within his heart, and that is indeed its core message.

Miscellany

The kin'toni of the Aere are in a very unique place at the current time, their neighbouring kingdom, Zelan, who they detest to the highest degree, have begun to make moves to try and gain land of the Nara Kingdom. The land that the Nara have been eyeing hasn’t been the land that is considered to be non essential either but rather land that is thought to be the storehouse of the whole kingdom. The kin'toni of the Aere clan are genuinely worried that if no moves are made to stamp out the attempts of the Zelan merchant clans from taking control of the lands in the south of the kingdom.

Within a few short centuries, they can expect to be completely submersed by the kingdom of Zelan, which would be far too powerful with the southern land holdings. In view of this supposed disaster that is heading straight for the people of Nara, the kin'toni of the Aere clan have been making attempts to right the ship as it were, and to prepare the finances that would be required to combat some of the richest kin'toni in the world. The Aere have been particularly active in the northern region of the kingdom.

Which happens to not only be the area of their origin but also a sector of the kingdom that they have continued to enjoy through support and this can be squarely ascribed to the events of the Civil war and its eventual resolution. The course of action for the Aere, as far as can be understood seems to be fairly simple, and is likely divided into multiple stages. It is speculated that they are well past the first section of their plan and are continuously working to conclude the second phase of their action of retaking the land of Nara from the slimy grasp of the merchant kin'toni of the kingdom of Zelan.

To being with, the very first step in the process has been land grabbing at a massive scale, the nature of the land grab is unique in that it isn’t a blatant action that the Aere are carrying out openly but rather one that is being done through proxies of the clan. And the land that is being targeted is the land of the crown, which the crown or rather chamber is eager to sell in order to be able to earn a profit on the deal and in order to repay the massive debts that the kingdom has incurred through the last disastrous times.

The land is not being bought by kin'toni that are openly affiliated with the Aere, in fact a lot of the land that has been bought over the last decade has majorly been won by the kin'toni who have had run ins with the Aere, however, without question all of these purchased lands have been in the northern part of the land. It is now speculated that the next stage of the process is to root out the perennial spy network of the Zelan Merchant kin'toni that can be assumed as the root mechanism of their control over the kingdom of Nara.

Nearby Groups

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Aere Kin'toni Clan

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