Kalban Kin'toni Clan

History

The Kalban kin’toni clan was founded from the remnants of the warring clans who clashed for control of the rock covered plains of Ray'ougha Rocky Plains. In the blood soaked dirt of the final battlefield, the strongest warrior from both sides put an end to the fighting. These warriors, known as Prospi and Arelban, became the founders for the new clan. They dug an underground village using the rocks to hide the entrances as they prepared to overtake the surface as their hunting grounds. They prevented other clans from gaining footholds within the region while letting zu’aan settlers build villages and towns throughout the territory.

They kept to the shadows and hunted mainly at night. At first they targeted only those who strayed from the lights of the settlements or were in the dark alleys of the towns. They made sure to leave no trace so they wouldn’t be discovered from any worried zu’aan looking for their missing fellows. This tactic proved only so effective as the settlers became uneasy and while some began hunting the plains, others started whispering of leaving for safer places. Arelban concocted a scheme to belay the fears of the settlers and allow them to continue to hunt as they saw fit.

One night the clan unleashed some of their hunting animals before the majority of the settlements had gone to rest for the night. As the animals began attacking the settlements, a few of the best warriors in the clan rode down their own pets and killed them in full view of the zu’aan. Then the supposed heroes announced that they were a part of a somewhat peaceful clan that has been protecting the settlements from the shadows from raiders and predators. They laid all the blame for the disappearances upon any that could not be stopped in time because they were trying to make their presence unknown.

Utterly fooled, the zu’aan pleaded with the clan to protect them and offered to serve and pay them with whatever they wanted. The clan agreed and began moving out in the open, using the darkness to hide their responsibility for any disappearances that occurred. They even began making the abduction sights appear like the work of other creatures or left things that indicated other clans that the Kalban prevented from ever entering their territory. Over time the clan grew larger and more hungry. Instead of increasing their takes during the hunts, they began recruiting the most fit and capable of the adult settlers to become fellow guards and warriors.

They turned the practice into an almost ritual by requiring them to pledge to leave their old life behind and swear to protect the region for eternity. Once they are taken to be trained, every recruit was then drained and turned to join the ranks of the clan. Doing so kept the clan fed and growing while not causing their prey to die out or realise the truth and try to escape from the real predators hunting them down.

Psychology

Biology

The Kalban kin’toni clan members have violet irises that shine out of black sclera with silvery oval pupils. This allows them to have extremely good eyesight in the darkest parts of night. They are light sensitive and even at knight will hide in the shadows. Their senses of hearing and taste have only slightly heightened from before they were turned. Their mutated face, now more extended into almost a muzzle, grants them the advantage of a heightened sense of smell that makes it possible to track scents from a few leagues away. While much of their sense of touch has been deadened due to their mutation.

The soles of their feet are still capable of feeling enough to prevent them from choosing poor footing amongst the rocky terrain. Standing two and a half heads taller than the average zu’aan, the Kalban are lean and athletic in musculature everywhere except for their abnormally broad shoulders and long arms. They are covered in hair not quite thick enough to be fur except for a thick mane along their spine ending in a fluff of a tail. They are well suited for the temperature shifts, however they are weak to extreme cold and fire. They also have an allergy for the smell of certain plants.

Which causes their sense of smell to be nullified by their snouts being stuffed up. Their long limbs allow for semi-quadrupedal movement, a quicker longer gait, and potential for better dexterity if they know an attack is coming. However they can prove clumsy on slick frozen ground. Because of this, once winter hits they are forced to move carefully to prevent slipping and hurting themselves. Like all kin’toni the Kalban are extremely sensitive to sunlight to the point where exposure can lead to death if more than for the briefest of moments.

This drove them underground to survive the daylight hours and caused their mutations to enhance their nocturnal natures and senses. Their flesh is pale and slightly leathery where not lightly covered in the coarse hair. Often they stand hunched when relaxed due to the low ceilings of their underground village. If unarmoured they are only capable of withstanding attacks for a short time except for slashes from maintained and sharpened blades. Part of their mutations included extended hooked claws well suited for tearing and ripping flesh.

These dangerous claws adorn their fingers and toes and these are often used only during hunts to imitate the actions of animals in case the bodies are ever discovered. Their mouth, transformed through mutations of the change into more of a muzzle, is full of really sharp canines and incisors to allow for ripping into flesh with their powerful jaws. This too is often used as well as the claws to further the charade of animal attacks. But these traits are often hidden from the zu’aan settlers to prevent the potential realisation that it is actually the Kalban who have been picking them off instead of protecting the region as they claim.

Culture

The Kalban clan makes their home in dug out dens that fashion an underground village beneath their hunting ground of the rocky plains of Ray’ougha. It initially was a small den for the twenty or so clan members to hide from the bright and burning sunlight as well as to hide their presence from the zu’aan settlers they planned to prey upon. As time went on and their numbers grew, the created more dens and eventually a vast village system beneath the region with entrances facing the borders of their territory to not have the settlers stumble upon their home.

Much of their clothes are made from the skins of the creatures they hunt and blame for the disappearances of the zu’aan the clan drains and turns. Often their clothes act to protect them from weapons as well as the elements, but are designed to allow for the maximum ability to move in any way to be effective in combat. During winter they add a layer of furs in order to stay warm. As they conned the settlers into believing they were fighting for them, they were gifted cloths and fabrics along with other resources. They used these to fashion under clothes and banners and hoods to cover their faces.

This is when interacting with the settlers as a way to prevent their monstrous features from being discovered. They don’t live in standard houses or use common tools other than weapons and the things to maintain their efficiency. The weapons were originally taken from those they had defeated and reworked to fit their hands and styles. Once the clan had won over the settlers, they were able to have some of the weapons reforged in the villages and towns under the pretence that they were for the border defence. While the settlers believe they are in a symbiotic relationship with their underground dwelling protectors.

The reality was that the Kalban control the region and use the settlers as cattle to feed on when necessary and trick them into trusting the clan to keep them alive. The clan uses the resources offered to them by the settlers to keep the region under their control and built a border of spikes and traps to prevent mass invasions. However everything they have constructed has been made from things taken from the settlers and the defeated forces of raiding clans. In their underground dens they keep a hold of unaltered weapons and armour that they use when they decide to make their hunts seem like they were killed by other kin’toni that slipped through the lines.

Near the border furthest away from the settlements, there is a large covered structure made of clay from the dens. The settlers believe that this is where the Kalban train and house the zu’aan recruits for the border defence and so call it the barracks. However, this is used as a collected feeding ground where the whole clan feeds on and turns the volunteers in a place far from the gaze or ears of others.

Government

The governmental structure of the Kalban clan may seem like a disorganised mess to other clans, but this not could be further from the truth. The founders Prospi and Arelban hold equal power over the clan and any decision on what the clan should do must be agreed upon by both leaders. This prevents either one to have more power and less need for the other, and thus halts any aggression between the former enemies. They were given the honorary titles of clan father for Prospi and clan mother for Arelban, and the rest of the clan treats them both as parental figures.

They gathered the best warriors of the survivors of their original clans to act as their guards and generals and advisers and to serve directly under them. These clan members often manage the majority of the mundane situations that arise in the clan. They are in charge of fulfilling the military orders the leaders give in regards to the hunts and warfare. They command the guarding and construction of the dens and entrances. The separate band leaders brought the requests from the clan to these individuals to look over and decide what required the attention of the founders.

The rest of the clan is segmented into small bands structured like microcosms of the larger clan government, with two equals acting as leaders over their smaller hunting group. These leaders are in charge of the training and guidance and livelihoods of their bands. They make all the decisions that affect their group and takes their cues from the generals under the command of the founders. Any issue in their group is up to them to decide, and they are in charge of making sure the others follow the laws when on the hunt and any time they interacted with the settlers.

There are several unspoken laws amongst the clan that are more a matter of years of survival instinct dictating their actions. Conflict within the clan must be dealt with bloodlessly if at all possible and by members of all bands so as to make there be unity. Instead the stated laws have more to do with their subversion of the settlers who lived above and how to handle themselves in the presence of a zu’aan. The first of such laws was “Thou shalt hide thyself from the fearful gaze.” This was in reference to always staying in the shadows and wearing hoods to hide their features from the settlers in order to make them seem less monstrous to them.

The second law was “Thy hunts must not be witnessed by the living.” While likely obvious, this law really meant that they had to choose their prey carefully to prevent them from being spotted by the other zu’aan. To aid in this, they only target those who separate themselves from the others and used the cover of darkness and night to hide their actions. The last of these laws was perhaps the most well known of the laws amongst all the clans. It reads “Do not touch the offspring until they are grown.” There is no further explanation to that.

Military

The military might of the Kalban clan is not in their numbers or weapons of armour. It’s in the fact that every single one of the original members of the clan are the survivors of two warring clans that killed each other over the right to claim the rocky plains they now call home. They use their years of training and experience to predict and plan for the movements of their opponents. While during hunts they rely on primal instinct, on the battlefield they rely on strategy and skill with weapons. Instead of fighting with a large standing army.

The Kalban rely on using smaller fighting bands to harass and separate their enemies in order to take on larger forces than they could otherwise handle. They practice and train to use all manner of martial weapons from swords and axes and spears to the long bow and chain dart. When in combat they prefer to adjust their fighting style and weapons on the go and often first seek to disarm their opponents and kill them with their own weapons. The founders of the clan, Prospi and Arelban, were the greatest warriors of their original clans and formed the Kalban out of the survivors of the battle that wiped out the rest of their clans.

They trained the others to be adaptable and cunning in battle and as their numbers grew they left the actual fighting to the others, with the eldest and most trusted of their people becoming their generals and advisers. These people commanded the rest of the clan in matters of war and helped with the strategic and tactical planning of each battle. They oversee the general training of their warriors as well as the use of animals in hunting and battle. Below them are leaders of the fighting bands. Two leaders for each band and chosen for their skill and aptitude for strategic thinking.

Their job is to carry out the personalised and advanced training of their bands and to make sure that each member follows the laws and rules of the clan. When called to fight, they are the ones giving the direct orders and in charge of controlling the flow of battle. While the generals and the founders concern themselves with the overall outcome of the battle, the leaders of the war bands focus on keeping their warriors alive and ready for anything. They will use a short hand phrase to communicate tactical information while on the move in battle and familiarise themselves with the strengths and weaknesses of each warrior in their band.

When hunting they go unarmed and rely on their claws and trained animals to mask their tactics form the settlers they prey upon. They used to use the animals to cut off the runners and keep them from reaching safety, but now they have the animals chase their prey right to them and pretend to save them from the horrible creatures before sinking their teeth in and draining their victims before turning them.

Religion

The Kalban kin’toni clan worship the moon and believe that they are created to serve as its warriors. They call it Shaordigregort and believe that it is really a massive grey wolf. They believe that Shaordigregort was the real mother of all kin’toni and they were the chosen clan to carry out her will. According to them she is at war with the worshippers of the day for the soul of the world. A prophesy of her victory is often told along with the basics of her myth in order to inspire the clan members to raise their moral.

The story of Shaordigregort goes thusly: long before the world was inhabited by the zu’aan and kin’toni there was the grey wolf Shaordigregort who loved nature and cared for the animals by giving them cool dark soft places to rest. There also the golden moth of illusion and fire known as Aluviten who hated the love that Shaordigregort received. To take away all that the grey wolf cared for and claim it for themselves, Aluviten used the fire they controlled to create a hollow globe of fire and enclosed the world with it. The fire globe is massive and would take many eras to finally scorch the world.

So Aluviten cast an illusion over the world to hide their terrible creation and that was how the sky came to be. But Aluviten was still unsatisfied that it would take so long. And so they crafted the zu’aan to serve them and destroy nature and all that loved Shaordigregort. Meanwhile the great grey wolf tried to dispel the illusion and the globe of fire to save their beloved world. Shaordigregort’s actions shattered the illusion in two and created the separation known as day and night. Aluviten holds sway over the bright and burning day, while Shaordigregort controls the night and uses that time to try to break the spells of Aluviten.

To combat the destruction of the followers of Aluviten, the grey wolf formed the kin’toni from the least of the treacherous zu’aan and gave them the power to reclaim the world in the name of nature. And after she created the clans that would become the Kalban, Shaordigregort leapt into the great illusion to rip it apart from the inside. Because of the effects of the illusion both Aluviten and Shaordigregort appear as glowing orbs during their respective times. They have clashed many times within the great illusion and upon the world their forces have clashed nearly as much.

And once the time is right, the great grey wolf will leave the illusion and lead the final hunt to kill the last of the worshippers of the day along with her children. Then she will pull Aluviten from the illusion and finally slay the jealous moth, putting an end to their evil deeds and illusions. While victorious the battle would claim the life of Shaordigregort and her power would be granted to the kin’toni along with the responsibility to care for the world and what would come next.

Miscellany

Nearby Groups

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Kalban Kin'toni Clan

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