Umvera Kin'toni Clan
History
After the outbreak happened and the infection wiped through the Umvera kin’toni clan, they were left disoriented and confused. While it didn't take them long to understand that they would need blood to survive, they also felt something that they didn't quite understand. Each of the Umvera kin’toni felt connected to any trees that they touched. They felt as though the trees were higher beings and that they were meant to respect them and to love them. Because of this, the Umvera clan decided to move to Elmatai Sullen Grove. This was so that they would be more surrounded by the trees and could worship them better.
They decided that they would never harm the trees and that they would respect them as they would their other clan members. While living in Elmatai Sullen Grove, the clan decided to sleep in hammocks among the trees, that being the only time that they would use the trees for anything. They would sleep there because they believed that having walls around them would distance them from the trees and it would cause them to become unworthy of the love from the trees. Many of the members would sleep high in the trees amongst the branches so that the branches would keep them safe from any attacks from below, and the branches would keep them from falling to their deaths.
While a few members of the clan had fallen out of the tree, the ones that survived had discovered their dark secret. The secret being that when they injured themselves, fungus would grow from the wounds. They grew to like this about their clan as the fungus didn't hurt, and they were a little more durable with it. Some had even decided that they would resort to digging themselves a hole and burying themselves up to their necks in it so that they could heal faster and so that they could grow more durable fungus. This became something that each of the clan members would partake in, gathering in groups to do so together.
Once one decided that they needed healing, they would all gather at the base of the largest tree they could find, and they would bury themselves and each other so that they could all heal together as a group. As time passed, they became an ugly race, their features deformed and their skin was left tinged green from the moss that grew around their fungal growths. This made them a distinct clan, as they were unable to blend in anywhere else, their features easily giving them away as the Umvera clan. Aside from their obvious love and adoration for their trees, the Umvera clan was a simple clan.
They didn't fight other clans, they didn't get themselves into trouble, they would just spend their days worshiping their trees and finding new ways to grow fungus onto their bodies that they would be able to use as an armour of sorts when they would need it. This giving them an advantage against other clans.
Psychology
Because of their belief that the trees were higher powers than them, the Umvera kin’toni clan held the belief that the trees should be worshipped as often as possible. Their beliefs clouded everything that they did, making it so that they would always be worshipping, and anyone that wasn't, was essentially in direct violation of everything they stood for. After a while of them healing and growing the fungus on their bodies, their minds became delirious and they started to become confused. The fungus had become part of their bloodstream and it was causing parts of their brains to slowly shut down in certain parts.
Some eventually became lost behind the belief that the trees were their leaders, that the trees would give them the answers that they needed to be able to live their lives. Many of the Umvera clan, regardless of how delirious they had become, knew that they would never think that fighting was the answer for anything. They didn't think that putting their hands on other kin’toni was something that was good. It was believed that putting their hands on other people was a sin, that it would lead to more bad decisions and that unless it was entirely necessary, that there was no point, and that no amount of explanation would ever make it okay.
The only time that they had ever been okay with fighting was when another clan had come and hurt one of their trees or even if their own clan members had turned and were hurting the tree. They would resort to any means to put an end to it. Once they did, they would make sure that their trees were okay, and then they would make sure that their other clan members were okay. The Umvera clan were a tight knit clan, even before the Shattering happened. They had been living close together in a village before they moved to Elmatai Sullen Grove.
It was always believed that there was strength in numbers, and that the community was just as close as family. They relied on each other for any and everything that they could possibly need, knowing that their neighbours and other members of the community would always be there to help them. This was reassuring for them as it gave them the hope and guidance that they needed from each other. They knew that they would never truly be alone if they didn't want to be, and that they would always have someone to turn to if they needed it.
After they had succumbed to the infection, and the fungus had started growing, they still believed that their community was more than a family to them. They would still seek out each other throughout the day so that they could be together to complete tasks and so their duties as members of the clan.
This was how they had always lived, and this was how they knew they would continue to live as it was what made them the most comfortable in the first place. This is what they knew how to do, and that was okay with them.
Biology
As previously stated, the Umvera kin’toni clan had begun to grow fungus on their bodies anywhere that they had injured themselves, and more specifically when the injury was an open wound. The fungus would spread through their skin and would grow to close the wound and branch out of it, causing a large malformed lump where the wound used to be. In many cases, the fungus would grow so large or in such an inconvenient place that they would lose some of the functionality of their bodies. Some would end up being unable to walk, talk, lift things, or even see as some of the fungus prevented them from being able to do so.
Although this was how this ended up for many of them, they wouldn't want to remove any of the fungus, even if it meant that they would be able to see, or walk, or even talk again. They were far more content knowing that they were more like the trees than they were like kin’toni. No matter how many times they would heal themselves with the fungus, it always grew back in a new and different way. Even if two wounds were exactly alike, the fungus that would grow from them would be entirely different. Some of the kin’toni would intentionally cut their skin so that they could grow more fungus and be even closer like the trees than the others in the clan.
They would be drunk with the idea of turning fully into a tree. Sadly, the more fungus they would grow, the more they would slow down, and the closer to death they would be. The fungus would become more and more prevalent in their blood and eventually it would clog arteries and end up killing them off. This wasn't much of an issue for them as they wanted to be as much like trees as they could be before they passed away. Many of the members of the clan that would partake in fighting would have much more growth than the other members, and this was something that they were proud of because most of the time that they were fighting was to protect their trees and to keep their clan safe.
When they passed away, the members of the clan would be buried in the earth near where the others would go to heal so that they could gain the fungus of their past members and carry it on in their name. It was seen as a high honor for them to carry the fungus of their peers as they had been so close with them before they passed away. Some of the fungus would look similar to how it had looked on the previous kin’toni, and that was how they knew that they had inherited it from their clan members. They would wear it proudly on their bodies and show it off to other members so that everyone knew that they carried a piece of that member.
Culture
In a few short words, the Umvera kin’toni clan were essentially tree huggers. They put the needs of the trees before any of their own needs, and that was something that they knew they would never change. They lived their lives protecting their trees and becoming one with them so that once they passed away, they would either come back as a tree, or they would be absorbed into one. The clan believed that the only way to live was to serve nature and to worship the trees. They did this through the Goddess Aranya. She was the goddess of the forest, and she was the trees.
The clan believed that the goddess was the one that chose which of them would become one of her trees in the next life. That was what they wanted, to come back and be able to serve her truly as a tree, and be protected by their clan. Because while the clan knew that the trees were sacred they didn't have any proof that backed up that some of them were their passed clan members. Instead they would hold the belief that Aranya decided which of them were worth being reincarnated under her direct protection and guidance. In other parts of the clan, there were members that didn't want to become one with the trees as quickly as their peers.
Instead, they wanted to wait and see what else life had to offer before they were taken from it. Eventually, they would succumb to the same fate as their peers, but not until they discovered new things within the world. They would chase knowledge that would help them to keep the trees alive, even long after their death, and would find ways to have their peers grow new and interesting types of fungus that wouldn't take their lives as quickly. It was widely known by other clans, the way the Umvera clan decided to live, and many would leave them to it.
No one on the outside of the clan was allowed within it, and that meant also not trusting anyone else for help. No one was allowed to send them anything, even if they needed it. They weren't allowed to accept trades. Instead they would just spend their time working with the trees and Aranya because that was what they believed their calling and their purpose was. The other clans understood that this is what they had decided to do, and many of them would just leave the clan alone because they weren't causing any harm, but there were other clans that thought the Umvera clan didn't need to live, that their existence meant nothing.
They would send in troops to attack but would end up being killed as they didn't realize how protective the Umvera clan was of what they had, and so anyone that they had sent would be killed because they couldn't just leave well enough alone.
Government
Because of their intense love for their trees, the Umvera clan decided that they would make their laws surround the trees. While the clan didn't have any leaders, and they would take most of their advice from Aranya, they did manage to come up with a couple of laws that everyone was in agreement on. They decided together that the trees were sacred, that any harm to come to them would directly result in jail time or death. They took this law the most serious out of all of them, allowing any member of the clan to prosecute another member if they believed they were harming a tree or intended to do so.
While most of the clan members knew that they would never want to hurt the trees, there were some that thought they shouldn't be idolizing them, and so they would try and chop down some of the trees so that they could prove it was an unfounded law. While this was happening, other members that didn't like the laws would hire other clans to invade so that they wouldn't be caught, although they were usually either called out by the other clans when they were caught, or they were found out eventually. The punishment for the law breakers would either come in the form of jail time.
Allowing for the member to reflect on their actions and decide, hopefully, that they would like to come back into society and go back to loving the trees. This is what most of the imprisoned kin’toni of the Umvera clan would choose to do as they would want to choose the best option and the one that would allow them to go back into society. However, there were kin’toni from this clan that would choose to be executed because they really couldn't decide if they could truly embrace worshiping trees over each other. While this was happening, many of the other kin’toni in the clan would go to where the prisoners were and they would offer them words of wisdom to try to encourage them to come back to society.
Since they were such a close knit clan, they never truly wanted to see any of the clan members that they had grown up with get turned away or put to death. That was not what they wanted as they had usually watched these other members grow, or had grown up with them. So they would do everything that they could to help their fellow clan members, even if sometimes it wasn't wanted or welcomed. Some of the prisoners would choose to pray in silence where they could hope to receive answers from Aranya on what she wanted them to do with their lives.
Sometimes they would receive answers and they would plead to be let out with that knowledge so that they could go back to doing what the goddess needed them to do at that time. It was widely known that Aranya would step in to help clan members make their decisions, but only when she deemed it necessary.
Military
Before the outbreak happened, the Umvera clan never truly believed in fighting unless they really needed to. Before they moved to Elmatai Sullen Grove they had collected weapons from other clans, or that they had found while they were just living their lives. They had ended up collecting a small pile of weapons that they would never bring themselves to use unless they had to. Because of their belief that they didn't have to fight, many of the weapons that they had collected were rusted or falling apart. They never used them, unless they really needed to, and that caused them to be faulty the next time they would have to use them.
After the Shattering happened, the Umvera clan decided that they would throw any of the weapons that had wooden components away as they didn't want to use wood like that. That left a handful of iron weapons with various handles for them to utilize, and while they didn't regularly use them, they would make sure that they were still usable before they needed them. They hadn't been able to find any armour before, but it wasn't worth looking for or making anyways as they were constantly growing new fungus and they would have to always be remaking the armour.
Once they learned that their armour was quite solid, and that they could just use their skin as armour. They would also welcome new cuts and injuries as that would mean that they would grow even more fungus and it would contribute to their armour while they were fighting. They fought with a fairly open style, but they couldn't move very fast because of the fungus, so they would try and block as much as they could, and they would try and strike once they saw an opening and could do so. As previously stated, the Umvera kin’toni clan would fight anyone that had tried to harm their trees, and they would go into those fights intending to win.
They would do anything that they could to win the fights, but they wouldn't try to kill the members of other clans on their soil because they believed that it might taint their soil and then their trees wouldn't grow as well. Instead, they would aim to subdue their opponents so that they could hopefully send them back to their clans, or in more extreme cases, they would take them off of their sacred land and execute the kin’toni there. They wouldn't aim to have to kill anyone, but to them it would depend on how much damage they had done to the trees, and whether or not it was repairable or if the tree would suffer because of its injuries.
If it came to the tree falling because of the damage, they would not only execute the other kin’toni, but they would send a message to their clan warning them that the next time they wouldn't be as nice.
Religion
The Umvera kin’toni clan was under the full belief that a goddess named Aranya ran their forest. When they needed guidance about anything to do with the forest, they would pray to Aranya for answers. Usually they would say that they had gotten the answers that they needed so that they could get back to their jobs and get back to worshipping the trees. Each of the members of the clan would spend time at the largest tree in the grove and they would kneel and pray to Aranya for any reason that they decided that they should. Many of them would go in groups, just as they would to heal, and they would pray together.
Praying usually involved them holding hands and sitting in a circle. While they would pray silently in their minds, they believed that when they all prayed at the same time, and as long as they were holding hands, that they would be able to reach Aranya better, and that they would hopefully get an answer from her. As previously mentioned, the prisoners would have to pray to Aranya for forgiveness, so that she could decide if they were allowed to go back and rejoin the rest of the clan.
Sometimes, the prisoners would lie and say that Aranya had decided to let them out, and because they didn't know any better, they would let the prisoner out, only to to find out that they had lied and thus they would be put back into their cells until it was them that decided what to do with them. The kin’toni of the Umvera clan took their religion and their beliefs very seriously. They wouldn't allow anyone to speak against Aranya or the trees. If someone did, they would be charged with blasphemy and imprisoned until they were deemed worthy to return.
They took their religion to such a high standard that they wouldn't even start fires, instead, they would either retire to their beds as soon as it was light enough, or they would find other ways to produce light that wouldn't hurt the trees, and wouldn't require wood as fuel. At one point they had figured out how to burn dry leaves that had already fallen, but that didn't hold enough light for long, thus they would only use that as a light source for a short period of time, and only when they truly needed it. Otherwise, they would go to bed at sunrrise.
And they would be awake again just after the sun would start to set so that they could go down out of the tree and start their day of worship again. They would add their religion into every part of their lives so that they could make sure they were always connected with Aranya. This would also allow them to become closer as a clan as they would share a lot of their beliefs together, and that would help them worship better as they were always on the same page as each other.
Miscellany
This article is written by debraspencley. Copyright 2023 Stevie Lambert "All rights reserved" unless otherwise stated.