C'rilaw Kin'toni Clan

History

The Wasalee Rocky Hills and its massive, jagged rocks were once the home to a kin’toni clan way larger in numbers than the C’rilaw clan. Their land was rich with various metals that they used as materials for their weapons, armour and even houses. Further towards the East, the tiny clan of kin’toni that would soon be known as C’rilaw suffered. Their land was rotting from drought and famine; the deep bowels of the earth contained nothing of value for the clan either. Despite those setbacks, the C’rilaw clan prospered due to their virtues. Unyielding brutality.

Mastery of war. The pursuit of endurance and strength. They had nothing to do in an area which felt like the most useless place to control in the entirety of Taerel. Naturally, they chose to expand. So a day of bloodshed and agony arrived. The C’rilaw sieged the walls of the clan in control of the Wasalee rocky hills, with merely an army of ninety kin’toni. Sixty of those were on foot and armed with spears, hammers and similar weapons of close combat. Twenty were wielding bows to take down the town’s defenders from afar.

Ten were mounted on lo’tu, animals which the clan employed not just for waging war, but also to carry their equipment in day-to-day life, and even as guards of their settlements due to the deafening noise they emit when threatened. The plan that the C’rilaw put together seems simple at first sight: the clan’s infantry would storm straight into the town at daytime and slaughter anyone they met on the way there. The lo’tu riders would charge ahead, hacking down those kin’toni who attempted to flee or regroup. The archers would be at the back of the troops and serve their foes a quick death from afar, if they chose to group into a wall impenetrable by the close-combat warriors without taking heavy casualties.

One must remember that the clan settled on the Wasalee hills (the Kel’uri kin’toni clan) outnumbered the attacking C’rilaw more than four to one, and being a tribe with free access to a ton of iron and bronze made them anything but defenseless. From the minute the C’rilaw stormed the gates of their settlement, their army began to assemble. While the C’rilaw warriors did manage to cull a fraction of the Kel’uri before the two armies met, they couldn’t stop them from grouping together. A huge problem arose when they were met with a wall of 300 armed kin’toni marching straight towards them.

The last remaining members of the Kel’uri clan. They were not clueless in the art of war either, since they found a way to protect themselves from the rain of arrows sent in their direction by C’rilaw archers, forming an impenetrable shield wall that called the C’rilaw to engage them in close quarters. A clan not as bold as the C’rilaw would have retreated right there, yet the C’rilaw kin’toni were far from cowards. It was preferable to fall with dignity and courage than to run away and betray the trust of the clan.

The C’rilaw foot warriors and cavalry circled around the shield wall, but there were no easy gaps to get through, and the Kel’uri weren’t interested in being the ones to make the first move. So the clan split into four and charged the wall from all sides with such terrifying ruthlessness and lack of mercy that the hopes of the Kel’uri shattered before the first blow was even landed. Sure, the defenders outnumbered the attackers, but the C’rilaw fought and slashed with the power and viciousness of entire armies, their fierce battle roars drowning out the yells of the dying.

The Kel’uri ranks crumbled by the second, and at the end fo this dreary battle, the last thirty kin’toni left alive were part of the C’rilaw clan. It was in the Wasalee that the victorious C’rilaw settled, and since then they have grown and expanded to not only cover the losses, but to become almost as large a clan as the Kel’uri were. Even though there were other conflicts since the clan overtook Wasalee, the battle between only 90 C’rilaw and over 400 Kel’uri is remembered to this day and plays a huge part in the C’rilaw legends.

Psychology

It is frequently said, sometimes seriously and sometimes as a half-joke, that the C’rilaw are incapable of feeling fear. They chose not to retreat in the face of near-certain death, brawling against an army more than four times as large as them; they chased and shoved the daunting Loremdra Kin'toni Clan off their territory, disgusted by their blood-curdling practice of cannibalizing their foes. It’s not at all surprising that other clans consider the C’rilaw’s courage to be a natural trait of the clan’s kin’toni. It’s true that their self-preservation and flight instincts seem to be toned down compared to other kin’toni.

It’s only natural that a C’rilaw clan member would sacrifice themselves in order to help another clan member, or even just to save the future of the clan itself. This is slightly rooted in the C’rilaw culture, but psychological differences seem to play a part as well. Their military and tactical prowess isn’t only caused by their recklessness. The C’rilaw are social kin’toni, who value the members of the clan a lot. Back in the days before the clan took full control of the Wasalee hills, the land they lived in was savage and pitiless towards kin’toni who were either weak, or those who couldn’t be helped by others.

Clear roles in the clan’s society got developed subconsciously by the C’rilaw. Some hunters would always be on the front lines, others would scout for zu’aan, others would sit back and watch their flank for potential ambushes. Everyone in the C’rilaw kin’toni clan did something, but this something would be dependent on one’s strengths and weaknesses. These roles allow the clan to communicate and work together seamlessly, as everyone participating in a hunt or a battle knows exactly what their job is, and what isn’t. The C’rilaw view other kin’toni clans neutrally, but still value their interests less than the clan’s.

They don’t need an excuse to invade a clan’s settlements apart from this invasion benefiting the clan. At the same time, the C’rilaw are not by any means sadists. They won’t fight and wage war against other clans for no reason. They would attack the Loremdra on sight only because they considered their practices to be utterly vile. Pacifist clans would be, as a rule of the thumb, left alone. There is neither honour nor bravery in assaulting someone who refuses to fight back. If the C’rilaw want to expand though, they’re going to do that no matter what, and the need for more land is a good enough excuse for them in those situations.

The attitude that the clan’s kin’toni have towards the zu’aan is… interesting. Much like a lot of other violent military-focused kin’toni clans, they do not view the zu’aan as creatures with equal consciousness and self-awareness, even though zu’aan minds are actually more advanced than theirs. Ultimately, the C’rilaw are always in a state of passively hunting zu’aan, even when they don’t need more blood. Thrill and glory of the hunt is what a lot of the hunts get launched for, not hunger. What drives this careless view of zu’aan life? Dehumanization.

There is no rational reason for the C’rilaw to look down on zu’aan, so it’s thought that the hate they exhibit is a base psychological instinct of those kin’toni, or a result of the desensitization that happens from hunting zu’aan to relieve their thirst for warm blood.

Biology

The C’rilaw kin’toni have had to adapt to the hostile area of Taerel from whence they came. They are muscular and are mostly around 2 meters tall, although the height of the C’rilaw kin’toni varies from about 190cm to 210cm. While the strength of each kin’toni varies, their height combined with years of training make them able to overpower multiple zu’aan at once. Still, those are very broad attributes that weren’t specifically developed to survive in a land starved of resources. Despite having that much raw muscle power, the C’rilaw aren’t required to eat very often, since their bodies are adept at storing energy.

This is something which let them stay energized between hunts that may have only been successful once every few days. The same applies to water, even though the C’rilaw kin’toni didn’t inhabit the desert of Taerel. The C’rilaw have dark beige skin, bordering on brown. Their eyes can be either green or blue, though a handful of kin’toni actually have multicoloured eyes. The hair of the C’rilaw is unique, and is something that they take great pride in. Each C’rilaw kin’toni has a hair colour that is unique among the clan members, going from dim chestnut brown and metallic grey to bright blood-red and shades of fiery orange.

The C’rilaw are also one of the few kin’toni clans to grow beards among males. These tend to be adorned with ornaments and sometimes skulls of their fallen foes. A C’rilaw’s beard is always the same colour as his hair, unless dyed via the use of certain plants that can be found in the Wasalee hills. Surprisingly though, the C’rilaw kin’toni don’t have any significant evolutionary advantages to help them in combat, outside of their height. This is something which makes them even more impressive than they currently are, because all of their combat prowess is the cause of countless years of struggle and difficult training,

Rather than being born with a subset of abilities which could cause them to have an edge over other clans. Sure, one might argue that their heightened sense of smell and resistance to pain play a role in allowing the C’rilaw kin’toni to fight as well as they do, but ultimately there are no biological reasons as to why ninety of them managed to take down four hundred Kel’uri kin’toni. One other thing that may actually have been important though, is the fact that the brains of the C’rilaw are quite well-developed, when compared to Loremdra kin’toni or Lyenche Kin'toni Clan for example.

The C’rilaw aren’t just a military clan who use their raw might to crush their opponents. A careful understanding of tactics and strategy have been crucial to their army’s successes.

Culture

The C’rilaw culture is rich and complex, even though the majority of it rests on a couple of pillars that really separate the C’rilaw clan from other kin’toni clans. They value strength, courage and honour really highly. A kin’toni can indeed be strong, but if he is a dishonourable coward, he is just as good as a weakling. The focus on bravery specifically is what truly makes the C’rilaw ruthless. They are not afraid of death or injury, so that means that they can strike their foes with absolute full force every single time. The biggest and most risky battles are some that the C’rilaw idolize and have even turned into myths.

The last thirty kin’toni left at the battle for the Wasalee hills have been treated with the greatest respect and admiration imaginable. Young kin’toni look up to them as role models, hoping that they too may receive their own moment of glory. However, if you think that the last living thirty were placed on a too high of a pedestal, the ones who fell in battle are treated with even a bigger amount of appreciation by the C’rilaw. The victors are remembered, but it’s the countless dead that sacrifice themselves in order to ensure the victory, that should be honoured the most.

This is the philosophy that the C’rilaw live by. Not everyone may get the gift of exiting the battlefield alive, but the ones that don’t are just as valuable. War also plays a part in multiple C’rilaw traditions and rituals. The same drums that are used in warfare are also used in celebrations and religious music by these kin’toni. Swords aren’t just used for fight, but also in dance and games. However, the C’rilaw traditions aren’t all based on war. The C’rilaw enjoy sport as their primary form of entertainment, and collaboration between athletes is seen as the undoubtedly most important part.

All sport is played in teams, and the kin’toni in each team tend to form a powerful bond with their teammates. The C’rilaw have a solid etiquette system, so there are some actions which are considered “good”, and others which are considered morally reprehensible. Cannibalism is considered the worst crime against nature that a kin’toni can commit, hence why they were so merciless against the Loremdra, who in turn didn’t see anything wrong with this act, and merely saw it as another way to terrify their opponents in battle. Murder of a fellow clan member is another act which the C’rilaw consider to be repulsive.

Even though they’re far from being a pacifist kin’toni clan, the C’rilaw believe that trust and companionship between clanmate is something that must be preserved at any cost. Murder completely severs any ties of brotherhood and puts the murderer at the same level as a hostile kin’toni from a foreign clan, and such kin’toni get sentenced to death. Luckily, there have not been many instances of murder between C’rilaw, but they have happened, and the hushed whispers spreading rumours about those occasions haven’t even stopped in modern Taerel, because committing murder is an abomination that can’t be forgotten.

Government

The C’rilaw have a system of government which might sound complicated at first, but it’s surprisingly simple. The most respected and honoured kin’toni are considered to be Ta’inn: leaders. Those leaders have cults of personality built around them, a following which will follow them into any battle they rush into. Now, the C’rilaw clan has about a dozen leaders as of modern day, and each one of them is a commander that has a miniature army for themselves that they lead. Each kin’toni can choose which commander they want to obey, and thus which little battalion they want to be a part of.

It should be noted that the Ta’inn, despite technically being rivals, are close to each other and work together to find solutions to clan-wide problems. What the system ultimately leads to is a dozen sub-clans inside the C’rilaw clan¸ but the difference between them isn’t major at all. The various groups of C’rilaw don’t hold grudges against each other, obey the same ground rules and fight side by side. Anyone can become a Ta’inn, provided that they’re ready to face their fears and work hard for the title. There is no limit on how many Ta’inn there can be at once either, so competition against other Ta’inn kin’toni isn’t really a thing in the C’rilaw society.

The most dangerous foe that one has to defeat to become a Ta’inn is oneself. There is a list of base laws that all of the Ta’inn (and pretty much all C’rilaw kin’toni in general) have agreed upon. These laws mostly forbid transgressions against clan members or kin’toni of allied clans, some of those transgressions being theft, murder, and occupation of land. These are just the base rules for how a kin’toni should behave though, and breaking one of those rules will result in justice being served against the criminal. However, the C’rilaw law system is supplicated by two other rule systems that the clan employs.

The first is the unofficial etiquette of the clan, aka what’s considered polite and morally correct, and what isn’t. Insulting a fellow clan member is considered a breach of etiquette, but since the unofficial laws don’t get set by the government, no legal punishment will await those who breach them. This doesn’t mean you can break the clan’s etiquette left, right and center. It’s possible to consequences to bite back in the form of the clan’s other kin’toni refusing to participate in group activities with the rule-breaker.

Long term, it’s possible for a repeat to be looked down upon and shamed for the constant refusal to follow society’s basic rules, so harsher punishment will strike them. This is where the third rule system comes in. The third category of laws is a bit like the middle ground between the government-mandated rules and the etiquette, they are rules set by the Ta’inn. To a C’rilaw kin’toni, one’s battalion is one’s family, lifelong companions, blood brothers. One of the worst disgraces that can befall a clan member is to be banished from it.

This is something that may happen if the rules set by the kin’toni’s Ta’inn are broken, even if they are not part of the general laws that apply to all kin’toni with no exception. A Ta’inn can set both the laws themselves and the punishments for breaking them, though there are certain limits to a Ta’inn’s power. It’s not possible to uplift the official base rules, and nor is it possible to demand that kin’toni who follow one Ta’inn also obey the laws of another.

Military

Every kin’toni in the C’rilaw clan is part of the clan’s military. The kin’toni even live together in the groups they go to battle in, that’s just how critical military strength is to the C’rilaw kin’toni clan. There is clear separation between hunters (the kin’toni whose main purpose in the society is to hunt zu’aan and provide the clan with a constant supply of blood and new clan members) and warriors (those kin’toni who slay other kin’toni in warfare), and there are even specialized groups within these two broad categories.

Within the latter category, warriors are split up into three narrower once depending on what their role is in battle. The largest group among them are the infantry kin’toni, they are your standard warriors on foot, wielding weapons crafted for the purpose of excelling in close quarters combat. Spears, swords, maces and knives are some of the tools that the infantry employ to secure their foes’ destruction. The majority of the kin’toni belong to this group for two reasons. Firstly, the infantry is the building block, the foundation for a powerful army.

It’s unlikely for you to come out from a battle victorious if you only bring archers, but the infantry are incredibly versatile and also serve as pawns to cover the more valuable units on the battlefield. The second group are the archers. The C’rilaw is one of the only clans on the entirety of Taerel where the art of making, aiming and shooting bows correctly has been discovered. Some other clans that employ bows can’t make them truly deadly because of sloppy archery or bow-making skills, but the C’rilaw kin’toni clan have explored and found out which types of wood on Taerel make for the best bows.

Which posture an archer should stand in to ensure the most precise shots and even how various types of arrows differ in the way they travel through the air. Archery is considered a very graceful, and also incredibly functional skill. However, it is a craft that’s both difficult to both pick up and master, and it also doesn’t allow the wielder to unleash his natural kin’toni bloodlust. As a result, only few kin’toni have decided to become archers for the C’rilaw clan. The third and the most feared group of all three is the C’rilaw cavalry.

The C’rilaw have found out that it’s possible to domesticate lo’tu and ride them into battle at speeds that the infantry kin’toni couldn’t even dream of. The lo’tu are fierce animals that can charge straight into the enemy lines if trained for the purpose of being war machines. The mere presence of cavalry in the C’rilaw army is what gives them the biggest advantage over other clans, it’s a whole other dimension of warfare. Nevertheless, lo’tu don’t let themselves get tamed easily, and a skillful owner is required for them to remain obedient to the commands they receive.

This is an area that the C’rilaw want to make huge leaps in, but their knowledge of taming animals and domestication is still very limited and basic.

Religion

The lack of fear that the C’rilaw exhibit when it comes to death is partly tied to their religion. They believe that death is a mighty unstoppable force that takes everything and everyone. What makes it interesting, however, is that death will only be kind to those who accept it, those who die in battle surrounded with the clash of swords and roars of fury. If a kin’toni dies in battle, and this death is honourable enough (which for example means that the kin’toni didn’t flee and leave their allies behind or backstabbed them to survive for longer), the kin’toni will enter an endless garden where all their desires will be fulfilled for the rest of eternity.

They will be joined by their comrades that fell in the same war, and they will all be rewarded for their sacrifices. On the other hand, those who refuse to accept death, those who tread on others in an attempt to flee from its cold pursuit, they will met by the worst punishment the C’rilaw kin’toni can imagine: oblivion. The dead will be conscious in the unearthly void, but that’s just about it. Can’t feel anything, can’t see, can’t scream. Just exist in the darkness and wait for aeons to float by. Alas, those that suffer this fate will never receive mercy.

Death is not the only supernatural force that the C’rilaw kin’toni admire. They believe that the greatest kin’toni who perished in battle, including the original sixty in the battle for the Wasalee hills, will merge with the natural order of the world and become deities themselves. This is the ultimate goal of every C’rilaw kin’toni, not just to become remembered in this world, but to be immortalized in the next and break away from the cruel cycle of life and death that Taerel is forced to obey. Their beliefs manifest themselves in glorification and worship of these legendary hero-figures.

The C’rilaw believe that praying to them and remembering their deaths will bring them good luck and success. The effect of those rituals has not been proven, yet the clan continues anyway, mostly out of tradition than actual religious beliefs. Surprisingly, the C’rilaw don’t believe in any god or gods outside of their clan’s figures and the natural forces that keep the world running. Those natural forces are not just death though. The force of life is considered to be the opposite to death, and they have to exist in harmony or else Taerel will crumble from the disruption of the natural balance.

Those who try to flee from death merely attempt to destroy the order that the universe has set, and thus are not to be respected.

Miscellany

Nearby Groups

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C'rilaw Kin'toni Clan

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