Sessuyan
From ElanVital
The native inhabitants of Voltumnus.
Contents |
Values
Excellence, beauty, perfection
Cities
Ysiris, their capital city. Home to over 3 million Sessuyan. Sprawls through a cluster of caves in the Poleveskian mountains, 600 miles NNW of Tirania.
Culture
Strongly pro-art, but most of their art is 3d. Architecture is the major art; Sessuyan love to live in beautifully sculpted caverns and talented geomantic sculptors are in massive demand. They enjoy music but have a wider hearing range than humanity, so their notes are often off our charts... however, their use of a pentatonic scale means that their music is still palatable if strange to human ears when it's heard. Storytelling is extremely popular, and it's pretty common to carve stories/poems geomantically in walls so there's always something to read when someone's sitting around.
Having no sense of taste but instead using a sense of smell to determine if food is edible, Sessuyan are big on seeding pleasant smells throughout their living spaces. Embedding scent crystals in sculpture is common, so that the objects can be touched, seen, and smelled all at once for maximum appreciation.
Family Life
All children are raised communally. Nonetheless, children are aware of their parents and the success of the children is a big deal for the parents, as the entire society believes in creating a generation better than yourself. Lazy children=ultimate shame.
Sessuyan who like each other tend to live together. There is no distinction between love and friendship, just a single concept for caring for someone so intensely you might die for them (sylai; individuals in sylai refer to each other as their sylaia). Sylai is highly idealized, seen as a microcosm of the incredible loyalty all Sessuyan have to their culture as a whole. Most of the culture's great tales involve incredible deeds done for the sake of the culture/society itself or for sylai. Sylai is not exclusively a pair bond (it can be three or even more Sessuyan, thouh large groups of people who like each other THAT much are extremely rare), and is usually not sexual. In the very rare case where individuals who are sylaia also are good genetic matches for reproduction, the relationship is considered particularly blessed by the White Lady.
Occasionally, a Sessuyan will have multiple non-overlapping sylai bonds. In this case, it's common for everyone involved to live near each other but not necessarily together. Jealousy (a non-sexual sort, simply desire for more attention from the multiple-bonded sylaia) occasionally is a problem in these situations, though they are ostensibly commended as showing an individual with deep ties to others (and thus increased communal loyalty). In most of these situations, the problems are resolved by the various sylaia trying to become friends with each other so that they can all share time with the individual they cherish, and many of the larger sylai groups have come from such solutions. Sometimes instead the neglected sylaia will form secondary bonds outside of the group. Multiple solutions exist, much as with conflicts between friends in human culture.
Society
Sessuyan society is intimately tied to the Sessuyan religion of Lunism, detailed below.
An individual's worth in society is measured by two things: how good they are at what they do, and their actual contribution to the society as a whole. Thus, if you are an immensely good ditchdigger, you will be actually be more liked/appreciated than a scientist of middling ambition and talent. Inborn ability is acknowledged as important, but not seen as the determining factor; the Sessuyan tend to believe anyone who works hard at their best aptitude will succeed.
The worst thing a Sessuyan can be is society's eyes is useless. Individuals who are incapable of contributing in any field due to birth defects or disorders are rare due to pre-hatching screening, but ARE born; in these cases, it is considered humane to find completely menial work for them to do so that they can be reborn in a kinder way. Individuals who are completely incapable of doing anything are typically euthanized, considered to be the reincarnations of those who squandered their talents in total idleness. The parents are not blamed in these situations, but generally sympathized with as the unlucky host of a freeloader's soul.
Sessuyan extend big government to a degree basically unthinkable by humanity. In human terms, every Sessuyan is employed by the government; private enterprise is not really a concept they would understand. Individuals do not receive wages as such, only varying allowances (meat allowances, vegetable allowances, clothing allowances, luxury allowances, etc). These allowances are more or less similar to wages, as they do vary slightly based off the overall productive value of someone's work and allow individuals to have differential amounts of possessions. It is considered extremely unseemlyand impolite to brag about these allowances as a sign of status, however, and the differences between them are small enough that it might be hard to anyway.
Education
Schooling from birth, focusing on identifying and fostering every individual's specific gifts. Extremely specialized, little focus on being a well-rounded individual.
One exception: combat. Everyone is supposed to be capable in combat due to Voltumnus's native dangers. Physical inability is not considered an excuse not to be, as Sessuyan are all able to use magic.
It is common for all youths of the Sessuyan to take a turn working in the nomadic hunting tribes that leave the caves and follow the herds of beasts, bringing back fresh-killed meat to the caverns. Those who will not take on this duty for a couple of years in their early adulthood are often seen as inferior specimens - and that's an awfully big deal.
Biology
All Sessuyan are unisex; reproduction through laying of egg pods that take two years to gestate; two individuals are needed, one egglayer and one fertilizer. Egglayer is usually the stronger, healthier of the pair, but is determined by reproductive contracts. Modern Sessuyan mostly choose partners via a neural network in Ysiris that can analyze DNA and determine an ideal mate, but they do not enter into a contract lightly. Partners will remain in contact usually for the rest of their lives to discuss their shared child.
Reproduction is difficult for the Sessuyan and the egglaying is physically quite traumatic. Many individuals cannot do it more than once due to resulting damage; thus it is not uncommon for a reproductive pair to trade off which one of them does the egglaying duty. Their population grows very slowly, notably more so than humanity's.
Physically, even strong Sessuyan are weaker than average humans, but magically they surpass humanity to a considerable extent. All of them can control beasts, and most all have secondary powers on top of that.
Religion
The Sessuyan religion, nearly more of a philosophy than a religion, is called Lunism (by humanity). The human term arose due to an erring initial belief that the Sessuyans actually worshiped the moon. Instead, they believe in a goddess called the White Lady, whose spirit watches them with great interest from the moon. Lunism dictates that the White Lady built the world of Voltumnus as a beautiful but cruel paradise designed to create the perfect beings. Evolution is thus seen as her holy design, the ability for species to better themselves through intelligent survival.
The Sessuyan see themselves as the most successful of her creations, having evolved sufficient sapience to understand the beauty and majesty of her design and to speed up their own evolution. Thus, eugenics and genetic engineering are almost holy rites, procedures for improvement of the race. If the entire race continues to progress, working hard to improve its lot, Lunism states that they will be powerful enough to make Voltumnus a complete paradise - and eventually they will evolve into beings as perfect as the Lady herself.
Prevalence
The vast, vast majority of Sessuyan are Lunist, as the religion has formed the basic fabric of their society. Those who dare to openly not subscribe to the society's belief are usually shunned and ostracized, and rare is the partner who will mate with them. Employers are also loathe to rely on them, as they are seen as being lazy and likely to shirk their duties.
Afterlife
Reincarnation is a key tenet of Lunist belief. Individuals who have achieved to the maximum of their inborn potential will live their next life in bodies more perfect than the previous generation. Individuals who have been lazy or failed to live up to their own abilities will be born again with fewer capacities, as the inferior members of their race.
Daily Practice
Daily practices of Lunism involves usually a small prayer of thanks to the Lady for the ability to reason, given upon waking. An hour of 'working out' that combines magical, mental and physical exercises is prescribed as a daily ritual; the closest thing to priests the Sessuyan have are the counselors who help individuals determine their personal set of exercises.
The main responsibility of a Lunist Sessuyan is to do its job thoroughly during the twelve hours of the day dedicated to working, with great attention, ambition and diligence. Any failure to live up to these responsibilities must be confessed to the White Lady in a prayer during any time the moon is in the sky. This holds whatever the job.
The hours when a Sessuyan is not asleep, working, or 'working out' are considered free time, during which the Sessuyan does not have to worry about perfecting itself. Actively 'unperfecting' itself with harmful and unnecessary activities isn't generally kosher, however...
