Fauns

Overview

Fauns are cloven-hooved humanoids with densely furred unguligrade legs, short, upward-curving tails, large, flat ears, and true horns. Through evolutionary history, they populated warm, arid regions, particularly the rocky deserts in the rain shadow cast by the Skyward Barrier mountain range. They trend shorter and broader than other humanoids, but only slightly so. Their communities are sedentary, and their culture fosters an incredible interdependance on family and other social structures. Their native language is Montaran.

A ram is a male faun. A ewe is a female faun. A wether is neither male nor female, and also both (see below).

Physiology

Fauns are even-toed ungulates, more closely related to satyrs than to ipotanes.

They exhibit the most sexual dimorphism of any humanoid species, displaying differences in: vocal timbre, horn structure, fur pattern, and breast growth¹.

Fauns have different horn shapes determined by their sex. Rams' horns curl downward around/beside their ears, while ewes' horns curve upward and slightly inward over the top of their heads. Some individuals display both types of horns simultaneously: these individuals are called wethers, and can choose to live as either a ram or a ewe, as well as having the option to experiment outside the zone of typical gender roles and identities.

Fauns' horns begin growing at around 8 years of age, and typically remain just nubs until closer to 12. At that time, the pattern of the growing horns becomes apparent, and the faunling is assigned a gender. Until then, children are considered genderless, and are referred to with a seperate, neutral pronoun used only for children.

Ewe's horns grow significantly slower than ram's, and so usually appear and subsequently differentiate a year or so later in life.

Haloing, the process by which an elderly ewe's horns grow together at the tips, becomes common at around 75 years of age. There is no equivalent to haloing in rams, but as their horns grow throughout their life they simply continue to spiral outwards in increasingly tight loops. An average measure of the horns of a ram around 70 years old can be as much as 810 degrees- compare to the average measurements for middle-aged or young adult fauns, which are closer to 500 and 360 degrees, respectively.

Fauns also feature variation in fur pattern which coincide with sex. All sexes have complete fur covering on their legs, but rams' fur tapers up the center of their stomachs and backs, while ewes' does so on their hips. Ewes also have an additional patch of fur on their shoulders and neck that tapers down the center of their back and chest, that rams lack.

Fauns carry their young for five months and usually have babies in sets of twins.

Juvenile fauns are often called kids, but many people also refer to them as faunlings, especially for older children that feel the term 'kid' is too childish, but who are not yet adults. With some wiggle room, 'kid' refers to a faun under 15, while 'faunling' refers to a faun ages 15-19.

Kids grow slowly, usually only starting to crawl around the year mark, though development quickens after this point. The speed, or lack therof, that children grow is a large factor in faun's culture of large, intergenerational households. All capable family members, as well as some friends, neighbors, and other important people in a family's life, aid in childcare, especially during the first few years. Without this system, child rearing would be simply too much work for any one set of parents.

Culture

Speaking in cultural dimensional terms, fauns foster a collective, low power-distance culture with high uncertainty avoidance. They value tradition and are slow to change, but don't exhibit the emphasis on restraint that other cultures- notably ipotanes and humans- do. Visual art and craftsmanship are at the forefront of their personal expression and tradition alike. Fauns place very little emphasis on 'evidence of a good life' in terms of personal achievements or material wealth, instead lending focus to interpersonal relationships, sentimentality, and betterment of their communities. Fauns are highly dependant creatures, working best in groups, which, while true of all humanoids to an extent, is taken a step futher with fauns. A lone faun is rare, and all but a death sentence.

Hair

Faun's hair is extremely important to them- it is kept carefully and never cut more than a maintenance trim. Hairstyles vary wildly by personal taste with two integral exceptions: it is never cut short, and it is never covered².

To explain why fauns' hair is important, it's easier to explain what the lack of it means.

The tradition of cutting hair began in wartimes. Fauns are historically a peaceful people, and war was very rare. Militaries were completely voluntary- any fighter is there of their own accord, because they believe in the cause. Because they have an assumption that they will take lives, fighters cut their hair before marching to war. It is a symbolic loss of peacetimes as well as a warning, but it is also a disgrace: this person is now tainted by death³.

Fauns still follow this wartime practice, but mostly in theory post-cataclysm, as with no real cities, there are no real wars. Now, it is a punishment.

Certain criminals, when caught, have their hair cut for their crimes. Sometimes they are banished in conjunction, sometimes they are allowed to stay. It varies by place, by severity of the crime, and by greater context. It is a penance as well as a warning to anyone who might not know- this person may be dangerous. The idea behind it is not just retribution, though; it's that the cutting of the hair is an opportunity to change. A faun with cut hair must start over, but once it grows out once more, they are indistinguishable from anyone else and are given the chance to do better this time, unobstructed by their past. The regrowth period is symbolic of repentance as well, a visible indicator of rehabilitation.

Whatever a faun does to get their hair cut, it is always an incredible disgrace. A faun with short hair has been greatly humiliated, a constant, public shame that is visible to everyone who sees them. If a faun's hair is cut for something that they either tried to get away with, or don't believe warranted it, they will fight the sentence. In this case, the cut itself can be a horribly violent thing. Not physically- no blood is shed- but cutting a faun's hair, especially when they don't resign to it, is violating.

Fauns don't cover their hair because it's very similar to not having it at all- long hair is a source of pride as much as short hair is a source of shame. Likewise, wigs are a massive taboo. A faun in a wig got caught in a crime and is trying to hide from the repercussions. A faun with a wig is a lie and is dangerous: refusing to accept the consequences of their actions, refusing to change.

Names

Faun households are multigenerational, usually homing three to four generations of family at a time, along various branches. There is no true matrilineal or patrilineal namekeeping method, instead, fauns take surnames for the house in which they live.

The surname of the house is adopted by everyone living within it, no matter if related by blood, marriage, or simple residence. Fauns' surnames can change throughout their lives as they relocate, if they do. If a faun leaves their home to make a pilgrimage or is otherwise without a literal roof over their head, one of a few things may happen.

• Those who leave in good spirits- travelers, merchants, and wandering artists- they may choose to keep their name under the assumption they will return. In this way, they still belong to that house, and so carry the name with them, even in departure.
• Those who leave without intention to return may, immediately or in time, replace their name with another as they join another house. The only difference is that there is often a space between names, when fauns who remain in their place of origin rarely experience this, simply switching names as they move.
• Or, in the event they either cannot or choose to not replace their surname, they just don't have one. This is rare, as it is a tell for the circumstances of their departure and is often looked down upon. This happens most often with criminals, and so is associated with short hair- likewise shameful.

Tattoos

The vast, vast majority of fauns have tattoos. They are not only a form of expression among a people who don't tend to wear clothes, but they are an old tradition and hold a variety of meanings to the tattooed as well as the community.

In older times, tattoes were often intricate and abstract- patterns and concepts rather than representative images- as they were expanded on indefinitely throughout a faun's life, and so avoided constraints like form and shape. In modern times, however, this abstraction has faded into more literal symbology, though the general style of thin linework in primarily black and brown has remained.

Every faun, upon reaching the age of rite⁴, gets the beginnings of their first tattoo inked on their right forearm. It is kept simple, carefully done to ensure it doesn't warp as the child continues to grow, and is usually finished by anywhere between 16-18. The start of the tattoo is usually the marker for when a child stops being a kid and starts being a faunling. The tattoo is a inscription of their first name, done in ancient montaran.

Traditionally, fauns greet one another by clasping arms so their hands rest over the other's name tattoo. This is seen as a gesture of goodwill and good faith. This has faded somewhat, but is still in wide usage in formal and semi-formal settings, personal aquaintances and first meetings rather than friends and family.

This form is still used in marriage ceremonies, however. Those wed hold this form for the duration of the formal ritual, a symbolic re-meeting of their partner in a new context.

Bonded fauns get a small duplicate of their partner's name on their temple as a visual indicator of partnership.

Fauns also get tattoos when someone close to them dies. It is a way to remember them, honor them, and keep a portion of them in the world of the living. Some fauns believe that when you get a remembrance tattoo, the deceased can visit you through it, watching you and the world through the link you provide. These tattoos take the form of something that was significant to the deceased, significant to the living of the deceased, or, ideally, both. Many loved ones can get tattoos for a dead faun and they will likely all be different- this kind of tattoo is for the living and the dead in equal parts.

The act of getting the tattoos is often shared by many or all of the deceased's loved ones- this time is used for sharing stories of the dead, mourning, and generally bringing together those left behind. It is often the dead's last gift to the living- strengthening the bonds between those left.

Elderly fauns are often covered in tattoos, getting new ones with each passing, as well as continuing traditions of casual, daily-life tattoos accumulated over a long life.

Fauns below the age of rite with tattoos are regarded with fragility and care- for better or worse- because it means they lost someone close to them at a young age. Remembrance is the only time a faun below the rite will get a tattoo.

Tattoo artists are extremely well regarded and valued- in history, and still in very old-fashioned places, they held positions as religious leaders and organizers. In most modern times, though, they are simply respected for their skill and their holding up of an integral piece of faun culture.

Weddings

Fauns weddings are town-wide affairs, often held in the center square and open to the public. Traditionally, weddings are held on the summer solstice- just one a year. Couples looking to be wed raise with members of the council to request this- it's not unusual for weddings to be held years after the initial inquiry, as they are arranged simply in order of first-come. Some exceptions may apply, for example, if very old fauns wish to marry, and there is real thought of one of them dying before the next year can come around. Additionally, in especially large cities where having just one wedding a year would back up incredibly quickly, weddings may also be held on the winter solstice, or even fall and spring equinoxes.

Waiting to marry is not a hold on any tangible life events, however. Fauns do not require marriage to live with their partner, have children, or even call each other spousal titles. The wedding itself is simply the celebration of marriage, and the formal binding of two people, as marked by the tattoos on their temples.

The formal ceremony, for lack of a better term, is the two wed persons sat in the center of town, the ground (which is always lined in white stone) is painted or chalked, depending on preference, resources, and small-scale cultural differences. The intricate patterns created are usually radially symmetrical, and often use warm colors more often than cool ones. If cool colors are used, they are closer to the center, not only to conserve rarer pigment (as the area covered will be smaller in the center), but to bring the contrasting colors closer to those being wed. They hold each other by the forearm in the way of a formal greeting, but remain that way for hours rather than seconds. As they sit this way, tattoo artists⁵ give them their wedding tattoos: a small copy of their partner's name in ancient montaran, on their right temple. As they are tattooed, partygoers dance around them, using the concentric painted patterns as guides. Sometimes, patygoers will approach the couple to place decorations in their hair: shells, flowers, beads, metal. This is done carefully so as not to interrupt the tattoo artist, and is often made into a game to be as hard to detect as possible. In this way, the married couple rise with far more adornments than they started with, often unaware of just how many they have accumulated until their tattoo is finished. After the tattoos are complete, the couple joins the dancers, and the rest of the day is spent is celebration.

Burial

Fauns' burial practices consist of communal tombs, traditionally carved into the mountainside, but fauns that move away from the ranges simply dig down into the earth. The causality of this is evidently simple: in an interconnected society, they remain together in death as they are in life. Tombs' formation, though, that being, who is buried where, can vary.

• The oldest is that of the household. Anyone who lived together at the time of death, are buried together. This is the simplest way of choosing burial places, but gets complicated in very old households. At what point is the tomb too full? Can you dig into the mountain indefinitely? When do you begin a new tomb? Solutions vary wildly by household.
• Some tombs follow bloodlines, usually either patrilineal or matrilineal of all sons/daughters, respectively. This extends outside of households to those who relocate from the home of their childhood, but runs into the same problem of space in old enough families.
• A newer method is by simple decision, as laid out in a will. Fauns will determine who they want to be buried with long before their deaths- importantly, while all parties are still alive. This results in smaller tombs that, once the last relevant person dies, are sealed permanantly. The only problem with this method is if a living faun wants to buried with a dead one that did not specify themselves to be buried with them. It is deeply disrespectful to overwrite the wishes of a dead faun, as they cannot speak for themselves. Many fauns, to avoid this, include caveats or exceptions to their burial wishes regarding, for example, relatives as of yet unborn or too young to make their burial choice yet. Such caveats often are worded as acceptance of burial with x person or those like them, if x so chooses. That way, x is not required to burial with the deceased if they do not wish it, but if they do, it is not overwriting the wishes of the dead.

Tombs are kept accessible for a significant time after death(s), both to allow visitation by the living, and to allow effusion of the spirit to and from the tomb. Once a tomb is sealed permanantly, there is a sense of finality, and an impossibility of traversion of the dead to the living. Those deceased in a sealed tomb are forever barred from the world of the living, unless the tomb is reopened in the future, an outcome which is rare for its taboo. Reopening a sealed tomb disturbs the afterlife of the dead, bringing them back to a limbo-like state in which they are once again tied to the living world. This limbo is understood as an easy transition between living and dead for the newly dead, allowing them to watch over their living loved ones and adjust to death, but for the long-dead, as those who have been sealed are, it is a jarring and unwelcome waking to a world they are no longer accustomed to.

After the cataclysm, the ashfall sealed many tombs that otherwise wouldn't be yet, seperating the living from the dead abruptly and without warning, when neither were prepared for it. There is a distinct before and after as far as the dead go, a break in the natural progression of death that made those who survived all the more unbalanced, stripped of their usual mourning cycles.

Fauns are buried adorned in extravagence: most often jewelry. Jewelry is a common gift, handmade and well made. It's normal for fauns to accumulate a number of jewelry items in their life, each one from a loved one, some for special occasions, most with memories. Fauns are buried in as much jewelry as they can physically accomodate. Oftentimes earrings in particular, a very common gift, have new piercings made after death to hold them- fauns are buried with far more earrings than would be practical in life. They are bejeweled in their tombs to ensure their beauty follows them in death as in life, and to take remnants of their loved ones with them.

The exception to this practice is with heirlooms or jewelry which holds other significance outside of the deceased. Pieces with a meaning, especially to the family or household, are kept among the living to be passed down with time. Fauns may also pass on new heirlooms they believe to have significance to others. This is rare, as jewelry rarely has significance past the gifter and the giftee, but in the case that it would, a new heirloom is begun.

Gender

Gender in faun culture is a rather strict dichonomy, but not in the way we might think. Fauns don't have much cultural understanding of genders outside of their three accepted ones, but the ones they do have aren't structured and regulated in the way satyrs' and humans' are.

Gender is centered around horn structure rather than sex. The type of horns a faun has does usually correlate with their sex and other secondary sex characteristics, but not always, and that's not what they look to for determination of gender. Because of this, faunlings are considered genderless until their horns grow in and differentiate into one of the three forms: ewe, ram, or wether.

There are rather rigid ideas of what a ram or a ewe is (wethers follow slightly different rules), but what that is isn't enforced like it is in other cultures. If you are a ram, that is seen as a pretty unchanging fact, but a ram doesn't have to be a certain way to perform his gender correctly. The same for ewes. The exception is in partnership: which, in many places, repuidates same gender partnerships, a result of superstition bred from old stories and mythos on which fauns define their understanding of the world.

Because there aren't strong gender roles to begin with, wethers don't occupy a different area of society, but are allowed more freedom in terms of what their gender is. Likewise, wethers can form nontraditional family structures and bonds where they otherwise might not be allowed, with the understanding that even if they, for example, marry a ewe and decide to be her wife, that isn't really a same-gender partnership, because the wether is still a wether.

Wethers are understood by most non-fauns to be a third gender, but they really aren't. They are closer to both at once, but even that is an incomplete translation.

Stepping now into more specifics, because of the lack of gender roles, and because sex and gender are not equated, and because they simply lack the same stigmas, there is no taboo against people with breasts having them exposed. Some may choose to wear some form of cover, the purpose of which is not modesty but support.

In contrast to most other cultures, facial hair is actually a feminine trait in fauns. It is still the rams who can grow beards, but because the pattern of facial hair growth is vaguely similar to ewe's fur patterns (on the neck, tapering to chest, back and shoulders, as well as on the face) it feminizes rams who choose to grow it out.

Mythology

Fauns are polytheistic, but to call their deities true gods is an imperfect translation of the concept. They don't worship them in the way we might think: fauns don't pray to their gods, offer gifts, build temples- but their relationship to them drives aspects of their culture nonetheless. Fauns' gods are understood as fact, as existence, but they feel no need to trade worship or offerings for favor. Their gods look upon them, love them, and they do this without response. Faun gods need not be appeased and they cannot be angered, at most, they may grieve those below, maybe regret the choices they've made. But they will never lash out and will never remove their favor as punishment. Faun gods just are, not for reason or purpose, just as much as time or air is. Fauns try to do right by them, but they are never afraid of retribution should they fail- even purposefully. Faun worship is less tangible than other species, instead focused on a certain 'ideal' or honorable life lead. It is longer-term focus.

Faun gods are linked to natural phenomenon, and when depicted in art or stories, are anthropomorphized. It is understood, though, that these beings are not humanoid, nor possible to concieve in humanoid terms. They are often assigned faun-shaped forms, spoken of as if they were people, but this is a method of simplifying a complex concept, not a true assumption of humanoid form. The god of, for example, the river, is the river, and every river that exists, has existed, or will exist. But she is also gendered, personified, for ease of storytelling. These things do not contrast each other- both exist at once, both are true. This is how fauns understand their gods.

The most important figures are the celestial ones- the sun, the moons. The sun in particular is revered in a way superficially similar to that of the human mothergod, kindly and benevolent.

The Sun

The sun is a feminine figure, both ageless and timeless. She is depicted as a very old ewe, her horns haloed twice in an overlapping concentric ring, in the center of which rests the light of the sun. She is caring and wise, constant and strong, capable of harm that she chooses not to impose out of love for those she has power over. She is not all-knowing nor is she all-powerful, but she is the highest of them. She sees what happens in daylight. Some believe the moons tell her what happens at night, since she cannot see it herself.

The Moons

The moons, two of them, are both masculine figures, by nature of being the same. They are depicted in varying forms, depending on the story being told, but are always two rams with interlocking horns. They may be depicted with braided hair joined together into a single plait. Otherwise, their hair will be shorn short. They are associated with wonder and beauty, but also with naivety. In some forms, they occupy treachery and selfishness, secrets and lies. They are sometimes seen as the sun's liasons to the night- the one thing she cannot see into. Other times, they are what keeps her from the night, barring her from this time she would otherwise be able to watch over those below.

The River

The river is a feminine figure, young and carefree, a gentle, peaceful constant. But she is also emotional and easily angered, floods and rapid currents- a lesson in moderation. The sea is her lover, always rushing forward to meet him. The storms are her enemy, forcing her to sprint rather than meander as she runs from recognizing tragedy.

The Sea

The sea is usually depicted as a wether. Translations vary, and therefore spoken of in any language but Montaran, she is referred to with variant pronouns. She is a cruel beauty, a callous, reckless rush. He loves in a way that is to consume- holding tightly to everything sunk in the depths, unable to let go even if it kills the subject of this care. He welcomes the river with open arms.

The Storm

The storm is both vengeful and benevolant, highly variable. A masculine figure. He cools the air, cares for crops, replenishes the river. But he also grows disasterously melancholic, drowning the desert until this sorrow passes. Between land and sky, he is neither worldly nor celestial. The storm is the god of mourning and of new beginnings. Rain at funerals and births is a good omen.

The Mountain

The mountain is a wether, referred to in the same way as the sea in translation. He is a watchful, looming guardian, tall and constant, unchanging and peaceful. The mountain is the god of home and hearth, of art and family. She is steadfast, unbreakable, and distantly loving.