Satyrs

Overview

Satyrs are cloven-hooved humanoids with densely furred unguligrade legs, long tails, large, funnel-shaped ears, and two-toned skin. Evolutionarily, they lived in small groups in wooded areas, but in recent history (circa. 750 years) they built large cities and elaborate infrastructure in which to live. Post-cataclysm, they live scattered throughout other species' towns and settlements, unable to reclaim their own for reasons ranging from impossibility of swift rebuilding, to fear of the mountain's shadow over the north.

A male satyr is known as a stag. A female satyr is a doe.

Physiology

Only stags have antlers, which begin growing for the first time at around 11-13 years old. Stags shed their antlers every year in late winter, and the new growth begins significantly in mid-spring. Satyr's fur- which exists in two distinct segments, one covering their legs, and another covering their necks and shoulders- grows thicker in the winter, thinning out once more in summertime. This changing of coat is driven by temperature rather than time, earning satyrs a reputation for being particularly hardy, especially to cold winters.

Satyrs have two-toned skin- typically the lower half of their face, palms, undersides of arms, and front will be a shade or two paler than their foreheads, bridge of the nose, backs of arms/hands, and backs are. Though in satyrs with either very light or very dark skin, this pattern may be less apparent. Some satyr's fur and hair grows darker from the darker skin, while some keep a static hair color. This will depend on genetics and, to an extent, environmental variables.

Satyrs are built for sprinting. They are mostly lean muscle, and their hooves allow them to be quickly manueverable while moving at speed (unlike ipotanes, who are fast, but run like cannons). Satyrs are the fastest humanoid, on average, at short distances- usually under a mile, maybe more if the satyr in question is used to runnning.

Satyr's natural circadian rhythym is crepescular: broken into waking hours at dawn and dusk, with short rests at midday and midnight. Post-cataclysm, however, most satyrs live amongst other humanoids' settlements, and many choose to adopt more diurnal habits to better fit a diurnal world. Some areas are kinder to crepescular habits than others.

Culture

Satyr culture can be considered achievement-based and communal. Much emphasis is placed on personal success (whatever that may mean), but the success of the individual quickly becomes the success of the group. Satyrs concern themselves with building the renown of their city, or family, or community, as well as themselves. This has resulted in fantastic empires of the past, though the cataclysm has since crumbled them to obscurity.

Cataclysm

Post-cataclysm, satyrs are scattered, strewn across the land. Because of their architectural methods (see Satyr Empires), rebuilding was near impossible. They simply could not fix or rebuild their structures quickly enough to be worth it. So instead, they joined other communities, ones who could rebuild quicker. Humans build with stone and wood, fauns with clay and rock. Those grow quicker than satyr's living architecture.

Further, satyrs pre-cataclysm occupied the pine forests in the north- those areas that were hit hardest by the eruption. Their forests burned or were buried in ash, and that far north, the long winters that followed were impossible to endure. Those that stayed, died. The rest fled to wherever they could survive, south and east. Satyrs still have nothing like what they used to, no cities of their own, most too wary of the mountain to even try to return to the north.

Succession

Satyrs are patrilineal- titles are passed down from father to son. In this way, satyrs are also patriarchal. Stags tend to hold more power, as they can inherit it from their fathers. Does are not kept from power, but because they cannot inherit it, it is more difficult to obtain, and it cannot be passed on, not to sons nor daughters. Even so, there is not the expectation of motherhood or wifehood as there is in humans.

Surnames are passed from parent to child of the same gender- daughters inherit the surname of their mothers, sons inherit the surname of their fathers. On occasion, children with a single parent of the opposite gender may inherit their surname, but if the same-gender parent is known, it is more courteous for the child to take their name. Not doing so is usually considered an insult.

Mourning

Satyrs have a designated mourning period that lasts for 10 days after the death of a relative or close friend. During this period, anyone affected should wear an opaque veil that covers their face- usually in black. The veil is made of thin cloth that makes it impossible to see the wearer's face, but leaves the wearer able to see their surroundings. It is hung from the antlers, or, in does and children, from a simple circlet placed on the head. The veil is to provide the grieving with protection from scrutiny, rendering them able to mourn without damaging their image or pride, but allowing them to remain in public while doing so. To mourn openly is to surrender dignity, and to not wear a veil under circumstances when it would be expected, thus proving an absence of mourning, is a callous insult to the deceased.

In the past, the death of a king or queen would require a city-wide mourning period, during which all citizens would be expected to veil, under penalty of treason.

Makeup

Satyr makeups are often derived from similar materials that human ones are, but are applied differently. Satyr's focus in applying makeup is less on altering features (eg. reddening of cheeks or lips, lining eyes) but more on creating new patterns to acccentuate the preexisting ones in their naturally two-toned skin. Traditional satyr makeup consists of usually black and white paint in lines and dots on the face, as well as other parts of the body, particularly hands, in parallel or otherwise emphasizing an individual's skin patterns. Paints are typically chosen to contrast skin tone, so darker skinned satyrs are more likely to wear white makeup and lighter skinned ones black makeup. Satyrs with dramatic variation in their skin tones (Eg. a very light-skinned satyr with dark brown patterning) may use both colors on respective areas of the face and/or hands. Colored paint is considered higher class, typically reserved for governmental and religious leaders. Blues, and yellows are most common, with green being only occasional and red reserved for war paint rather than aesthetic.

Contact with humans in the east resulted in satyrs adopting some of their makeup practices in conjunction with their own, notably the use of soot derivations around the eyes and reddening of the lips, though the latter is typically painted by satyrs, while humans preferred lipstick paper. Human-origin makeup practices are gendered, and so are typically only worn by does, though satyr-origin makeup is ungendered and worn by both does and stags.

Reincarnation

Most satyrs believe in a form of reincarnation, rather than an afterlife state more similar to many other species. (etc about this eventually)

Sailors

There is a long tradition, and long since taken up by humans, as well, in the building of a ship for sail. Before the first boards are ever cut, a drake (ideally a dragon for their fearsomeness and longevity, but a griffon will also do) is killed in the name of the ship. This serves two purposes.

• A: from its skull (from which the largest surface area of solid bone can be utilized) the ship's token is carved. This token is unique to the ship and is carried by the owner to prove their right to it. The owner is sometimes the captain, but not always, depending on personal skill and what purpose the ship itself serves. The material it's made of makes it incredibly hard to forge, and most shipowners keep their tokens hidden, so that any passerby cannot know the carving and attempt to recreate it to steal claim of the ship. The material also makes it valuable alone- hard to come by. In this way an ship's owner is protected from piracy in layers: the difficulty of aquiring necessary material, the knowledge of a token's design, the skill to forge it, and the physical parting of an owner from their ship.
• B: the drake's spirit then infuses into the ship as it is built, understood by satyrs as a method of reincarnation, and by others as a type of blessing. This keeps the ship safe, keeps her from falling apart to the wind or waves, and holds her crew together in hardship. Ships are referred to as 'she' since the drake killed is usually a female, as they are larger than the males.

Smaller ships, such as fishing boats and the like, do tend to follow this structure as well, if only for tradition and token aquisition. They tend to hunt much much smaller drakes, however. Waist-high individuals at the maximum. Some may choose to slaughter a domestic breed of griffon, but this is generally assumed to offer less protection, as the creature has less knowledge of the wild with which to steer the ship.

Ships, upon being built, before ever exchanging hands, send word of the token's image and the ship to which it belongs to major ports it is expected to sail to. This can go by sea or land, but is most often sent via carrier griffon. The shipyard (only large, well-established ports build ships) will allot the captain of the ship a number of additional, metal tokens bearing both the image of the dragonbone and the name of the ship, which they can give to smaller ports they dock at as proof of officiality. The intracacies of these are specific to the shipyard, and as such likewise difficult to forge, though easier than the token itself. For this reason, this number is finite, and any additional ports the ship docks at is expected to recieve word of that ship's status from a major port before accepting the captain into their harbor. The burden of keeping all this in line is placed upon the captain.

Obviously, these precautions are not foolproof. Bribery is always a viable option for pirates and mutineers, as are threats. But major ports stay in close communication to try to prevent just one crooked harbormaster from granting a pirate legitimacy.

Cross-Cultural Exchange

Fashions

Satyrs and humans have a long history of trade, political relations, and reciprocal cultural communication. Even pre-cataclysm, humans and satyrs exhibited a unique blend of cultural styles that is rare in other species' relationships, and this trend continues post-cataclysm, most notably in fashions.

Satyr-style clothes- gender-nuetral long robes and tunics- gained popularity among humans around the same time satyrs began to adopt human forms of styling. Skirts as a specifically feminine article gained traction among satyrs as a result of human-satyr relations, and the use of dresses as everyday wear began with satyrs. Use of buttons, ties, and other laces as means of securing clothing has human origins, while satyrs typically wrap their clothes and secure them with a belt, as intricate lacings often catch in satyr's natural fur covering on their necks, shoulders, and upper chests/backs. Satyrs also adopted the wide bell-sleeves that humans wore, though their own, tighter-fitting sleeve styles, as well as robes lacking sleeves at all, remain common. Leather was also widely used by humans and subsequently used by satyrs in place of woolen or silken belts.

The practice of accentuating clothing with dragon hide is a very old satyr tradition that quickly gained traction among humans for its richness and intrigue. Satyrs typically only use dragon hide in hemming and as belts, as it is very expensive, but it is sought for the implication of power and reach it imparts to the wearer. Many old satyr cities traded dragon hide from ipotane herds, as dragons are more abundant in the plains than in the forests.

Stemming from this tradition, and as such, not quite as old, is the use of griffon feathers in clothing. Griffons are easier to find in the forests, and as such their products quickly surpassed dragons' in terms of frequency of use. This practice, too, passed to humans, and, to a lesser extent, ipotanes.

Shipbuilding

Satyr ships are modelled mostly after human-built ships, but the way humans built their rigging made it impossible for satyrs to reach the yards with the same methods, as they cannot climb the shrouds with their hooves. Faun-built ships employed thin, winding stairways carved into the masts to reach the higher points of sails, and so satyrs used this technique in their own ships to reach the human-designed rigging (if altered slightly, to accomodate for satyrs' comparatively lesser climbing agility than fauns').