ethn_the_island_people, whale_person, sky_person, islander, tall, dark, breechcloth, whale island
THE WHALE ISLANDS: A traveler can see the Whale Islands from quite far off. They hang hundreds of yards in the air, supported only by the unending spouts of water from the blowholes of enormous whales. These huge black whales swim slowly through the waters of the Middlemarches with their mouths open. In this manner, they gather water to support the islands and collect food for themselves. Meanwhile, they live out a life cycle of their own, communicating with each other through a series of low moans and producing young that also grow to support an island. Younger whales propel water with less force, so they support only the smaller islands, which hang lower in the sky and provide easier access for visitors from Creation. Getting up to the lowest islands is a minor feat, as they are no more than 100 feet in the air. Moving from there to the higher places requires patience and some ingenuity. The islands always hover above their respective whales, which swim about each other as they feed and interact, so travelers must time their ascent carefully and prepare to scale at least 100 feet to each successive island. Two cultures live in the Whale Islands. They each speak a separate dialect of Seatongue, and each calls itself simply “the People.” The people who live on the whales’ backs call the islanders the Sky People. The people who live on the islands call the folk who dwell on the whales the Whale People. The Sky People have ropes and readily help visitors climb up to their islands. The Whale People taught them that to visit another place is an invitation to be eaten. It makes them very welcoming of strangers. They treat visiting characters very well until the feast. When their guests run or fight, the islanders believe it is just part of the guest gift to bestow a hunt and combat. Visitors may roam between islands at will, because the Island People inhabit them all. The only thing visitors may not do is leave. The Island People are tall and dark, and usually wear only breechcloths. Their society is so haphazard that children sometimes rule over entire factions of them. Nothing they do really matters as long as their island stays floating in the air. On the topmost island lives the current guardian of the islands and his or her many wives and husbands. The guardian supposedly oversees the defense of the Whale Islands, but exercises little real command. Really, the guardian family is a dynastic legacy in the middle of near anarchy, set up by an unknown entity centuries ago to protect a magical artifact. By this point, the guardian family has forgotten everything except that it should live on the oldest and highest island. The Whale People do not eat strangers. It is their way to eat what the Sky People drop or discard from their bountiful gardens and orchards. From this, they learned that anything that comes from above is food, including Sky People who once descended to meet their neighbors. Now, Sky People do not come down anymore. Not on purpose. The Whale People insist that each of them is the transitive spirit of a great whale. When a new whale is born, one of the Whale People must leap into the new whale’s mouth to give it a soul. If the whale dies anyway (as many of them do), the spirit was not strong enough or pure enough. Families that produce unworthy spirits lose standing in the community. Inside each whale that lives, they say, is the seed of a soul that, if swallowed, can ease a person’s worst suffering. Whale People mix their food with blubber they cut from the creatures they ride. Their unique digestion cannot subsist on solely whale blubber or the food that drops from the sky; they must consume both. Their careful butchery trims excess fat from the quick-healing whales, ensuring that the whales can move quickly enough to consume enough food to stay alive and water to keep the island aloft, supporting the Sky People. The Sky People, in turn, drop fruits and vegetables down to the Whale People. This interdependence could break easily, but it has somehow remained stable for centuries.
