The Early Morellic Tribes

Last updated Aug 22, 2024

• Morellic
• Groups

The early Morellic tribes were made up of nomadic, matrilineal clans living in the south of Tseireph during the minikin Mesolithic era, or Middle Stone Age. They were united by a common culture and ethnicity, but saw themselves as very disparate.

The early Morellic tribes served as the predecessors of Sarvara and Coroth, and spoke a continuum of Proto-Morellic dialects, including Old Sarvaran and Old Corothic.

They were contemporary with the pre-aqhoran tribes, but would not make contact with them until they migrated to the southern coast of Tseireph and founded the city-state of Aqhor at the dawn of the minikin Bronze age.

The early Morellic tribes wore clothes made of animal hide, fur, leather, woven grass leaves, and plant fibre, such as from Lunuth. They would commonly wear long dress-like tunics, cloaks, belts with pouches, sandals, and jewellery made of bones, shells, volcanic glass, and stones¹.

They would not wear more sophisticated fabrics until the bronze age saw great developments in agriculture, namely the domestication of Lunuth wheat and invention of Lunuth fabric. They would sew their hide and leaves together using bone needles and plant fibre, and would commonly dye their clothing colours such as red or orange.

The early Morellic religion was decentralised, angel-worshipping, and polytheistic. The early Morellic Minikin would make prayers, sacrifice, and worship to these deities, whom they could communicate with in dreams. Each tribe, clan, family would have patron deities who were believed to have a level of influence over the good fortune of their worshippers.

The chief deity of the early Morellic religion was the Petrified Child, who protected nature, all things holy, and the innocent. It was believed that the petrified child was the firstborn of the god of nature, known as ‘Kherelli²,’ and that the other deities were her other children.

The early morellic tribes used variations of a lunisolar calendar called the ‘kasuumitvirsu³.’ Years were made up of 297 days with 8 day weeks, divided 8 months of 36 days (with an extra intercalary month every 4 years), and began around the start of summer. The early morellic tribes counted a person’s age from the month they were born, rather than the day.

Women were respected and seen as greatly sacred in Morellic culture. In early Morellic society, it was customary for women to perform ablutions (involving cleansing of the body with water and the shaving of the head and tail) twice every day, symbolising their purity. In addition, women were further respected as spiritual leaders, mothers, and grandmothers.

Women commonly held high-ranking positions with a high amount of influence, symbolically acting as mothers over their clans, but were also permitted to perform other tasks such as foraging, pottery, and weaving.

Early morellic tribes were made up of clans led by Matriarchs, which tended to be grandmothers, wise beyond their years, ex-spiritual leaders, with great knowledge of sorcery. The matriarchs’ authority was mutually agreed upon by the members of each clan, and they were cared for by the spiritual leaders of the group.

Furthermore, their lifespans were prolonged through the use of alucinara, as the spiritual leaders would feed them aluciferous foods. This led to some matriarchs reaching above 40 years in age upon their deaths, which was rare in minikin, whose lifespan usually reached no more than 25.

Men were less respected than women, but were not oppressed. Men commonly held laborious positions, being hunters, foragers, and potters, but also had the opportunity to become spiritual leaders, elevating their rank in early Morellic society.

Some wise and strong men would leave their clans, searching to find a wife from others in order to increase genetic diversity. Upon finding another group, they would undergo an initiation ritual to join the clan.

Initiation Rituals, each known as an ‘Adhiimnelya⁴,’ were led by the matriarch of the group in order to potentially let in an outsider for marriage. These outsiders would be required to prove themselves, showing endurance of pain, and would ultimately end in either ostracism or marriage to the most compatible bachelorette.

The tests of endurance included climbing up and down burning dead trees, and being attacked by various stinging insects. The matriarch of the inviting clan would watch, and ultimately decide wether the man seemed fit to enter.

Spiritual leaders in the early morellic tribes were highly respected shamans, who would counsel, guide, and protect the members of the group. They were the only class permitted to make sacrifices, but they often made them on behalf of others.

In addition, early Morellic spiritual leaders also sang in choirs and played primitive flutes. Not only would they recite oral tradition in spoken form, but also in song; it was during the early Morellic period that shamanistic polyphonic singing was innovated, an art form expanded upon in later Morellic societies.

Furthermore, the spiritual leaders were skilled not only in advisorship and music, but also sorcery and warfare. They often fought in early, small-scale battles. In Sarvara, they would evolve and split into two castes, that of warriors and priests.

Eunuchs were rare in early morellic society, and were often ostracised from clans. However, this changed in future morellic societies; for example, in Sarvara, Eunuchs were accepted, but treated as adults from the beginning of their life, without the opportunity to live as a child, and mostly served as high-ranking advisors.

Sexuality in early morellic culture was not very restrictive. It was seen as normal for men and women to marry, and women commonly held many husbands. It was taboo, however, for men to be polygamous, but they were permitted to have romantic relationships with anybody within the group, regardless of gender.

It was also taboo for a minikin to be in a marriage or relationship with their immediate cousins, siblings, parent, parents’ immediate cousins and siblings, and niblings. However, it was perfectly acceptable to romantically and sexually mingle outside of this group.

Furthermore, the difference between friendship and relationship was blurred in early Morellic society; some friendships were purely platonic, but some included romantic aspects, without being fully-fledged relationships.

Spiritual leaders facilitated marriage ceremonies, which were permitted only between women and their husbands. Marriage ceremonies required the participants to wear special clothing, known as ‘Byelodjunu⁵,’ and for the bride to recite oral tradition on the nature of marriage.

The ceremony was completed through covering one of each of the participants’ palms with resin, and interlocking that hand with the other (the hands facing the spiritual leader). This symbolises the connection of those married.

The early morellic coming of age ritual took place for males on their 6th birthday, and females’ 5th, being the ages when the minikin reached the age of maturity and began to be held accountable for their actions. Eunuchs did not perform these rituals.

In males, the coming of age ritual (known as the ‘Areyomittakhar⁶’) was a month-long pilgrimage into the wilderness, where the boy would have to learn to fight, hunt, and survive, symbolising his transition from dependent to independent.

If the boy survived, the month would end with their reintroduction to their group, with a celebration (known as ‘Kulyaannelya⁷’) on the first day of the next month. A boy’s Kulyaanelya involved the performance of music, a large feast for the whole group, and the boy’s consumption of hallucinogenic Nyuta tea, when he was to commune with the deities and make requests for the future and his life plans.

A females’s Areyomittakhar was a more sophisticated process, where the girl’s mothers and aunts would perform ablutions on her twice a day for a month. This symbolised a girls transition into womanhood and prepared the girl for the rituals that came with being an adult woman, which was a sacred position in morellic societies.

On the first day of the following month was the ‘*Osinnelya⁸,’ which was a more private event than a Kulyaanelya. The Sinakasudh required the girl to recite the oral tradition pertaining to the sanctity of womanhood in front of an audience, after which she would retire home to consume Nyuta tea and perform the same requests as boys on their Kulyaanelya.