#ayviah

If you’re a male, not much. You spend your days caring for children and providing for their needs. The men teach young boys how to care for the communal nest and future children and how to prepare the food the hunters bring back. Adult males are essentially a cluster of concubines. They don’t particularly belong to any one female, but are expected to submit to all of them.

If you’re a female, you’re a hunter or a scholar. Hunters leave to gather food (meat, mostly, occasionally fish depending on the season). They also fight to protect their territory and the communal nest. They pass down generation after generation worth of fighting techniques and combat magic specifically designed to hunt animals and destroy enemies. Scholars, meanwhile, study and memorize the nest’s archives of knowledge, pass down oral traditions, and conduct research into magic and the natural world - as it pertains to Ayviah, of course. 

They’re very knowledgeable about medicines (that work for Ayviah), poisons (for everything), chemistry, biology, geology, magic, the elements... Ayviah are one of the few races who specialize in non-elemental magic, but good luck getting any from them! They don’t even conduct trades between the nests, let alone with other races. (A nest being something like a clan. It’s their community.)

Ayviah hatchings happen once a year. The birth rate of males to females is 1:10, but their childhood training regiment is so Spartan that less than half the female children of any hatching even survive to adulthood. Regardless of whether a girl’s gonna be a Hunter or a Scholar as an adult, they all go through the same kind of training as children. Any Ayviah woman is fully able to conduct herself in combat. Their fighting style uses mostly magic to strengthen their body or supplement attacks performed with their taloned feet and sharp beaks. When they use their wings, it’s to buffet and stun the enemy but not actually cause damage - an Ayviah’s wings are their life, if they were damaged it’d be as good as a death sentence. They’re very careful with their wings. (Most Ayviah do not have human arms and just have wings. It’s VERY RARE for an Ayviah to have wings AND arms unless it’s a hybrid, which are also really rare.)

Yup. 

Yup, Ayviah are strongly matriarchal. Strongly. Not as strongly as Drow, but fairly close.

There’s a lot of bad rumors among most races around Trow and Mer at the moment.

Everyone thinks all Trow are simple brainless meatbag barbarian savages.

Mer are secretive water-dwellers (mostly ocean, some lakes) and like to feed their guests - especially skinny ones - and their sharp teeth and somewhat odd mannerisms makes people think they’re people eaters.

Ayviah are racist against everyone. Like, everyone. They tolerate Aethen, but everyone else is trash and Nagaens are the worst (ground crawling pseudo-intellectuals, they claim). This hatred includes Ayviah hybrids - how DARE an Ayviah LOWER THEMSELVES to reproduce with the LESSER RACES?!

Most Fae dislike Yokai. Think they’re too stuffy and violent.

Yokai dislike Fae, but don’t trust or tolerate Kassilik much either. Yokai tend to be fairly serious and practical, neither Kassilik nor Fae have those traits in abundance.

Nagaens dislike Ayviah (pompous featherbrains).

Actually, fat Mer are VERY common! It’s more UNCOMMON for them to be slender! Because having high fat content helps regulate their body temperatures in the cold, deep oceans. (In this way, Mer tend to think of slender folks as malnourished, delicate, and sickly. They’ll try to feed you to fatten you up, which causes a lot of urban legends about Mer fattening you up to eat you.)

Ayviah are very rarely fat, since it makes it harder to fly. Only older Ayviah or otherwise inactive ones, like ones with crippled wings, are heavy.