#kulki

enki the keeper and kul'zak the wanderer. the gays of all time.

Like of course climate plays a big role in how traditional dress looks, but apart from that there’s also things like religion that play a big role. We don’t really know what the climate is like in Ru’aun but Irene is a big thing, how does that effect clothing choices, what dyes are most common and how does that reflect in clothes?

I’m a sucker for world building

Hello again, anon! Lucky for you I, too, am a sucker for worldbuilding. I have been considering my answer for literal days. I’ve vaguely commented on modesty rules in Ru’aun before but we’ve yet to get into fashion trends and hierarchical or religious dress, not to mention personal ornamentation and the different meanings associated with that in different areas, so let’s talk about Ru’aun first.

Because of the impassable Sacred Forest, most towns are along the coast to facilitate travel, and it’s a very lush and green region. The majority of the land is either plains or various forests, with a variety of cliffs, shoals and a few mountains scattered around, plus stretches of swampland and beach. Dyes are usually made from whatever resources are nearby, so you’ll see a much wider range of colors in settlements near flower fields or birch forests. Popular port towns like Meteli, O’khasis and Bright Port also have more variety, but will most often stick to colors that have special meanings to the town. Whites, greys, and blues are popular in O’khasis and Scaleswind as the religious capitals of the region, but red is also pretty prominent in Scalesind.

The same general rule also applies to fabrics and jewelry—mohair comes from goats so it’s easier to acquire in Phoenix Drop where there are tons, there’s more precious metals in Scaleswind, and in Nahakra people take any broken glass they find and lay the pieces in fine mesh containers on the tideline to make sea glass for decorations. Fabric and dye are common trading goods, especially in more backwater towns where the physical currency used in bigger villages and city-states have about as much practical value as an especially shiny rock. The most popular kinds of fabrics in Ru’aun are mohair and wool for their durability and temperature regulation respectively, with leather, ore and ivory as the most common materials in ornamentation.

The primary religion is what I’ve been calling the Divine Faith, which worships the Divine Warriors as a whole under the figurehead of Irene and has various subsets that focus more on each individual Divine Warrior, with the grand majority of its followers falling under the Church of the Matron or cults dedicated to the Destroyer, with the Trail of the Wanderer as a close second. Which of the Divine Warriors you follow most closely definitely has an effect on your attire. 

Disciples of Irene wear small cloaks modeled after hers and members of the church hide their faces as a way to present themselves as closer to the goddess since you don’t look upon those of divine nature or close to divinity without consequences, most often using dark blue or white veils stitched with gold, since those are the colors she’s documented wearing most often and are therefore most often associated with her, though purple is too. Devout followers cover their eyes, members of the church like priests and nuns cover the lower half of their faces, and the High Priest covers his entire face, usually veiled or with a simple mask in public and with a more ceremonial mask during sermons and ceremonies. 

Followers of the Destroyer are much more subtle because they’re technically outlawed, they have a lot more to do with ornamentation than clothing. If you have long hair, it’s always pinned up and back, never in a ponytail and never left loose, usually in braids and buns and other hairstyles that wouldn’t be out of place on a guard, nothing an enemy can easily yank on. Hanging jewelry is also out. Hair is adorned with warmly colored beads and hair sticks that can be used as weapons and on occasion chains are woven into braids, most other accessories are close-fitting: there are nearly always cuffs around the wrists and ankles, subtly decorated wraps around the waist are more common in cities, chokers with detailing done in texture are uncommon but widely used, and earrings and ear cuffs are rare and usually kept for formal ceremonies. 

Those on the Trail of the Wanderer are nearly always found to be wearing travel-appropriate clothes no matter the occasion or setting, and there’s touches of pirate and backpacking aesthetic throughout. They tend to carry just about everything they own, dedicating their life to traveling and seeing the world the way Kul’zak did, and dress accordingly. Knee high boots, at least two layers, oil-treated cloaks, many wear jerkins and sashes with stitched depictions of scenes from places they’ve been, and leather harnesses and holsters are common. Hair is usually left down or half put up and decorated with feathers and ribbons found on the Trail. Meditation beads carved of wood or stone are nearly universal, worn around the neck or wrapped around the wrist. Trinkets and charms found on the Trail are important to the travelers, and you’ll find bowls of them left behind by others at shrines and trail markers that you can add to or take from, and in doing so you bring other travelers with you on your adventures and are carried by other travelers on their own, it’s a very dear tradition on the Wanderer’s Trail. Imagine geocaching but with religious connotations. Many of these items are worn as bracelets, anklets, necklaces, or on waist chains, usually put together while camping out. Flower crowns are also a bit of a thing and when they start wilting they’re left behind in places bearing Kul’zak’s symbol.

I’m thinking of making flower crowns also a thing with Enki’s followers since I’ve recently been turned onto the Kulki ship by @warlocks-and-phoenixes, but instead of wildflowers it’s mostly herbs and grasses. The matching flora crowns are a symbol of their union. Enki’s followers are mostly stuck on an iceberg, so they show their faith by carrying carvings of his symbols and making tapestries and records of their history, studying the world and spreading a love of knowledge wherever they go. Children usually start with embroidering their favorite/their family’s stories into their own clothing.

Embroidery! I love embroidery. In Ru’aun, it’s a very popular pastime, especially among stay at home parents and the sickly, so you see it pretty much everywhere. Colored threads are easy to acquire, but some colors are restricted. Purple is only for the clergy. Gold is for the highest ranking members of the churches and Lords’ family lines, as well as important personal staff of the Lord’s household like a close advisor and the primary caretaker of the children. Silver thread is for other people in powerful positions like members of a council or the highest ranking members of the guard (commander of the guard, second-in-command, reserve commander, Jury of Nine), which helps to distinguish officers from soldiers in larger villages and city-states that have a standard uniform and armor template. If you qualify for both, the gold usually takes precedence. For example, Laurance would have gold embroidery despite being head guard of Meteli because he’s also the son of Joh. Many small settlements don’t bother much with distinguishing personal importance based on thread color, though. They much prefer to use embroidery to keep a record of family history. Abstract depictions of personal achievements are stitched into the edging of most clothing, and the rank and position of the wearer and their parents + lovers go across the back on formal clothes and if you’re a guard around the neck and cuffs of your gambeson and also your sash if you wear one as a way to identify bodies after battle like modern day dog tags. It’s very simple and blocky on guardwear and incredibly elaborate and stylized to the point of illegibility on formalwear. Other common designs are flowers, symbols of faith, waves, landscapes, and elements of regional stories.

Modesty standards in Ru’aun. Here’s the basics: the average person should show nothing in the range of torso between the knees and breasts in public, midriff can be seen only by people very close to you, mothers should be covered from somewhere around the collarbones to their ankles, visible shoulder straps and undershirts are generally a no-no but off the shoulder and sleeveless attire are okay, and open shirts should not go further than the base of the sternum and should not show undergarments or nipples. Anyone fifteen or older is expected to follow these, but it’s not as important that children do. Some of them are negotiable based on climate and regional culture; Meteli and let’s say Pikoro are more lax and pretty much do whatever they feel like while O’khasis and Scaleswind follow the rules very closely and places like Brightport and Boboros are somewhere in the middle.

In Tu’la, how you dress is so important because it shows your loyalties. It’s a place filled with hundreds of clans all on the brink of beating each other up on any given day. In their culture, you’re not defined by who you are but who your family and their allegiances are. Symbology is important, families have their own color blends, patterns and even specific plants associated with them since gems aren’t very commonly found in Tu’la and sparkly things go to the monarchy and the king’s pets (the humanoid ones). Throwing away your clan’s symbols when you’re not on a covert mission of some kind is seen as a betrayal.

Cloth is very often uncut and styled by wrapping, pinning, and tying them into various shapes like you would a sari or toga or a variety of old African clothing styles I can’t remember the names of. Short sashes and waist wraps are very common. Many of the common people will also wrap their hands and feet in place of gloves and shoes. Cutting cloth is often reserved for important articles or the royal family and its vassal clans. It’s considered a wasteful expense since the excess cloth can’t be remade and isn’t recycled into other things like blankets. Scraps are distributed among the clan’s servants for them to wear to match their masters’ clothing as a sort of claim over them. Gladiators often wear their sponsor’s colors in the same way. When clothing is sewn, you’ll often see designs similar to the Japanese kimono and yukata and the Chinese hanfu and cheongsam/qipao. Designs with layers are more expensive and a luxury that very few, essentially only the king and his consorts, can afford. In most places, the only articles of clothing you’d find cut and stitched into new shapes are some forms of undergarments and a more form-fitting underlayer that covers the entire torso and cloth is arranged over top of.

Tu’lan clothing is essentially custom tailored by the wearer for the wearer, unless you’re super rich or a conscripted servant. Ideally it should allow you to be flexible, it should allow you to keep cool in Tu’la’s very warm climate, maybe with a window just above your butt if you have a tail, but easy to hide things in. Really the only rules about it is that you don’t wear enemy symbols and you keep your private parts private around everyone not your lover. It’s a war country, so most of the time the styles are very utilitarian and comfortable, but you’d only know how utilitarian it is if you were raised wearing them. To Ru’aun and Gal’ruk, even the simplest outfits seem fancy. Part of what makes them think that is the decoration and accessories.

Hair sticks. God do I love hairsticks. More formal ones are made of glass with a small hanging charm and common ones are simply carved from wood or made with the scrap metal shavings of weaponsmiths—those ones are usually sharpened into needles or knives in case you need it. Jewelry is usually close-fitting to make it harder to grab, so meditation beads would be wrapped several times around the wrist or ankle and no pretty hanging piercings. Humans are actually the only one of the three dominant species who get piercings because pretty much all meif’wa clans are warriors or their ears are too sensitive, and if a werewolf has to transform with a piercing in it’ll either warp super bad or hurt them when the change tries to push foreign bodies out of the werewolf. Cloth is usually made with patterns everywhere or very prominently displayed and accented. 

Sun and snow motifs are also fairly widespread since the patron Divine Warrior of Tu’la was Menphia, it very rarely snows in Tu’la but she had ice powers so. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything more on Menphia’s followers right now, I’m basically scraping and redoing her whole temple and worship at the moment.

Gal’ruk loves yarn and fur, since practically every living thing out there is covered in fur and spinning yarn is a good time consuming indoor activity. A lot of people spend considerable time weaving and tanning and sewing over the blizzard season when they get trapped inside by storms. Fur goes inside everything from gloves to hoods to pants. People make competitions out of who can knit the best hat or scarf from scratch before the next moon. 

For an idea of the style of clothing usually worn I recommend looking up ‘viking winter wear’ for some ideas. Plenty of layers, loose pants cinched at the knee, lots of fur cloaks and shawls, leather belts with pouches and space for your knife/sword/axe’s sheath over top. Leather goods like armor and belts are usually marked with subtle designs pressed into the materials and are padded. Nothing metal ever comes close to touching the skin directly. Clothes can either be simply pulled on or are closed with loops and clasps carved of wood or bone/teeth from a hunt. 

Nothing hunted ever goes to waste. Gal’ruk is a plentiful land but it can be a harsh one too. Pelts, furs, teeth, claws, bones and tails are all made into clothing, among other things. Pelts can be scraped and tanned and made into leather, furs are stuffed into everything as an insulator. Teeth, claws and bones are carved into accessories or combs or buttons, it’s very common for someone to make the spoils of their hunt into necklaces or arm bands or earrings as a mark of their achievement or to exchange as a betrothal gift to prove their worth as a provider. Married couples wear carved tokens of their family’s symbol made by each other instead of rings, presented to the other for the first time at the wedding and very rarely taken off unless one dies or they get divorced. Widows and widowers usually keep their tokens old, but they’re burned to make the divorce official and if a divorced couple gets back together new ones have to be made.

Unfortunately color is fairly sparse on the island. There’s not many plants to harvest  dyes from and clay takes ages to dig up and warm enough to use, so it’s mostly natural colors of the materials and some darker shades from smoking pelts over a fire to waterproof them. There are shades of green every so often from dye made with the kelp that washes ashore and sometimes if you can manage to grow beets there’s some reds and purples but not everyone is able to dye their clothing.

Gal’ruk has zero modesty standards. You wrap up to keep warm outside, but while you’re inside you can wear just about as little as you want. The public dining hall can get pretty warm with everyone packed in there, it’s not unusual for people to go titties out. They’re all warriors, they’re pretty chill about partial nudity and naked bodies are very rarely sexualized in such a close-knit warrior community, they’re all pretty much grown up seeing each other half undressed while tending wounds, so modesty isn’t a real issue. This is why I said in my post about Travis playing around with his shapeshifting that he needs to have Ru’aun modesty rules explained to him the first time he changes into a female form in public, because in his homeland having breasts show through an open shirt isn’t at all notable but in Ru’aun it’s absolutely scandalous.

And we’ve circled back to embroidery! Again, time consuming pastime, again, people who spend the majority of the year huddled inside waiting out the worst of the cold, again, followers of Enki. Personal history is recorded on parchment, but communal history is recorded on tapestries and clothing. They have very little in the way of colored threads, so designs are made with only lineart and shadows in mind to make it clear what they’re meant to be. Stories about Enki and the Divine Warriors are very common, and so are fables for the children. Animals bounding through the snow and their different tracks trailing behind them are used to teach the babies how to tell your prey apart by print. Kids are taught to embroider their own clothes to teach them patience and attention to detail.

And then gonna spice things up with a Katedenza ask I think

- Rose @pumpkinprincess22

Vylance is answered here!! Thank you so much for the obligatory ask for them though <3

Also no idea why the colors look so ugly for the marking, I promise they were prettier before the image saved:

Thoughts and feelings again of course:

As metaphorically seen in Eleven Ways to Ask the Same Question

yes, these two invented the concept of renewing vows

From first to last, ordered by when they got or made them:

aged solid gold / solid iron with enchantments / pure solid jade / solid carved peach-pit / turquoise in rose gold / amethyst in silver / pure solid diamond* / meteorite dust in silver / red garnet in gold / solid granite / carved solid olive wood

Enki, who sees another man's body cradling in its chest the soul of his beloved, of the father of his children, of the World's Wanderer. Who wakes before Kul'zak with tears on his face and a hitch in his chest, and he looks beside him at Kul'zak's face, slack and peaceful in sleep as something in his dreams braids his hair with flowers that do not exist in the waking world, budding and blooming as though they grew from Kul'zak himself. He brushes one of these braids from Kul'zak's face, knowing he will not wake at his touch.

They're not yet twenty. Their life together has only just begun.

In his dreams, Enki sees his husband's smiling face in a village built on stilts and gangways, and he sees him with a child, two. Their children, young, and their children, grown. And he sees a man with Kul'zak's smile and Kul'zak's wanderlust and Kul'zak's soul, in a village built on stilts and gangways, with his own husband and his own children. Two of them, young, and two of them, one growing old as the other never will again.

He sees the man with his husband's soul with an arrow through his chest, saying his goodbyes to his son as he begs him in Kul'zak's language not to go Baba please please don't die. Enki's sons will someday call Kul'zak Baba. The younger will call Kul'zak Baba as he sends him and his brother off to their own homes after family dinner on the night that his husband will die. He grows old, Kul'zak, and he dies happy with Enki at his side despite his aches and wounds and the infection festering in his side from a wound he had received on his latest venture out of town that had been beyond help by the time he made it home.

Enki has known for a long time his husband will die tonight, and when he wakes to find him cold beside him Enki cries himself to sleep and when he finds Kul'zak is in his dreams he doesn't wake up again. And Enki's soul will return to Gal'ruk.

Kul'zak's will remain on the mainland. And Kul'zak will have another life. Another husband. More kids. Far away where Enki will never meet him again.

And then he dreams of the man Kul'zak's soul will make a home in dying in his son's arm, and as Kul'zak's soul is untethered his other life's son holds him tight, and the pieces breaking off his soul sink into the grieving son's. And he will never know he carries his father with him. And Enki will see his love again after all, and never know what they once were.

In the present, or what he thinks is the present, when they are not even twenty and are sleeping curled together among the roots of an ancient tree on the side of a well-traveled trail, Kul'zak's eyes flutter open. He smiles, and it falters as he wipes tears from Enki's cheeks. He murmurs a good morning in Galenk, and he kisses Enki so sweetly, and by the time Kul'zak asks what's wrong, Enki has forgotten what he was dreaming of that made him cry in the first place.

So, after you die your life force is sent on but sometimes pieces of it fall off as they travel to the afterlife and drop back into the mortal plane. This happens to pretty much all living things, sometimes including wyverns.

Sometimes the pieces land in plants and animals and collect the experiences of those things to pull into their soul and whatever they move onto next. Sometimes they land in a living person. When that person has a kid, the stray soul piece is passed on to the kid and gets mixed into the kid's own natural soul as they grow, making them, ba ba da ba, a partial reincarnation! This also works if the soul piece drops into an infant or a kid young enough.

For very rare for a soul to be born or develop with completely new parts. The energy is recycled in the ether while the person part of the soul goes on to the afterlife, but the majority of new souls are made up of parts that fall off in transit, which can sometimes lead to strange magicks or prophetic visions depending on what got mixed in. People who get flakes of wyvern souls get the gift of prophecy 99% of the time, though most of the time it's garbled by the disparity between the minds of humanoids and the minds of wyverns.

Enki has flakes of wyvern in him, and he can't understand most of them which frustrates him to no end. Zane has what he perceives as prophetic visions for wyvern-unrelated reasons. Kul'zak ended up with a soul made mostly out of plants and goats, which makes him very in tune with nature and traveling the world and it's also why he feels like kindred souls with goats (his sacred animal).