#shandians

The paints themselves are oil based, mixed and applied during the closing of the ceremony with specific intent to transfer as much pigment as possible on contact, to stain wherever that contact is made, and to be very slow to dry. Any remaining paint is mixed with hot wax, which is then cooled until solid and kept by the newlyweds to preen each other with whenever desired.

Most often you will see this tradition alive and well with children, who will come together and paint silly, colorful faces with wide, bulging eyes on the backs of each other’s wings. While seemingly innocent and all in good fun, this practice is a cultural holdover from their Blue Sea years, where the land predators were a much more active threat than what they are on Skypiea. It operates on the same principle as wearing a mask on the back of the head in areas where tigers are known to hunt. A fun creative outlet that fosters social skills and also acts as predator deterrent.

The same mimicry is used by warriors, only the faces are painted on the front of the wings, and are often intimidating depictions of the predators native to Jaya (mainly snakes and insects), with some adoption of Skypiean predators (wolves and foxes). The same bulging eyes are present, but the faces themselves are no longer goofy. They are made to frighten people more than animals, after all. Colors are also carefully selected to contrast with their plumage as harshly as possible, always bright and vivid and terribly distracting. The more psychedelic, generally the better. Weapons are sometimes doused with poisonous, hallucinogenic concoctions to worsen this terrorizing effect, but that depends heavily on how much preparation goes into an attack.

The only colors that are barred from general use are the pairing of purples and greens (southbird/directional bird colors), which are reserved for wedding ceremonies and are to be worn only by the spouses to be. This does not bar purples and greens from being used independently from each other, though. This rule applies to tattoos and bodypaint as well.

What I find frustrating about Gan Fall is that he could have just given the land back to the Shandians without any strings attached (after all he fully admits that it rightfully belongs to them), and trusted that a goodwill gesture like that would be enough to make peace. After all it was all the Shandians really wanted from the start. And surely the Skypieans could have then traded with the Shandians, or even agreed to a deal where the Skypieans could maybe use some of the varse/vearth for their needs, or something.

(Even if the Shandians didn't want peace even after getting the land back, the Skypieans still clearly had the superior military power (otherwise they wouldn't have been able to keep the Shandians out in the first place) so it wasn't going to be a huge risk anyway. Either peace happens and Skypieans only have to give up direct control of the land, or there's no peace and the situation remains more or less the same.)

If someone steals something, we don't generally think it's right for the thief to demand concessions before returning the stolen property. Why is it that this doesn't seem to apply to land theft through colonialism?

Or if giving up all of the land was too politically contentious for him as the leader of the Skypieans, he could have at least given the Shandians half of the land with no strings attached and then negotiated peace and the potential return of the other half too. At the very least. He already implied that he was willing to return some of the land, but then why didn't he just do it? Imagine how differently the peace talks would have gone if he had given them half of the land back right at the start, without asking for anything in return for it, and only negotiating for the other half. Not that it would have been right either, but I think fewer Shandians would have sided with Wyper if that had been the case.

Since the Skypieans were the ones with all the land, the power balance was in their favour, and that's why I think the responsibility for peace was more heavily on their shoulders than on the Shandians. Not to mention that the Shandians were simply in the right. I fully understand Wyper's rage, no matter how unconstructive it is. I get why he was angry at the village elder planning on conceding without the Skypieans giving up anything to prove that they genuinely meant to make up for their ancestors' crimes, rather than just trying to pacify the Shandians without truly giving up their power. Many indigenous peoples have agreed to peace negotiations with their conquerors and been cheated and betrayed, so Wyper is absolutely correct in not trusting such a process. And in fairness to Wyper, his comment about demanding sacrifices came only after he heard that Gan Fall wasn't willing to return the land, and putting the "blessings" of Skypieans over the rights of the Shandians.

Basically what Gan Fall is implying is that Skypieans deserve to keep their privileges and that these privileges are more important than the Shandians' rightful ownership of the land. I understand why Wyper lashed out.

Wyper is frustrating because he's letting his anger guide his actions and he's not being helpful at all, but he's just not wrong. He's right to be angry and he's right to reject unjust deals with the colonisers.

More Shandian worldbuilding and theorizing.

So I think I figured out the shift from venerating ancestors and the gods of primordial forces to worshipping the Great Serpents like Kashigami, and why the Shandia didn’t appear to be living in Shandora in Kalgara’s time pre-Noland.

We assume due to its significance as the capital city of the Shandorian Empire that it would have been where the Void Century decimated people called home, but it isn’t ever shown to be so.

The city itself is built with a clear initial plan in mind rather than built onto and built onto as need arose, as you would see with places where people would live and naturally spread out. There are multiple indigenous American architectural styles employed within it (and some Tibetan architecture, given the shape of the Bell and belfry itself? Odd, but I digress) as well, which would imply that the Shandorian Empire (and the Shandia who remain) are a melting pot of various cultural identities.

The central stepped pyramid seems to be more Aztec and/or Incan inspired. It doesn’t have the width to it that you would see more in with the Maya style. The smaller buildings nearer the foreground appear Puebloan. This melting pot idea would also explain why the current canon time Shandia appear to have a mixture of real world influences from the Plains and the Northwest Coast peoples (the teepees and the totem poles).

If it was built with all these architectural styles in mind from the very start, all of these buildings covered in gold, all of them gathered around the Bell. Would it be out of the question to think that Shandora was meant to be a necropolis?

Which brings us to the Trees. Because if Shandora is a necropolis, that would make the Trees no longer where the souls of the dead went to rest. Unless there was a major shift in how funerary rites were performed.

I believe this shift came about due to Kashigami. Or a predecessor of Kashigami. Depends on exactly how long living these notably long living snakes are.

Shandora is covered in gold, and while not the best metal for it, gold conducts heat. Considering that Jaya appears to be a tropical summer island, heat would be radiating off of the place.

I believe that Kashigami (or his predecessor) began using Shandora as a basking spot at some point between the Void Century and Kalgara’s time. Due to his sheer size, it would have taken a lot of warmth to keep this creature awake and moving, so it would have been all but necessary for his survival do so.

I also believe several generations into Kashigami’s (or his predecessor’s) stay was when they began to regard the snake as a god. This great, near sapient beast that came to inhabit the city of the dead at the time of your empire’s fall, has outlived generations of your kin and will outlive the generations that come after you… animism had likely long been practiced at that point, so Kashigami’s (or his predecessor’s) apotheosis would have come fairly quickly. Perhaps within two or three generations.

So with Shandora now being the home of a god who came to the city of the dead at a trying time, and would likely only allow them to linger in it long enough to ring the bell before he started becoming agitated with them, new funerary practices needed to be formed so the souls of the dead could pass on.

It’s likely that the trees came into this because of how odd it would be to see a birch adjacent tree in a tropical place like Jaya. The pale bark would have burned in the deep, lush greens of the jungle like a beacon.

As for the Tree Fever, it seems it was some sort of fungal blight that was not native to the ecosystem, spores of it likely coming over from sailors that Kalgara and his hunting party were actively killing and no doubt collecting resources from. All it would have taken was one funeral to have brought those spores to the trees to propagate.

Whatever this blight was, it must have been in its early stages by the time Noland had them cut down because they still had leaves on them. The trees would have been alive, yes, but they would have withered and died no matter what. Noland could heal the sickness as it presented in people, but it appears that saving the trees was beyond the botanical knowledge at the time. But with Nola still being quite small and having imprinted on Kalgara (and Noland) after this event, it was possible that they could have returned to the old practice of interring their dead in Shandora.

Then Upper Yard was thrown into Skypiea, and the Shandia were forced from the necropolis once again, with the added horrors of also being pushed out of Upper Yard entirely, and the loss of the Golden Bell.