This month we take a look at the Ardwmus tribes, a matriarchal society situated in a desert environment featuring primarily barren, rocky plains. In the east of the desert, and forming the eastern boundary between the desert and the rest of the world, is the Elzitir, or field of dunes, which lies downwind from what had once been a great river. Details about the size of the desert, and the number of Ardwmus tribes in it, are left vague so that they can be adjusted for a small desert as easily as for a desert taking up half of an entire continent.

On the Matter of "w" and "u"

In writing down words from the Ardwmus language, vowels which appear twice in a row are repeated separately, rather than turning into a different sound. This is troublesome when it comes to the "ooh" sound, which under other circumstances would be written as "oo" or "uu." As the Ardwmus language does not use a "w" sound (the closest equivalent is closer to "r"), this letter has been used to substitute in place of "oo" or "uu," being in this case quite literally a double-u.

The Ancestors

Ardwmus religion centers around the worship of one's ancestors, specifically one's earliest female ancestor, traced matrilineally, who is called the lineage-mother. An Ardwmus tribe generally shares the same lineage-mother, and while there are cases where two lineages are in the same tribe, lineages are never spread out among multiple tribes. While all of one's ancestors are venerated, especially those who have done something particularly noteworthy, only the lineage-mother is believed to possess any supernatural ability to help her descendants.

Requests are not made of her directly, however, except in the rarest of cases, and are instead directed toward one's other ancestors, who are viewed as being in a position to act as intermediaries and prove to be more persuasive than if one were to ask for something on one's own. In order to gain anything from the ancestors a sacrifice must be made. The greater the sacrifice, the more likely that the request will be fulfilled and the greater the gain from its fulfillment.

Funeral Rites

The body is considered to be of little value after death; the thing which made it a person is now gone and all which is left is the inanimate shell. The Ardwmus waste nothing which they do not have to and so the corpse's possessions are taken. A woman's possessions are usually given to her children while a man's possessions are given to his nieces and nephews. The body is then left for the scavengers.

The soul is believed to be separate from the intelligence housed in one's body and upon death it has nowhere to rest. With no means of finding direction (for the world looks very different to those whose eyes are not clouded by flesh) the dead are doomed to be lost forever. Luckily, there is a means to prevent this: By placing a part of one's soul in another object, the greater part of the soul will be able to find its way, by knowing its location relative to the shard and knowing the location of all other things relative to the shard.

After becoming a full member of the tribe, a woman is given a newly-made bone knife which she cuts herself with in order to coat it with her soul, which is contained in the blood. The knife will remain with her for all her life, and be used only in emergencies, so that the risk of breaking it is minimized. Men, on the other hand, are similarly cut, but place some of their blood on the jar which contains the soul-knife of his lineage-mother.

The soul-knife of a woman is kept safe until the tribe's nomadic path brings it to the Elzitir, where each tribe keeps vast collections of soul-knives, hidden from outsiders beneath the sands. The soul-knife is placed deep in the ground, and because each member of the tribe knows the location of this burying place, she is capable of knowing her location by way of knowing where she is in relation to it, until she has grown used to the way the world looks to her new perceptions.

The souls of men, however, use the container of the lineage-mother's soul-knife in order to get their bearings, as this is where their own soul fragment lies. In this way the warriors of the lineage protect its greatest treasure even after death.

In order to provide time for the newly-dead to find their way, requests are not made of the deceased until the tribe passes by the soul-knife field twice more.

Gender Roles and Hierarchy

It can be put simply like this: Men control matters which take place outside of the tribe while the women control matters inside the tribe.

Hunting and conducting warfare, for example, are matters for the men, who are more expendable from a reproductive point of view and thus from the point of view of the tribe. More domestic matters, including the day-to-day running of the tribe, are handled by the women. While warfare and hunting may take place outside of the tribe, it has not been lost to the Ardwmus that the initial conception of the idea to go on a particular attack or hunt is made within the tribe, and for this reason the women must first approve any such venture; it is the women who decide when to go to war and when to hunt. Afterward, however, the men have control of the situation.

Among men, rank is determined by marriage: those who are married have authority over those who are not married; those who have more wives have authority over those who have less; and those who married their first wife earlier have authority over those who married their first wife later, if they have the same number of wives. For this reason, marriages do not occur on the same day. Among the women, rank is determined by children: those who have children have authority over those who do not; those who have more children have authority over those who have less; and those who have grandchildren have authority over those who do not. Grandmothers of the tribe are equal to each other in authority and the majority rules when they are at odds with each other, although the Ardwmus prefer to debate for long periods of time until one side or the other has been convinced, rather than force everyone to submit to the rule of the majority.

It should be noted that for the matter of female authority, only children who have been given their second name count.

Children

Survival of the children is not guaranteed, and for this reason they are given "birth names," or simple placeholder names such as Nyayen (First Daughter), or Dezhw (Second Son). These act as a way to place an amount of emotional distance between parents and child, in the all-too-likely event that the child will die. Only once the parents decide that the child will likely survive will she be given her "growing name," which is usually relating to an animal, like Toaz (vulture) or Hugina (mouse). These names are not gender-specific.

When a boy is of fifteen years old, or a girl has had her first menstrual period (which may not be well until fourteen or even later), they are deemed ready to begin preparing to become adults. A boy will henceforth be ready to participate in raids and more dangerous hunts while a girl will be ready for marriage. To become a man, one must kill someone from outside the tribe, while womanhood is earned by successfully giving birth to a child. At this point, they are given their soul-knife or their blood is coated on the lineage-mother's jar, and they are given the last name by which they will be known, their "living name."

Men who wish to marry must offer a bride price to the girl's mother, usually in the form of the spoils of the hunt or valuables taken in war, and the mother is then free to accept the price, reject it out of hand and deny the right to further negotiation or demand that a higher offer be made. Ardwmus society is polygamous, not least in order to allow the best men to thus father more children, but also because it is not merely a single tribe which demands an outsider's death as a requirement for manhood and a good number of a tribe's unmarried males will be killed by each other in war as they try to earn their manhood.

Two other matters also accompany the rite of passage for a woman: Firstly, the grandmothers of the tribe tattoo her back in the sacred symbols of that tribe, with carmine dye harvested from cactus parasites, and secondlyÖ

Children are of the utmost importance to the Ardwmus, who will do anything to keep them safe, but who also are all too aware of the necessities of life in their harsh environment. Nothing is more valuable than a firstborn child, and for this reason, in order to receive in exchange as much protection from the lineage-mother as possible for one's future children, the firstborn will be left behind when the tribe next moves on. To find such a child, called a zol if found, is extremely lucky both for the child and the finder, and the child is considered to be exceptionally blessed and possessed of a great fortune.

Diet

The Ardwmus obtain their food from hunting and from wild plants. There are no taboo sources of meat in their culture, and they will readily set upon anything which they are able to catch. Bows are primarily used for hunting, although traps are also placed whenever the tribe is expecting to remain in the same place for a few days.

Slightly more than half of the Ardwmus diet consists of plant matter, mainly nuts and legumes gathered from the many hardy varieties of plant in the desert. Also of importance are the species of cactus in the desert, and the yazqwr, a variety of tuber.

While many of the other food-producing plants have secondary uses, most often being able to be used as cloth, it is the cactus which is most variable. Most of the species in the desert produce an edible fruit of one size or another and most of these fruits are extremely juicy. The main body of the cactus is often edible as well, once the spines are dealt with, and in some species the skin can be used as a container. Finally, certain insects parasitize the cactus and can be used to produce a carmine dye, the principal source of ink for the Ardwmus. In addition to tattoos, this ink is used to decorate the tribe's tents.

The yazqwr is, along with the cactus, possibly the most important plant for the tribes. It is able to deal with minimal hydration, is extremely nutritious, and preserves well. The plant is also hard to come across simply by accident and only a small amount of it grows aboveground. Most tribes know of several places where there are large amounts of yazqwr and these act as a sort of storehouse, capable of keeping the tribe from starvation even if all else fails.

Clothing

The Ardwmus wear loose clothing made from leather or woven from one of the various plants which exist in their desert homeland. Strong gloves are used as well. The head is protected by a hat, woven from plant matter, which bears a resemblance to an extremely flat chupalla, while the face is protected from the winds and sand by a mask of bone, and a scarf is usually wrapped around in order to protect the ears and neck.

Stories

Storytelling is, as with most societies, an important part of the culture. Lessons, rules of life, and advice are contained in poetic form and wrapped in mythic narrative. The story of Uyin the Rabbit, which exists in one form or another in most Ardwmus tribes, contains almost step-by-step instructions of how to hunt rabbits and also of the many mistakes which can be made, which are of course the very first things which The Fool Hunter always does. It even manages to include lessons on proper behavior with regard to one's ancestors. There are few stories which do not contain some sort of lesson.

Much importance is put on stories and once the day's duties are done with, the tribe often partakes in uligir, almost like a sort of improvisational theater which starts and ends spontaneously and which can take place even during periods of work. Different members enter and leave the uligir of their own accord, and in this way a single session can last an entire day but begin and end with entirely different collections of members. Players take on new personas and refine them throughout the uligir before ultimately casting them off as they cease to participate. A particular persona can, after being cast off, be seen by another to be interesting enough to pick up again in the next session. If this happens enough, the persona will acquire a traditional status and likely be used by various members for generations to come, being refined and altered all the while.

Next Month: Loosely-organized tribes of werejaguars who make new languages like their patron god is Tolkien. Also, thighbone instruments and man-eating.

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