Angareza

Angareza
Capital	None
Ruler	Many
Government	No formal government; matriarchs and elders
Demonym	Angarezan
Adjective	Angarezan
Languages	Hikunza; Sea-Speak; other regional languages
Religions	The Cascade; animism

The Angareza (pronounced ahn-gah-RAY-zah), or anchor-less, are nomadic locathah tribes who endlessly wander the Na-Gaesa Ocean, tending to their shoals of herd-fish from atop their ray mounts. They are widely considered the best hunters and trackers of the Wounds, able to follow even the faintest scent or blood trail through the seas.

Geography

Angareza bands can be found far and wide across the Na-Gaesa Ocean, but rarely outside of the general area of the Wounds. Though they are not quite as tied to the coral reefs surrounding the many archipelagoes of the Wounds as are their sedentary kin, they still consider them to be strongly spiritually important and do not wish to be too far physically separated.

Demographics

The Angareza are effectively entirely locathah. On occasion individuals of other ancestries join them as they journey throughout the seas, most commonly merfolk and aquatic elves, but this is not particularly common.

Culture

Religion

Compared to the Itothani and Bakari, the Angareza are more religiously diverse. Still, the majority are followers of the Cascade. While the Angareza do not live the majority of their lives around and within their reef-gods, as their kin do, they still make every effort possible to travel to commune with the reefs when the opportunity presents itself. At a minimum, most Angareza return to their ancestral reef for the hatching of their young, so that the reef-god's spirit-form knows of the child even if its flesh-form is distant. Upon birth, a small piece of living coral is carefully harvested for the child, to be carried with them for their entire life. When they die, then, their body and the coral are returned to the same reef. The Angareza view their time apart from the reefs to be an ultimately temporary condition, as they both begin and end their lives as part of it.

Other Angareza worship the Beating Heart, the Sunken Star, or even religions that are otherwise entirely the domain of surface dwellers such as Ta-Lasau-Kori.

Society

The Angareza have little if any in the way of formal leadership or governance. When they need guidance they seek the input of their family's elders or matriarchs, or those of their band if separated from their family. Laws, informal as they may be, are enforced through social shunning or even exile in extreme cases. With the high degree of social cohesion and interdependence of the Angareza this can make one's life significantly harder if not outright impossible, as there will be none willing to share food, work together, provide healing, and so on. That wronging one Angareza will lead to their entire family and band shunning the perpetrator only exacerbates this. As a rule the Angareza are generally very high trust, willing to help any and all, but betraying the trust is a sure way to find oneself cast out permanently. As with other locathah peoples, such punishment can be a great burden, as the individual in question will not share in the resources of their band, forced to fend for themselves. In the open ocean this can be extremely harsh, and therefore the Angareza typically take with them any offenders until they at least reach shallow waters.

Like other locathah of the Wounds, the Angareza are split between innumerable families and loose tribes.

Spending the majority of their lives away from the reefs of the Wounds means that the Angareza find it difficult to form deep connections to them. In order to remain a part of the reefs to whatever degree they can, the Angareza carry living corals with them on their travels, both their birth-corals, those taken from the reef in which they hatched, and ancestral corals, those that have been passed down in their family for many generations. Typically fashioned into amulets, at least when small, the constant slow growth of their ancestral corals eventually causes them to be shaped into armor, so as to continue to allow them to be worn. Particularly large ancestral corals confer significant prestige. When their size eventually renders this untenable the corals are carefully broken into multiple pieces and distributed amongst a family for the process to repeat.

Languages

Nearly all Angareza speak Hikunza, the language of the locathah of the Wounds. Their constant travels and interactions with other locathah bands and settlements means that their dialects do not have a particularly great level of divergence. It is also not atypical for the Angareza to know Sea-Speak, Taruhmite Dwarven, or Zabarshan Elven.

Art

The Angareza encode their histories, legends, moral lessons, entertainment, and more in the form of dances, which are elaborately choreographed and practiced. Demonstrations of these dances often involve many individuals at once, all moving in careful synchrony. Unlike the Itothani and Bakari, however, they also keep oral stories like the air-breathing peoples of the Wounds do.

Music played on Angareza shell-instruments can carry through the seas for quite long distances. They use this music as a form of entertainment, especially on long journeys through open waters, as well as for timekeeping and to communicate with distant groups. They are also known to join in on whale choruses on occasion. Some Angareza, known as whale-callers, train with their instruments to the point that they are capable of bringing forth whales from distant parts of the seas to aid them.

Migration and travel

Each family, band, and tribe of the Angareza has specific routes and areas of travel through the Na-Gaesa to which they frequently return. They are in no way beholden to these, and do not restrict themselves through the concept of possessing a territory, but nonetheless often stay to these parts of the sea out of familiarity. These regions can be very large, sometimes connecting islands, archipelagoes, and reefs many thousands of miles apart.

When an Angareza band needs to rest while on the move, they gather up in waters near the surface. There half of the band forms a perimeter to keep watch, while the other half is allowed to rest. The roles switch half-way through each stop. The Angareza will make use of natural shelters when possible, but this is a luxury they often do not have on the open ocean.

The Angareza have a reputation as excellent trackers, able to follow the faintest of trails through the water. Their skills are a combination of many things, not only a strong familiarity with the currents and terrain of the Na-Gaesa Ocean but also lives spent on the alert for traces of predators of their herd-fish.

Food and agriculture

Angareza cuisine is effectively entirely based around seafood. Seaweed, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, turtles, crabs, and shrimp are core parts of their diet, but fish accounts for most of it. Unlike other locathah peoples, the Angareza do not hold restrictions on the types of fish that can be consumed, though they do respect the limitations of those who do when they find themselves in or near their settlements. As nomads, their diets are heavily dependent on what they can find in the regions of the ocean through which they travel, even if their herd-fish are effectively a constant.

While they are hunter-gatherers to a degree, the Angareza are pastoralists first and foremost. Each band tends to a shoal of herd-fish, the exact species of which varies, that they shepherd through the seas in search of good waters to let them graze or hunt. They often form symbiotic arrangements with pods of dolphins, together protecting their fish in exchange for a share. Similarly, while the Angareza are often described as using animals as mounts, and mantas in particular, their relationship is more a collaboration and less that of a rider and steed. Druids are widely respected amongst the Angareza, in large part for their ability to help facilitate these connections across species, and most bands have at least one druid at any given time.

The Angareza value freshness in their food, preferring to eat it as it is gathered or harvested, or at least very soon after, without allowing it to sit any longer than is necessary. Almost all dishes are eaten with raw ingredients, though often combined and prepared in inventive ways.

Trade

Angareza bands frequently trade with those who they encounter in their travels, whether that be settled communities of Itothani or Bakari locathah, other groups of Angareza, or nomadic or sedentary surface dwellers like the Fanakara and Keleta-Ru. Their constantly itinerant ways and the difficulty of transportation through the ocean means that they do not acquire many possessions, however, instead preferring to exchange for foodstuffs or other consumable items.