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keaaluRough notes about the Yil - just want to post what I have before I go and accidentally delete it or something stupid. :P As ever, opinions are good. Yes, some things got said twice; that's because I decided to change where I put things, and haven't got around to revising it out of the earlier/later sections.
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Yil Alignments
Yil’i – the Yil language
Yil / Yila / Yil – male, female, plural
Ivos’ai – “accursed birds”. Yil’i slang for Kiravai.
Taskaré – head of a particular clan. (From “tusker”)
Yuilka – the (former) Yil homeworld.
Match – a Yil’s current mate
Alignment – “family unit”, clan.
Musth – fertile season.
The Yil are comparative newcomers to Coalition territory; like the DuSkai, they were fairly happy staying in their home solar system, until the Kiravai came along, decided their world was a good source of mineral wealth, and forced them out. Unlike the DuSkai, who are more pragmatic and harbour little ill-will toward the Kiravai, the Yil are a vengeful, angry race and have maintained a deep-rooted hatred for their attackers, willing to abduct, abuse and kill any Kiravai they can catch.
The Yuilka year is the equivalent to 1.7 Earth years in length, the life expectancy of the average Yil being 50-55 years, but more important to all indigenous Yuilkans was the long seasonal cycle. Yuilka is a world with a significant orbital “wobble”, which has led to extreme climatic variations and a seven year long cycle between rain and drought. Life naturally adapted to the season, with mature plants “hibernating” through the drought and animals only breeding during the rainy months.
Since losing their homeworld, the Yil have become a race of nomads – travelling in Alignments, settling for only a few months at a time in various places, never filing for Coalition membership and happy to answer to no-one but each other.
Average around 4.5 to 5 feet tall. Only males have tusks – used for display or fighting. Both sexes have crests – females are shorter and usually duller than the brightly-hued males, but females often augment their colours with tattoos or make-up. (needs working in properly)
The Yil are small, vengeful species of what appears to be simian descent – looking a little like small, partially-reptilian monkeys. They are plant footed, but have small thumbs on their feet and as such walk a little “bow legged”. They have long, naked, prehensile tails, rather bristly and almost “scaly” in appearance, and certainly capable of supporting their weight if need be.
Only the males bear tusks; large and striking, these grow from their upper jaw and protrude over the lower, often making them sound “heavy”, like they are speaking around a mouthful of food. Although the tusks grow for much of a male’s life, usually stopping at late middle-age, they begin to become noticeable at the onset of puberty. Females do not grow tusks, instead having just small canines in their place.
From a distance, they look to be furry in places, but get a little closer and it is apparent that they are rather more “bristly” than soft and fluffy – not quite so spiky as a hedgehog, but certainly not soft.
The Yil live in small “family” units called Alignments – although 90% of individuals in each group may be unrelated, as illustrated below. An Alignment is usually headed by a mature male and his wife (or two – “harems” for either sex are not frowned against), this male being known as the taskaré, and it is he that makes the final decision on where to travel, where to stay, who to permit into the group, who to eject from the group, and so on.
Alignments form and disband regularly – a Yila may find a suitable “Match” to sire her young, and will usually remain with him for the duration of her Musth, but once her eggs have hatched the pair may split and go their separate ways. (Only 25% of Yil remain with the same partner for life. 50% will have had two to five partners during their lifetime, and a good 5% will have gone through ten or more.) If a female is slow into Musth, for instance, her Match will often leave to find a new partner; if a male is unsatisfactory, his female may go her own way.
As a general rule, partners are taken from other Alignments when the groups meet. Thus, any given Alignment may consist of totally unrelated males and females that have simply remained together when a former partner has moved out. Children obviously move with their parents (90% of the time remaining with the female) but this is usually the only time an Alignment is a stable unit (and often because females come into Musth together). If there are no children, it is common for individuals to move between clans on a regular basis (some individuals move every time they contact a new Alignment, provided they’re welcomed).
Whether related or not, most “unmatched” Yil refer to each other as siblings – it just makes life easier.
A Yila will first become fertile (be “in Musth”) around her ninth to eleventh year, and will come into Musth on average every seven years for the rest of her life. Becoming fertile late is seen as a bad thing.
They have only six or seven periods in their entire life when they are fertile – their homeworld had a very long cycle of rain-drought, and the species evolved such that they’d be most likely to have children coinciding with the rains. (Similar to the way some species evolved such that they have their offspring in the spring, when there’s plenty of new life about.)
The Yil were once communal nesters, in a safety-in-numbers way – they have a system of delayed development after an ova is fertilised, and as such it was typical for females to synchronise egg-laying. Pheromones informed social groups of females of the breeding status of their “sisters”, and close friends would all nest together, taking turns tending the eggs while their sisters bathed and ate and socialised. As their society grew more technological, they grew more warlike, and an unfortunate side-effect of the once-beneficial communal nesting was competition for nest-sites. Modern females are content to fight tooth and nail for a suitable place to lay, especially when heavily “pregnant”; “miscarriage” is not an uncommon occurrence if a stronger female attacks a weaker one for a prime nesting spot.
Notes
The entire Yil species stemmed from a single line in a story – one character threatening another that if he didn’t stop “misbehaving” (read: trying to escape), she’d hand him over to the Yil. At that point in time I had no real idea what they looked like – I think in my mind’s eye I saw something tall and skinny and almost ghoulish.
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Still pondering over the whole RPG idea, too, thanks to Techno seeding the idea in my brain. GRR! Thinking over rules and places and stuff, might post it later to get THOUGHTSNESS on.
Yej.
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Yil Alignments
Yil’i – the Yil language
Yil / Yila / Yil – male, female, plural
Ivos’ai – “accursed birds”. Yil’i slang for Kiravai.
Taskaré – head of a particular clan. (From “tusker”)
Yuilka – the (former) Yil homeworld.
Match – a Yil’s current mate
Alignment – “family unit”, clan.
Musth – fertile season.
The Yil are comparative newcomers to Coalition territory; like the DuSkai, they were fairly happy staying in their home solar system, until the Kiravai came along, decided their world was a good source of mineral wealth, and forced them out. Unlike the DuSkai, who are more pragmatic and harbour little ill-will toward the Kiravai, the Yil are a vengeful, angry race and have maintained a deep-rooted hatred for their attackers, willing to abduct, abuse and kill any Kiravai they can catch.
The Yuilka year is the equivalent to 1.7 Earth years in length, the life expectancy of the average Yil being 50-55 years, but more important to all indigenous Yuilkans was the long seasonal cycle. Yuilka is a world with a significant orbital “wobble”, which has led to extreme climatic variations and a seven year long cycle between rain and drought. Life naturally adapted to the season, with mature plants “hibernating” through the drought and animals only breeding during the rainy months.
Since losing their homeworld, the Yil have become a race of nomads – travelling in Alignments, settling for only a few months at a time in various places, never filing for Coalition membership and happy to answer to no-one but each other.
Average around 4.5 to 5 feet tall. Only males have tusks – used for display or fighting. Both sexes have crests – females are shorter and usually duller than the brightly-hued males, but females often augment their colours with tattoos or make-up. (needs working in properly)
The Yil are small, vengeful species of what appears to be simian descent – looking a little like small, partially-reptilian monkeys. They are plant footed, but have small thumbs on their feet and as such walk a little “bow legged”. They have long, naked, prehensile tails, rather bristly and almost “scaly” in appearance, and certainly capable of supporting their weight if need be.
Only the males bear tusks; large and striking, these grow from their upper jaw and protrude over the lower, often making them sound “heavy”, like they are speaking around a mouthful of food. Although the tusks grow for much of a male’s life, usually stopping at late middle-age, they begin to become noticeable at the onset of puberty. Females do not grow tusks, instead having just small canines in their place.
From a distance, they look to be furry in places, but get a little closer and it is apparent that they are rather more “bristly” than soft and fluffy – not quite so spiky as a hedgehog, but certainly not soft.
The Yil live in small “family” units called Alignments – although 90% of individuals in each group may be unrelated, as illustrated below. An Alignment is usually headed by a mature male and his wife (or two – “harems” for either sex are not frowned against), this male being known as the taskaré, and it is he that makes the final decision on where to travel, where to stay, who to permit into the group, who to eject from the group, and so on.
Alignments form and disband regularly – a Yila may find a suitable “Match” to sire her young, and will usually remain with him for the duration of her Musth, but once her eggs have hatched the pair may split and go their separate ways. (Only 25% of Yil remain with the same partner for life. 50% will have had two to five partners during their lifetime, and a good 5% will have gone through ten or more.) If a female is slow into Musth, for instance, her Match will often leave to find a new partner; if a male is unsatisfactory, his female may go her own way.
As a general rule, partners are taken from other Alignments when the groups meet. Thus, any given Alignment may consist of totally unrelated males and females that have simply remained together when a former partner has moved out. Children obviously move with their parents (90% of the time remaining with the female) but this is usually the only time an Alignment is a stable unit (and often because females come into Musth together). If there are no children, it is common for individuals to move between clans on a regular basis (some individuals move every time they contact a new Alignment, provided they’re welcomed).
Whether related or not, most “unmatched” Yil refer to each other as siblings – it just makes life easier.
A Yila will first become fertile (be “in Musth”) around her ninth to eleventh year, and will come into Musth on average every seven years for the rest of her life. Becoming fertile late is seen as a bad thing.
They have only six or seven periods in their entire life when they are fertile – their homeworld had a very long cycle of rain-drought, and the species evolved such that they’d be most likely to have children coinciding with the rains. (Similar to the way some species evolved such that they have their offspring in the spring, when there’s plenty of new life about.)
The Yil were once communal nesters, in a safety-in-numbers way – they have a system of delayed development after an ova is fertilised, and as such it was typical for females to synchronise egg-laying. Pheromones informed social groups of females of the breeding status of their “sisters”, and close friends would all nest together, taking turns tending the eggs while their sisters bathed and ate and socialised. As their society grew more technological, they grew more warlike, and an unfortunate side-effect of the once-beneficial communal nesting was competition for nest-sites. Modern females are content to fight tooth and nail for a suitable place to lay, especially when heavily “pregnant”; “miscarriage” is not an uncommon occurrence if a stronger female attacks a weaker one for a prime nesting spot.
Notes
The entire Yil species stemmed from a single line in a story – one character threatening another that if he didn’t stop “misbehaving” (read: trying to escape), she’d hand him over to the Yil. At that point in time I had no real idea what they looked like – I think in my mind’s eye I saw something tall and skinny and almost ghoulish.
-----
Still pondering over the whole RPG idea, too, thanks to Techno seeding the idea in my brain. GRR! Thinking over rules and places and stuff, might post it later to get THOUGHTSNESS on.
Yej.
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(no subject)
Date: 2 Aug 2006 04:53 am (UTC)Don't answer that. I find it strange that the female and plural pronouns are the same - that's bound to get confusing.. Or is Yil for a male? Not sure...
I find it interesting that they don't really see each other as siblings in the traditional sense - they live with who live for the moment, and that's about all the attachment they get. Though I'm still trying to comprehend the exact social details listed here. I'll try again when I'm more awake, sorry.
So, is the life span in earth years or their home planet (x1.7) years?
(no subject)
Date: 2 Aug 2006 08:23 am (UTC)"Yil" = male, "Yila" = female. It's like "man" - you might use "your fellow man" when you're talking about both genders. It's not that confusing. ;) And "Yil" is the plural for the same reason you don't have "sheeps", and "yils" sounds stupid anyway. :P
I need to finish off the social details anyway. :P I wrote most of this in my lunch hour.
Life span is in THEIR years - it works out to about 80 in Earth years, if I remember my workings right. I'm putting "EEs" in some pages (Earth Equivalents) to hopefully make things easier.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Aug 2006 09:48 pm (UTC)You could use "Yilia". Just a thought.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Aug 2006 08:25 am (UTC)