Also referred to colloquially as the “gulomen” or “wolverinemen”. Known
to be the most warrior-minded of the mustelid peoples, the wolverinemen
can be very fierce in battle and can turn all rabid whenever you insult
them or provoke them. While they have their own particular code of
ethics, not always understandable to others, they are generally a
honourable (if oft-foolhardy) bunch. Just like other human and beastfolk
species, they inhabit several landmasses of the known world, but always
stick to their cold, northern fringes. This to them is their ideal
environment, their true paradise on earth.
The material culture of the wolverinemen, while certainly still
pre-industrial, is fairly advanced and well developed. Though they still
use tools, weapons and even bits of armour that utilise stone, volcanic
glass, bark, antlers and bones, the ones from Aporue have a long and
distinguished history of metallurgy. Bronze tools and weapons have been
abandoned several centuries ago, and most of the contemporary ones are
made of iron and steel. But the wolverinemen are also proficient in
goldsmithing and silversmithing, which has brought them much fame. Their
simple jewellery, usually made from mundane or precious metals and
adorned with more mundane gems (malakhite, garnet, volcanic glasses,
etc.), is a well-respected and well-selling good that provides them with
a fairly solid income.
In addition to hunting, they also herd reindeer and elk, fish with
harpoons and rods (sometimes utilising simple canoes and monoxyls) and
trade with furs and bone or tooth trophies. Some tribes and polities of
wolverinemen even establish their own fur farms and fish-raising ponds
and dykes. Outside of flax growing and the occassional growing or
trading of herbs and lichens as spices for their meaty diet, the
wolverinemen don't really have a settled agriculture in the traditional
sense. The wolverinemen of other landmasses tend to be different in
customs and material culture and are often more prehistoric or archaic
in this regard.
Though wolverinemen trade with humans from near and far - especially via human channels like the nomads of northern Metsämaa - there has always been a degree of tension, friction and distrust between them and humans (particularly mining prospectors from abroad). Some other species of beastpeople don't have it easy either. It doesn't help that the wolverinemen consider most of their mustelid cousins to be “wimps and weaklings, pampered by the use of modern technology”. They tend to get along best with the sablemen, being more eager to willingly consider them friends, with human acquaintances often taking quite a bit longer to earn the trust of a wolverineman or wolverinewoman.
In terms of religion, the wolverfolk are, much like most of the sablemen and many of the human natives of the far north, still following their old religions of ancestor worship, animistic respect for the spirits of nature, and many an overblown heroic poem or song about dying valiantly in battle (or at least a tussle at the local tavern). Interestingly enough, the oldest legends of the wolverfolk speak of their ancestors once worshipping several deities, but eventually turning against them, once they learned those deities had tricked them, betrayed them and planned to enslave them. As the wolverfolk put it, "our courageous ancestors slew those false gods - they were more trouble than they were worth !". Ever since then, wolverfolk spirituality and religion has revolved exclusively around ancestor veneration and rememberance of various legendary heroes and heroines (not just warriors, but also wise and brave commoners, etc.), and showing regular respect to nature. (The animist part of their practices were at least partly influenced by some of the neighbouring sablemen cultures, who share some of these spiritual customs.)
The gulomen believe that individuals who die while heroically or honourable defending their fellow tribesmen, or even complete strangers they don't even know, will reunite with their ancestors in a mead hall of warriors in the afterlife. They also like to emphasize that all warriors (or all persons fighting to defend others) have to be honourable in mind and actions, as well as modest in attire and attitude (this explains their disinterest in overly fancy decorated armours and weapons). Whenever warbands of competing gulomen nobles and chieftains meet in battle, or said nobles and chieftains agree to a duel, warfare is often highly ritualized around the concept of honour. If the dispute is minor and an opponent is fought to a standstill or defeated honourably, the other side is expected to concede, and the two sides should then immediately make peace. A genuine war between gulomen, though rare, is a tougher thing to settle, but even there, there are cultural expectations of fighting honourably. The concept of honour extends to not harming unarmed people, whether of their own kin or strangers, and not harming women, children and the elderly. The rather ritualized nature of personal duels also allows for combatants or feuding parties to duel each other with a game of riddles, a duel of throwing axes or shooting arrows at a target, and similar.
Some wolverfolk have converted to monotheism, particularly those that
have moved to more urban and cosmopolitan domiciles, or were even born
there. Most of the Hrímlandic wolverfolk are, in contrast to their
mainland relatives, monotheists. Ironically, though the wolverfolk
resisted any attempts to force monotheism on them, they were fully
willing to adopt it voluntarily, many of them arguing there aren't vast
differences between their traditional faith and monotheism. Indeed, some
religious scholars and travelogue writers had noted already centuries
ago, that the wolverfolk's traditional religion of venerating ancestors
and various cunning and admirable heroes of legend is akin to "a
religion with saints, but without any gods". Paradoxically, this is what
contributed to the easier voluntary conversion of many wolverfolk
individuals, since they opined that the One God sounds wise and caring,
unlike their fallen gods, and the twelve Prophets and assorted saints
remind them of their folk traditions of celebrating virtuous heroes and
people of the past.
Many individual wolvermen use patronymic-style surnames, rather than
true family or clan names, utilising “-narf” as a suffix for sons and
“-núar” as a suffix for daughters. For example, the masculine patronymic
“Harvenarf" means "son of Harve”, while “Harvenúar" is a feminine
patronymic meaning "daughter of Harve”.
The native language of the wolverfolk is called Wolvertongue, or more scientifically, Gulonic.
Pieseň prisťahovalca
- the exact origins of this old folk song are shrouded in mystery, but
it's assumed it was created by the wolverinemen of northern Aporue. Some
of the human peoples living in the same regions adopted it as well,
such as the Metsämaan nomadic tribes and some of the Metsämaan settlers,
as well as some of the ancestors of the Hrímlanders. Fittingly, this
old folk song is known by some north Aporuean immigrants to Melza, such
as Skall, a rare wolverineman shopkeeper in the city.
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Skills and stealth, combat and thieving talents
Due to being a mostly rural people who don't congregate that much in
towns and cities, the wolverinemen are not known to dabble much in
organised, professional thievery. Meeting males and females of the
species who are members of thieving guilds or fellowships or even petty
gangs is exceedingly rare. Especially in a central Aporuean city like
Melza (though it is still more likely than cities of even more southern
latitudes).
When it comes to skills, wolverinemen prefer to focus on their physical
strength and natural smarts in fighting and brawling. Beware getting
into a brawl with a member of the wolverfolk, they have rather wicked,
powerful jaws with big strong teeth, plenty of strength in their limbs
and decent claws that are not to be underestimated. Annoy, provoke or
challenge a wolverineman or wolverinewoman to a fight only at your own
peril. They might easily wipe the floor with you, completely barehanded,
even if they're a whole head shorter, or even two heads shorter...
Those wolverinemen who work as merchants, shopkeepers and similar
entrepreneurs (especially in big cities abroad) might be willing to cut
deals with professional thieves. Many of them might actually be secretly
taking part in various smuggling operations.
When it comes to more new-fangled weaponry, including bombs and guns,
the wolverinemen use them rarely. They see their merit, but they tend to
stick to what they know and are comfortable with. More travelled
gulomen are more open-minded to using more modern weaponry, and more
modern tools and technologies in general.
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Autorove poznámky
The wolverinemen are also referred to as the gulomen. This other
fictional name is inspired by the real world Latin term for the
wolverine, gulo.
While it would be a bit of an oversimiplification, most of the
wolverinemen of the Aporue continent could be described as somewhat
similar to the Norsemen of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
However, they are distinctly land-bound and have little interest in
maritime matters. Their overall culture also has many parallels to the
real world's Paleoasiatic peoples and even Greenlandic Inuits.
In political matters, some of the wolverinemen have a Scandinavian-style
proto-nobility of sorts, while others use a more peasant-centered
system of governance. This latter system is somewhat comparable to
Iceland during the Icelandic Commonwealth era, with rather
democratically-styled public council meetings and rich peasants and
landowners in lieu of actual nobility. The nomadic human tribes of
northern Metsämaa who the wolverinemen share some technology and customs
with are comparable to real world Saamis, a.k.a. Lapplanders.
Similarly, the tribes of the sablemen often live in such societies,
intermingling with the human natives, and trading with the wolverinemen
in addition to humans and people of their own species.
I will say this is upfront: If you get the feeling that my wolverinemen
are a good-natured parody of the clichés associated with the "stout
barbarians from the northern wastes" stock character type... or of the
various viking-based or viking-inspired clichés in historical and fantasy fiction... you're right on the money ! ;-) Emphasis on the "good-natured" part of the sendup, as I'm not being mean-spirited about it, just cheeky and irreverent. :-) The inclusion of the medieval cover of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song
as the gulomen's supposed "barbarian folk song" is part of that
silliness. Imagine the humanoid versions of the guys seen in the gallery
below running towards you in early medieval clothing, byrnie on their
torso, bespectacled helmets on their heads, axes and swords and shields
in hand, doing battle cries with their raspy and baritone voices. Oddly
hilarious. :-D They have their seriousness, sure, but I like to think of them as comic relief that is a little too overly self-serious. ;-)
While wolverines are pretty tough and fierce animals for such small predatory mammals, they are also rather cute and endearing,
though obviously gruffer than their cousins, the martens. This goes
doubly for their humanoid derivatives in my setting too, with the
wolverinemen being honourable and hardworking and caring and patient,
but also rather comically quick to anger, lose their temper and get into
a fight (or try to provoke someone into a fight). They're the tougher,
buffer, somewhat shorter cousins of the far more common martenfolk.
Whereas the martenmen are subtle and varied in their conduct, the
wolverinemen are far more monolithic and predictable in their lifestyle.
And yet, they are still varied individuals, their society is complex.
You can often find individual wolverinemen working far away from their
typical homelands, particularly as merchants or determined entrepreneurs
of small to medium businesses. A rare few wolverinemen have even joined
governmental institutions of their adoptive homelands, or turned to a
life of professional thievery or other criminal dealings, for whatever
reasons.
If the martenfolk are something of a mustelid analogue to Bigfolk
humans, then the wolverfolk would be sort of analogous to fantasy
dwarves from most fantasy fiction, especially those dwarves that are
blatantly inspired by medieval Scandinavian culture. However, since my
setting already has dwarves covered with the Permons and their
allies/friends, the Stonie variety martenmen, with their similar
preferences, the wolverfolk are meant to reflect the "rough and tumble
elements" of the stereotypical Germanic-style fantasy dwarves, rather
than the subtle ones.
A while back, I mentioned some of the influences behind my setting and the design of the RPG I am developing for it. Well, though this is another unconscious similarity, the RPG 7th Sea had an interesting conflict
in one of its cultures, the Scandinavian equivalent. It became split
between forward-looking parts of the nation of Vendel, analogous in
their features to 17th century Sweden (and somewhat the Netherlands
too), while another part of the nation were traditionalists who wanted
to retain a more medieval, viking-esque style of life. It made for an
interesting clash in what was clearly a post-medieval setting. In my
Orbis Furum, I suppose there is a similar tension, though not as
blatant. The wolverinemen are, whether they like it or not, a bit of an
anachronism: They (and other unrelated northern natives) want to keep
living the way their ancestors did for centuries, with not much change
along the way... But my world is increasingly industrialising, headed
for modernisation, societal changes... And the wolverinemen find
themselves sticking out like a sore thumb in all of that, with their
insistence on living an unchanged life in rural villages with tribal
governments, still fighting with the same "medieval" weapons they fought
with some five to seven centuries ago. Tellingly, those wolverinemen
who defy the typical expectations of their kin and countrymen and move
abroad to trade and earn wealth, tend to embrace the changing nature of
the world, and that brings them at odds with the cosy-minded, rustic
traditionalists that make up most of their species.
Because the wolverfolk are a non-human culture, they don't really need
to conform to any single human culture from real world history. You'll
notice that, though they're quite obsessive about honour in battle and
so on, they're not all that interested in raiding or pillaging (all the
more that they're not actually keen on seafaring, preferring to avoid
swimming), nor are they interested in ostentatious armour and weapons.
The focus on celebrating various legendary-but-mundane heroes and
heroines, even those that weren't warriors, in songs and sagas, or the
veneration of ancestors who await their descendants in a mead hall in a
paradisical afterlife, is meant to be broadly Scandinavian in feel, and
yet intentionally distinct from any real northern human culture from the
real world. The ancestor worship alone, if we're to compare it to
anything from the real world, evokes more of a traditional Chinese
belief system or some of the American Southwest native belief systems.
The fairly ritualized nature of honourable duels and honourable fighting
in wolverfolk culture also evokes the ritualised honourable fighting
and subsequent peacemaking of the Maori or several Native American
cultures. As a non-historical influence, my more anthropological angle
towards the wolverfolk is not unlike LeGuin's approach to the Kargs of
her Earthsea series (part-Scandi, part-Inca in attitude, completely
different religiously), or Tolkien's handling of the proverbial mythic
concept of "northern courage", and finally, the notion of a culture with heroes ready to defeat and topple even their own deities, owes something to RuneQuest's famously wild storytelling and gameplay elements. Worthy of over-the-top music.
The hypothetical and not yet confirmed wolverinmen of the more distant
landmasses would be something of a northernly Native American analogue -
in the mold of Inuit, Yupik, Aleutians, Tlingit and Nootka.
- | - | - | -
Galéria
My hand-drawn concept sketch for the wolverfolk, a.k.a. wolverinemen
or gulomen
- tough as they are, they do smile, even if it's a cunning
smile
.jpg)
This wolverineman's ears are (somewhat amusingly) covered by his warm fur hat. Hey, in really cold weather, even his ears can get rather cold, so... He's wearing typical early medieval Scandi-style attire and footwear (not the heel-less boots, a common sight for many centuries) and is armed with equally typical arms, such as a round shield, a one-handed early medieval style sword, a seax knife, and a Dane axe (or whatever the Orbis Furum's equivalent term is, given that there are no Danes or Denmark as in our world).
.jpg)
A swordsman in a mail shirt and helmet, with a shield and seax knife in sheath.
A spearman in padded armour and helmet with a shield.
An archer with a longbow, arrowbag, seax knife in a sheath, wearing ordinary clothes and a fur hat.
What clothing and equipment the wolverinemen
would wear and utilise, for civilian and combat occassions
- | - | - | -
Demonymá
| Anglické názvoslovie | Slovenské názvoslovie | Etymológia a poznámky |
|---|---|---|
| Beastpeoples | Zveroľud(ia) | The general term for beastpeoples in Aporue and other continents of the Orbis Furum. |
| Beastman, Beastwoman, Beastmen, Beastwomen | Zveran, Zveranka, Zverani, Zveranky | The everyday terms for males and females of the various beastpeople species. |
| Wolverfolk | Rosomľud | The wolverine-like humanoids of Aporue, a less common species of beastpeoples, from the north of the continent. |
| Wolverinemen, Wolverinewomen | Rosommuži, Rosomženy | The everyday terms for males and females of the wolverfolk. |
| Gulon, Gulons (nickname) | Gulon, Guloni | The nicknames for the wolverfolk. The Slovak term for a wolverine is rosomák. The Latin name is gulo, and this is reflected in the nickname. |
| Gulos, Rabids | Gulovia, Zurvalci | The derogatory nicknames for the wolverfolk. |
| Aporueans | Aporuejčania, Aporuejci | Any inhabitants of the continent of Aporue. Equivalent of Europeans. |
| Melzans | Melzania | Demonym for people of the Melzan statelet (the country) or its capital city of Melza. |
| Melzan | Melzan, Melzanka | A male or female inhabitant of the statelet in my fictional world, or of the city of Melza that the overall monarchy is named after. |
| Cittan | Mesťan, Mesťanka | Contrast these newly coined words with citizen and townsman and občan and mešťan (same meaning in English). The Cittans / Mesťania are only the people from The City (city / mesto), the city of Melza proper. These are always capitalised. "Cittans are citizens/townsmen of Melza." / "Mesťania sú občanmi/mešťanmi Melzy." Yes, the Slovak equivalent of Cittans only differs by two letters from the real term for "townsmen". |
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Nabudúce...
Nabudúce sa pozrieme na o niečo nezvyčajnejší druh mysliacich bytostí kontinentu Aporue s výzorom humanoidnej lasicovitej šelmy. Guloni nemajú máčanie sa vo vode v láske, no nasledujúci druh to zbožňuje...
- | - | - | -
Ďalšie prehľady mysliacich druhov v Príležitosť robí zlodeja (Thick as Thieves)
- Ľudia (ľudstvo) - prehľad
- Mločniaci (Mlokoľud) - prehľad
- Ježani (Ježoľud) - prehľad
- Kuňania (Kunoľud) - prehľad
- Vydrania (Vydroľud) - prehľad
- Hraníci (Hraniľud) - prehľad
- Homárňania a Krabeni (Kôriľud) - prehľad
- Vranmuži (Vraniľud) - prehľad (apokryfný druh)
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Copyright
(C) 2014, 2021 P. Molnár & Knight-Errant Studios - Koncepty/nápady, text, skicované výtvarné návrhy,
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