Ertu race

The Ertu have been designated as the primary species of this planet
Physiology

Your average Ertu is around 6'6 when standing straight up, but are hunched over in a way that makes them only around 5'8, their wingspan is around 10’. Their legs are as a parrot's, with three toes in the front and one in the back; their feet and digits are opposable and strong enough to manipulate objects. Their torsos are muscular and human-like, but covered in small, downy feathers. In place of where a human has arms, Ertu have large, feathered wings that fold forward into a praying mantis-like position when not in use. Their head follows suit, being eagle shaped, with extra long feathers going down the back of the head. Their trademark blades are made of bone, though unlike the rest of an Ertu's skeleton, they are solid and dense; they start small at the base of the neck, continue down the spinal column where they're at their largest, and follow along the tail, where they get progressively smaller as they go towards the tip. The tail is reptilian, and covered in scales rather than feathers; the biggest blade on an Ertu extends from the tip of their tail, and the blade is about 5 inches long on average, the tail itself being 3/4 as long as the Ertu is tall.

Ertu feathers are resilient and light, allowing for some natural protection, though they're not waterproof. They're bones are solid on the outside, while the insides are spongy, and designed to absorb shock while being light enough to allow flight.

The males of the species always have grey feathers, and the females have gold; the tail scales match the color of their feathers, but the skin of their legs are always yellow. Females are slightly bigger and stronger than males, though males are generally a little more aggressive. The females lay eggs, which take around a year to hatch. An Ertu becomes physically mature at age 20. I've yet to find evidence that an Ertu has ever died of old age; the oldest Ertu I've met personally was estimated to be about 150 years old. There are legends of a warrior that has gone undefeated for three-hundred years, but it should be obvious why I'm reluctant to take that as fact

Social Structure

The Ertu have a strict hierarchy, and make their homes on mountains where the higher-ups are literally higher up. Each spot on the hierarchy is filled by a single family, from which there is one representative known as a Jetim. A family's position on the hierarchy is decided through a series of duels. These duels take place in mid-air between two Jetim, and involve daring dive-bomb attacks where each tries to cut the other using the natural blades on their back, The winner getting the higher spot. The Jetim is responsible for challenging those higher then them, defending their spot on the hierarchy from challenges, and joining the tribe for large-scale battles. The rest of the family is responsible for hunting and tending to the home.

At the top of the tribe is the Nomus, which is a highly dangerous position to be in. The Nomus leads the tribe into battle, devises strategies, handles diplomacy, and makes the decisions on things that aren't efficiently settled through combat; however, the Nomus has very few other responsibilities, and has more freedom than anybody else in the tribe. The former makes the Nomus a priority target to other tribe, and the latter makes the position highly desirable for those in the tribe.

Other than duels, the only way to change rank is through dishonorable acts, which will set you back several levels.

It should be noted that males and females are roughly equal in power and influence, and either can hold the position of Nomus or Jetim. Ertu relationships are strictly monogamous, and must be agreed upon by both parties. Adultery and taking mates by force are both dishonorable acts.

Housing and Territory

tribes claim most territory immediately upon finding it, unless already occupied by another tribe. Territory can be any piece of land, though housing is implicitly on mountains. Each tribe takes two to four mountains, depending on the size of the tribe and mountains, which are not allowed to be claimed or challenged by other tribes. Two tribes cannot occupy adjacent mountains, though there is no set required distance.

Each family, and by extension each hierarchical rank, gets a small cave in the side of their tribe's mountain in which to make a nest and store food. These caves are made manually using the blades on the Ertu's tail to carve away at the rock by whoever is going to be occupying them at the time of the cave's creation. When a family moves up or down in rank, they leave their cave to whoever is moving to their spot while taking the cave of whoever formerly held that position.

Family Life and Mating

While the Jetim of a family is doing challenges, fighting for their tribe, etc, they leave their spouse and offspring in the cave(assuming they have a spouse and offspring). The spouse is responsible for hunting, as well as tending to any eggs or offspring.

The spouse teaches offspring anything and everything they need to know as adults, which includes but is not limited to flying, speaking, hunting, tribe responsibilities, and honor. As previously stated, Ertu become able to reproduce at 20 years old, though they are neither allowed to do so nor even considered adults until they prove themselves to be mature, which may be before or after age 20.

Once they prove themselves mature, they get their own hierarchical position one rank below their parents, and are expected to carve out their own cave.

Mating is not very regulated, and may be between anybody so long as they are opposite genders, considered adult, and in the same tribe. Once you mate, you are expected to stay with that mate until death. If your mate dies, you are not allowed to choose another

Rank does not officially limit who you can mate with, though mating between individuals who are far apart on the hierarchy is rare because the lower ranking Ertu is generally seen as unworthy by the higher one, and generally raises suspicion. However, since each family gets their own rank, some distance is unavoidable, and exactly how far is socially acceptable depends on the size of the tribe. When a mate is chosen, they duel to decide the Jetim, and then both live in the Jetim's home.

The Mekolo

The Mekolo tribe

All tribes on Er'won are said to have branched off from the "once-great" Meko tribe, but the Mekolo are the biggest and supposedly most directly descended. Their first Nomus was the second in command of the Meko tribe at the time of the exile.

Mekolo tribe members believe in loyalty above all else, and act more as whole; food gathered from hunting is distributed so that those that are higher up get progressively more. A prerequisite of being a member of the Mekolo is the will to sacrifice yourself for the good of the tribe.

The Mekolo's tribe symbol is a mountain, the same as the Meko's used to be, but with a crescent moon over it

The Ekafon

The Ekafon tribe is the second largest, and though honor is important to all Ertu, the Ekafon stress it more so than the others. If you are in the Ekafon tribe and go into battle, you come back victorious, or you don't come back at all. Furthermore, doing a dishonorable act in this tribe may not make you descend ranks, it may instead get you killed.

The Ekafon's tribe symbol is an Ertu tail curled into a spiral

The Eviri and Nanoklo

The original Nanok tribe were the smallest tribe on Er'won, and were looked down upon by the other tribes. They were more practical in their practices, and dealt punishment much more leniently. While members of the other tribes place their own tribe above themselves; the Nanok tribe members looked out for eachother, but didn't put much more value on the tribe than themselves.

Following a particularly bad battle against the Ekafon (observed during the orbital observation stage of our investigation), the Nanok were split into two tribes. One side becoming the Nanoklo, and the others taking the title Eviri.

The Nanoklo tribe has much the same ideals as the original, though to a higher degree. They actively avoid fights, and seldom punish anybody as they feel that they should play it as safe as possible until they regain their former numbers.

Meanwhile the Eviri are the exact opposite. They feel the Nanok lost because they strayed too far from Ertu tradition, so Eviri fill their lives with action. They distribute food communally, with everybody getting equal amounts, and even the Ertu who aren't Jetims get a lot of fighting practice due to constant sparring.

Where the other tribes' families generally sport only three to four family members at a time(a mother, a father, and one to two offspring), The Nanoklo and Eviri tribes are pushing family sizes to the limit, the Nanoklo to rebuild their numbers and the Eviri to keep from dying out due to their lifestyle.

The Nanoklo emblem is a feathered wing, the same as the Nanok's used to be, but with a crescent moon over it.
The Eviri emblem is a cracked egg

The Otam

There are those who choose not to be in a tribe, though it is somewhat rare. These individuals are known as the Otam, which becomes their last name immediately upon losing tribe affiliation regardless of maturity. There are three notable kinds of Ertu with no tribe affiliation: the Shuyin, the Olos, and the Nenka.

The Shuyin are most often those who fell through ranks to the point of no longer being trusted by their tribe, though wish to make good of the remainder of their lives. They travel, finding others who they feel are in need of assistance, and protecting them. The Shuyin aren't generally respected, though they aren't hated either, and invoke mixed feelings by even those they protect. Shuyin must have some degree of skill, otherwise they would be killed by those they seek to protect for their bad history. You can always tell a Shuyin because they wear the tabard of their old tribe, but with a unicursal hexagram superimposed of the emblem

The Olos are the opposite of the Shuyin, they generally are those who rose through the ranks so quickly that they felt a lack of challenge, so they broke off to fend for themselves. They ally themselves with nobody, though if there's a battle going on, regardless of who it's between, they will often pick a random side to join during the duration of the battle, leaving to find a new conflict once the previous one has settled. The Olos are, with few exceptions, highly skilled, so whoever they join will be joyed by their arrival, and the opponent will fear them.

Finally, there are the Nenka. These are the ones that fell so low as to be kicked out of the tribe. They are honorless wanderers, caring not about the morality of stealing or sneak attacks, just so long as they live another day. Nenka generally start off weak, though living they way they do quickly teaches them to be ruthless. They are hated wherever they go; even Shuyin refuse to offer their protection to a Nenka.

Battles

Among Ertu, battles are, almost without exception, mid-air fights where they attempt to cut each other with the blades on their back. Sneak attacks are dishonorable and will get you executed if you're in the Ekafon, and will set you back multiple ranks with the other tribes.

While they have the intelligence to make and use tools and armor, it's usually reserved for the higher-ups(top 15 of the Mekolo and 13 of the Ekafon), and even then only used when necessary, as they consider using them to be showing your body to be incapable; though it is less disgraceful if the opponent is using them as well. The Nanoklo uses equipment a lot less discriminant

During battles against anything that isn't part of the tribe, an Ertu will wear a tabard bearing their tribe's emblem; Olos wear tabards with custom emblems into battle.

Misc

Flight Patterns

Ertu are incapable of flying backwards, however, they can do something resembling hovering, with effort. When flying long distances, they prefer to glide, though they will flap their wings to gain speed. They usually fly alone, though even in groups they do not fly in any recognizable formation, each relying purely on their own power to arrive at the destination.

Diet

Ertu are strictly carnivores, and will eat anything they manage to take down, though cannibalism will not happen unless necessary. If nobody can find anything to hunt a few Ertu will sacrifice themselves to feed the tribe. They prefer dog-sized mammals, for ease of carrying them back home while still providing a sizable amount of sustenance, however, they have been known to kill elephant sized creatures, using the blades on their tails to cut out chunks small enough to carry.

Names

Ertu have 2 names, the first of which has two parts, and the last being the tribe name

The first part of the first name is a single syllable indicating the family the individual belongs to, and is followed by an apostrophe and their given name(eg Thal'Tolusk).

An Ertu Will not get their last name until maturity, though their first names are given to them upon hatching. An example of a full Ertu name would be Kam'Lagin Eviri; in fact, that's the name of the Nomus of the Eviri tribe

Inter-Tribe Relations

The tribes are at perpetual war with each other, always squabbling over their petty differences. However, it is not entirely hostile. Once per year, the top five Jettims of each tribe meet up at a designated area to discuss anything that would be better settled outside of combat (takes place on neutral ground, no bloodshed allowed. If your tribe attacks somebody here, you can pretty much guarantee that you're going to have the entire rest of the species teaming up against you)

At this gathering is discussed anything that falls outside of individual tribes, such as laws or requests, as well as challenges. This is one of the few times when things are not decided via duels.

speech

As a result of their warrior-based society, their speech is rather undeveloped to the point that it's a wonder they even have a written alphabet, let alone that it's consistent between tribes. This supports the singular tribe origin story, and each tribe's scribe seems quite devoted, which is important as otherwise many older legends would be lost. They don't have the letters C, Q, or X; however they have single letters for TH, CH, and SH, so it actually ends up having the same number of characters as the English alphabet. Their Grammar, however, is not so equal.

They do not have prepositions or articles in their speech, and list adjectives after the nouns they're describing. They don't have plurals either. For example:
I'm going to go to the big mountain
using Ertu grammar becomes:
I go mountain big

Writings are read vertically, from the bottom up, though left to right or right to left depends on where the writing is located. Writings are ALWAYS inside a cave, and start at the cave mouth. So if, when you enter a cave, you see writing on either side of you, the writing on the left is read left to right, and the writing on the right is read right to left (and, again, from the bottom up. Each line starts at about ground level, and goes about as high as the writer could reach).

Ertu can mimic sounds, though not as easily as a parrot, due to how little they use this skill, it's been starting to die off. Theoretically, an Ertu should be able to speak any language, and some success has happened by just teaching them replacement words (Having them say "War" instead of "Waug", "Leader" instead of "Nomus", etc), though due the fact that their native tongue is so simple, combined with how little interest they have in such things, teaching an ertu to fluently speak a foreign language is, 9 times out of 10, a lesson in futility.

statues

While the Jetim is off hunting or fighting in wars, the Ertu that's left at the cave has quite a bit of free time. When not raising children, they spend a fair amount of their time carving out the cave to make it look nicer, commonly making images of ertu in battle or various abstract designs on the walls. Particularly enterprising individuals may push the back of the cave for enough to make a full sculpture, rather than just a bas relief; if you can manage to remove these statues without it breaking or you getting yourself killed, you can expect millions of dollars for selling one.

music

The Ertu have yet to come up with the concept of musical instruments, though "war hymns" are relatively common before heading out to battle, or while flying towards a warzone. Some Ertu legends are told in rhyme, likely to aide in remembering them as well.
War Hymn Audio File(With Translation)



final notes

An interesting race, and one that is more complex than it first appears. That said, compared to humans, they're rather simple. In terms of practical application, the uses for the Ertu race is disappointingly few. Their statues are extremely valuable, but it's not like they just give them away, and they don't have a monetary system either. Pretty much the only way you can get them to part with the statues willingly is by besting them in combat, though at this point the exact rules of the engagements are in development. Using a firearm of any sort forfeits the statue, though they seem fine with "classical" melee weaponry (A member of my team was allowed to used to use a machete he brought, though I doubt they'd have the same feelings about stunsticks). battles are to first blood, and similar rules follow about armor: the less you have, the more likely they'll accept (power armor is right out). I'll leave it up to the council whether or not "harvesting" these statues is worth the effort (keep in mind that the Ertu are a proud race, and in all likelyhood, not all statue-makers will even accept a duel over their work in the first place, especially if we start sending fighters over by the thousands for them). It should go without saying that the "golden goose" rule applies to the statues