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Quathili

Quathili are a people that live in the Depths, around its major lakes and underground rivers, as well as in caves connected to large bodies of water that are connected with the crevices of the Underworld, their real home. They are just matter of legends on the surface and for what it regards its inhabitants, fully confused with Ilthir, therefore in most cases just unknown, confused with some odd Elves of dark skin, or also called Dark Elves.

Descendants of a group of Ilthir which remained separated from their kin due to a large cataclysmic event in the past that flooded a large section of the Underworld, and linked in caverns that lead to the oceans. As time went by, evolution ran its course and made them able to survive in their new environment, allowing them to move deeper into the waters and eventually reach the ocean.

Still mostly xenophobic like their darker cousins, the Church and religion though occupy a much more marginal role in their society, which, perhaps due to their smaller numbers, is much less structured and free, at least on the surface, while their beliefs are still of an extremely tight society, for some aspects much tighter than the one of the Ilthir.

Biology

Quathili share common biological ancestry with Elves, but more closely with the Elves of the Depths: the Ilthir, with whom they share the same adaptation to dark environments, as well as physiological aversion to light. However, adaptation played a strong role with some extra and specific changes, such as giving them some gills-like organs, making them able to remain underwater for even a few hours, characteristics that made environments such as large underground bodies of water, or coastal caves, perfect for their settlements.

​Quathili have a lifespan comparable with the one

of the Ilthir, perhaps just slightly shorter on average, and their development happens with the same speed. They are not fishes, they are mammals, so they reproduce as such and are known to be fertile with Ilthir, even if this mixing, being a heresy towards Arachnea is extremely rare and actively persecuted.

Society

The path to perfection

Quathili’s society is greatly shaped by their environment: mostly large bodies of water in the Underworld, which connect via long and mazey, often partly or fully flooded tunnels, with openings in the open sea, or with some coastal caves. The narrowness of the environments and difficulties of building in flooded caves has in time created a multitude of smaller communities, making the formation of places like the large cities of the Ilthir almost impossible, causing the population to be mostly scattered in small villages, While living most of the time in the Underworld, some of the Quathili that live closer to the surface or in deep shore caves would at times build some huts of wood brought by the sea and thatched roofs on the shores. These villages in remote islands usually seem completely uninhabited to visitors, since the Quathili would live there only at night, would be thought to be cursed

by sailors and others that would stumble upon them, for how lived yet empty they would seem. Only rarely would Quathili allow some Pale Elves to settle in these small villages as some sort of ‘cover’ for their actual town nearby.

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This allowed for complex bureaucratic and government systems not to be necessary, giving instead the place for smaller communities fully led by a single figure that would act as the only power and authority, called simplistically indeed just ‘the Authority’. Still a matriarchal society, as in hereditary and succession rules and other similar principles favor women over males, it is however not unheard of for some males being the local Authority, especially when there would be no notable female present.

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​The simple and fragmented society makes it so that nobility is also not as important as in other societies, with titles being mostly fully meritocratic and not automatically inherited, but more often the Authority would simply decide their successor. Some groups of Quathili would be more aggressive, and try to assert their dominance and influence over these other small villages around the costs, especially of regions with many islands and hidden bays where the surface navies visit only seldom, and would push at times to assault the rare and less defended mercantile ships, always sinking them or dismantling them for wood, as they would have no other use for a floating vessel otherwise.

'Egalitarianism' and Castes

The whole societal structure, more than the typically pyramidal one of other cultures and races, is mostly flat, with people mostly not being deemed more or less worthy or important.
Not only, but the openness of Quathili is so great that it is not unheard of that they would accept an Ilthir as their village’s Authority, nor they would really discriminate strongly by religion.
However, the openness and apparent egalitarianism of their society goes so far, and instead is revealed internally to being extremely closed, with people being assigned a role or at least a ‘Caste’ from birth, and unable to be accepted into any other role afterwards, unless this role would be considered a obvious worsening of their condition, such as slavery, homelessness or prostitution. Such a person would be marked for life and it would be impossible for a Quathili to ever consider them as anything more than that.
This closed view is also applied to members of other races and cultures: once they would be clearly identified as being part of a specific Caste, they would not be considered as being anything else, and even less so accepted as something different.

Economy and daily life

Quathili’s society is based mostly on a subsistence economy: every village and small town providing for itself, with commerce being almost impossible due to the underwater tunnels being often the only way connecting places, or perhaps the vastness of the ocean, on which surface they can however not linger too much or at least not openly, due to the uncontested dominance of the Humans.

Fishing and gathering corals and other resources the lakes and the sea would offer are the most common activities, and the usual cultivation of Mushrooms typical of the Depths would be accompanied by the cultivation of some species of edible algae.

The underground rivers are also a great source of profit due to how on their beds they would often be rich in gold and other crystals, albeit the latter often only in fragments. What little commerce there would be for Quathili people, this would be with their darker cousins, or with some rare, isolated village of fishermen: these small exchanges, happening mostly on some shores at night, would however remain difficult and risky.

Many Quathili would also spend time gathering any sort of object that would have fallen to the bottom of the seas, keeping them as a variety of odd ornaments to their houses or themselves, finding them to be symbols of luck and change, or even offering them to their deities. Though some of the most daring would go as far as to try and steal innocuous items from these settlements built around the sea. Similarly to Ilthir, slavery is common and less regulated, though at least for these settlements that border the surface, often their slaves would be mixed with local populations of peaceful Pale Elves in small inconspicuous fishermen villages, making the enslavement of more exotic and out of place races, such as Ogroids, rarer and risky due to them standing out more.

Philosophy and religion

Being their life so influenced by the cycles of water, even is being so close and almost dependent to their Ilthirri cousins, and while still worshiping The Weaver, Quathili developed a singular view of the deity’s ideals, especially since their religion could not focus on the superiority of the Ilthir to theirs, nor it could focus on their superiority over the Ilthir, since Quathili’s society was so dependent on theirs. Quathili’s cult of The Weaver is indeed more focused on perfection as the concept of cycles and cyclicity. Life and death, day and night, the cycles of the mushrooms, but even more so the waves and the tides. Perfection indeed was to be found in adaptability, in bending like an algae which resists any current, instead of standing and eventually breaking like a rock or tree.

Quathili also commonly worships another deity, Calipha, its cult easily coexisting with The Weaver’s, even if this would be more of a House Deity, having nothing more than small, sanctuaries, often outside of towns and of the beaten paths, definitely not having any real Temple such as The Weaver's would.


Small, daily, somewhat intimate rituals especially practiced by Quathili are for instance the "Sea Whispers": fears, worries, sorrows and anything that might troubling, but also at times just wishes , or even small curses dictated by jealousy and other negative feelings, are whispered into a shell, which is then sealed shut, usually with wax, and buried in the sand at the bottom of a sea, or otherwise still abandoned to the waves, entrusting these thoughts, feelings or wishes to Calipha, allowing the seas to wash them away, or bring them where they should be

Apparel

​Quathili have a skin tone that varies from various scales of gray to the same grayscale but with slight blue hues to it, although like their cousins, their hair is always white. Due to this, their looks are still mostly similar to the one of their Ilthir relatives, and therefore, due to their common ancestry, still reminiscent of Pale Elves. Not being fishes, they do not have scales though for some of them, their hands and feet look like they have developed a slight membrane-like palm between the fingers. Their ears though are one of the features that most distinguishes them from Ilthir, keeping instead of their slim pointy shape, an odd shape that might remind of seahorses. They dress with light clothes usually of tonalities that remind the environments they live in, so between grey and deep sea blue, differently to the Ilthirri fashion, often preferring gold, bronze or copper to silver ornaments.

Relation with other races

The Quathili people are conscious of their closeness to the Ilthir, and even if they do not share their very structured society and focus on religion, they are their close allies and enjoy a prosperous commerce with them, even if often keeping their distance, as per the Ilthirri religious beliefs, racial separation was still fundamental.

Quathili tend to maintain decent relations with Pale Elves as well, even if not as a race, but they often would entertain relations with those lonely sailors, fishermen, or solitary souls that would happen to meet them on the shore on a starry night, or in the Darkness of their caves, after becoming familiar with them, at times even perhaps welcoming them or visiting them in their houses, at least those that were not part of any large settlement.

How to play

  • Settle near the large bodies of water in The Depths or in the shore caves around the sea, taking advantage of underground rivers and flooded tunnels to maintain a special connection with The Depths.

  • You can allow a handful of Pale Elves or perhaps Eeypai, to settle next to your shore cave, if on the surface to form some kind of ‘cover up’ village, though in The Depths you will still have to respect the customs of the Ilthir, and any surface inhabitant would be allowed only as a slave.

  • Keep to yourself or to other inhabitants of The Depths, approaching lonely surfacers (mostly Pale Elves) during the night for trade, convenience, or simple curiosity.

  • While Quathili can keep their breath for very long periods of time, they can not fully live under water, and will need to come back on the surface every hour or so, making actually settling -under- the water not possible for them. However, Quathili are all excellent swimmers and will take advantage of this when possible.

  • Slavery is normal and acceptable in any form, and very little regulated, though the ownership of some races where the presence of these people becomes a risk is in practice forbidden, as it would drag unwanted attentions.

Characteristics

  • Darkvision, Weakness to Light I (see Table of racial characteristics)

  • Languages: Vulgar Ilthirri

  • Height limits 153 to 180 cm

  • Quathili can not live outside of the Underworld or coastal caves for more than a couple of days before going permanently blind, and see quite badly in bright light, on top of getting severely sunburnt after a few hours of direct exposure to light. There is no protection from this.

  • Quathili can not ride any horse/donkey/camel by default: the Depths are an environment that does not allow the survival of standard riding animals, even less so their use as transport.

Authors: Rashan, Modwena

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