Arcus - Korlum Ethnicity

Most Arcus stand between 2.1 and 2.4 metres tall, with dense musculature that carries them smoothly over ice and through heavy snow. Their fur is pale, usually white, ivory, or soft grey, and grows thickest along the shoulders and spine, where the cold strikes hardest. Their hands are broad and powerful, each finger ending in a short, retractable claw capable of both precision carving and defence. Their faces are distinctly ursine, with short muzzles, wide-set eyes, and small, fur-covered ears adapted to retain warmth. Males and females are of similar stature, though roles vary with calling, not sex.

Young Arcus often wear the markings of their clan brushed into the fur of their shoulders using ash or riverstone pigment. Elders, especially songkeepers, may have fur braided with thin cords of bone or shell, each piece signifying a verse or ancestral name. Despite their size, their movements are careful and economical, no step wasted, no gesture frivolous. Among strangers, their stillness can be unnerving. Among kin, it is understood as respect.

Arcus decorate not with clothing, which is unnecessary given their fur, but with adornments that carry spiritual or mnemonic meaning. Neck loops made of carved stone, bone, or volcanic glass are worn during rites of passage. Beads tied near the wrist may mark the number of winters survived or battles endured. Snow-dyes, made from crushed berries, ash, lichen, and mineral pigments, are used in ceremonial markings painted directly into the fur, particularly for seasonal festivals or spirit-summons. These dyes fade gradually, their disappearance seen as a natural shedding of spiritual charge.

Elders of high standing may carry sculpted bone wind-charms that clink softly as they move, allowing spirits to follow their song. Ice-lens pendants (small discs of glacier crystal) are sometimes worn by trance-seekers, believed to focus vision inward when meditating during snowblindness. No jewellery is worn for beauty alone. Every object tells a story or holds a lineage of use.

Arcus dwellings are built for harmony with cold and wind. In Arpen, they favour shallow snow-mounds reinforced with ice blocks and packed hide, centred around a long, narrow hearth. These homes are seasonal, melted or collapsed each summer as game routes shift. In Tyros, many dwell in wind-carved caves or deep glacial hollows lined with smoothed bone. Communal shelters house entire clans, with private chambers reserved only for seers, trance-dreamers, or those undergoing spirit-healing. The hearth is sacred; to sit furthest from it is an honour for the strong and the shamed.

Villages are not permanent. They drift with season, game, and dream. Waymarkers, stone totems or dyed driftwood, signal to wandering Arcus where a clan may be found. These are never written with language, only pattern and echo-line, interpreted through clan memory. Shelter-building is a communal act, and each dwelling bears the markings of the snow-season in which it was built.

Life among the Arcus flows with the wind and the moon. Days are not ruled by clocks but by light, temperature, and the instincts of the body. A typical day may begin in silent breathwork beside the fire, followed by preparation of communal food, tool repair, or spiritual rites. Hunts are quiet affairs, carried out with reverence. Each kill is sung over and thanked, with its meat divided by need and rank. Nothing is wasted. Bone becomes carving. Sinew becomes cord. Fat becomes oil or balm. The skin, scraped and softened, may become bedding or canvas for sacred maps painted in echo-pattern.

Children are taught first by listening. Only when they can recite a story without prompting may they speak it aloud. Elders correct not with scolding, but with silence. Every act, gathering roots, tending the fire, shaping a harpoon, has a rhythm and tradition. Outsiders often mistake this for slowness. In truth, it is an intricate choreography of memory and trust. It is said an Arcus village may go an entire day with no raised voice and not once fall into confusion.

Food is life, and to share it is to honour the spirit. The Arcus diet consists primarily of icefish, seal meat, whale fat, snow-roots, and dried berry mash. During harsh winters, fermented marrow-bread and smoke-cured blubber provide energy and warmth. Communal meals are taken at dusk, around the hearth, in quiet. Eating too quickly, wasting food, or refusing what is offered are grave breaches of etiquette. Each clan has a “feast-scar” dish, a bitter or sour food eaten to commemorate famine or hardship in their ancestral memory.

Offerings are made before meals: a breath over the pot, a touch of claw to the rim, a shared memory of an ancestor who once starved so others might eat. No food is prepared without song, even if whispered. Some verses are known only to those who cook, passed down like spells to keep the hearth warm and the spirits near.

The core of Arcus spirituality lies in a form of oral animism. Every living thing, and many non-living forces, are understood to possess a breathline, a spiritual essence that may linger after death or disaster. These breathlines can be sensed by trained songkeepers or wind-hearers, whose duty is to interpret shifts in mood and message. Spirits are not always kind. Many are ancient and aloof. Offerings must be made not for favour, but to avoid insult.

There are five commonly accepted categories of spirits:

• The Deep Cold: Spirits of stillness, hunger, and death. Feared but respected. Associated with crevasses, white-outs, and silence before collapse.
• The Echoing Ones: Ancestral voices and guardian spirits. Heard in sleep or storm. Invoked in rites of passage and mourning.
• The Quick Wind: Trickster spirits of sudden change. Blamed for lost tools, quarrels, or shifting ice. Sometimes courted for insight.
• The Flame-Bearers: Rare and semi-mythical. Spirits of renewal, vision, or rebellion. Associated with volcanic springs, red auroras, and the courage to break tradition.
• The Listeners: Mysterious presences said to dwell in still lakes and hollow ice. Observers, not actors. Their attention is both blessing and danger.

Spirituality is rarely dogmatic. Each clan has its own variations and song cycles, and even neighbouring groups may disagree on which spirits are ascendant or appeased. Disagreement is not heresy, it is difference, and difference is a form of memory.

Unlike the Barla Korlum, who name gods with pride and drama, the Arcus name nothing lightly. Names are sacred echoes, powerful, dangerous, and not to be wasted. Most Arcus possess three names:

• The Hearth Name: Used only by family and clan. Given in infancy, tied to the breath of the mother.
• The Wind Name: Given by a songkeeper after the child’s first echo-dream or survival test. Used in formal rites and storytelling.
• The True Name: Known only to the individual and the spirits. Spoken aloud only in death-song.

To use the wrong name is a grave offence. Outsiders are usually given wind-names chosen for them. Misusing a true name, even by accident, can provoke ritual exile or demand a long appeasement quest. Names are believed to hold pieces of the soul; to speak one lightly is to scatter it.

Arcus values centre around five concepts: Memory, Restraint, Breath, Kinship, and Echo. Memory is not history in the written sense, but shared experience. Elders are not obeyed because of age alone, but because they carry more echo. Restraint is not passivity but wisdom: to know when to act and when to wait. Breath is sacred. It is not only life, but the medium through which song and spirit pass. Kinship binds the clan, and is often extended through ritual adoption or shared survival. And echo, perhaps most profoundly, is the Arcus concept of continuity. What lingers, what responds when the voice is gone.

From these values, numerous taboos and expectations arise. Taking food without singing thanks. Speaking across the body of the dead. Lighting fire with no witness. All are considered breaches. But perhaps the most severe taboo is to imitate a spirit’s voice in jest. To mock the echo is to call it closer, and few survive its attention.

While Arcus society is deeply spiritual, not all Arcus are mystics. There are sceptics, doubters, and those who walk only partway along the echo-line. But even they do not scorn the songs. To refuse to sing is one thing. To interrupt a song is another entirely. Disbelief is tolerated; disrespect is not.

Foreign religions are generally met with polite confusion. Arcus hosts may make space for an Alemni guest to light a prayer-candle, or a human to offer salt, but they rarely engage beyond courtesy. The Taro Pantheon, with its loud hierarchy and named deities, is often regarded as dangerously arrogant. Magic, especially arcana, is treated with caution, unless it is breath-bound or shaped by Rhetoric. The difference, to an Arcus, is not power but alignment. Magic must echo. It must listen.

Arcus art is ephemeral and sacred. Snow-dyes painted into fur, patterns traced in frost over bone or ice, temporary spirit totems carved from driftwood and left at storm-hollows, these are the canvases of a people who know nothing lasts. Even their songs, perhaps their most vital cultural expression, shift subtly with each retelling, evolving with the teller's breath and the season’s rhythm. This is not decay. It is living truth.

Instrument-making is considered a spiritual craft. Each bone flute must be hollowed in silence, each drum stretched only beneath certain stars. Popular instruments include the kalnak (a throat-sung bowl harp), the qaviit (ice chimes), and the tirlaq (a resonance mask used by solo chanters to alter their voice and embody a spirit’s echo). These are not performed for entertainment. They are tools of memory and reverence.

Storytelling among the Arcus is not a profession. It is a communal responsibility. Stories are told in long-form song cycles, sometimes lasting entire nights, passed between multiple singers. Some are mythic, the birth of the northern winds, the sealing of the first glacier, the taming of fire by whisper. Others are ancestral, tracing the line of breath from clan founder to present day. Still others are pragmatic: how to survive a certain kind of storm, how to tell when a seal is beneath the ice, how to test snow for safe travel.

Songkeepers are central to this tradition. Each holds dozens, sometimes hundreds, of songlines within memory, encoded through rhythm and repetition. Young Arcus are trained to recite small portions from an early age. An apprentice songkeeper is chosen only after they have sung their first counter-line: a spontaneous verse that reflects and reshapes a known cycle without breaking its rhythm. To alter a songline is not forbidden, but it is a burden. What changes must be justified before the clan.

Clothing, as commonly understood, does not feature in Arcus culture. Instead, self-decoration is achieved through fur marking, accessory binding, and posture. Body language is formalised in some clans, with specific stances or gestures used to show deference, apology, or invocation. In more ceremonial contexts, Arcus may wear shoulder-wrapped hides painted with clan colours, or corded charms bearing snow-crystals bound in seal-bladder.

Ceremonial face-markings are used during rites of mourning or change. A diagonal slash of ash from left ear to right eye means grief. A spiral painted around the muzzle indicates a vow of silence or journey of seeking. These are not decorative. They must be earned. To falsely wear a grief mark is among the most serious breaches of conduct, requiring public admission and ritual shaving of the shoulder fur.

Ritual shapes the Arcus year. Each seasonal shift is marked with a night of breathwork, song, and shared silence. The Sunfall Feast, held during the darkest night of the year, is the most sacred: a time of communal fire-building, ancestor-invoking, and dream-sharing. Each participant recounts a dream or vision from the past cycle, weaving it into the village's echo-line for the coming year. None may speak of these visions afterward, save within song or blessing.

The Hollow Walk is another major rite, performed by young Arcus seeking adulthood. It involves a solo journey into the high ice, guided only by ancestral dream-maps and star-signs. Upon return, the initiate offers a new verse to the songkeeper, one not taught, but heard while alone. The clan will vote whether to accept this verse into the shared cycle. It is said some never return. Those who do are always changed.

Interpersonal relationships are formed slowly and tend to last for life. Courtship is subtle and long, shared hunts, paired silence, or collaborative storytelling. Marriage is not formalised through contract or ritual but marked by the mutual carving of a shared object (often a tool, charm, or bowl) kept at the hearth. Should the bond end, the object is returned to the glacier, melted or broken as a symbolic return of its breath.

Friendship is considered no lesser bond. Clan ties, shared memory, and co-survival forge strong connections. Disputes are rare but not unheard of. Grievances are addressed not through argument but through counter-song, a poetic recitation before elders that retells the moment of disagreement from one’s own echo. The accused may respond in kind. Judgment is passed not on truth, but on resonance: whose version echoes truest in the hearts of the listeners.

Arpen and Tyros are the twin pillars of Arcus geography. The glacial coasts of Arpen, with their yawning fjords and labyrinthine ice caves, host numerous ancient hollows and long-standing breathlines. Clan Seli, Clan Maqar, and Clan Tovarr are among the most prominent here, often found near the coastlines where marine life is abundant. These hollows are semi-permanent, dug into cliffside shelves or protected grottos warmed by geothermal steam.

Tyros, by contrast, is a land of high ice ridges and deep sky basins. Travel is more difficult, and the Arcus there are more insular, more dream-bound. Here lie the wandering spirit-paths of Clan Ulviir and Clan Nenqal, whose seasonal movement through the uplands is governed by ancestral star patterns and ice fracture song. It is said no outsider has ever mapped Tyros fully, and those who try never return with the same eyes they left with.

While Arpen and Tyros remain their heartlands, small populations of Arcus can be found in peripheral territories and liminal spaces where their traditions can survive. A few rare hollows exist in the far reaches of Evara’s northern range, protected by treaties with nearby Varlimni tribes. These are typically composed of Arcus exiles, wandering lore-bearers, or lineages broken by storm or conflict.

The Driftkin, a term for Arcus who live alone or in long solitary journeys, can sometimes be encountered even farther afield. Though not common, they may appear in isolated mountain passes, forgotten glacial ruins, or even among secluded arcanist enclaves where their dream-knowledge is valued. Most retain their traditions even in isolation, carrying songs like lanterns through stranger lands.

The Arcus population is small by any measure. The total number is estimated to be under 70,000, with perhaps half that number in permanent or semi-permanent hollows and the rest engaged in seasonal migration or solitary stewardship. They do not count themselves by head, but by breaths remembered, a cultural census based on the number of active songlines in circulation. By that reckoning, they see themselves as neither diminishing nor growing, but sustaining a balance.

Population density in Arcus lands rarely exceeds more than a few dozen per square kilometre, with entire mountain ranges or ice-plains held sacred and left uninhabited. This scarcity is not considered a weakness but a necessity. It is said that “the more who gather, the less the wind can speak.” Their territories are not ruled or patrolled, but watched. Any who enter may be observed for days before being approached, if at all.