~Sealnea~ - the Intelligent Monkeykind of Castrovel

Slightly shorter than the average human. They are covered in a thin coat of short fur that can be a variety of colours: from ivory to light browns, chestnuts, and gold. Despite being covered in fur, they still grow lengthy hair on their head and both males and females take considerable pride in wearing elaborate hairstyles to any social function. All have long prehensile tails and their feet are almost as dexterous and capable of fine manipulation as their hands are. Sealnea are naturally very dexterous and also have a deep-seated natural wisdom.   *

Prehensile tails. Feet have opposable thumbs.   *

Arboreal, dwelling in the great megadendra rainforests and rarely venturing to ground level.   *

Omnivorous, but favoring fruits and shoots, supplemented with small game, eggs, and larger insects.

A curious Sealnea social custom is sport-theft, wherein these people steal trinkets from each other for the opportunity of presenting them back. This may become quite involved, as thefts become pretext for more complicated schemes, diversions, and coups. However, a great deal of social prestige may be won in this matter. Unfortunately, many Lashunta do not take these thefts so graciously, which has led to many unintended feuds.   *

Cites with elected senates. Smaller clans led by elders.   *

North-Central Asana extending down along the River Hisyho.   *

The Sealnea Confederacy, consisting of six known cities, extends from Ushalashtru on the eastern shore of Lake Arasene to Kailavi and Antarda beyond the Golden Monkey Mountains, on the eastern bank of the River Ganaha (southeast of the Gulf of Parting), and Srida in the north in the Voliahu’s southeastern marches. Yet their largest and most well known city is Akadru, located at the Ganaha’s mouth where it meet Lake Arasene, and so sits not far from Than. Over the last four thousand years, the cities’ alliance has both strengthened and waned, but for one unbroken rule: whenever the Lashunta have encroached or threatened, the Sealnea cities has set aside their difference and united in deterrence. After Ofu-Laubu’s bitterly fought war, the Lashunta cities have mostly avoided confrontation, leaving the more rural clans and freeholds to set their own policies toward the Sealnea as they see fit. Additionally Sealnea freeholds exist, intermixed among Lashunta settlements, further southward along the Hisyho.   *

Complex, with agency shared by both males and femaies. Families are matrilocal, organized by maternal clans within a larger tribal structure. Both males and females participate in tribal leadership, based on geriocracy. While both males and females hunt and practice arms, a city's or settlements war-leader is typically an older, male professional warrior.   *

Relationships are highly varied. Not uncommon to have multiple lovers over one's lifetime.   *

Medieval Iron Age   *

Prior to the Age of the Thief-Queens, the Lashunta knew little of the Sealnea. While legends exist (many of them dramatic), the first documented reference comes from an account written by the Sage-Princess Kiestovel of Lea in the Twelfth Millenium, regarding an exploration of the jungles and mountains east of Lake Arasene. It describes meeting a tribe of ~Sealu-Avyru~ - ‘Wise Monkeys’, with whom her expedition had congress. Her record portrays a prehistoric, stone-age society organized into elder-ruled clans, yet whom she describes dwelling high among the megadendra tree-canopy, incidentally practicing many of the skills shared by rural Lashunta. Although these prehistoric Sealnea shared a similar veneration of milk-trees, Princess Kiestovel describes them as ‘soul-weak’, meaning a lack of psychic talent, except for select priests charged with the milk-trees’ care and ritual. The Sage-Princess bequeathed a favorable if condescending impression of these monkeyfolk, proposing they might become good candidates for civilization as subordinate clients to Lea.   Whether Princess Kiestovel’s proposal was ever enacted to civilize the ancient Sealnea remains unknown. However, the Sealnea’s oldest legends of Lashunta are less positive. They speak of fiendlike ‘tall witch-apes’ (other epithets translate as ‘Flat-Feet’ or ‘Shotalashu-Lovers’), with malevolent intent to make war and even eat Sealnea (incidental note: Lashunta generally do not eat ape or monkey meat, since their physiological similarities make it taboo, and any Lashunta community doing so would be labeled the worst savage barbarians). The contextual evidence is that, after the sage-princess’s expedition, relations deteriorated over the next eight thousand Castrovellian years (4,000 Golarion), primarily with the Lashunta clans dwelling in the Voliahu Rainforest north of Lake Arasene, and the cities on the southeast edge of the Lake, such as Than.   Roughly coinciding with the advent of the Age of the Thief-Queens in the Thirteenth Millennium, Sealnea began migrating northward and northwestward into the Voliahu Rainforest (which, according to legend, is also the Lashunta’s original homeland), possibly as a result of the turmoil following the Thief-Queens’ conquest, and bringing them into conflict with the local clans. Little details are available of both the Lashunta and Sealnea’s ebb and flow of migrations throughout this area until the Twenty-First Millennium, with the emergence of the seminal founder-hero from whom Sealnea Civilization takes its origin: Shazhaeas-Sealnearas, as he is known to Lashunta: ‘Emperor Golden-Monkey Hero’, and the Sealnea’s national deity.   That Sealnearas is a historical figure known and verified is held beyond dispute by both Lashunta and Sealnea chroniclers. However, the legends surrounding his adventures are so epicly acknowledged as canon that they outweigh and confuse the facts. While the Sealnea hold him as their founding father and law-giver, to the Lashunta he is not only one of the four great Trickster-Heroes of myth (along with Shotaviras the first Shotalashu Steed, Vulkariki the First Squox, and Elindrae the Moon God), but also an apotheosized hero-sage, worthy of veneration in his own right. Purportedly coming from a Sealnea tribe driven from the Southern Voliahu, Sealnearas traveled eastward, where he united Sealnea resistance to Lashunta incursions and drove them back. He then journeyed to Lea, where he allied with the native cityfolk and supported their rebellion against the Thief-Queens’ rump empire. Then, under confused and dubious circumstances, he provoked a war between Ofu-Laubu and his own people, including the Lauba’s invasion of not only the Voliahu but also the Sealnea’s eastern territories. Sealnearas rallied his people, until the conflict grew so bitter that Saint Yaraesa, not yet risen to godhood but already head of an important philosophical movement, interceded to negotiate the end to the violence. As part of Their successful entreaty, Sealnearas eventually went southward as Their disciple until, after several years and more adventures, he returned to his people and codified their first legal code, including the basis of the constitution that governs the Sealnea confederation to this day.   *