Hunu (ˈhu.nu)

"General - we've sighted land!"

"Thank the stars and seas! What island is it?"

"We don't know. It's not on our maps"

"Well, any land is better than drowning. We may be here for some time."

— recorded when General Belanu ša Telmun first arrived near Hunu.

Hunu is the largest island in the Nûrîka group, making up more than eighty percent of the land area in the archipelago. It holds the largest population of Xapeta in the world, and is the center of the nation of Nûrikan. The largest settlement on the island is the town of Nroubea, the capital of Nûrikan. It was originally constructed by the Telmun invaders who conquered the islands of Nûrîka some eighteen centuries ago, but was burned to the ground and rebuilt when the Xapeta overthrew the Telmuns and established their own government instead. The surviving Telmuns were then banned from the island of Hunu, and relocated to several small islands off the coast, where their descendants remain to this day.

Notable Spirits

According to the Xapeta, the island of Hunu is home to thousands of ancient spirits, collectively known as the Tamarau. These are not the ancestors of the Xapeta - their spirits descend into the sea - but are relics from a world lost to time. As the rest of the islands changed and moved on, the spirits of a former epoch found a way to gather themselves on Hunu, and then to preserve the world they knew and loved on this remote island. It was a land before the plants and animals of the modern world, and the Tamarau are the gods of species long lost to the world at large.

When the Xapeta first came to Hunu, many thousands of years ago, they found the Tamarau. At that time, the spirits were fading, as the memory of them had been lost to all but the oldest of the Dreamlands, and spirits who are not remembered will fade and dissolve into the stuff of the Dream. Knowing that they no longer had the power to reject the coming of the Xapeta, they instead struck a bargain with them. If the Xapeta would consent to learn their names and their ways, and teach them to their own children, the Tamarau would guide them in this strange environment so that they might thrive and integrate with it. They traded the purity of their preservation for the ability to continue preserving something. The Xapeta agreed, and have forged a balance with the Tamarau, aiding them in their protection of the island's unique ecosystem and keeping the memory of the Tamarau themselves alive in the Dream.