Building a Valon

Posted 8 years, 7 months ago (Edited 8 years, 6 months ago) by chiauve

Interested in joining in? Here's where you can get some help designing your Valon! Remember, this is only a guide, have fun with your Valon!

I will adjust the information in this thread as necessary, so let me know what you need or what is superfluous.

chiauve

What kind of Valon?
What kind of Valon you want will affect his personality, experience, and appearance.

Traditional Valon
Valos who have no or negligable other bloodlines in them. They make up the majority of the population and come in many varieties. Traditional Valos have pale to tan skin. Their hair can be black, brown, blond, or red, and either straight, wavy, or swoop upwards. They can have any eyecolor. They have no outstanding abilities not found in humans. The average Valos stands at around 6ft.

Haivalo
A haivalo is extremely rare and is when a Valon leans more towards his male sex over his female. He is generally more masculine in appearance and has an unstable etsera phase. Haivalo are rarely able to carry a fetus to term.
Example: Egalan

Essvalo
The essvalo are the female-leaning counterparts to the haivalo and are just as rare. They are more feminine in appearance and are rarely able to sire children.

Mosvalo
On rare occasions have the Valos received visitors from across the ocean. The Mosa are a sea-faring people descended from Kenya who have made attempts to rediscover the Americas and those able to make it have often had romantic relations with their hosts. The offspring of these Mosa have dark skin and other traits of their sire that may present themselves for several generations. The Mosvalo are found among the Atlantic and sometimes the Mexico Clans. They often have the adventurous streak of their sire that got them across the ocean in the first place.
Example: Ronan

Half-Karkans
About one-fourth of the Valos population has some karkan blood in them, and most obvious are the half-karkans. The forced offspring of the Karkan and one of their victims, half-karkans are rarely raised by their dam. They have grey skin and blank eyes that glow yellow when angered, and sometimes as they age will develop horns and spines. Their hair is either black, white, or bright red, straight or wild in type. Half-karkans are stunted in their ability to feel empathy for others. They have the telepathy of their sire and can pull forth the worst fears and memories of someone when in physical contact. They oftentimes prefer solitude. Half-karkans are found in all Clans, though most commonly in the Plains and Atlantic Clans. The Mexico and New England Clans suffer Karkan attacks less often than their nomadic kinsman and as such have less experience with half-karkans. Those who live in the cities may find themselves ostracized and can grow up paranoid and prone to lash out. This, of course, only encourages the urban Valos' opinion of the 'dangerous half-karkan'.
Example: Kaisara, Varan

Quarter-karkans
Quarter-karkans look like normal Valos save a trait or two of their half-karkan parent, more likely if the half-karkan was their dam. This may be blank eyes, strange birthmarks, or white hair. Quarter-karkans have limited telepathy, often bound to touch. Opposite their parent, quarter-karkans are known to be very warm and empathic to others.
Example: Tebric, Vamic

Any further generations from a quarter-karkan will not possess telepathy, but have a keen sense towards other people.

chiauve

What Clan/tribe is he from
Overview on the clans here.
What clan and tribe your valon hails from affects his traditions and role in society. Is he a wanderer? What kind of clothes does he wear? Can he read? What are his views towards karkan-kin? From what clan he comes answers these questions. Let's start with a chart to get things going.


1) Is your Valon nomadic or sedentary? Nomadic Valos live in smaller groups made up of a few families, everyone knows each other. Urban Valos tend to display more of a sense of individuality. The agricultural tribes are somewhere in between, people generally know who everyone is but they are not as tight-knit as the nomadic tribes. Nomadic Valos are hunter-gatherers, or follow herds. The agricultural Valos are, obviously, farmers and those closely tied to that culture. The urban Valos have a more complex society and the number of available types of jobs shows this. Urban Valos also make use of currency and have a more material-based culture. This means more artists of varying kinds.

2) Is your Valon literate? If so, this would limit them to only two tribes, and even then only certain jobs maintain the need (more on that in the next section). Most nomadic and agricultural Valos simply have no need to read, though they can count and most can do mathematics. There are always exceptions, of course, and Valos do move around and intermarry and change clans.

3) Gender roles. All this means is that certain jobs are taken by Valos dependant upon their phase. For example, in some tribes the role of hunter and warrior is only taken up while a valon is in the Haira, and he does other roles while in Etsera. Everyone rotates through their duties. Other tribes have no gender roles and anyone can do any job regardless their sex phase. Does your Valon rotate his duties or does his sex phase have no bearing on his work? Note that some jobs have no phase restrictions on them regardless the tribe, such as artisans or healers.

4) Class. Most tribes have no class, everyone is equal, though leaders are obeyed and certain duties give one a louder voice than others on certain subjects. The boat-carver's word won't have as much weight as a healer's on the matter of a sickness spreading through the tribe, for example. Urban and agricultural tribes have more complex societies and classes developed in them. If your Valon is from a classed tribe, what is his class? Is he wealthy? Important? A nobody barely scraping by?

5) What are your Valon's views on karkan-kin? The western and central tribes have larger half-karkan populations and so are used to them, but the eastern tribes have less karkan-kin among them and have developed a stigma against them. Does your Valon think nothing of karkan-kin, or do they fear them, or even dislike them? If your Valon is karkan-kin, have they grown taught to hate themselves, to be ashamed? Or are they accepted by their tribe?

6) Is your Valon religious? The older tribes, those settled in the northeast especially, retained their beliefs that one day their Progenitors would return and judge them. Those who have spread out west and southward have more or less disposed of this mentality; their past on that end no longer matters. Any other forms of spirituality varies per the individual Valon.

7) If your Valon is first-generation Mosvalo, he's most likely from Coastal, Peninsula, or Gulf tribes.

chiauve

What does he do?

What does your Valon do for a living? How does he contribute to society? What hobbies does he have? Valos in nomadic tribes have simple societies and their duties reflect that. Hunter, tanner, healer, etc. Valos from urban tribes are from a complex society and that opens up a wider range of possibilities: engineer, government official, courier, apothecary, scribe, etc. The agricultural tribes are mostly made up of farmers and their families, as well as animal breeders and trainers. There are also Valos who choose more solitary lifestyles. Trappers, traders, explorers. Some hunters travel far from home. Warriors are often sent on patrols and build a lifestyle around that. There are those who have set up and run trading posts throughout the nomadic tribes' territories, allowing easier trade as well as a general sanctuary for travelers of any kind.

chiauve

Give him a history!

This is the fun part. How did your Valon get the way he is? What does he like? Who does he like? What about his family? Give your Valon a story and set him loose on the world!

chiauve

Names

Valos names are simple: they are named after an object or idea (occasionally with an adjective) with the oppropriate grammatical ending.

-a
Follows after an object or idea, adjective+noun name combos end in this. Non-definitive.
The name Kaisara means "Red Star", Dala means "Gift"

-an
Makes a name definitive.
The name Egalan means "The Eagle", Kasan means "The Abode"

-i
Compares the person to the object, "__ like", or "as a __", makes the name a descriptor.
The name Auri means "Gold like" or "Golden", Lavni literally means "Life like" but generally means "Verdant"

-ic
The person attempts or achieves the property of the name. "To __" "Towards __"
The name Adlic means "To Victory", while Vamic means "To Innocence"

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You can use whatever you like to make your valon's name, from made-up to using a real word, but here's some known Valos words to help if you want. Note: words that end in 'a' drop it when applying a name suffix, so the word "vama" (innocence) would become "vamic", "vaman", "vama", or "Vami".

Animals
Condor - Ador
Crow - Corva
Eagle - Egal
Fish - Traut
Hawk - Van
Wolf - Ulf

Colors
Black - Ash
Gold - Aur
Red - Kai

Objects
Cloud - Nosh
Dawn - Aur
Doll - Ninan
Eye(s) - Ma
Head - Pann
Home, abode - Kasa
Pear - Per
Pineapple - Dol
Road - Rona
Sea - Haiya
Star - Sara

Concepts
Answer(s) - Tebra
Innocence - Vama
Pure, true - Vara
Song - Alura
Truth - Verita
Victory, completion - Adla
Life, living - Lavna