The Cereménti

An Introduction

The earliest record of the Cereménti /kere'menti/ comes from Ninzunalusun of Fadaχa nearly 3,000 years ago in his Populations, who calls them "a tall, thin, dark folk, who love best the sea and the twilight". This description is apt to this day, though the Cereménti have long since left the shores of modern Hercua and departed for distant lands. They are not a secretive people, but instead a solemn one. Their own legends say they were the followers of a córmol or saint, who led them to the shores and into the sea—that they were reborn from those who chose to leave, but to the sea they will return. And indeed, among the Cereménti are a number of those who are called to the Name of the Dance, which they call Cávis /'kawis/, allowing them powers of peace and deflection, turning aside swords and even bullets, and occasionally allowing them to breathe underwater as well. But for the most part, among their number are born those who follow Táras, the Name of the Whisper, who grants power not over peace but over the senses, granting them secrets and extensions of their being to other places in the cosmos.

The Cereménti are patrilineal but matrilocal; aboard one of their many ships, daughters remain onboard while sons set forth to live on other homes, passing on their lineage-name to the children they bear with their wives. Men have lineage-names, taking the surname of their father and their mother's father, but women also bear somewhere in their name the identity of the ship which birthed them, and it is by this that they are known. Men earn their keep as sailors for the captain and his wife; women need not do so, for the ship is theirs to command in peacetime.

Ships in a fleet are marked by size and ability to travel. The largest of all are the óstoha-quondalam, whence comes the Hercuan word quondal "sambuk"; these can carry up to 110 people, or twenty crew and about 90 tonnes of cargo. The Cereménti love their ships as they do members of their families, and it is very difficult not to feel that their homes are somehow alive in and of itself. (They might be.)

History

Traditionally making up the majority of the maritime trade associations on the Varafar Sea, the Cereménti monopolized the spice trade with Acarios and Zahng Kwen for centuries. Although on the plains of Hencora it was faster by far to use the river Drazál and its associated canals to transport goods, the coast offered speedy travel times that the Hercuan emperors of old paid good money for when leading campaigns abroad. (Not frequently, mind; it was believed that the sea washed away solidity and caused the empires to crumble.)

The first to interact with the Cereménti in Hercua proper were the Truzithans who lived along the rivers meandering through the near-arid grasslands of Hencora (then called Dradalu), and in the coastal regions of modern Duales, Parocel, and Cazimir.

When the Hirago unleashed the Ten Plagues upon the Empire and the Imperial government fled to the island of Coluega in 2610, there was considerable suspicion placed on the Cereménti, although in truth no ship's captain ever admitted to such a deed and it was likely the result of foreign interference or simple seclusion. (The idea that a demigod literally parted the sea for them to walk across en masse is somewhat difficult to believe, although there are stories of tsunamis perpendicular to the shoreline in Acarios and Lewidzia from around the same time which are certainly intriguing.) As a result, there was often a general ban on sea trade within the newly established Holy Land, and the Cereménti were forced to relocate elsewhere. Coluega, Lewidzia, Acarios, and Zahng Kwen all found themselves with new and quite capable population of sailors and navigators, which prompted, for example, the Zanguenese trading missions to the archipelago of Akotoya and the discovery of the Lauk-Pa Islands, and eventually the Qoldishtari colonization of Zhalyah on Ballyre.

Sartué

The legends surrounding their origins are unique, yet the legends they have given to others are more potent by far. Although the Cereménti have their own rituals that they keep to themselves, they are more than willing to share what they call Sártuhei-nim-Írta, the Dance of the Constellations (Sartué in modern Hercuan). Believing that the stars themselves are reflections of the world itself in all its forms, the Kerementi are avid charters of stars and planets, using them both for navigation and for prediction of the future. Those who follow the Whisper have been among the greatest of their astronomers.

Sartué is open to all; the spires (postomei) of the faith, great astronomy towers, are found across the Inner Sea, as far south as Coluega and as far north as Dubal. Even if the Hercuans believe them to be blasphemous, they recognize them as cades upiese, "among those who will yet see the truth", and a simple infidel's tax is more than sufficient to be able to land in their ports. The spires in Hercua tend to be small affairs, not like the great domes with some of the largest functioning telescopes in the world found on the shores of Zahng Kwen. And sailors, regardless of their faith, often pay a visit to the local spire and offer alms to the cirmoleu or astronomer-priests, and purchase from them star-charts of the highest quality. These cirmoleu also serve as political leaders for the Cereménti, interpreting the heavens, the sacred chants, and the whispers of captains and crew to glean insight on how they as a people should interact with the wider world.

And yet there is some secret knowledge of the stars that the cirmoleu keep to themselves. Stories not of mere reflections in the night sky, but of living worlds, just beyond the grasp of humanity. Of strange beings more properly belonging in a bestiary than a star chart, of enormous crabs and serpents with hands on their tails, living cities in the clouds and dark gods beyond the ken of mortals. Some have been driven mad by this knowledge. Others disbelieve it completely. One thing has been made clear, however: the world is not yet ready for these stories.

Lucialtá

The language of the Cereménti is old, still using a version of the first Truzithan glyphs and having changed surprisingly little. It uses biliteral or triliteral roots in various inversions and combinations, and is considered a sacred language, not to be touched by time or at the very least to be constantly reviewed for potential changes. They base these reviews around the mutual intelligibility of the Almaquísemes, the Songs of the Sea composed in the 11th Century LC, with the modern ship-board dialects. Often they will learn new languages to use portside, and may become more than passably fluent in them, but Lucialtá remains their primary—and holy—tongue.

Ciormintó len aspostúl pósto, len ascerú cárë, len astarú Táras.

He who has climed the tower, who has plunged beneath the waves, who has been one with the Whisper—he is not dead.