Species Name: Illian
Species Appearance: Illians look like humans from a distance but have several defining features which differ from humans. All Illians are born with four long ears with tufts of ear on the ends. The long ears extend three inches out from the side of the head for the big ears and two inches for the small ears. The upper parts of the ears of females curve inward and slightly down from their base to a half inch out though this is mostly from softer caritlage falling down. The second, smaller set of ears connect directly to the inner ears of the first set. Illians can slightly rotate their ears up and down to better recieve sounds. Illians also have short, hairless tails until the very tip where there is a tuft of fur a shade darker than their actual hair. Their noses are tipped with the sort of leathery nostrils that you see on a cat.
Male Illians do not grow beards nor mustaches and instead grow sideburns and elbow hair. All Illians have bushy eyebrows, though males generally grow thicker eyebrows. Males typically wear their hair in short, high ponytails on top of their typical hair cuts while females wear their hair in four long braids at the end. Males stand anywhere from five feet and four inches to six feet and two inches weigh anywhere from a hundred and sixty pounds to two hundred and thirty pounds. Females stand from five feet to five feet and eleven inches as well as weighing anywhere from a hundred an twenty pounds to a hundred and seventy pounds. Illians are born in pairs or some times triplets.
Location in the World: Illians are semi-nomadic with the occasional tribe building houses around rivers. The huts which Illians build are easily collapsable and can be set up rather quickly. Their houses are built from skins with a central support pole and skins lain on the ground.
Species History:The history of the Illians is a convoluted one. History is a verbal one for Illians and has never been allowed to be written in any form and may only be told to other Illians. Some Elders say that their people came from the southern continent across the land bridge many eons ago to Lydia. Other Elders say that their people had been on Lydia long ago, before even humans came about. The majority of nomadic Illians believe that they had come across the Erbethan Landbridge while the Illians who are stationary believe that their ancestors were born in Lydia. The one thing both sides agree on is that the early Illians were extremely violent. Tribal wars against each other were not rare and many souls were lost before they called down. The tribal wars lasted for nearly a hundred years before the tribes became more peaceful.
Though, this does not mean that the tribes didn't still war. Wars just began to happen less after the hundred years after. Marriages became often between two different tribes to lessen the tension between the tribes. Eventually, each tribe became entwined with each other in some way. Over many centuries, the Illians have become more peaceful and some have begun to turn towards a sedentary life rather being nomadic. Illians who live a nomadic life trade wood and antler carvings for grains, which are the staple of their vegetarian diet. Illians typically eat grains, berries, and fish as a part of their diet. Sedentary Illians typically grow and fish their own food but will occasionally trade for more grain if the harvesting season didn't go well.
Overall, the culture of the Illians is unknown to outsiders. Illians do not trust outsiders in their villages and those who do come to their villages to trade are required to stay outside the walls while all the items agreeded upon are gathered. All Illians are taught from birth to never harm any animals without good reason. Even the fish caught are quickly killed in the most humane way they know. The antler carvings which Illians produce are from shedings produced yearly. Illian children aren't allowed outside of their villages until the reach the age of twenty and even then, Illian children are required to travel in pairs and return after a year to determine if they will stay or leave. Those who choose to leave are allowed to come back whenever they wish but still must never tell anybody about their life before leaving. Illians typically wear clothing which is very loose fitting and thin even in the colder portions of Lydia. Light colors are typically found in their clothing and pure black is extremely rare to find. Illian males are trained how to fight from an early age so as to protect the tribe or village.
Species: Snowdrop Dragon
Name: Minim
Age: 6 months
Appearance: Despite bearing the name of 'Dragon', a Snowdrop Dragon is actually a mimicry of a dragon. Snowdrop Dragons are lizards which have a pair of leathery wings like a dragon which are capable of flight but do not grow as big as dragons nor do they have the typical scales of a dragon. Minim is no exception. She's a white-green color of Snowdrop Dragon having been born in the forested area around Juri's home. She is a mere two feet long and her wings aren't fully developed yet for long flight but they extend out a foot an a half from the tip of one wing to Minim's body. She stands at barely a foot tall. Snowdrop Dragons grow to be a mere eight feel tall with wingspans of ten feet and a length of thirteen feet at the age of two.
Equipment: Minim has a personally made set of hardened leather armor. The leather armor covers her back and underside while allowing a rather long range of motion. The leather armor also attaches at the base of the net and runs up to cover the top of Minim's head and lace behind her ears. A set of leather laces lightly over her wings with a piece of sharpened metal attached to the end facing her head for combat. The final piece of Minim's armor is a piece of leather which laces around the end of her tail and has small pieces of metal sown into the leather, sort of like a gauntlet.
Evia Persim, The Wandering Scholar
Age: 22
Gender Female
Appearance: Evia is unusual for her people for she has red hair rather than the normal blonde and brunette. Her hair is long with the ends of her braids reaching nearly the middle of her back. The tuft of fur at the end of her tail is a dark red, nearly scarlet, in color. Evia has undersized ears to the rest of people with them only extending an inch and half, from base to tip, for the first set and a half inch for the second set. Evia is taller than most people in her tribe at an impressive six feet and two inches while weighing a hundred an eighty-six pounds. Her lithe figure should not be taken as weak as the majority of her weight is pure muscle.
Armor: Evia's armor was made for her by her father before she left the village. It is a simple set of hardened leather three layers thick with each layer a third of an inch thick stitched together. All pieces of the leather were collected from the dead animals on their island who had died naturally. Evia wears a cuirass, two bracers, and two leather greaves. As part of her village's custom, Evia's armor has scales collected from fish sewn onto it giving it a blue-green coloration.
Clothing: Evia has four sets of blue, cotton shirts which lace up at the front. Her pants are made of cotton and are light green in color. She often wears a pair of gloves made from woven cotton to cover the tattoos from her tribe on her hands. Her shoes are made from wooden flats with woven cotton wrapped around them and in the form of closed-toe shoes.
Weapons: Unlike most of the females from her tribe, Evia is untrained in the use of a spear and instead uses two swords. Well, technically she uses a short sword with a two feet long blade and a sword with a with a three and a half feet long blade. Even though Evia knows how to use a bow, she doesn't actually carry one with her.
Miscellaneous Items: Evia carries everything thing she owns, excluding her swords, in a knapsack she keeps slung over her shoulder. Inside she has a thick, cotton bound book with nearly two hundred pages, twenty of which have been written on. She also carries with her a bottle of ink, three quills, and a seaweed wrapped sack of grains and fish. She also has two loaves of wheat bread with dried nuts mixed in.
Biography: Evia was not born in the normal city of her kind in Lydia. Instead, her tribe had taken their isolationism to an extreme. The Illian tribe of Hasi, which Evia was born into, had left Lydia fifty years before Evia was born to live on an island further north where they could be entirely sure their secrets would be safe. The Hasi tribe established a small settlement on the island they came to call Ilpa. Ilpa was a small island with a mountain at the northern end and high cliffs all around the island. A small river lead up to a lake between the cliffs on the west side. Further inland were forests of evergreens and plentiful amounts of deer.
The tribe settled around the lake and, with the wheat and corn seeds they had brought with them, established their farms along the river. Many fish lived in the lake as it seemed the lake was a sort of breeding place for the fish in summers. Wild walnuts and pecans grew throughout the island which the Hasi made use of by mixing it into their bread. This small, isolated society was one which Evia knew well. Her father was the chieftain of the tribe, a young Illian of thirty-two years, and her mother a cotton weaver, she was twenty-two years old. Evia never knew her mother long for she had caught a fatal illness the winter following Evia's birth.
Evia would have been raised to use a spear as most females in her tribe were if she hadn't been the chieftain's child. But, since the child of the chieftain will take over his position when he dies, she was trained in the use of swords as weapons as well as bows. She would sit through the lessons, the beatings when she failed, and the long history lessons led by her Elders. Evia was taught the rules of her people including never telling about their history nor about how she was raised on Ilpa. She was a slacker though and would often spend her time in the forests around the mountain which her tribe had come to call Ulism. It was Evia who first encountered the Snowdrop Dragons which were native to Ilpa.
Most of her tribe feared these Dragon-like creatures for they believed that they would consume them like an actual, feral dragon would have. But the snowdrop dragons were peaceful and not even actual dragons. Instead, the snowdrop dragons occasionally descended from Ulism to hunt deer, fish, and occasionally give birth to new eggs. When everybody noticed that the snowdrop dragons were peaceful, they began to accept them and realize they were not dragons. Evia had a knack for caring for snowdrop dragons and would occasionally bring fresh fish to feed to them when she could. She, of course, got in trouble for this as it often meant she was giving away fish that could have been eaten.
Like many of her race, Evia left her village when she turned twenty with her friend Limea. The pair sailed to Lydia and traveled along the coast. Evia was amazed by the beauty of the world outside of Ilpa and decided to begin writing about it. After buying a book, quills, and ink at the market, Evia wrote about everything she had seen and heard while she and Limea were outside of Ilpa. But, Limea wasn't as excited about Lydia as Evia was. Limea wanted to go back to Ilpa and stay away from the strange culture of the lydians. She would stay with Evia until they had to come back but she would only ever stay outside of cities at their camp while Evia wandered the city.
A year later, Evia had filled an entire book with the things she had found in Lydia. She handed the book to her Elders and told them that inside was everything she discovered about the people in Lydia. I was obvious to everybody that Evia had chosen to leave Ilpa not to long after having come back. So, for four months they rushed to ready supplies for Evia including a thick book and armor. During this time Evia met a small snowdrop dragon, one which she has come to call Minim. Minim was unique for she was born a white-green color unique only to a few snowdrop dragons born on Ilpa. Minim's egg had been abandoned in the forest when Evia found it and decided to raise the egg. Three weeks before Evia left, Minim hatched from her egg to meet a happy, young Illian who was more than willing to keep her.
Evia left with Minim on her shoulder and all the supplies the village had put together for her over the four months she have been on Ilpa. She left the island with only two things to tell her father, "I will come back but I will learn as much as possible about the outside world before I come back." Evia had promised her father that she would be back no matter what and that she would indeed take over the position of chieftain when she came back. So, Evia and the three week old Minim set out to travel through Lydia. She once again took to writing about what she saw and heard but added to it a study of animals and plants she found in Lydia. Nearly six months after Evia left Ilpa, she happened upon a poster calling for people to become a person's guard. Evia decided to do it simply to see what she could learn about these places she had never heard about. Not too long after, Evia arrived at Lenaya asking for directions to the Golden Guar.
Extra: Evia is a tad bit too trusting of people. As she has lived among her own for most of her life, Evia doesn't understand that most people in Lydia are likely to mislead her or trick her for coin. Because of this, Evia doesn't actually have any money with her since she spent the last of her money on a severely overpriced bottle of ink to replace her empty one.
