Scholarite

Customs

A common greeting when around this culture is a slight wave of the hand. As a greeting, those of the scholarite culture raise their arm vertically and then flick their wrist backwards as a common greeting. While in most other cultures, this is a sign of disgust or annoyance, it is a common and friendly greeting among scholarites.

Fashion

Typically, Scholarites wear clothing that is padded and warm but always ends tight around the wrists. This is to ensure that no article of clothing can brush against parchment and damage it. Athenaeum workers wear special robes to protect artifacts and prevent ink smears.

For Scholarites who are not of the mountains, it is common for them to wear fashion from other surrounding cultures.

Food & Drink

Root vegetables are the main source of food for the Scholarites who live in the mountains. They grow mostly potatoes, beets, radishes, turnips, and some herbs because they don't have fertile farmland.

Mint Tea

A common drink of the mountain scholarites. Using the mint herbs, either found in the wild or privately grown, they steep the mint leaves in heated spring water. The warm drink helps keep the cold of the mountains from seeping into their bones.

Geography

Common, general information, and history is written and stored in massive libraries known as an athenaeum. People build athenaeums throughout the world, but they mostly construct them high in the mountains.

Cities grow around Athenaeums in the mountains as people seek knowledge and rare collections. True scholarites keep the most valuable documents high in the mountains away from other cultures that might not agree with their findings.

Laws & Regulations

In the Scholarite culture, they deemed all written documentation sacred and is to be handled with care. One never knows if a piece of writing could one day become something of history and therefore should be preserved with the utmost care. Failure to show care for documents can result in prison and public punishment.

Parchment Disposal Process

The Parchment Disposal Committee will analyze and dispose of unimportant documents. Failure to do so can cause imprisonment or punishment by the Thousand Cuts technique at a public viewing.

Thousand Cuts

If found destroying any documentation without taking the proper measures of disposal, you can be publicly thrashed. They used a special whip designed to inflict tiny cuts in order to simulate receiving thousands of paper cuts. After the public thrashing, the criminal is taken to the sanitarium for treatment and then released.

Religion

A Scholarite doesn’t see religion in the same light as most other cultures. They believe in what they discover from their studies. If they can find facts leading to a truth, then they will focus on it religiously in order to prove it is true.

Single Sight Following

Scholars discovered ancient scrolls dating back to the first humans. In these highly protected and worshiped documents, it refers to the cyclops and how they used energetics to create life. This information became the seed to a religious following that claims all humanoid life is the spawn of the cyclops. And that all life has a part of the cyclops genetic makeup inside them.

Further research showed that their original findings were not completely accurate. In that, not all life was created by the cyclops, but that the mythical and rarely seen dragons came before them. It is said that Gaia, herself, created the dragons, followed by the cyclops and then the cyclops created all other life using Gaia’s power. Scholars found that dragons and cyclops had a war, splitting the world and driving cyclops mad while making dragons vanish.

Scholarites who follow the Single Sight religion see cyclops’s as holy creatures and gods. They dream of the day they can see one but fear it because of how mad they have become.

The Eye

The Eye consists of scriptures from the ancient scrolls and documents collected through history. It worshipped and seen as holy scripture. The book is the most copied book in history.

Society

The Gora originally started this culture, which quickly spread throughout the lands as more and more people searched for knowledge.

Those who have taken up the ways of this culture are referred to as an Ardent. They are seekers of knowledge and discovery. Their society dates to nearly the beginning of creation. Unfortunately, their lack of physical proof and recorded history makes that only a rumor. Scholarites are the keepers of history and the most knowledgeable in researching it.

A Scholarites word when reciting historic events is taken as truth and never questioned. Scholarites memorize important knowledge and keep it in secure vaults to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. Only high-ranking members know the history, which is passed down through generations. The secret to their memorization is the use of Chrono energetics. The information is restricted to only the highest-ranking members because of cultural traditions. With Chrono energetics, they use a technique to secure knowledge and keep it unalterable. Accessing the vaults requires extreme circumstances that the elders must approve.

Scholarites are not thieves, rogues or the like. Their training and discipline in copying manuscripts and art make them skilled forgers.

Traditions

Scholarite tradition uses Runic for all written content, as it's the oldest and most suitable language for knowledge and history. This also means that most Scholarites become fluent in Runic and use it as their native language.