Chapter 21 – Irkan culture and history

Salandra’s eyes went wide as they entered the clearing.
Grac gave a nod, not really sure what to say.
“You mentioned that you were interested in Irkan history and our friend here is from Tas’Irkan, so I figured the two of you could chat.” Cobal said sheepishly.
Salandra spun around and hugged him. “This is beyond what I expected to encounter in my studies.” Quickly recomposing herself she walked over to Grac and held out her hand. “Salandra Fevezar, pleasure to meet you.”
“Grac, likewise.” He sat back down and Salandra took a seat on another log across from him.
“What would you like to know about? I’m not a historian of my people, but I grew up in Tas’Irkan, so I know our basic history.”
“History is documented in books and we know quite a bit about Tas’Irkan and its surroundings, although a lot of it is of course second hand information. I’m personally more interested in your culture. Who do you worship, what do you celebrate, what stories do you tell your children to make sure they behave.”
Grac smiled. “Those are all good questions, I can tell you’re serious about this.”
Salandra blushed. “Well, it’s just that I’ve been studying the culture of people who live in the Feral Wildlands for a while now, so the more well known stuff, I already know about. I’m trying to learn new things.” Her eyes lit up. “And if you can tell me anything about your knowledge of herbs and alchemy that would be even more incredible.”
“For that you’d best talk to my wife, but that’s… difficult now.” He sighed. “But I can answer your other questions no problem.”
Salandra seemed to have the sense not to pry for more information about his wife and just nodded along.
“Let’s see, let’s start with who we worship. Most of us who live in the wildlands worship Saresh, the guardian of the wilds. Some of our people pray to others of the Arpentara. I know our scholars ask Owlana for guidance regularly. Outside of the gods you would recognize as well, we also have our tribe father Mosg. He is the one that first molded our tribe out of the earth and sent us on our path into this world. He is a strong and kind god, and was the first to live in Tas’Irkan. When the city first thrived, he went on a journey of self discovery and he hasn’t been heard from since, but us Irkans believe that he’s still roaming the world, learning about himself so that one day he can come back and teach us.”
“May I ask what Mosg looks like, or what symbol is used to worship him?”
“You may.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a small clay doll. It looked a bit crude and rough around the edges. Where the eyes of the doll should be were two beautiful glass orbs that shone in different colors depending on what angle you looked at them.
Cobal and Mana had long sat down next to Salandra and Grac respectively and were intently listening along.
“This doll is what we call Irkana. Each Irkan makes their own Irkana when they are but a child. We then pray to it while a priest carefully attaches the crystal eyes to the doll. Once it is complete, we hold onto it our entire lives or until it breaks. If it breaks, an Irkan is supposed to return to his or her home to have a priest help them in making a new Irkana. There is no shame in breaking your Irkana, as they are fragile clay dolls, but there is shame in not returning home to make a new one.”
“Fascinating,” Salandra said. “I had heard of the name Mosg before, but I didn’t know what an Irkana was. Are your people named after the Irkana, or is the doll named after your people? What is the origin of both names?”
Grac chuckled. “If you keep adding questions I won’t get to answer all of them. Nevertheless, the Irkan as a people came first. Mosg taught the first Irkans how to make an Irkana. It’s our word for tiny Irkan, we add ‘a’ to a word to indicate that it’s a tiny version of something else. So it’s a tiny version of our own person. In a sense, we pray to ourselves whenever we worship Mosg. He’s a humble deity.” He gave the Irkana to Salandra who very carefully inspected it from different sides, before giving it back to Grac. “And the origin of the name Irkan?”
“As far as we know, that’s the name given to us by Mosg. Where he got the name from, we do not know. Perhaps it has a deep meaning, perhaps he just liked the sound of it. All I know is that we’ve always been called Irkans.”
Salandra nodded. “I see, I’ve never even read about Irkana. Is it supposed to be a secret?”
Grac shook his head. “No, I’m sure there are many outside of our people who know about it. Our people just spend most of their time isolated from others, so we have no real reason to share our customs much.”
“That makes sense. Are there any special celebrations you hold?”
Grac smiled. “Let me tell you about our spring celebrations.”
“There’s a beautiful river that flows through our village and ends at a waterfall. I believe it continues onward from there and ends up traveling further east. The waterfall is called Rekasha, which means ‘spirit of water’ in the old Irkan language. Lake Rekasha, which isn’t very large, is the center of our spring festival. Around the lake grow flowers that are native to the region. These flowers we call Maldela. The Maldela flower has a beautiful dark blue hue to them and when it’s time for the Rekasha spring festival we pluck hundreds of Maldela flowers and float them down the waterfall. They’ll then pool in the water at the bottom for most of the day, before eventually traveling down the river and disappearing out of the village. During the festival we eat, laugh and dance together. It’s probably not that different from most other people’s celebrations, except for the Maldela flower and the Rekasha waterfall.”
Salandra listened to every word Grac was saying, fascinated about the new things she was learning. “None of my books spoke about either of these things, are you sure it’s alright to share this information with me if my purpose is to record it?”
Grac nodded. “Like I said about the Irkana, these aren’t secrets, it’s more so that no one bothered to ask us before. I mean no one who then wanted to record this information. We’ve had many visitors throughout the years, the previous hero even spent some time in Tas’Irkan apparently.” Grac then sheepishly looked at Cobal as if he’d given away a secret.
“Don’t worry friend, she already knows about our backgrounds.”
Grac nodded. “That’s our festival, what do you think?”
“It sounds lovely, I would love to see this place for myself.”
Grac thought for a few moments. “If you want, you can come with me to Tas’Irkan once I’m done with the business that is keeping me here in Marsolin. You’re helping Cobal who’s helping me, so consider it a debt paid back.”
Salandra’s eyes grew so wide that Cobal almost worried they would fall out of their sockets. “I would absolutely love that, I’ll take you up on that offer for sure.”
Grac smiled. “Very well, then once we’re done here, we will talk about the specifics.”

Eventually the topic changed as Salandra turned her attention to Mana and asked, “what was your old world like, if I may ask?”
“What would you like to know?”
“I don’t really know, it’s hard to imagine. Was it similar to our world, or was it very different?”
“The latter. We didn’t have magic, swords and kingdoms, but instead we had countries governed through democracy.” She chuckled. “Sometimes at least. We didn’t have horses and wagons – not that they didn’t exist, but we didn’t use them as transport anymore – but instead we had trains and planes and cars. A train is a wagon that can only go on one specific road but can carry hundreds of people at once. A car is a wagon without horses and a plane is a flying tube that can carry people.”
Salandra looked to Cobal to see if she was being fooled but he smiled at her. “I’ve heard all of this before, it seems to be true.”
“Then were there no wildlands in your world?”
Mana shook her head. “Not really. There were some uncontacted tribes in the rainforests I think, but throughout the years as infrastructure got more and more complex, we explored pretty much the entire world. This had benefits but also downsides. Different cultures died out, lands were stolen and profit became paramount. People started developing tools of war that are beyond imagination and would even make your most powerful mages quiver in fear.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Salandra said. “I don’t know too much about magic, but I’ve heard stories of mages being able to destroy entire buildings with a sea of flames.”
Mana smiled wryly. “There was a weapon in our world that could demolish entire cities, killing millions of people all at once and doing lasting damage to the surrounding environment.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I wish I was. Luckily for most of us, the one time these weapons were actually used, we all decided afterwards that it was far too scary to do again and although tensions have risen high throughout the years, since different countries had access to these weapons, I’m happy to say that none have been used in my lifetime. It’s kind of nice to think that such a devastating weapon perhaps does not exist in this world. It’s comforting.”
Salandra paused for a little while. “That sounds horrible.”
“Tell me about it. Do you have any more questions for me? I’m sorry I turned it into such a dark subject so quickly. Force of habit.”
“What about animals, did you have any exotic animals or even other races that aren’t common here.”
“Not so much other races, we had humans and animals and that was pretty much it. I’ve talked with Cobal about this in the past, but we have some animals that aren’t common here and some that he’s never even heard of. I’m actually quite curious if they still exist on other continents because despite the many differences between our worlds, the similarities are common enough that I believe there might be some link between the two. But that’s a topic far too broad to broach now. One animal species that might be interesting to mention are elephants. I hear they also exist on this world, but only far to the north in the desert lands, and that none have ever been seen in this part of the world.”
“What are they like?”
“I’ve only seen them on TV or in captivity, so it’s hard to say, but I did hear a fun story that elephants think that humans are cute in the same way that we might think a puppy or a kitten is cute.”
“That somehow warms my heart.” Salandra smiled. “What’s a TV?”
Cobal perked up. “I’ve got this one. It’s like a window, but you can see something that happened somewhere else and might have even happened in the past. They use it to watch plays and shows.” He looked at Mana to see if he got it right.
“More or less what Cobal said. It’s hard to explain if you don’t have the concept of our technology, but it’s what we use for entertainment in our world.”
“That sounds crazy, so you can just watch a show from your home?”
“Yes, and you can pause it when you want, watch it back later and even rewind it a little bit if you missed something.”
“I’m still not sure if you’re messing with me.”
Mana and Cobal laughed. They continued chatting for a while before going back to town. There they did some preparations for the next evening so that they could take the following day off to relax a bit before diving head first into danger.