Sharasa
History
The Tengu were immortal beings, once, who tell of their arrival in Dheghom as being dragged into a prison and left to die. Although the gods are said to have brought them to this world for their own protection, the act of sealing them within also stripped them of their immortal nature. During the long peace of the Bloom Age, they experienced death for the first time. Terrified and horrified, their society coalesced around the imperative to reverse this fall. This great work, the Shūfuku [shoo-FOO-koo], sought to restore their lost immortality and end death for their people.
The coming of the Blood Age and Aetheric Saturation made the Tengu's magical pursuits to regain immortality dangerously unstable. The harder they worked to return their immortality, the deadlier their home became. In addition, aggressive human cultures from the coasts of northern Anterra began to raid Sharasa's shores. For the first time, in addition to the death of aging, they face violent death. Desperately, they attempted to defend themselves with their magic, compounding the effects of Aetheric Saturation.
The consequences of the paradox of magic being both their greatest strength and the source of chaos defined their slow decline throughout the Blight Age. The Shūfuku has been all but abandoned. They have become an insular, paranoid, and isolationist people who comfort themselves with tales of a past now so distant that it seems to them a lie and the only way to pursue it is to invite chaos into their home.
Today, the Tengu exist in a self-imposed exile on an island made dangerous by their own power, including an unintended rift that drew an entire humanoid army from another plane to their doorstep. Moreover, the external threat remains, as the Navtog and Navrow syndicates hunt their people as curiosities for cages. Their culture is stagnant, haunted by a purpose they were forced to abandon as they struggle to survive within a prison, living a finite life they despise.
Government
The Tengu are ruled by the Kōmonkai [KOH-moan-kye], a council of elders. This body is composed of the senior masters from each of the Ryūha [ree-YOO-hah], the great scholarly schools. Their authority is derived not from bloodline or military power, but from a combination of age and scholastic rank; the elders are revered as the living repositories of the lore of the Shūfuku. As a result, their governance is inherently conservative and risk-averse, focused on preserving the academic traditions that have ensured their survival.
Practical authority in Sharasa is decentralized. The Kōmonkai does not involve itself in day-to-day administration, convening only when a threat requires a unified, island-wide response. Governance is otherwise left to the individual Ryūha, who manage their own members and archives according to their own traditions. This system creates a government that is highly stable but also slow to react, a collection of isolated academic institutions united by a common fear rather than a common purpose.
Interesting Facts
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The Tengu culture was stunted as death interrupted their access to the memories of their elders for the first time. Millennia of knowledge was lost with each of the deaths of the first refugees. Desperately, the Tengu sought to preserve as much as they could, and now maintain vast libraries in an attempt to create a memory to replace the ones they lost.
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After the first generation on Dheghom stagnated, the Tengu instituted a duty to breed. Immortal beings have no impulse to produce offspring, but as death became a predictable outcome, the Tengu realized their lineage would soon perish. Now, pairings are arranged by the Ryūha with no marriage or emotional bonds. The stone-like eggs are then given to the geothermal springs of Sanbōkō's sanctum, where the heat accelerates a hatching process that once took centuries.
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A vestigial, wild instinct sometimes drives the Tengu to practice a form of brood parasitism, laying their eggs in the nests of large mountain birds and abandoning them. While most of these eggs fail to hatch in the wild, legends persist of wild-hatched Tengu, individuals who have survived and grown up feral, entirely outside the culture of their people.
Current Challenges
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Revivalist Schism. The centuries of stagnation and decline have broken the Tengu's cultural paralysis. The younger generations of the Ryūha argue that the passive, measured magical research of the Kōmonkai is a slow and cowardly form of suicide. These revivalists are openly restarting the high-energy experiments of the Shūfuku of the late Bloom and early Blood Ages, believing the risk of accelerating the Aetheric Saturation is worth the chance to reclaim their immortality.
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Aetheric Decay. Millennia of magical experimentation for the Shūfuku has increased the Aetheric Saturation across Sharasa. This instability has made any magical work a risk, effectively crippling the Ryūha's research and their ability to defend the island without worsening the problem. Recently, the mounting Aetheric Saturation has caused a planar breach to tear open north of Teshi. Through this rift came the Ninth Legion, a force of nearly six thousand Roman soldiers along with a retinue three times that size. Now stranded, this organized and aggressive military force has established a fortified foothold on the island.
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External Predation. The Navtog and Navrow conduct raids on Sharasa's coasts with a single curiosity in mind: the Tengu themselves. Treasured for their rarity on the world stage and their perceived exotic nature, captured Tengu are sold to decadent nobles as the ultimate status symbol: living curios to be displayed in gilded cages. Nearly any Tengu is highly sought after, but those with unique plumages can demand the largest payouts.
Ryūha of Sharasa
Tengu society is organized into four schools, or Ryūha. While all are dedicated to reversing their fall into mortality, known as Shūfuku, each school is defined by its own distinct methodology.
The Rigaku
The Rigaku [ree-GAH-koo] believe their mortality is a violation of a cosmic principle they call Ri, which is the natural order of things that was disordered when they were brought to Dheghom. To restore Ri, they attempt to grasp the nature of reality, looking to the past, present, and future, attempting to shape what was, what is, and what is to become. They use Mnemomancy to observe the past, Divination to map the flow of causality, Transmutation to alter reality, and Chronomancy to manipulate time.
The Hōsokugaku
The Hōsokugaku [hoh-so-GAH-koo] believe their mortality is the result of the gods inadvertently triggering a specific Hōsoku, or law, which resulted in the loss of their immortality. To reverse this law, they use Evocation to stress-test reality, Transmutation to alter physical constraints, Illusion to create sensors, and Stochomancy to manipulate the probabilities of the application of the laws they encounter.
The Tangaku
The Tangaku [tahn-GAH-koo] believe their mortality is an ongoing environmental deficiency, a disease caused by being severed from a vital substance in their original world that was necessary to sustain their immortal nature. To cure this deficiency, their pursuit of the Shūfuku is an alchemical one; they practice the craft of Alchemy, using Transmutation to alter matter, Evocation to control reactions, and Divination to analyze substances in their quest to synthesize a restorative elixir.
The Seimeigaku
The Seimeigaku [say-may-GAH-koo] believe their mortality is a biological disease, a dormant process of aging that was triggered upon their arrival in the incompatible environment of Dheghom. To find a cure for this decay, their pursuit of the Shūfuku is a direct study of life itself; they use Biomancy to alter their hereditary blueprint, Transmutation to reshape their physical forms, and Necromancy to understand the mechanics of death.