House Mallental

[Duarchist 307]

Spoiler

 

 

 

⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇼⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀

 

 

The House of Mallental is a family of Almenodrim that can be traced back to the ancient elves which joined Almenor, but were not related to Sylvaen through the line of his seven sons, and who did not follow their kin to Aegis after the Great Exile. With values rooted in rigor and societal roles carved through self-dedication to the stars, sea and arts, Mallental dot their names on the shore of contemporary elvendom through their collective drive to thrive as a people – knowing of and embracing the waves coming to clean them in time.

 

 

⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃

 

 

⭒ 𓇼 G E N E S I S 𓇼 ⭒

 

The first members of the house chose not to follow their Sylvaeri kin to Aegis in the wake of the Great Exile. Instead, the three families — the Mallen, the Telaeri, and the Vallinel — journeyed forth and made landfall on a dry patch of stone and sand in the middle of the sea. They found ways to adapt survival at sea into survival on shore: instead of lumbering, they focused on carving homes out of the sandstone, forming dry, hot echoes of the grand Almenorian homes they’d left behind. Instead of gardening, they learned what currents were best to follow to find the meatiest mussels. These Almenodrim made this once little-known isle their home and entitled it Calaedon, the golden blessing, and they called themselves Mallental, golden-footed.

 

 

Iellwen Mallental – unanimously elected, a mistake that went uncontested – made of the island’s worries a flourishing enclave with a focus on forward-facing exclusivity. Centuries passed, and the island endured aa time of relative peace until Iellwen’s unexpected death left a power vacuum amongst her children. The Brother's Feud, a period of kinslaying and interfighting amongst the Mallental family, turned what once was a functioning system of governance of Calaedon into a sandmass by ill-defined borders, ideology and guerilla-conflict. The mass exodus came in waves: and each of them brought different families to other, distant shores. 

 

To this day, mystery surrounds what remains of the ancient city – the sands of Calaedon left bristling in the wind, dissolving like ash into the seas, as though Thalassa herself strived to hide the imperfection.

 

 

⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃

 

 

⭒ 𓇼 B E L I E F S  &  V A L U E S 𓇼 ⭒

 

Despite their lengthy displacement from elvendom following the Great Exile, House Mallental continues to adhere to the Sea Tenets of old Almenor. They conduct themselves with pride and honor, they avoid the temptations of voidal evils, and they uphold ancient Almenodrim traditions including blood pacts, name cleaving, and oath rings.

 

THALASSA Where the Aspects dim and weaken in a universal act of maintaining balance, Thalassa instead invokes reverence of all Almenodrim to preserve the things important to her, namely: currents, islands and the bounties beneath the waves. Most if not all Mallental follow Thalassan ideals; additionally, Illiviran Mallental have begun to adopt the practice of Duarchism, as the personification of the Sea Goddess under Aevosian ideals and their Sylvaeri kin no longer aligns with their core beliefs.   THE UNDERSEA It's believed that upon death a Mallental's corpse will turn to sea-foam and their soul will become one with the natural balance of the sea. Because of this, the Mallental conduct their funeral rites at sea, often by way of ship burial. To not be returned to the sea posthumously is nothing short of an offence, and often causes distress amongst the family of the fallen, as they believe they will not be able to reunite with their loved ones in The Undersea.

 

HEALING & COMBAT

Where injury is in no short supply, the Mallental resign themselves to habit; their taletelling knots, meant to record history, keep it alive by stitching wounds shut, often with a patterning that betrays the origins of the injury for a future Mallental doctor to discern. A Mallental trainee’s first efforts in war are always oriented towards the remedying of the trauma it brings. Only after a thorough understanding of broken ribs and sliced sinew will they be allowed to pick up a spear, and put their own body on the line.

 

Like most Almenodrim, the Mallental are renowned for their grace and agility, and they possess a nearly unparalleled prowess in their ability to swiftly and quietly traverse both water and land. They glide beneath the open sea with remarkable ease, possess a near-inherent understanding of water’s currents and undertows, and maintain nimble footwork on land, enabling them to exploit the forces of nature to their advantage. In battle, the Mallental historically favor the spear as their primary weapon.

 

 

⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃

 

 

⭒ 𓇼 C U L T U R E  &  C U S T O M S 𓇼 ⭒

 

SEA TRAVEL

Thalassa has a lost, nameless sister, some Mallental say, without ever pointing to document or scripture. They are star-crossed and far away, but in an effort to show her Thalassa a familial love they have been denied, she took to art and made of the sky a canvas. She had learned that Thalassa, water itself, would never know her reflection in the way Thalassa allows her to see her own. Somewhere up on high, she plucked the white hairs off distant suns and made a brush. The moon is her barrel of paint, waxing and waning in proportion to how often she paints sweet Thalassa's likeness into the cosmos: a notion Mallental have discovered better lets them orient themselves in the seas, with each star corresponding to an isle on her form: a mole, a beauty mark, a wrinkle. The beautiful work of a nameless, astral sister is often document in sheets of papyrus, and just as quickly discarded when modern voyagers deem them outdated.

 

STARCHARTING Starcharting is a simple endeavor primarily grounded in the belief that a starry night is simply a reflection of the sea in the same way one’s face can be reflected in a body of water, and that the stars themselves are the glittering representations of islands abroad. The wideness of the sea, coupled with a bit of luck, resulted in so-called North Stars correlated with stubborn islands that refuse to sink. It then becomes a matter of memory and the artistic settling of paints to canvases, and thus Starcharting is in truth seacharting – and the routes voyagers make according to these stars only append the mythological cannon of constellations, forming rigid links between islands for practical sailors and looping swirls for more mirthly voyagers.

INDER’TAYNA Inder'tayna are long pieces of twine, rope, or thread on which an elf adds beads, gems, shells, bones, fabric, et cetera to represent significant events in their life. A Mallental’s parent often creates the foundational cordage before birth, and the child will add to it as they grow. The trinkets that are added to the cordage are sometimes found by one’s self, but are more often gifted from friends, family, allies, and mentors. This practice became commonplace in Illivira after Mallental made landfall and shared the custom.   ALDAMEAR A traditional Mallental art form that saw use in ritual, painting and finally became a traditional, cosmetic option upon the integration to modern elvendom in Aevos, aldamear is a non-permanent tattooing dye of a deep red-orange hue scraped off the leaves of the island’s brush. It lasts only a week, and though Illivirans are culturally expected to harvest their own dye and be painted by a loved one, it is also common practice to visit an artisan dedicated to the craft.

 

⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃

 

 

⭒ 𓇼 C A L A E D I A N  L A N G U A G E 𓇼 ⭒

 

CALAEDIAN

Calaedian is a posteriori language evolved from Ancient Elven which diverged due to natural linguistic drift following the Mallental isolationism period after the Great Exile. It is primarily spoken by the Almenodrim family of Mallental, their three bloodline families, and more recently, the denizens of Illivira in the realm of Aevos.

 

GREETINGS, GOODBYES, CONVERSATIONAL BLURBS

Spoiler

Alla - informal welcome, ‘blessed be’

Amatulya - formal welcome, ‘blessed arrival’

Hara mariesse - informal hello, 'stay in happiness'

Mara mesta - informal goodbye, 'have a good journey'

Elen sila lumenn omentielvo - formal greeting, 'may a star shine on the hour of our meeting'

Elen síla mentielya melamar - formal goodbye, 'may the stars guide you through safe passage'

 

Alima amaurea - good morning, ‘good sunrise’

Alima uso - good evening, ‘good dusk’

Alima huine - good night, ‘good darkness’

Manen nalde - how are you?, ‘how to be you?’

 

Nanye mae - i am well

Nanye urra - i am poor

Nanye nyerinqua - i am sorry

Hanta - informal, thank you

Hantanyel - formal, i thank you

Nalye alatulya - you are welcome

 

Nasa - yes, ‘it is so’

Uito - no, ‘it is not’

 

FAMILY & TITLES

Spoiler

Emme - mother 
Atta - father
Hanna - brother
Nette - sister
Hest - sibling
Anel - daughter
Anon - son
Hina - child
Hest’anel - niece, ‘sibling-daughter’
Hest’anon - nephew, ‘sibling-son’
Ontar’hanna - uncle, ‘parent-brother’
Ontar’nette - aunt, ‘parent-sister’
Ontar’hest’anon - male cousin, ‘parent-sibling-son’
Ontar’hest’anel - female cousin, ‘parent-sibling-daughter’
Ontar’hest’hina - cousin, ‘parent-sibling-child’

 

NAMING CONVENTIONS

Unlike their Elven kin, the Mallental follow a structured naming convention; the ratio of consonants to vowels, and how near they sound to elements of nature and the common noises of traditional roles plying their trade betrays the wishes of a given Mallental’s parents. To name their son or daughter after themselves, a Mallental parent would use the suffixes and -ion and -iel respectively; Laether becoming Laetherion, Aellera becoming Aelleriel, and so on.

 

Prefixes: Ae-, Ael-, Aeth-, Ar-, Bae-, Bale-, Bar-, Ca-, Dae-, El-, Elen-, Elae-, Gae-, Helae-, Iel-, Ith-, Jae-, Lae-, Luce-, Mae-, Mara-, Mir-, Ny-, Rha-, Sae-, Sel-, Sy-, Te-, Thal-, Ty-, Va-, Vae-, Van-

 

Suffixes: -aen, -hawn, -iel, -iron, -la, -lera, -leys, -lora, -na, -nara, -nyra, -ra, -rea, -ren, -tari, -ther, -tii, -wen

 

Modern Mallental have 'Mallental' as their family name, denoting their dedication to the merge of the original three families, whilst also retaining the surnames of their original bloodline. Thus, names follow a binomial standard, with the bloodline name acting as a human's middle name would: Aelwen Teleari Mallental; Luceren Vallinel Mallental; Syrea Mallen Mallental, and so on.

 

 

⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃

 

 

⭒ 𓇼 P H Y S I C A L  F E A T U R E S 𓇼 ⭒

 

The look and phenotypic features of the House have remained relatively consistent over the years due to their isolationism. Mallental are tall but willowy, with narrower builds than other Almenodrim; while their complexions vary from pale to bronze shades, they almost always possess grey eyes and golden or black hair.   They prefer draping clothing in shades of teal, terracotta, and blue, and prefer gold accessories to silver. Where their Sylvaeri counterparts value jewelry and gemstones, Mallental absorb themselves in pearls, shells, and corals, often weaving them into hairstyles or attaching them to one's person. As of their entrance to modern elvendom, it's not uncommon to find a Mallental sporting piercings, nor the leather, woven textiles and hand-crafted accessories adopted from their Mali'ame neighbors.   As of the Second Age and their rejoining of modern Elvendom, the Mallental have adopted the practice of ilmyumiur: three stars across the forehead represent elegance, intelligence, and reverence for the elders and children of the realm.

 

In the vibrant tapestry of Calaedian culture, the length of one's hair is an emblem of significance intricately woven into the fabric of their beliefs, and this ideology has followed the Mallental family to Aevos. Long, flowing locks are revered amongst the family as a symbol of strength, wisdom, and spiritual prowess. Each strand tells a story, testaments to challenges faced and resilience exhibited and so in turn, the act of cutting one's hair is a solemn rite undertaken only in the face of two formidable adversaries: physical defeat on the battlefield and the conquering of one's inner demons. It is considered a great offence to have one's hair cut without permission.

 

⭒ 𓇼 T R I V I A  &  M I S C 𓇼 ⭒

Things that don't belong anywhere else!

Spoiler

Calaedian classifies colors by their brightness rather than their hues; as such, Mallental often refer to dark shades of blue, green, violet, and brown as being 'wine-dark'; light shades of blue, green, grey, and yellow are called 'bronze' or 'sun-kissed'; and orange of any hue is called 'fire-yellow'.

 

 

⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇼⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀

 

 

Spoiler

If you're interested in being part of the house and family, message me on discord at zombiefever or find me in game on Duarchist.

 

art is by joseph freely, tara bennett's 'art of avatar the way of water' book, and my own commissioned work

 

@RainbowRoad1234 @Toffee & almenodrim writers of yore for the general lore and worldbuilding info

@Evanuri for ur formatting and language help (and blatant theft)

tolkien for the quenya and teleri languages i guess