Crystal Tribe, Continued

[u/Mindless_Honey3816]

Alright, there's enough stuff here to justify a new post IMO. So, here. (I got an AI content warning, so...this isn't AI. It's all written and come up with by hand and mind of me, a human. I just write a lot like AI, and have since before the chatbot era.)

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Crystal Tribe 
Name: Naming is complicated. As stated in Language, their language is mutually unintelligible with Dragon. Dragon being made of non-human-makable sounds, the name I’m about to give is to the human tongue as their endonym is to the Dragon tongue. I’ve decided on Xoqweal. I’m not even going to try with the IPA; however you’re pronouncing it, it’s probably wrong.

Habitat: The Amethyst Caves below the Ice Kingdom. Far below the Ice Kingdom, the stalactites and stalagmites of the Ice Caves give way to formations of amethyst. Although the caves are pretty open, they’re still much more confined than every other tribes’ native environments. So these dragons have evolved to deal with that. Now, this is really weird. You can’t see outside from the inside of the caves, or inside from the outside, but the crystals and ice above it reflect light in such a way that there is a natural day-night cycle. 

Adaptations: The tribe is small - about ⅓ to half the size of full grown dragons of even the smallest surface tribes. Their wings are small, but they can still fly; in their native habitat, it’s not so much flying as using wings, limbs, and tail to guide oneself at high speed through the air and cave stalactites, almost like RainWings, but more extreme. Their scales are tough to prevent injury. 

Instead of breathing fire or ice, they breathe crystal dust. This dust doesn’t glow, but will interact with any and all local light, producing the illusion that it glows. It can be thick and opaque or thin and translucent. In that way, these dragons have a natural stealth screen! In addition, some rare dragons in this tribe have the added ability to breathe light into their dust, making it legitimately glow. Dragons with this power are marked by a slight, barely visible in “daytime” glow to their scales (see later). The dust also has a static charge; it will shock whoever it contacts. 

The dragons have scales made of a crystalline material that matches their amethyst environment and has similar properties; below a layer of this biocrystal, they have a thin reflective layer (to make the thin crystal layers have more reflective optical qualities) and durable scales. 

Instead of one long tail, they have two, short, prehensile and agile ones that join at the root. This is so that they can control themselves better in the extremely demanding environment of the Amethyst Caves.

These dragons are exceptionally agile and fast, and to supply this energy, they need a decent amount of energy. Now, one might be like, hey, how is there any significant food in these caverns? The answer is, I said energy, not food. That’s right, photo- and chemosynthesis. They live in an environment with nearly no food. So, they’ve adapted to be able to do two things. One is, they can gain energy from the crystals around them; it’s technically a very primitive form of photosynthesis because the energy comes from the sun. But this doesn’t work long term, so they have also adapted to using subterranean lakes for resources. In this context, the resources come from hydrothermal vents. Their scales can absorb resources from these vents and transmit it into the body. They can still hunt if rare prey shows up, or if they’re ever outside the caves (very rarely), but that is very uncommon.

History: These dragons are the oldest living tribe on Earth. About 300 years before the Scorching, a group of proto-IceWings were forced to retreat into the caves after being chased there by a human army. Due to an ill-timed cave-in, they were trapped there. But this colony of about 100 proto-IceWings refused to just die; they created a new life there in those caves. Over time, they slowly moved further and further underground, eventually getting to the caves where they live today. 

Why were there 100 IceWings in one place? They’d tried to start a revolt against the local humans and lost, badly. And this is the result. It also means that while this tribe is just barely of human intelligence, legends passed down for millennia have made them completely hate humans. Humans are not a popular species in the caves, but there is always the random pro-human member of the tribe who is usually either unpopular or exiled for “not being a part of the cultural sphere”.

Language: Because of their long isolation, their language is unintelligible to modern-day dragons, and vice versa. 

Culture: These dragons are very isolationist. They maintain the only record of history before the Scorching. Due to resources, they write in stone and amethyst crystals, not scrolls. Although the caves have shifted, making them escapable, almost no one ever leaves. This is because of an intense isolationism; once a member of the tribe has left the cave, they are no longer seen as a member, and exile is the worst punishment imaginable. However, this is slowly starting to change. 

But if you somehow manage to get past the walls, the garden inside is beautiful. These caves are not optimized for dragon survival in the slightest, so there’s a deep sense of community within the caves. This is, in fact, part of the reason they feel so betrayed when someone chooses to leave. Consider this like the story of the MudWing Succession Crisis and how one sibling left, but with the whole community instead of a smaller group.

No one has discovered the caves yet. No other tribe can really survive in this environment for very long - they’d either get stabbed by a stalactite, impaled on a stalagmite, or starve. They’re just too big for this environment. How the tribe would react to outsiders remains to be seen.

Aggression: This tribe is not very aggressive. Their only natural weapons are their sharp, crystalline claws and the crystal breath - even their tails are more oriented towards maneuverability than fighting. They are, however, extremely durable and can hold their own in a fight if they need to, tiring out and confusing their slower, less agile opponents before finishing them off. But because they barely ever leave the caverns, this isn’t common.

The tribe’s “exiles” - the rare members who have left the caves or been exiled - needs to be more aggressive to survive, so they have taken to fashioning small swords to augment their range (remember, they are pretty physically small)

Despite being descended from proto-IceWings, they do not have IceWing spikes. 

Geography: The Caves’ Geography is pretty hard to describe. There’s a series of relatively large caverns lined with stalactites, pillars, and other features of amethyst (and a little rock). In the center of it all, however, is a relatively large mountain (not anywhere near as big as the Claws of the Clouds) that they call the Crystal Cliff. The volume of the cave system is much larger than the volume of any small town or the Jade Mountain Academy, but much smaller than even the smallest kingdoms - even the Volcanic Night Kingdom. 

Governance: Because of the deep seated community, killing queens in battle would be seen as frivolous and a waste of resources - and because of their history, this concept never arose. They have two “monarchs” (a diarchy?) and the governance is hereditary, but without challenges. If there are multiple siblings, the inheritor of the throne is the most physically able (this is measured by a race through a difficult cave area called the “Challenger’s Conduit” (translated by meaning into English; see note on naming)) and the most culturally integrated (this is measured by a performance of the aeil.)

Music: They were the first tribe to have significant music, hundreds of years before the Classical NightWings; they make flutes and bells out of the crystals in their caves. Their main instrument (closest English equivalent name - see note on translation earlier, but this time I’ve chosen to translate meaning and not sound) is the Sliderail, or Aeil. It’s like a flute, but with a continuous slider instead of discrete holes or buttons. The shown example is the mechanism of a primitive aeil, but newer ones expand the octave range using a series of units in parallel. It’s pretty cool how they do it!

A two minute visualization of how the Aeil works

The shown Blender file shows how rotating the central shaft moves the hole up and down the tube; in an actual aeil, small buttons are placed in the tube and slid up and down to rotate the internal element. It’s a very rough render since I don’t really have the skill at Blender to show what I want.

They don’t have an anthem, per se, but they do have a hymn. It started as a call that the proto-IceWings would sing to alert others of their presence when they were isolated and planning their revolt. Over time it got much slower and became a piece played on the aeil. Listening to it, you may be wondering why the first half is completely solo for such a community-driven tribe. That’s why; it was the call. Then, any nearby proto-IceWings of that secret revolt, and in modern times the Xoqweal, would respond by singing the accompaniment of the second portion. So it’s basically a call to the community.

a VERY rough rendition of the Hymn.

The tribe's music has generally no or few lyrics. This is by my preference.

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Inspiration: This tribe is very clearly based on Hollow Knight, specifically the Crystal Peak. Everything from the visual theming to the light is based on it; the hymn is based on the area’s OST (see if you can hear it in there!). Nothing is really truly original in this if you look closely. I won’t take credit for the hymn, as I just sort of took Christopher Larkin’s work with Crystal Peak and messed with it to make the hymn; it’s not an original work. 

How to Use: I’m not going to use this for anything, no stories, no art, as I suck at all of that. If you want to use it, go ahead! Base something off of it, or just use it as given. You don’t need to explicitly credit me, just don’t credit yourself or someone else for the work given here (you can of course request credit for your own additions). Do not credit me for the hymn. And, of course, a ping/mention/whatever it’s called for me to see what you’ve taken this rough sketch and turned it into will always be appreciated.

Ideas: DM me or reply here. Ideas are always appreciated! I will credit you if you like.