Terris & Keepers

[Ruin]

Terris & Keepers

The Terris dominance lies far to the North and is mainly rugged snow-topped mountains. Those known as the Terrispeople live here, the only group of people allowed to keep any type of cultural division from the rest of the Final Empire. The Terrispeople are raised from birth as Stewards to serve the nobility. However Terris is also home to the Power of Feruchemy. Here is where the Keepers are born and raised in order to save as much information as possible.

Tathingdwen
Tathingdwen is the Capital city of Terris and is nestled directly between the two largest mountains. Although the temperature is below freezing for more than ¾ of the year, it only snows on occasion. More commonly, the ground simply freezes over, making it as hard as rock. Buildings are often kept small since the population of even the capital city is rather lacking. The roads are organized in a grid pattern, designed by the very first Terris generation in order to promote productivity and efficiency in traveling. Although there are quite a few inns for anyone traveling to Terris to request a Steward, the only other buildings besides the houses are the stores, the library and the breeding centers.

Culture
Most of the Terrismen are castrated in early childhood and trained as stewards for the Nobility. This type of oppression has taught the Terrismen to be very docile and submissive, even those who have not been castrated. The women are used in the Terris breeding programs focused in the capital city of Tathingdwen.

Terrispeople can be indentified by their unusual height, and the stewards by their shaved heads. Even the women usually stand somewhere near 6 feet and the men are even taller due to castration. Another part of the Terris culture is an insane amount of metal jewelry. This is convenient to the Feruchemists because their Metalminds will not be seen as unusual. Unusual overlapping V patterned robes is stereotypical of Terrismen as well. Those serving a Noble House will use the three house colors in their robes.

Breeding Center
In order to make sure Feruchemy is destroyed the Lord Ruler created the Terris Breeding Program. Run by Obligators of the Canton of Inquisition, Terris women are chosen for their docile personalities and lack of Feruchemical powers, they are then forced to breed with the few uncastrated Terrismen. The mothers are allowed to raise their girls but the boys are usually taken in early childhood to be castrated and begin their steward training. Somewhere around the age of forty the women are relieved by newer women and allowed to take up some kind of domestic labor such as weaving, cooking or cleaning.

Keepers
Terrismen with the power of Feruchemy are called Keepers. They are scarce and due to the Lord Ruler’s hatred of their kind they are secretive and work hard to keep their powers hidden. The Keepers’ duty is to find and store as much information in their copperminds as possible before their death. The knowledge is then passed down from generation to generation of Keepers there by “keeping” it for the fall of the Lord Ruler, when they will teach the skaa all that has been forgotten. Keeper has a particular focus that they study and search information on for example, religion, plants, chemistry, literature, poetry and so forth. However each Keeper has stored all of the knowledge that has been collected throughout time, so if even one were to survive to the Fall of the Lord Ruler, they could still pass on everything that the Terrispeople had worked so hard to collect. But while the Keepers work hard to store information, they prefer to stay behind the scenes waiting patiently for the Lord Ruler’s fall rather then working to make it happen.

The Synod
The group of elders who govern the rest of the Keepers are called The Synod and are focused in Tathingdwen. They usually number twelve and consist of Keepers who have worked hard as Keepers and are loyal to the “best interests” of the Synod (which translates into "un-rebellious and obedient"). It is the members of the Synod who decide where Keepers will go to gather information. Although the members work hard to do things in Terris such as getting female keepers into the Breeding Programs, they are rather detatched from any outside actions and are generally against Keepers taking interest in the affairs of ‘the outside’.
Note: You cannot make a Keeper who is a member of the Synod.

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