Al'ar

It’s another hot day under the sun, with nothing to do but listen to sea birds chatter and waves clap against the ship. At long last, a mountaintop pokes up from beyond the glassy horizon you’ve been watching for weeks. The ship makes its way through a loose gathering of fishing boats with their captains sprawled out on the deck. The blazing colors of dock town banners are just beyond.

Welcome to Al’ar.

The Feline Isles of Al’ar are a remote archipelago of over three hundred volcanic islands. Al’ari are predominantly feline—most are cats, and the non-cats pick up some of their traits while living there. Deep green jungles and the dark blue sea give the homeland a natural beauty that is the envy of all the Beast World.

Untouched beaches and lively dock towns come to mind when the average person hears this homeland’s name. The temperature is warm year-round; the seasons are a cycle of dry sun and harsh storms. Hurricanes pass through the southern half of the archipelago in the wet season, high winds scattering the seeds of Al’ar’s fruit trees. They scatter any unprepared cats, too.

Al’ar is about 25,000 square miles in total land area (counting islands with at least one dock town). Just over one million people call themselves Al’ari, and they live along 2,600 miles of surrounding coastline. Species other than felines and humans are a tiny minority.

Lively Docks, Unspoiled Land

Al’ari Pirhouans believe the world is a gift from the Beast Mother. They leave nature with as few permanent alterations as possible. People live in cities built on long wooden docks along the isles’ sandy beaches. Tent and hammock dwellings stretch inland, but stone structures are exceedingly rare. When islanders fell trees, they pay careful attention to replanting. They only mine the littoral caves formed naturally in ocean-side cliffs.

To avoid permanent changes to the land, the Al’ari take a unique approach to agriculture. They explore their home islands, encouraging the growth of wild crops and expansive mangroves. With care, wild-sown crops yield plentiful forage in their own time. The neat rows of farmland in Allemance and Arneria are unfamiliar to an islander, but the crop rotation and nitration techniques necessary to cultivate Al’ari forage farms are used to aid conventional farms as well.

Al’ari cuisine certainly doesn’t suffer for this approach. Root vegetables such as sweet potato and cassava are staples of their diet, accompanied by a wide range of jungle-native fruits and tuna. These foods are enhanced by robust spices unique to Al’ar’s tropical climate. Sugarcane grows on Al’ar’s largest islands, and Al’ari rum is a favorite everywhere in the world.

Sailing Home Waters

Houses in a dock city often have sparse furnishings and little storage. An Al’ari home is mainly a shelter from rain and insects. Spending more than a few daylight hours indoors attracts rumors one is hiding an illness (or a mistress). Tools, unfinished fabrics, and anything else vulnerable to the elements are the most common furnishings. The Al’ari sleep on their roofs, under open sky whenever possible. This habit follows them elsewhere, which makes them easy to spot in delver caravans at night.

Al’ari settlements are on docks, but Al’ari life is lived on a boat. The clear waters are decorated with tiny vessels, whose sails fly a rainbow of colors and patterns. A newborn Al’ari can swim before they can crawl, can sail before they can walk, and can build a boat before they can read. The shipwright’s art is a lifelong pursuit. At least once a season, boats are replaced and their old materials are repurposed. The design and decoration of each one expresses its builder’s whims and momentary fascinations.

The Al’ari Sailboat

An Al’ari sailboat is a light wooden sloop built for two people, made to glide through glassy waters and choppy tides. They can be sailed alone and stored away in a few minutes. It is a vehicle, companion, work tool, and art project. The most refreshing nap is one taken on the tide. No fish is as filling as one brought from the sea to the kitchen.

Not every Al’ari boat is a slender personal wave runner. Some families combine their efforts to build transcontinental schooners, whose wide sails and tall masts carry them to Arneria on voyages lasting six months or more. Al’ari families take season-long journeys to trade spices, textiles, and other goods with foreign homelands. The crew is usually one to three families, but sometimes a band of adventurous young friends plan their own voyages to win some new fineries to wear.

Two Homes

Al’ari settlements uproot and relocate twice a year, in a practice known as the Storm Voyage. Docks are pulled up and huge migratory ships are built from their timber. Once finished, the vessels carry everything to the settlement’s second location. The destination is usually a completely different island. The timing of this journey depends on the settlement, but all Storm Voyages follow the beginning and end of the dry season: during May or June, then again in November or December.

The Storm Voyage is borne of necessity. Al’ari foraging is at the mercy of a wild growing season, and a dock town’s migration gives the island time to recover from sustaining a large population. The migration of sea life has adapted to match these sailing patterns, which helps the Al’ari resist the complacency that leads to overfishing.

Of course, the most important reason for the Storm Voyage is in the name. Hurricanes tear across Al’ar during the wet season, which would nullify a city built on docks. The storms are more manageable along the northern islands, so every year a tide of colorful sails washes onto their beaches. The Al’ari circle their waters this way, with sails like a school of colorful fish skimming the surface.

This journey is a centuries-old tradition. Legend has it that the oldest Al’ari homes contain timber from the first Storm Voyages. The name Al’ar itself is derived from al-isar, which translates to “child of the typhoon” in Old Al’ari.

A Boulder Pushed

The semi-annual voyage and dock town reconstruction is two weeks of intense labor. From sunrise to sunset, every healthy citizen helps to build the ships. Traveling Al’ari with necessary skills are often called home for the task, and join their communities in the back-breaking effort of moving an entire city across the sea.

An Al’ari saying about the value of work goes, “a boulder pushed an inch rolls a mile.” When the Storm Voyage is finished, its maelstrom of effort subsides. Al’ar settles down into a leisurely joie de vivre. By narrowing their work to one tough month, the Al’ari earn eleven more months of easy living with the sun and sea. They spend long afternoons in casual study, walking among the mangroves, or perfecting their fishing technique.

The rhythm of the Dungeon delving life comes naturally to beasts and brethren from the Feline Isles. An Arnerian might be frustrated by its short bursts of effort and excitement, followed by months of idle inaction. For the Al’ari, it’s hardly a change in pace at all.

Pondering Time

The typical Al’ari spends hours by themselves every single day. They might spend this time pearl diving, climbing inland trees, or simply observing the rain from underneath a canopy. Grasping this alone time is an important part of understanding the Al’ari perspective on work, religion, and family. Even a flighty, chattering kitten learns the value of quiet moments of contemplation.

This thoughtful rhythm makes Al’ar a homeland of great philosophical minds. They regard metaphysics and the study of self with the same importance as mathematics or arcanist studies. Philosophers who publish insightful work enjoy privileged opportunities in Al’ari society. Long, waterproof scrolls of philosophical poetry, treated with wax and seed oil, are one of the few permanent possessions an Al’ari carries with them from year to year.

Tidal Temperament

An impermanent nature runs throughout all Al’ari culture. People wander from island to island, adopting other villages’ habits and traditions as they go. As their saying goes, “the sea is never truly still.”

Some people think centuries of isolation from other species led to Al’ar developing a culture closer to the tendencies of quiet-minded cats. Others have noticed similarities between Al’ari society and their surrounding ocean waters. Its people are inspired by both.

Feline Isle Families

"A bartender asks a group of bachelors why they want to get married. “For love,” says the Arnerian mouse. “For money,” says the Vinyotian fox. “For companionship,” says the Oric elk. “Because six is a nice, round number,” says the Alley wolf. The Al’ari tiger looks around in confusion. “What does ‘married’ mean?”
-- A Beast World barroom joke

Impermanence also helps describe Al’ar’s romantic and family values. Marriages are less common and occur at an older age than in other homelands. Settling down with a spouse before age 45 is virtually unheard of. An eligible young Al’ari drifts between paramours, with romance swelling and receding just as in a platonic friendship.

Children on the isles have a strong attachment to their mothers. Al’ari mothers are solely responsible for their children from birth to adulthood; insulting an islander’s mother is a sure way to start a nasty fight. An Al’ari child is also supported and mentored by their mother’s romantic partners. Al’ari moms are attracted to lovers who they think might be a good influence on their children. Al’ari children are self-sufficient at a young age, and are considered adults at sixteen. A mother teaches independence to her children, so she can keep her own as well.

An Agile Life

The most stark contrast between the maritime Al’ari and Vinyotian cultures is that most Al’ari don’t value what they can’t hold in their hands (or paws). Family homes filled with treasures and symbols of their status are foreign to traditions common in Al’ar. When felines first sailed to the mainland, the sheer hugeness of Vinyotian homes was the subject of decades of Al’ari jokes. They laughed at the “Warehouse-Beasts” who apparently feared running out of air and tried to trap all of it within the walls of their homes.

Ironically, however, the best way to spot an Al’ari in a crowd is by the amount of precious metal they wear. Hoarding treasures is a wasted effort, but the Al’ari love glittering things as much as anyone else—and some would say, even more. Al’ari wear their wealth on their bodies. Their richest traders could be mistaken for wearing platinum chain mail.

Handheld Economy

The spice trade is a huge part of Al’ar’s economy. Even tiny villages collect a bit of excess vanilla or cinnamon to make life more interesting. Vinyotian and Al’ari trade ships sail annual routes that send envoys to several dock towns at a time. They purchase local goods and bring news from around the world. These goods are exported for a profit.

Al’ari money is spent quickly. After preparation for unexpected hardship and community investment, any remaining proceeds are distributed to a dock town’s residents. How this windfall is divided depends on the community, but whatever way they divide it, it’s quickly cycled back into a trader’s coffers. Some traders skip the currency exchange altogether and bring goods from the east to barter with directly. However, most dock towns also use gold circulation to pay residents who perform its less-than-glamorous work.

“There Are No Pirates in Al’ar”

Al’ar has many pirates. Exiled criminals cluster together and build ships, which then gather into independent fleets. Some pirates are savvy traders taking a break from legitimate business to pursue a “shortcut” to wealth. And some are bored islanders whose knack for violence and lust for gold is stronger than their moral fiber.

The Al’ari night-sailing industry smuggles an eye-watering sum of gold and illegal goods between ports in every homeland. Vinyotian trade companies are keen to grease the right paws to keep their ships from being harassed by pirate fleets. This makes for less bloody business than one might expect. Most mariners know that for every pound of gold a pirate wins in battle, they win five move for the promise of “protection” from it. Al’ari pirates engage just in enough raiding to keep the consequences of missing a payment fresh in a trader’s mind.

A Storm Voyage is a target as vulnerable as it is lucrative; a single raid could half-sink a pirate vessel with treasure. However, it would also surely doom a dock town to starvation. Pirates and polite Al’ari society have a cautiously cordial relationship.

Among the few universal rules among ship wreckers is that raids on Storm Voyages are absolutely forbidden. Pirates enforce this rule with singular ruthlessness. Any breach is a death sentence that earns the executioner handsome bounty rewards from other pirates.

In exchange for this nonaggression, the Al’ari remain stubbornly neutral in the neverending war between traders and pirates. Al’ari mercantile voyages are armed to protect themselves, but there’s no organized pirate-hunting navy in the homeland. Foreign efforts to stamp out piracy are met with a cold shoulder, if not actively hampered. “There are no pirates in Al’ar” is an adage describing a winking agreement to frustrate pirate hunters.

The phrase is starting to lose its irony. Raiding excursions from the south are becoming less common, as pirates permanently leave the trade to become delvers instead. It’s a safe bet that a delver with an Al’ari accent has engaged in night-sailing at some point.

Al’ar Customs

Art & Music

Pigments made from its diverse flora allow colorful art to flourish in Al’ar. The textiles that decorate dock towns are woven on lazy days. The modern explosion of color in the wardrobe of commoners everywhere in the Beast World is thanks to Al’ar’s dye work.
Painting is also popular, and city boardwalks become a canvas for abstract expressions of emotion and movement. In fact, paintings appear wherever they’re allowed. Each temporary splash of color fades with rainfall, clearing the way for a new one.
Al’ari songs disappear just as quickly, changing with every performance. Cruz the Bard’s A Fistful of Sand was an attempt to capture Al’ari folk songs on paper, but each page looks more like a flow chart than sheet music. One song changes key when performed in the rain, another changes tempo when performed for a listener one lusts after, and several have a second bridge that’s only included when performed before a meal. Recording the lyrics was equally troublesome: (Name of Acquaintance) (Walks or Runs, Depending on their Preference) on (East Beach Acquaintance Enjoys) is a breathtaking composition, but it loses something when transcribed.

Funeral Fleets

Losing a resident is a time of grief for all of a dock town. Gray-sailed ships, sailed by those who were close to the departed, carry their remains out to open sea. This procession sails in silence and arrives at the burial ground at sunset. The destination is a deep burial trench on open water. Each of these trenches is used by multiple dock towns for funerary rites.
When the funeral reaches the trench, its boats gather in a circle. The people of a dock town sing the departed’s favorite songs as the bethelkeeper returns their body to the ocean. The weight of the possessions hung from their neck and body sink the remains to the bottom of the sea. Al’ari who die without enough wealth to sink them are draped in gold necklaces by everyone attending the funeral. In return for feeding them in life, an Al’ari’s body is returned to the sea. The practice also repays precious gold and treasures taken from the earth during life.
After the burial, a family is given a season to grieve. Dock towns deliver food and comforts to the grieving family, who are expected to rest during the work of that Storm Voyage.

Festivals

The Foxencat

Vinyot and Al’ar have celebrated their friendship for centuries by repainting a mural one hundred feet high on the east side of Mount Amistat every year. The mural depicts a feline and vulpine engaging in a different friendly activity every year. The storm season washes the mural away every summer, and on the first weekend of December, the Al’ari and Vinyotians congregate to repaint it in a festival known as the Foxencat.
During the Foxencat, guests eat, drink, and party together for seven days. When the mood strikes— usually around day four—they start painting the outline of the mural. By the end of the festival, dedicated artists have finished the massive painting that greets visitors to Al’ar for the next year.

A Celebration in Color

All year long before the Foxencat, islanders mix dyes from native flora that are used to create the vibrant textiles Al’ar is famous for. The winter leftovers are mixed into paints during the annual voyage to Amistat.
The festival sees revelers use these paints on everything—and everyone. The island, its inhabitants, and their ships are covered in loud color by the end of the week. Even the surrounding waters are stained with long tendrils of color that mingle and mix.
Unlike the dense symbolism of other Beast World festival customs, there’s no deeper meaning to the paint parties of the Foxencat. Once, many years ago, some accident splashed someone in paint intended for the mural itself. No one forgot the ensuing mess or the big smiles underneath it. Every year afterward, the cats brought a little extra color to leave a handprint on a friend. And on it went.

Stick Fighting

The stick fight is a popular pastime throughout Al’ar, and the Foxencat is the best place for a stick fighter to show off their skills. While technically a combat sport won by drawing first blood, its bright attitude and musical performance are a far cry from a stuffy joust between two overdressed Alley knights.
The “stick” is a sturdy wooden baton about three feet long. Two combatants dance to a drum beat while taking turns attempting to land a blow on the opponent. Each round, the fighters belt out an improvised rhyme about their own prowess, between lunges and dancing overhead swings. When a combatant bleeds, their opponent is declared the victor. Magic and supernatural chicanery are poor sportsmanship, but are also a sign one is probably taking things too seriously; the stick fight is a high-spirited spar meant to be enjoyed by the winner and loser alike.

Seakiss Night

The Al’ari Pirhouan festival of Seakiss Night is the most raucous of all the homelands’ religious ceremonies. Shipwrights gather up for two weeks at the end of the dry season, walking through the town to reclaim the lumber from broken sailboats, worn-out docks, and homes in disrepair. They use the salvaged materials to construct colorful barges known as seakiss rafts. The shipwrights build the boats in their most imaginative designs, often with multiple levels and using strange engineering experiments. The finished rafts are tied together to form a long, colorful parade.
On the night of the festival, everyone lines up their boats. The shipwrights’ family and friends dress in elaborate costumes and dance with the spectators. The rafts sail in a parade past each boat on the line.
After the children have gone to sleep, everyone else boards the rafts. The town’s cacique stands on the largest raft and swings an oversized mallet at a peg in the bottom. While the barge fills up with water, everyone parties on the seakiss rafts. The festival continues as long as any rafts remain— when one sinks, everyone dances closer on any rafts still floating. The sunken rafts settle on the ocean floor, where they become a home for sea life.
The challenge of a shipwright is to make Seakiss Night last until sunrise by building unsinkable rafts. The brightest engineers have kept things going until the morning sky is pale orange.

Unique and United

Multiple towns on some larger islands are united in laws and a ruling body. On others, one town might have leadership that governs completely differently than another less than a day’s sail away. Most Al’ari villages have no codified laws at all. Self-determination of one’s community is a source of pride in the Al’ari people. Dock town government is a nimble, ongoing experiment. However, the Feline Isles have some common traits and language of government throughout.

Villages and Dock Towns

Most settlements with fewer than a thousand residents debate at a regular gathering, and matters are settled with a direct vote. The final decision is entrusted to the eldest member of a community or their chosen delegate. This leader is called a cacique.
A dock town only replaces a cacique that acts unwisely and directly against everyone’s wishes. The meaning of “unwisely” is a subject of passionate debate in Al’ari social gatherings. Each community determines how they choose their cacique, as well as the other specifics of government.

Larger Cities

An Al’ari city is divided into localities of about one hundred people. Each of these hundred-person divisions chooses their own representative: a “Centuplicate Voice,” or centup. The centups meet as in smaller villages, debating and voting on a decision. They bring the results before the city’s cacique to make the final call.
While a small Al’ari town usually keeps the same system of government for generations, an urban population shifts and grows, which requires adaptive leadership. Localities change the method of appointing their centup constantly, and the most volatile ones try a new system every year.

Justice on the Islands

Judges on the islands give criminals a unique punishment, sentencing them to guidance. Criminals under guidance are bound to a steward of justice, usually a Dramphinian paladin in training, who remains with them at all times. They’re compelled to perform service to ameliorate the harm caused by their crimes. Al’ari pirates sometimes jokingly refer to this fate as being “tied to a new pal.”
Al’ar holds sacred the lives of all willful creatures. Execution is verboten and murder carries the harshest penalty: exile. An official called a birdkeeper helps enforce this exile. Birdkeepers compare any newcomer’s name against a list of exiled convicts. Names and descriptions of exiled Al’ari circulate among small-town rumormongers and eventually drift into every birdkeeper’s ear. They’re renowned for remembering faces and names, and they’re trusted spymaster informants everywhere in the world.

The Delve in Al'ar

Caravans heading to Al’ar refit their wagons for the sea voyage or charter special ships with wagon-wheel grooves to allow quick deployment onto an island for exploration. Smaller caravans often skip the arduous trip to the isles. Crews with a lead in these caravans split at Arloris and rejoin later. Larger wagon trains make the trip west every year, however, as there are more Al’ari natives in them who are looking to visit home.

Attitudes about the Delve vary depending on whose docks one bumps their ship against. Devout Pirhouans are grateful for delving crews, as monsters can ravage the natural landscape of untouched islands. Delvers bring the outside world closer, but some in Al’ar aren’t sure that’s a good thing. The Delve brings the blessings and plague of tourism to Al’ar.

Many of Al’ar’s islands are uninhabited and unexplored. The Dungeon has infested these tracts of land and their surrounding reefs, opening its mouth for sea monsters to lurk in the deeper waters. Pirates whose ships are endangered by Dungeon attacks around Tonoro put out their own lucrative leads.

Pirhouanism in Al'ar

An open-air lounge sits at the edge of a tiny dock village, with the Heartleaf painted on each outer wall. Four sailors and the bethelkeeper chatter and laugh while lounging on cushions around a table. A three-month voyage has just ended. In this typical Al’ari bethel, voyagers plan their routes by consulting weather divinations prepared by divine magic. There’s a culture of fraternity among the devout, as they compare sea charts and seek new horizons to explore.

In Al’ar, Pirhoua is the goddess of curiosity, stewardship of nature, and wandering. Pirhouans from the isles are convicted to stay curious throughout their lives. Al’ari academia and voyaging pursue the unknown. The charge of curiosity also challenges one to be inquisitive about everyday activity.

The First Divine Charge: Curiosity

The Al’ari Pirhouan sees the open sea as a spiritual mandate. Spreading goodness to the entire world means one must visit the entire world. Al’ari Pirhouans usually know every nautical inch of their hometowns and the surrounding waters.

Some interpret this charge from the perspective of how they treat others. A Pirhouan’s exploration might be intently listening to a stranger’s woes or asking proactive questions about a lonely neighbor’s passions. By “sailing a stranger’s seas,” they bolster and make their life brighter.

The Second Divine Charge: Safekeeping

The charge of safekeeping has arguably shaped Al’ari society more than any other homeland’s Pirhouan sect. To change the natural world is a prideful conceit. Felling a tree without replanting it is rejecting Pirhoua’s vision for the world.

This charge is the main reason for the dock town. Islanders can gather up an entire city and move it, while leaving minimal scars on the land. While Al’ari differ in how fervent they are about this lifestyle, most pay it at least some credence.

The Third Divine Charge: Piquancy

Fish is tasty, but spicy fish is even better. This simple truth encapsulates the charge of piquancy. Curiosity is their virtue, so Al’ari seek to see life’s blessings from new angles.

Al’ari clerics perform some drastic culinary experiments. Despite some questionable results, feline kitchen-piety has discovered what some consider Pirhoua’s single greatest gift: chocolate. The charge of piquancy motivates simpler experiments in pleasure as well—it’s why many Al’ari can’t seem to pick a spot to nap in.

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