Teblor Past and Present
'Sin'b'alle: '...these fallen Teblor. Teblor. They know naught, even their true name.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.37)
'The Teblor were long fallen from Thelomen Toblakai. Mirrored reflections in flesh only. Kneeling like fools before seven blunt-featured faces carved into a cliffside. Valley dwellers, where every horizon was almost within reach. Victims of brutal ignorance - for which no-one else could be blamed - entwined with deceit...'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.354)
'Complacency plagued all the clans of the Teblor, Karsa suspected. The world beyond the mountains dared not encroach, had not attempted to do so in decades. No visitors ventured into Teblor lands. Nor had the Teblor themselves gazed out beyond the borderlands with dark hunger, as they had often done generations past. The last man to have led a raid into foreign territory had been his grandfather...after more than four centuries...(Karsa embarks to lead a similar raid)'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.34)
of children, butcherers of the helpless, as mortal demons
delivered unto the Nathii in a curse altogether undeserved.
The sooner the Teblor are obliterated from their mountain
fastnesses the sooner the memory of them will finally
begin to fade. Until Teblor is no more than a name used
to frighten children, we see our cause as clear and
singular.
The Crusade of 1147
Ayed Kourbourn
(HoC, UK Trade, p.439)
Legend and Prophecy
'...the oldest words, the whispers, of the One, who will unite the Teblor, who will bind the clans one and all and lead them into the lowlands and so begin the War of the People. These whispers, they are the voice of promise, and that voice is mine.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.36)
The origin of the Teblor
'I (the carver of the glyphs in a cave in Rathyd territory), led the families that survived. Down from the high lands. Through the broken veins that bled beneath the sun (ice - glaciers?). We were so few. Our blood was cloudy and would grow cloudier still. I saw the need to shatter what remained. For the T'lan Imass were still close and much agitated and inclined to continue their indiscriminate slaughter...
And so I sundered husband from wife. Child from parent. Brother from sister. I fashioned new families and then sent them away. Each to a different place. I proclaimed the Laws of Isolation, as given us by Icarium whom we had once sheltered and whose heart grew vast with grief upon seeing what had become of us. The Laws of Isolation would be our salvation, clearing the blood and strengthening our children. To all who follow and to all who shall read these words, this is my justification -...
To survive, we must forget. So Icarium told us. Those things that we had come to, those things that softened us. We must abandon them. We must dismantle our...'great villages'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.84)...and shatter each and every stone, leaving no evidence of what we had been. We must burn our...'yellow bark'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.84)...and leave naught but ash. We must forget our history and seek only our most ancient of legends. Legends that told of a time when we lived simply. In the forests. Hunting, culling fish from the rivers, raising horses. When our laws were those of the raider, the slayer, when all was measured by the sweep of a sword. Legends that spoke of feuds, of murders and rapes. We must return to those terrible times. To isolate our streams of blood, to weave new, smaller nets of kinship. New threads must be born of rape, for only with violence would they remain rare occurences, and random. To cleanse our blood, we must forget all that we were, yet find what we had once been -...
...I have given these new tribes names, the names given by my father for his sons...Baryd, Sanyd, Phalyd, Urad, Gelad, Manyd, Rathyd and Lanyd. These, then, shall be the new tribes...' (HoC, UK MMPB, p.81-2)
Teblor Religion
The Faces in the Rock
Urugal the Woven (HoC, UK MMPB, p.32)
'Urual, whose name meant Mossy Bone and who was known to the Teblor as Urugal...'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.37)
'eyes travelling up the battered cliff-face, to find the harsh, bestial face of Urugal, there, among its kin. The pitted gaze seemed fixed upon him and Karsa thought he saw avid pleasure in those dark pools.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.34)
Beroke Soft Voice (HoC, UK MMPB, p.35)
'...Ber'ok, his voice a rough rasp through a crushed throat. Neck twisted and head leaning to one side...Dead Ash Tree (Imass name)...'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.37)
Kahlb the Silent Hunter (HoC, UK MMPB, p.35)
Thenik the Shattered (HoC, UK MMPB, p.35)
Halad Rack Bearer (HoC, UK MMPB, p.35)
Imroth the Cruel (HoC, UK MMPB, p.35)
'Siballe the Unfound (HoC, UK MMPB, p.35)
'Sin'b'alle - Lichen For Moss - who was 'Siballe the Unfound...'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.37)
The True Nature of the Faces in the Rock
'Seven figures rose from the ground, skin wrinkled and stained dark drown over withered muscles and heavy bones, hair red as ochre and dripping stagnant, black water. Some were missing limbs, others stood on splintered, shattered or mangled legs. One lacked a lower jaw while another's left cheekbone and brow were crushed flat, obliterating the eye socket. Each of the seven, broken in some way. Imperfect. Flawed.
Somewhere behind the wall of rock was a sealed cavern that had been their tomb for a span of centuries, a short-lived imprisonment as it turned out. None had expected their resurrection. Too shattered to remain with their kin, they had been left behind, as was the custom of their kind...for these seven, failure had not been honourable. Thus, the darkness of a tomb had been their sentence. They had felt no bitterness at that.
That dark gift came later, from outside their unlit prison, and with it, opportunity.
All that was required was the breaking of a vow, and the swearing of fealty to another. The reward: rebirth, and freedom.
Their kin had marked this place of internment, with carved faces, each a likeness, mocking the vista with blank, blind eyes. They had spoken their names to close the ritual of binding, names that lingered in this place with a power sufficient to twist the minds of the shamans of the people who had found refuge in these mountains, and on the plateau with the ancient name of Laederon.
...Freedom was raw exultation and, even limited as it was to this glade, the emotion persisted still. It would not be long, now, until that freedom would break free of its last chains - the truncated range of vision from the eye-sockets carved into the rock. Service to the new master promised travel, an entire world to rediscover and countless deaths to deliver.' (HoC, UK MMPB, p.36-7)
The lost history of the Teblor and the co-opting of their faith
Urual:'We could not have so twisted their faith were they cognizant of their legacy.'
(HoC, UK MMPB, p.37)
Religious Observances and Beliefs
'He (Karsa) remained on his knees in the glade, head bowed beneath the Faces in the Rock, knowing that Urugal's visage, high on the cliff-face, mirrored his own savage desire; and that those of the other gods, all with their own clans barring 'Siballe, who was the Unfound, glared down upon Karsa with envy and hate. None of their children knelt before them, after all, to voice such bold vows'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.31-2)
'beloved Urugal...I shall deliver unto you a feast of trophies such as never before blackened the soil of this glade. Enough, perhaps, to free you from the stone itself, so that once more you will stride in our midst, a deliverer of death upon all our enemies.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.34)
Six faces turned to the Teblor
One remains Unfound
Mother to the tribe of ghosts –
the Teblor children
we were told
to turn away
Mother’s Prayer of Giving
among the Teblor
(HoC, UK Trade, p.501)
Teblor Calendar and Astronomy(?)
Karsa Orlong's POV: '...with the new moon and in the year of your naming, Urugal...'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.33)
Urugal the Woven's Year (HoC, UK MMPB, p.32)
Teblor Customs (and hints thereof)
Coming-of-Age
Karsa:'Newly arrived to my eightieth year of life, finally a warrior in truth.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.35)
Year of Scarring(?)
Karsa Orlong's POV: '...in our first year of scarring. We have counted coup. We have slain enemies. Stolen horses. Shifted the hearthstones of the Kellyd and the Buryd.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.33)
'Knife of Night'
'Her (Dayliss') Knife of Night remained sheathed...For him, and him alone, Dayliss would unsheate her Knife of Night.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.35)
(symbol of virginity?, female sexual maturity? 'unwedded' status? likely all three)
Teblor funerary customs
'In solemn procession, he (a dog-mauled child) was carried by his father to the Faces in the Rock, laid down in the glade before the Seven Gods of the Teblor, and left there. He died a short while later. Alone in his pain before the hard visages carved into the cliff-face...This was not an unexpected fate. The child, after all, had been too young to pray.' (HoC, UK MMPB, p.32)
Teblor Blessings
Karsa's fantasy of a 'betrothal/raid blessing' from Dayliss(HoC, UK MMPB, p.35):
'I, Dayliss, yet to find a family's name, bless you, Karsa Orlong, on your dire raid. May you slay a legion of children. May their cries feed your dreams. May their blood give you thirst for more. May flames haunt the path of your life. May you return to me, a thousand deaths upon your soul, and take me as your wife.'
Teblor Glory
'Glory was found in ...the contests, the raids, in the vicious perpetuation of feuds.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.33)
Teblor trophies
'Scarred skull pates, frail-looking mandibles. Odd fragments of clothing made of some unknown material...small ears nailed to every wooden post...'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.32)
'Counting coup' among the Teblor
'Moving silent and unseen through enemy camps, shifting the hearthstones to deliver deepest insult...'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.32)
Traditional Teblor Weapons
Bloodsword (Bloodwood Sword)
Atlatl (Spear/Dart Thrower)
Black rope (garrote?)
Toothed-disc (chakram?)
Spear
Bow (Lanyd-only?)
Teblor Tribes
Origins of the Tribes
'I have given these new tribes names, the names given by my father for his sons...Baryd (Buryd), Sanyd (Sunyd), Phalyd (Phalyd), Urad (Uryd), Gelad (Kellyd?), Manyd (extinct?), Rathyd (Rathyd) and Lanyd (Lanyd).'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.82)
Bairoth Gild:'Urad is far too close to Uryd to be accidental, especially when three of the other names are unchanged. Granted, one one of those tribes has since vanished, but even our own legends whisper of a time when there were more tribes than there are now.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.84)
Modern Teblor Tribes
Uryd
Rathyd
Sunyd (corrupted and enslaved}
Lanyd
Kellyd
Buryd
Phalyd
Uryd Tribe
'Urugal the Woven was the (Uryd) clan's Face in the Rock, and Urugal was counted among the fiercest of the seven gods. The other clans had reason to fear the Uryd.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.33)
Karsa's POV:'Too much of the clan's reputation lived only in the past. THe Uryd had grown complacent in their position of pre-eminence among the Teblor.'(HoC, UK MMPB, p.33)
'While the Uryd disdained the use of the bow, they excelled with spear and atlatl, with the toothed-disc and the black rope...' (HoC, UK MMPB, p.33)
Karsa Orlong
Delum Thord
Bairoth Gild
Dayliss, Bairoth's lover
Synyg Orlong, Karsa's father
Pahlk Orlong, Synyg's father and Karsa's grandfather
Sunyd Tribe
Karsa: 'The Sunyd are the smallest among the Teblor.' (HoC, UK MMPB, p.139)
Sunyd Woman: 'Lost? Yes, long ago. Our own children slipping away in the night to wander south into the lowlands, eager for the cursed lowlander coins - the bits of metal around which life seems to revolve. Sorely used, were our children - some even returned to our valleys, as scouts for the hunters. The secret groves of bloodwood were burned down, our horses slain. To be betrayed by our own children, Uryd, this is what broke the Sunyd...They (the Sunyd children) are scattered, many fallen, many now sold into servitude to repay their debts. And some have travelled great distances, to the great cities of Nathilog and Genabaris. Our tribe is no more.' (HoC, UK MMPB, p.144-5)
Phalyd Tribe
Damisk Greydog: 'We would know more of the Phalyd as well, who are said to be your match in ferocity.' (HoC, UK MMPB, p.131)
Sin'b'alle's Hidden Tribe, the 'Found'
Ber'ok: '...you have your own children, Sin'b'alle, who are the bearers of the truth.' (HoC, UK MMPB, p.37)
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