by Matt Bennett
The lizardfolk are reclusive and fierce
about their territory. Of course, having helped in the Great Rebellion, their
alliance with the Kindred runs deep. The Kindred pass freely through the Geato marshes, treated like cousins or honored guests. Only the Temples of Geato Kariba (Ishari) have been barred to the Kindred, as they are barred to everyone
without the second sight. A full fifth of the Geato Abira reside outside the
marshes—many in the metropolis of Hub—but they are largely the young and
curious. At age seventeen, the elders encourage the Geato Abira to leave home
and see what life is like without the guidance of a chieftain or the Talos Bak
Sal (the Circle of Eyes). Most of the Geato younglings come back in a year or
two, and those who don’t are viewed almost as lost—though the offer to come
home is very seldom revoked.
Only younglings, wood merchants and emissaries
ever travel extensively beyond the Geato marshes—and the likeliest wayfarers
are female seers assisting the Kindred in trials and diplomatic disputes. Among
the Geato Abira, females grow largest while their males tend to be slight and
quick. Geato government is matriarchal and oligarchical, with power invested in
the Talos Bak Sal, a body which tends to be female-dominant and overprotective
of “the weaker sex.” Female lizardfolk are all naturally born with an extra set
of crystalline blue pupils (their irises are long and ovoid inside upwardly
tilted eye sockets). The extra pupils grant them low-light vision and—in a few
of them—the talent of seership. Rarely, a male lizardfolk is born with the gift
of sight, but a male chieftain or councilman is rarer still. Legend holds that
the Geato Abira sprang from the tears of a goddess mixed with the blood of the
Nameless One—which is why the lizardfolk women are so strong and gifted.
Geato Abira have always had open
borders, but to defend themselves from the overreach of Elven Empire they
became withdrawn and six hundred years has yet to soften them. Passwords, or
signs, are given to non-Geato merchants who wish to enter and trade within
their cities. A merchant train may be held up by a whole week waiting for
permission at a border gate village. And yet, the Geato Abira are rarely
overtly aggressive toward outsiders, unless challenged; if anything, they are
merely a people of custom. Before a merchant, or visitor, can be allowed
inside, a chieftain—known as a Sal Abira (literally, “Eye Child”)—must look
upon him and decide whether the Children of the Marsh can extend their trust.
At times this is perfunctory, but many Sal Abira feel the custom is deadly
serious and will turn away unsavory elements. Certainly, though, the isolation
of the Geato is geographical as well as cultural. The marsh is nigh impossible
to siege, besides being home to a skin-crawling army of giant insects, ravenous
camouflaged reptiles, lethally psychotropic plants and magical beasts
understood by none but the Geato Abira.
The sexes are five-fold in Geato
culture. Females without the gift of seership are known as Sala, from “sal,” meaning eye. Again, they are born with extra blue
pupils which grant them low-light vision. Female seers are known as Sala-ma and, despite being physically
like non-seer females, are regarded as separate since seership is so important
to the Geato. In a way, they are less feminine because they cannot become
warriors, and in another way, they are divinely feminine because their seership
links them to the goddess. Males are Taro,
from “tar,” which means horn, as males have a row of tiny horns across the
median line of their skulls. She-males are known as Taresal. Occasionally, males are born with the extra crystalline
pupils normally only conferred to females. Although they’re anatomically like
males, aside from their eyes, they are treated as hermaphroditic; expected to
know the spear, like any female, and mercilessly bullied. They aren’t
considered aberrations per se, but gender roles are rigid in Geato society, and
the Taresal belong nowhere—especially
if they show little talent with the sight. Only a hardened few she-males
survive into adulthood. Physical prowess is penultimate to the Geato, with
seership its only uneasy superior. The last sex type among the Geato Abira is
the Sal-talon. Outsiders might view a
Sal-talon as simply a freak, but
because of the emphasis on physicality in the Geato society, a Sal-talon is honored. Truthfully, they
are females born with a rare form of gigantism. Due to their condition, they’re
sterile and usually do not mate at all. However, they’re twice the size of
normal females, with incredible muscle mass.
Anywhere in the marshes, whether one is
Geato or not, a challenge to one’s status as the alpha, is legally answerable
with a bare-handed duel to the death once a person has passed puberty. The Taresal are frequently the victims of
these duels. To back down from these challenges, among the Geato, is a terrible
and unthinkable humiliation. By law, if a Geato backs down from a sal duel, their left eye can be gouged
out by their chieftain. Once a person’s eye is lost by the shame of backing out
of a sal duel, they cannot be
challenged again, but they become indentured to the Sal Abira and can be
legally traded to any other Sal Abira. Geato custom, of course, doesn’t extend
to outsiders, but backing down from a sal
duel will lose you whatever face you had among the Geato present. And an angry
alpha might duel you anyway and leave you eyeless as a lesson to you.
The Kindred, ever since the Great
Rebellion, have been considered exempt from the custom of sal duels. Even though it may be a bitter pill, Geato alphas will
swallow the insults of the Kindred. A Kindred challenger would have to be
hugely insulting to force any Geato into a duel; if anything is stressed in the
schooling of a Geato, it’s the blood oath with the Kindred. Most Geato refuse
to fight the Kindred unless the evidence is overwhelming that the Kindred has
done wrong.
Although isolated, the Geato Abira are a
a people of prophecy and visions, and cannot fully hold themselves apart from
the rest of Desylinn. Above any other people, perhaps, the lizardfolk
understand and accept their role in the cosmic soup of fate. Centuries ago,
before the Great Rebellion in the dawn of all peoples, the great seer Virin saw
that Daras, the goddess of death, would one day “lower the spear” for the
Geato. In the Geato mythology, Daras is a dragon-like figure who appears at
one’s last moment and drives the spear of her already red claw through the
heart, bringing a sweet long sleep. The seer foresaw a grievous world-wide
battle in which the Geato Abira served as the vanguard, and in which, due to
Daras, they would be wounded but would
not die. For centuries they have awaited this calling and for centuries it
hasn’t come, but every Geato believes the prophecy without reservation. Too
many of Virin’s other prophecies have turned out to be true—for instance, that
the Geato and the Kindred would become blood-sisters and that the elves would
fall. The Geato seers may debate the details of the immortality that awaits
them, but none doubt, and bravery in a warrior is to fight like death cannot
happen. Knowing that the future depends, in part, on the Geato Abira, they are
ever vigilant. To be weak means to be unworthy of Daras. When a warrior cuts
herself with a claw above the falls of Kaza Dar, she swears to be worthy of
Daras’ call as she serves the Great Protector, Geato Kariba.
