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Decheeran Culture
ThePlaintiffReturns
Member Posts: 49 ✭✭✭
Sup, playa.
Human culture boils down to two things: Food and Sex.
So what's Decheeran culture look like? There are two specific questions I have, but let's also use this thread to discuss their culture more broadly.
Human culture boils down to two things: Food and Sex.
So what's Decheeran culture look like? There are two specific questions I have, but let's also use this thread to discuss their culture more broadly.
- Decheeran reproduce asexually and are genderless, so they don't have 'sex' in the most commonly held sense of the word (i.e., manipulating genitals), but is there some special form of intimacy that they share and which would be analogous? I get that the question is far too rooted (*ba-dum-CHING!*) in a human and heteronormative mindset, but let's not turn this into a debate about RL politics.
- They don't eat, so they don't 'do lunch', but presumably they do still take in nutrients in some fashion. Do they do this through roots? If so, what are the implications of the fact that every decheeran has boots on their armor? And what about water? Same system, or do they drink it? Even if these things are the case, does food/nutrition play a part in Decheeran culture, or is it simply not a thing, just something slightly odd that they witness other races doing?
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So, yes, they do eat and they can "do lunch".
"They don't have families or any concept of one. What they do have are groups of Decheerans called 'Groves.' These are completely voluntary associations of Decheerans who bond with each other by rooting in a group together for a period of time, after which they are closely allied and can very vaguely feel the emotional state of other Grove members."
This is their form of intimacy.
https://www.starmourn.com/races/decheerans/
When you decide to just get up and walk on your own I doubt there's a ton of unified culture once they got into contact with other civilizations.
Just ask the humans grove with you and boom. How to spot a tree 101.
I dunno maybe they feel connected to nature or something every time they drop some seeds and they have some sort of intimate moment with the surrounding foliage. Maybe they get attached to other animate objects who exist within their perceived sphere/grove/ecosystem, in the same way God and Snow White are both supposed to love every bird that falls under their charge. Like hey there little fella, look at you all blooming up and blossoming about. I've known you since you was a pip!
It's impossible not to think of feelings within a human context, being as this is all I have ever experienced and can experience; and I think it is helpful to draw on personal experiences even when trying to conjure up believable fiction. So if I had to pluck moments out of my own lifetime where I felt most like how I would imagine a sentient, asexual tree-person would feel, sexually or otherwise, it would be in the silent joy and tranquility of watching a sunrise over a cloud forest mountain-ridge, on the banks of a river unspoiled by human intervention. That feeling of peace and isolation where even though you're sharing something with someone sitting right next to you admiring the same view, you aren't ruining the moment by talking, and so they aren't in your head; they don't know what you're thinking or feeling right now, only that you're both sharing something grand, something cosmic, not just with each other, but with the billions of other life forms inhabiting this space, from the worms burrowing through the soil right now to the ants climbing up the trees in formation, to the winged insects that would, should and often do annoy you, but are here by the same accident of entropy as you are, breathing the same air, inhabiting their own worlds within their minds which are likewise untouchable to yours.
I can't tell you how to play your character; it's your character, and you have your own set of experiences to draw from. But if I was going to portray the Decheeran equivalent of a tantric asexual orgasm and union/intimacy, it would be something like that.
"They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood