TEXT: Secrets of Fire 5
  Tethyn culture originated in what is now Spain. Had
  the people of this provincial and wooded land been
  more willing to cooperate with one another in the early
  days, Tethys might have rivaled Atlantis as a great
  nation of the mythic age. It was the first civilization of
  man to maintain a semi-feudal society, but more impor-
  tantly, it developed without the influence of fae, drag-
  ons, titans, or any other of the older races whose exis-
  tences or practices shaped the kingdoms of man. Their
  pride and racial unity
  allowed them to resist
  such inroads from other
  races, even subconscious
  ones, and so they clung to
  the cultural facets they
  had developed on their
  own. Some suggest that
  this independence led to
  the continuance of Tethyn
  language 
  beyond 
  the
  mythic age and into the
  modern, resulting in an
  island of linguistic inde-
  pendence in the Pyrenees
  of Europe.
  However, this same
  pride forbade them from
  bowing to Atlantis during
  its expansionist period;
  instead they attempted to
  make war on this more
  magically and navally
  savvy power. And so their
  strong compounds were
  burnt and an entire gener-
  ation of hunters was slain
  . . . as a result of this fool-
  hardy war in which all
  Tethyns fought but few
  Tethyns cooperated, the
  culture was nearly wiped
  out. This was midway
  through the fourth millennium of the Fourth Sun of the
  mythic age, over 3,000 years since the culture began. In
  their disorganized and still-poor state, the hunters and
  subsistence farmers who were the Tethyns’ descendants
  were easily enslaved or pushed out of their territory, like
  so many others, by the migrating Kurgans. At the myth-
  ic age’s cataclysmic end, the only Tethyn descendants
  scraped a living in the poor soil of their old homelands’
  forbidding mountain peaks or lived off of what they
  could fish and scavenge on the southern shores of the
  Inner Sea.
  GEOGRAPHY
  Tethys is a rugged land of heavily-forested hills,
  mountains, and valleys that are occasionally punctuated
  by long tracts of fog-shrouded moor. The first freeholds
  were founded around
  1,000th year of the Fourth
  Sun, centuries before civ-
  ilization 
  began 
  on
  Atlantis; at their height,
  before Atlantis’s navy
  was built and with the
  concept of “empire” still
  1,000 years away, the
  freeholds extended from
  the Weeping Deep (the
  chasm at the westernmost
  joining of Erebea and
  Ofir, which would one
  day be the Strait of
  Gibraltar) in southwest-
  ern Erebia, north as far as
  what 
  would 
  become
  southern Avalon, and east
  into the Elysian Plain. 
  An offshoot of the
  Tethyn clans also settled
  on Illean, the island in the
  Inner Sea that lies just to
  the east of the southwest-
  ern spur of Erebea. Illean
  is less forested than the
  Tethyn mainland, with
  regions of gently rolling
  fen 
  intermixed 
  with
  grassland. 
  Much 
  of
  Tethys’s arable ground is
  found upon this dismal
  isle. Though the clans that call Illean their home will
  never want for bread, they are seen in an unflattering
  light by their mainland cousins, who refer to them dis-
  paragingly as “farmers.” Crops grown in Illean are lim-
  ited to wheat, barley, and several kinds of root vegeta-
  bles, but they were not assisted by any beasts of burden,
  having domesticated none, nor by metal tools, having
  neither ore nor the knowledge of how to work it. This,
  NEW EPOCH
  TETHYS: HUNTERS OF THE FREEHOLD
  BY GARY ASTLEFORD
  
  combined with the Tethyns occasionally demanding
  young men and women as prey for the Gorynne
  Kazicka, or “most dangerous hunt,” kept Illean mortali-
  ty high and prevented them from developing as an agri-
  cultural society normally would.
  The sea off the coast of western Tethys is called the
  Weeping Deep, for it is constantly covered with fog and
  rain. Storms occasionally blow across the Deep, soaking
  the mainland and casting a gloomy light upon the entire
  kingdom. The weather in western Tethys is often cloudy,
  and rain is a constant concern. As one travels northeast-
  ward into Erebea, the weather improves, growing
  warmer and less damp, eventually reaching the Elysian
  Plains. The plains are home to nothing more than
  rodents and slow, dull-witted ruminants, early predeces-
  sors of cattle; the Tethyns have on interest in such crea-
  tures whatsoever, as they are easy to sneak up on and
  kill, but impossible to hunt once in a stampeding mass
  (the Tethyns do not have
  horses; these will remain
  alien to Erebea until the
  Kurgans bring them).
  Additionally, the Tethyns
  have an extreme dislike
  and fear of the wooded
  land that stretches both
  north and east of the
  Elysian Plains, which is
  either 
  the 
  border 
  of
  Elysium or the separate
  reaches of Avalon and
  Arcadia. Either way, of
  the Tethyn hunting parties
  that braved the plains,
  surviving the large aerial
  predators 
  that 
  preyed
  upon the ruminants and
  making the several-weeks
  trek to the forest at its far
  edge, only those who
  refused to enter the woods
  came back. All others
  simply disappeared in the
  green, never to return.
  HISTORY
  The history of the
  Tethyns is like that of
  countless hunter-gatherer
  societies throughout time: fluid, uncertain, and
  unrecorded. The unifying principles of the Tethyn hunt
  and its societal rules started from a seed of a few proud
  hunting villages, grew into a society of freeholds span-
  ning hundreds of miles, and then simply hit a plateau . .
  . in essence, the culture grew to its borders, then became
  static, its populations rising and falling with the popula-
  tions of the game creatures within hunting reach. The
  savage nature of the beasts in the Tethyn woodlands,
  along with disease, starvation, accidents, and the rav-
  ages of weather, kept the Tethyns from overpopulating.
  But as for notable historical figures or important events?
  Every Tethyn hunter would claim that his greatest hunt
  is known throughout the land, and every freehold has its
  own ancestral heroes of which stories are told through-
  out the years, the tales growing in size, scope, and non-
  believability with each passing generation. 
  CULTURE &
  GOVERNANCE
  Foremost among the driving forces of Tethyn culture
  is the hunt. Their traditional homeland is known for its
  mystical fecundity, which allows them to live on what
  would otherwise be an over-hunted population of game
  animals. Scores of competing lords, known as the
  Eiztaria or “Masters of the
  Hunt” rival one another
  for dominance of hunting
  grounds and arable land,
  but 
  such 
  competition
  always takes the form of a
  hunt rather than a battle.
  While more aggressive
  peoples were decimating
  themselves with competi-
  tive warfare and raiding,
  the Tethyns’ form of inter-
  cultural competition led
  only to more food for the
  people as a whole. Perhaps
  the key practice of this tra-
  dition is that neither a
  hunter nor his family
  could partake of the food,
  furs, skins, or other prod-
  ucts of an animal he had
  hunted; rather, such bene-
  fits must always to be
  given to the next lowest
  hunter of the freehold’s
  hierarchy. This practice
  creates an interdependent
  web of favors, obligations,
  and honor bindings, and
  assures that those in the
  positions of highest power,
  the Eiztaria, are dependent
  upon the gifts of their freeholders for the basic needs to
  survive. 
  All of the Tethyns that live within or near a freehold
  are called its freefolk. Each freehold is administered by
  a Master of the Hunt, who is elevated to that position by
  dint of the type and quantity of beasts he has success-
  fully hunted. The Master of the Hunt is served in turn by
  a group of lieutenants, known simply as Freehunters.
  Each freehunter is given various responsibilities within
  TETHYS: HUNTERS OF THE FREEHOLD
  2
  
  their freehold, ranging from the care of the its beasts to
  the manufacture of its weapons, tack, and armor. The
  freehold’s falconer, known as the Master of the Sky,
  sees to the welfare of the freehunters’ birds of prey,
  while the Master of Hounds is responsible for the care
  of the freehunters’ hunting dogs. The maintenance and
  manufacture of weapons is overseen by the Master of
  Arms. To become a Master of the Hunt, an aspiring
  Tethyn must first master the jobs of each of the free-
  hunters. This system allows for women to raise to as
  high a rank as they like, but no special consideration is
  provided for those who are on the verge of bearing chil-
  dren or those who wish to nurse and educate their chil-
  dren personally. Most female freehunters and Masters of
  the Hunt choose therefore not to bear children. Because
  the position of Master of the Hunt changes every few
  years, and since the position is not hereditary, there is
  little cultural drive to produce children to continue one’s
  legacy. This is not to say that the biological drive to pro-
  duce children is not extant, however; because of the
  common wounds and accidents that a hunter of beasts
  may suffer, as well as the inevitable aging of the most
  able-bodied hunters, children are reared in a communal
  style. They may look to those who are unable to hunt for
  mentorship, or may spend time with their true parents on
  easier hunts, or may latch onto a freehunter from anoth-
  er freehold who is visiting. In the end, it is a hunter’s
  individual accomplishments that make his name into
  legend, not that of his parents’ or his childrens’. 
  Nearly every task in the Tethyn paradigm is com-
  pared to a hunt of some sort. Courtship, success in busi-
  ness, and warfare are all analogous to hunting to the
  average Tethyn. Traps are never, as a matter of honor,
  used among the Tethyns, even if the hunter in question
  is somehow prevented from tracking and killing the
  great beasts. Any who trap for their meat are subject to
  scorn and are banished if they are found out. The old or
  lame of the Tethyns will instead wait in the brush for
  hours on end, patient and unmoving, in order to catch
  passing small game with a well-aimed stone throw or a
  quick grab of the hands. Obviously, therefore, most of
  the Tethyn diet consists of meat.
  Vast tracts of dense forest, treacherous marsh, and
  rugged hills, replete with ample water from springs and
  rivers, surround each freehold. A freehold may claim
  anywhere from 10 miles around it to hundreds of miles
  as its hunting ground; if a new freehold crops up within
  those lands or an existing one attempts to extend its
  boundaries, a great hunt or gyrigut is called. Hundreds
  of gyrigut variations exist, each with differing durations,
  weapons allowed, number of hunters in a party (ranging
  from solo to hundreds of men), area that may be hunted,
  prey beasts, and countless other minutiae ranging from
  the songs that must be sung on the way back from the
  hunt to the types of images that may be carved in the
  bones of the taken animals; a hunter’s adherence to and
  success in any and all of these details may be the decid-
  ing factor, or part of the deciding factor, as to who
  “wins” the hunt.
  Freeholds are built from wood, stone, sod, and the
  bones and flesh of great beasts. These last are the most
  sacred of materials, and prepared through a part-alchem-
  ical, part-natural process that strengthens the bones to
  that of the sturdiest timbers while keeping them light.
  Those who hunted the beast from which the bones came
  are responsible for carving them into the appropriate
  imagery of the hunt or of Tethyn ancestor-heroes (who
  are universally shared by all throughout the culture).
  The skins are likewise prepared in a variety of manners,
  formed into everything from a sturdy and durable wall
  sheeting, to transparent skins that are placed in win-
  dows, to incredibly flexible yet resilient leather hunting
  armor. As a universal rule, the hunter must prepare his
  kill and all of its remains. It is these remains, both as tro-
  phies and as useful equipment, that speak to a hunter’s
  prowess, and if he cannot point to the result of his hunts
  as proof of his boasting, he might as well not open his
  mouth.
  Those Tethyns who are not fit to join in the hunts of
  the faster or larger beasts are relegated to raising chil-
  dren, maintaining the household, gathering tubers,
  berries, and other edible vegetation, or hunting small
  game. There is no shame if a hunter is unable to main-
  tain his position due to age or injury; it is not what one
  can hunt down but rather what one has hunted in his
  tome or could hunt in the time left to him that matter. So
  long as an aging hunter can point to a pillar of bone that
  he left his mark upon, or to a window of clearskin that
  he stretched himself, he is cared for to the best of the
  freehold’s ability. With their limited medical ability and
  meat-heavy diet, however (possibly thankfully), those
  old who fall ill or become unable to eat of the meat of
  the hunt tend not to last long.
  Small treated bone monuments, carved to resemble
  animals and legendary beasts, are used to mark roads
  and pathways in the wilds of Tethys, many of which are
  little more than game trails widened over the centuries.
  Not only do these markers identify where a road or path
  begins and ends, they also signify which freehold claims
  the hunting rights over the surrounding wilderness. It is
  a great affront to any hunter to find a stranger hunting
  without permission on his ancestral lands. In Tethys,
  poaching game is a crime punishable by death. The far-
  ther one retreats from freehold, the less obvious the
  roads and pathways become. It is not difficult for
  strangers to become lost in the Tethyn wilderness, and
  even if they remain on the game trails the dangerous
  beasts with which Tethyn hunters make their names far
  prefer the cleared trails to the dense brush. Terrible crea-
  tures make their lairs in the deep dells and high hills
  between freeholds, and men looking for fame and for-
  tune have ventured into the wilds, never to return.
  TETHYS: HUNTERS OF THE FREEHOLD
  3
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Fireborn/Fireborn Secrets of Fire 5 New Epoch Tethys - Hunters of the Freehold.pdf