Yehani
The Yehani are a learned and enterprising people whose island homeland in the middle of the Adelantean Sea was destroyed several hundred years ago by the eruption of Mount Elemnis. They can now be found spread across the known world, generally settling in urban areas. The largest concentrations of Yehani are found in coastal cities, which they favor not only on account of the opportunities for trade and generally more tolerant cosmopolitan attitudes, but also because their love for the sea has not waned even in the centuries since the loss of their island home. However, a great many Yehani can be found living inland as well, particularly in large towns and cities along major trading routes.
The Yehani were the first worshipers of the One God, whose favored people they believe themselves to be. They are known for performing animal sacrifices to the One God and for living their lives according to a number of intricate religious stricture, and are generally distrusted by other peoples. They receive more toleration and acceptance in the Sirdabi Caliphate than elsewhere, but they still often dwell within specific enclaves separate from their neighbors. In addition to being daring sailors and traders the Yehani frequently perform unpleasant jobs that are forbidden to other peoples due to religious restrictions, but they are also famed for their physicians and scholars.
Appearance
Like the Sirdabi peoples to whom they may have some distant relation, Yehani generally have aquiline features, brown or black hair, and a middle range of skin tones. However, due to their extensive travel and contact with other peoples over at least a millennium, some groups particularly in central Ruvera and Altaruleska may have fairer hair and skin such that they only stand out slightly from their indigenous neighbors. Wherever they are found Yehani are distinctive for having eyes in all the varied colors of the sea, including pale pink.
Dress
The Yehani mode of dress varies somewhat depending on the dominant culture and climate within which they dwell, but certain styles and articles of apparel are considered characteristic. Women traditionally wear a calf-length dress-like tunic, layered over an undertunic or shift, and pantaloons or loose leggings. Men's dress is similar, save that the tunic garment is usually shorter, falling only to the knee or mid-thigh. For both women and men, the sleeves of the tunic may be either close-fitting and simply cut or loose and bell-shaped, with the latter most typically used for formal occasions and temple visits. Both sexes also wear the characteristic Yehani cap when they go out, which may come in two forms: one a simple brimless skullcap, the other a similar cap that conforms slightly less to the head and features a small rolled brim. Women's caps may also include light veiling which they can use to cover their face.
Yehani men are most often clean-shaven, and men and women both often wear their hair long. They also signal their maturity and marital status by how they braid their hair. Once a Yehani comes of age, which is typically at fourteen years for both sexes, they begin to wear their hair with a single thin braid to one side of the face -- the left side for women and the right side for men. When they marry, both husband and wife will wear two thin braids, which are then pulled around the temples and tied or pinned at the back of the head.
All Yehani, young and old, carry with them wherever they go a vial of sea water collected from the Adelantean. Called the memlevi and usually worn suspended from a chain or thong and resting over the heart, it serves as a cherished connection to their homeland and their past, as well as to the One God whom the Yehani still associate most closely with the sea.
Language
The native tongue of the Yehani is Yash, but from living and trading widely among other peoples they often speak a variety of other languages as well. Yash has its own alphabet and script, and literacy on at least a basic level is relatively common.
Culture
The Yehani have always been a seafaring people, and their great love for the ocean colors their attitudes and beliefs. As long as they have existed as a people, the Yehani have made their homes on the islands scattered throughout the heart of the Adelantean, as well as living in towns and villages along much of the coast. They have always been among the most best mariners in Avaria, as skilled at building ships as piloting them, and they possess a deep knowledge of the sea that comes from generations of collective experience.
History
The origins of the Yehani are uncertain; as long as anyone can remember they were simply the native people of the islands of the central Adelantean. The Yehani's own traditions state that they were created by Elu-Hani, later known as the One God, from sand and seafoam. From the earliest days of their history they were in fact known simply as the Yemel, meaning roughly "People of the Great Sea". Beginning as humble fishermen, the Yemel developed into savvy and adventurous traders whose mercantile pursuits spanned the length and breadth of the Adelantean.
Over the centuries their towns and cities likewise spread out around the entire Adelantean basin, founded along the edges of the shore on lands generally occupied by other peoples. Here they would sometimes rent the land for their new towns from the locals, while other times they might purchase it outright where the desired location was of little value. Being totally uninterested in war and conquest, and bound more by shared origin and interests than by the structures of a formal state, the Yehani's only empire was one of commerce. Nevertheless numerous great trading cities grew to dominate the coast in some areas, including Selush and Yenatan in present-day Ensor, Tripu in Cadenza, Druth in Tessere, and the city called Inith-el whose exact location is no longer recalled. Perhaps greater still were the ancient Marzumite kingdoms of Mar'i, Sennathrab, and An-Halor, whose kings and queens are to this day renowned for their deeds as recorded in the Song of the Sea.
But down through all the centuries, and regardless of the glories of kingdoms and city-states, the Yehani's beloved homeland remained the archipelago nation of Yashalen, a collection of islands large and small clustered near the center of the Adelantean. These volcanic islands boasted shallow but rich soils and bounteous shoals full of fish, and though fierce storms scoured them from time to time the natural reefs and deep valleys of the islets sheltered the Yehani from the worst ravages of the elements. Thickly wooded slopes furnished timber for shipbuilding as well as a variety of fruits and nuts, and flowers brightened the landscape throughout the spring and summer. Dominating the archipelago even at its furthest reaches was the holy Mount Elemnis, whose snow-capped peak was considered the throne of God.
When Elemnis erupted catastrophically nearly eight hundred years ago, it plunged the world into three years of darkness and sank all of Yashalen beneath the waves forever. Stricken by grief and numbed by shock, the surviving Yehani were left without a home and became a people of exiles. While they had often been envied by other peoples for their wealth, and distrusted for their often insular and odd-seeming ways, the Yehani became also feared and despised as Kalentians in particular blamed them for somehow defiling Mount Elemnis and thereby bringing on the Great Dark. But despite millennia of adversity, the Yehani have nevertheless adapted with alacrity to their changed circumstances and can now be found scattered throughout much of the known world.