Zoccoro

What is a Zoccoro?
A Zoccoro is a iron fox mask. In the toungue of certain nomads of North Altequentia the word means "Iron Fox". Its is used in the initiation ceremony of The Church of Twofold Eggs or CTE.

History and significance
The nomadic people of ancient of Northern Altequentia lived off of chicken, grasses and berries. They kept chickens in stone enclosures and harvested their eggs, feathers and meat. When the wind would favour the gods of any particular direction, they would make pray to The Sky Father to bless them with good weather for horse travel and make pray to The Earth Mother to give them no trouble and to their horses much speed and vigor. They would take their eggs, unpack their wood *tiertans* or mobile homes. It is from this time that the practise of sacred fox hunts to kill the creatures that ate their animals takes origin. Warriors would ride naked with a fox pelt scarf, a wood *zoccoro* and a bronze javelin in hand. They would pray to the sky god and earth god, then they would catch both a hare and an eagle, feeding the two very little food and giving them ample water. The animals would be released and as one kills the other, The hunt begins.

Much later, when farming came about, zoccoro wearing nomads would take farming peoples as their slaves, bringing much money and prestige to the clan. Many clans would gather at the winter solstice to perform a changed version of the fox hunt. Out in the plains, a fox that has been well fed on human flesh but hungry for two days will be set free. The young men of the clans would be brought to wear coal on their faces and bodies, wear a crown of berry thorns and a zoccoro and do the hunt. All this was done to make every move and turn of the participants body to be calculated, lest they be injured or due to the mask obscuring their vision, fall to be badly attacked by the fox. This tradition carried relatively unchanged until the large Altequentian empires had enough of the nomad clans and waged total war against these “squatters”.

As such the zoccoro is a mark of our tradition as great nomad warriors who ate from chickens and thus revered them. The zoccoro also symbolises this ancient story of our ancestors being forced to run or be assimilated. The town of Madinat Al Hayzan has also gone through a similar story. That is why the zoccoro is still used in the CTE initiation ritual today.

Etymology and Cultural History
The word itself as said is part of the tongue of North Altequentian nomads. As time went along, via raiding and such these nomads spread their genes and language to the farming communities in the area. As larger empires formed in the area, the territorial range controlled by the nomads shrunk and they were pushed into northeast Altequentia. It is at this time that these nomadic cultures settled down. Their nomadic culture and language was trasmitted by their warrior culture. At this time they lived in martial groups called clans. As these peoples got more established, the larger empires in the region started to take up policies to entirely incorporaate these people into their citizenry.

The word itself is confusing because branched off ideas that are still seen in some communities in the area have wooden animal masks in ceremonies. In their tongues the wood mask is also called zoccoros. There are a few reasons for this.

First is that the part of the word used today that menas iron might mean the stregth of iron instead of the material itself. Due to these groups possibly only using wood or stone pre Iron Age, they did not think to namethe zoccoro "wood fox". This word changed over time to its modern meaning.

Second is that the old wooden masks were used in an annual and very rare cultural event and later a warrior initiation. Therefore, for most of the time the tradition of zoccoro has existed, wooden, one time use masks would suffice. However as the new tradition used in the CTE or Church of The Twofold Egg is based one mask assigned to a priest that is used again and again, the word took on new meaning.