Wirlomeyan

The Wirlomei, also known as Wirl are an strange group of people and nation spread all across Rathnir, especially in Syltör, Nieden, Ummarnu and Haven, who claim to be the sprout of the rotting sun.

The wirl people possess no true physical appearance, instead being emotional shapeshifters. Most commonly, however, they take a pale, corpse-like skin complexion, with thin and frail bodies and delicate fingers ending in claws, sharply pointed teeth with two prominent pair of fangs and red eyes.

It is uncertain, even amongst wirl themselves, whether this is their actual humanoid form or just a mixture of Niedene and Lamiantrophi features.

Overview
Wirlomei seem to have no relation with neither humans or elves. In fact, as experiments realised in Ardat seem to indicate, the wirl seed is incompatible with all species in Rathnir; including each other.

Wirlomei are infertile. Not only does their seed produce no sprout, but many humanoid wirl lack any sort of reproductive system whatsoever in their bodies. This however does not mean wirl are incapable of feeling certain emotions as they can still be influenced by the shape they adopt.

Wirl are emotional shapeshifters, their appearance and physical composition vary depending in the emotional estate of any given individual around them, common appearances of wirlomei have included spiders, empty armour suits, shades, and people.

This last particular case allows wirl to take the shape of specific people and experiment sensations that'd be otherwise alien to them, which is why turning into existent individuals is generally frowned upon.

Despite their ability to shapeshift, wirl are incredibly uniform across shapes; and despite being clearly divided amongst two different sexes in society, their sexual dimorphism is noticeably negligible. This intel means that differentiating the sexes in any morphological manner is extremely difficult to do.

History
The origin of the wirl people is surrounded in mystery as most historical sources are heavily biased towards a mythological origin or entirely nonexistent.

The're no saying were did the species originate, as specimens have been found all around Rathnir, and as far as historical records concern, no wirl country had ever been formed before. It's speculated ancient wirl were responsible for the creation of Pisus, which would function as wirlomei city-states in the past, although there's no evidence to sustain this claim.

Most specimens were known to haunt the citadel of Utumno, in the Eastern Empire, before it was destroyed by Axyr during the Usurpation of Yimmu-Audal, currently an unknown amount of wirlomei have adopted a nomadic lifestyle or have settled in the League of Falsáivrea, in Haven and Ardat.

Culture
Despite there being almost no sexual dimorphism amongst wirlomei, theirs used to be a disturbingly patriarchal society; every aspect of it was controlled by males with the sole exception of martial training.

Females and males used to be separated at birth and given a different education, males getting none whereas females were solely trained to fight and teach. Any female that proved too weak to fight was immediately discarded and assassinated by her peers, those who passed through a rigorous examination were divided between those who could teach and those who could not; those who could were spared and turned into instructors for the next generation, those who could not were ritualistically dismembered by their male counterparts in sacrifice to the rotting sun.

This particular practice fell out of favour after a numerous amount of wirl settled on the Caliphate of Ardat-Mosul, there is still however a extremely notable social disparity between wirl males and females, as wirl males tend to withdraw themselves from public life and live in complete isolation, working as sorcerers or architects if at all; females on the other hand are prolific in pretty much every aspect of society in Ardat-Mosul and Céruma.

As wirlomei are infertile, they cannot breed, and as such do not reproduce so much as they grow like a fungus in places that follow very specific conditions. These places are called pisi and can be found all across rathnir. Wirlomei settlements are normally found near a pisus and are extremely dangerous for any non-wirl to get nearby. The rate of apparition of new wirlomei is unknown.

Pisi consist of large pit-like structures that hit bedrock, with numerous holes carved in the walls and unreadable runes, curses and prayers scribbled around in the unintelligible utumnic language.

Wirl don't seem to age, nor grow. The concept of age, sex and family is determined by a mathematical progression depending on multiple factors and is set for life. Wirl will, however, change their characteristics depending on what their birth projections estates at their birth.

Wirlomei are also mortal, and can be badly injured and even die from it. Whenever this happens, another identical wirl immediately takes their place. It's impossible to determine whether this new wirl is nothing but a clone of the original or a new incarnation of them.

These wirl clones are generated in the exact pisus the original was sprout out of. Distance doesn't seem to matter when considering these clones, as regardless of how far away the pisus is from the place of death, a new wirl can always be found in less than 30 minutes in the very spot they died.

The only situation on which wirl can permanently die is if murdered by another wirl. Many wirlomei, however, seem to lack the ability to kill themselves or their relatives, as many times this has happened and a clone still generates. This is not the norm, and even though proving this condition is enough to demonstrate two wirls are related, it's not required.

Extreme greed, paranoia, xenophobia and misanthropy are extended amongst the population to such a crippling extent and gravity that an artificial pisus had to be constructed in Ardat in an attempt to research a cause for it and come up with a solution. Their almost pathological antisocial attitudes as well as weak bodies make wirlomei very vulnerable to constant assassination, this has been a constant issue for the race and many have recurred to the art of necromancy to reanimate slaves who'd protect them.

It seems to be impossible for a wirl to reanimate one of their fallen peers, but it's possible for them to bring back people long ago deceased to function as their personal ounterage. It's not unusual to see wirl followed by parades of skeletons, vampires and ghouls; nor is unheard of wirlomei abducting and stuffing people and animals with stolen and summoned souls to create a range of disfigured beasts to have as personal bodyguards; the product of this process is called a werebeast.

These practices have been specially problematic amongst the Ardatist populations of the caliphate, who disapproved and persecuted the use of Necromancy until the Trafalgar Dynasty took over. Since then the Ardatist population has been rapidly on the decline whilst the population of werebeasts has been on the rise.

This has hit the Lamiantrophus population especially hard, facing cattle-life in Ardat once it was discovered that attempting to turn one into a werebeast will constantly result in a completely new wirl. Lamiantrophus are currently considered the cornerstone for the survival of the wirl race due to their extraordinary ability to reproduce.

Origin
As it's been shown Wirlomei are not humans in the slightest, it is thought of them as an species of demon. The exact process by which a wirl is born is disputed, but new individuals seem to just appear out of the shadows or come out of nether portals.

Given what is believed of their own nature by themselves, wirl could be related to the mysterious continent of Jagdas and the corruption that destroyed it. Thus, they would be the result of small-scale corruption events occurring in the world. This, despite being the most agreed upon theory, has not been proven true as these small-scale corruptions haven't been properly investigated nor found.

Another hypothesis is that they are just a variation of Lamiantrhophus, who sepparated so long ago it evolved into a completely different species incapable of interbreeding with any other creature in Rathnir. This, however assumes the humanoid form of the Wirlomei and does not explain why the species holds no ancestral land, being dispersed all around Rathnir.

Historically, wirl people tended to gather within ruinous citadels from time immemorial, called pisus. It's unknown whether these citadels were constructed by other wirlomei long ago or if they were occupied illegally; nor is it known what exactly was inside them. The only two known wirlomei citadels are Ninansuyo and Utumno, of which neither stand today.

Religion
Historically they worshipped a god named Caliburnus, of whom most myths were lost to time after a crusade was launched by Escharia to convert them into Soleannen. It's believed this resulted in the burning of what little historical record was held inside the fortress, as they possessed no writing system before being integrated in the empire and most information was stored in the form of enchanted water.

They currently practise what seemed to be a highly antagonistic and secular version of Soleannen known as Cruor Cruoris, but encrypted manuscripts found in the ruins of Utumno seem to indicate no conversion ever took place, despite what the Escharien crusade intended. However, the dating and decryption of these books still result problematic for researchers.

The wirl language (also known as Utumnic) was an historical language mostly used for record-keeping. The language fell entirely out of use after the Usurpation of Yimmu-Audal, when most of the population adopted a dialect of ancient Ardati as their primary language as a sign of good faith and friendship.