Khyagete

The khyagete are a species of Human Most common in Iìsgaròth and Feolne. They are usually stronger and stouter than Homo Sapiens and are famous across the peninsula for their tradition of never showing their face.

Evolution
The Khyagete Split off from Homo Sapiens after becoming isolated from Eastern pioneers during the time at which Nerod was first populated. Some avalanche, natural disaster or lack of will to return to their peers left the Khyagete people with a separate gene pool to that of Homo Sapiens.

Habitat and Population
Being primarily mountain dwellers, khyagete often live in ~200-person groups or Sungo in wide-open caves. The Gol Mod tribe lives in the tower abandoned by Safactis Milanwes’ 9th material form.

There are between 5 and 50 Sungo in each tribe. When a tribe leader wishes to unite his or her tribe, they make a torch with the wool of a mountain goat, called a Chun, and send a messenger carrrying it to the nearest Sungo. Upon recieving the chun, the sungo-hold travels to the sungo of the leader (or a locale inscribed on the torch, if present) and sends a messenger to the nearest uncontacted sungo. Each sungo carves its glyph onto the chun, so that the next sungo-hold can tell which sungo have been contacted and which have not.

Khyagete Masks
The most famous and widely known fact about the khyagete is that they always wear masks. This is most often true. There is a strict tradition allowing only outcasts, children and prostitutes to show their face. At the age of 12, a khyagete begins making their mask, which aims to reflect the personality and societal role of the wearer. The mask is never finished, because each major event is an opportunity to add details to the mask. There are no rules, but common adornments include intimidating horns for a warrior, a wrinkle under the eye for each dead friend, or a white tooth for each child given birth to.

Death
When a Khyagete dies, in most tribes the custom is to leave the body deep in the warmest, most humid part of the Sungo, known as a tschäg. Fermented herbs and sweet-smelling fruit are brought daily and placed around the bodies in the tschäg, until the hands show no skin. The masks are then carefully removed, labeled with the given name and mask-removal date of the owner, and placed in the maskery, which is often found in a cavern near the tschäg. The body, now only bones, is taken and left on a mountain-top to be eaten by wild birds. In times of abundant death (like famines or wars), bodies are left on a slope appropriately far from the sungol, so as not to pollute the water.