Gural
The gural are a birdlike race of people who originated from the coastlines of the Rendi and migrated through the rest of the world. They are one of the races born from the Rendi sisters, coming from the sister Sor Na’rai Lekt, and are believed to share their share their origin will all of the Rendi races.
Gural mostly prefer to make their homes by the water, and will gravitate towards beachfront or lakeside housing, even when in countries dominated by other Sentient races. As one of the few non-aquatic races able to hydrate by drinking saltwater, they are very comfortable living in sea ports out on the ocean, and frequently join seces communities.
Physical Traits
Av. Height (Male): 5’1”
Av. Height (Female): 4’7”
Gural are medium-height, bird-like humanoids with colourful feathers covering their bodies. They have bald faces, feet, and hands, and a pair of wings sprouting from their back. Their bald skin has a scaly texture to it; with their hands and feet being very similar to the talons of a bird, with thick-but-flexible digits.
The most notable trait unique to the gural are the colourful scent-glands by their eyes. These glands secrete a strong-smelling oil, often described as fishy or salty. Though they are usually flat against the skin, they will swell during intense hormonal influxes (such as puberty or during the fertility cycle). The skin in these glands is more rubbery to the touch than the rest of a gural’s body, and is very sturdy and difficult to puncture.
Though the gural have bald faces, their heads are not completely without feathers and they have large manes that frame their faces. These manes cover their heads like hair, and come down their neck to their torso. They are thicker than the rest of their body’s feathers, consisting of densely-packed, medium length semiplume feathers.
Alongside their manes, they also have feathery crests. All gural have crests directly behind their ear-holes, which are used both to aid in hearing and to express emotion. Some gural have crests atop their heads, poking through their manes, while others do not.
Like all Rendi races, the gural have wings. The wings of a gural sprout from their backs underneath their scapula, and are naturally muscular, designed for long-distance gliding. This is believed to come from their affinity to water and travelling the ocean.
Though a gural’s beak may come in a variety of shapes and sizes, the most common form is the hookbill; sharp, strong, and versatile, this parrot-like beak is often used as a tool alongside a gural’s hands. The nose of a gural is operculate and featherless, with their cere and nare sitting just under the eye-line of the gural. Gural also have a “lip” like edge to their flange; flexible, bald skin that can be used to create complicated expressions.
They also have feathered tails that are used to both aid in flight and display emotions to others.
Though they can be any colour found in nature, most gural have very limited colour palettes; with their feathers only having one or two colours. Those that do have more than one hue often have colours that are very similar, such as pink and red, or purple and blue.
Sex and Gender
There is very little physical sexual dimorphism between male and female gural, though there are some features that the gural consider significant. The majority of the differences between the sexes are social differences.
The most immediately noticeable physical difference is their manes: gural men naturally have thinner manes than the women. While the men’s manes stop at their shoulders and chest, the mane of the women extends down their arms to their wrists, and covers a significant portion of their backs.
All gural have hidden egg-pouches along their stomachs, for keeping eggs. Generally, gural men have much larger egg-pouches, able to safely carry up to five eggs, while women have small egg-pouches, only able to carry one at a time.
Both sexes of gural have their scent-glands, though a female gural’s are larger; extending a significant distance further down the cheeks than the males’ glands, and swelling much larger.
The natural scent of a gural’s glands play a large part in their sexuality and gender; in gural culture, there are more than single binary male and female biological genders. While initial male and female sexes are determined by the makeup of their genitalia and the presence or absence of a penis, there are other sub-sexes determined by the smell of the the liquid expelled by their scent-glands.
There are recognised to be 3 common female sexes, and 7 common male sexes, with some rare variations, and a large variety of recognised sexualities to encompass the different compatibilities caused by this.
They secrete a salty ooze of hormones from the glands under their eyes to express attraction, and it is considered the equivalent of talking dirty. A gural’s glands will swell when they are aroused, and strong-smelling hormones are released. Most non-gural find the smell of these hormones repulsive.
Due to the gland’s relation to biological sex and sexuality, the gural consider their scent-glands a part of their genitalia, and though they have no qualms about leaving their glands uncovered in public, there are several considerations to be had about them. They are not to be touched by a stranger or while in public, unless to wipe them clean. Likewise, it is considered a sexual act to make extended eye contact with a gural.
Culturally, gural men are considered to be calm and gentle, preferring indoor activities, while gural women are known for thrill-seeking behaviours and an intense interests in sports.
Racial Variations
Gliders
Glider gurals come from the geyser-filled mountain range found along the edge of Zolt’nata’s ocean.
They have a naturally reversed wing-feather overlay; while most gural have wings with feathers where the feather furthest from the body is the “top” feather, when viewed from the front, gliders have a reversed pattern, with the feather furthest from the body being on the “bottom” of the wing. Because of this, each flap of their wings create a suction towards the ground; meaning that these gural struggle to take flight when unaided.
Because they cannot take flight on their own, they rely on other methods; leaping from their high cliff-side homes and catching the strong winds from the seas and geysers to lift themselves up.
Despite their need for aid while flying, they are still rather skilled while in the air; able to make sharp turns with ease, and land gracefully.
Open Ocean
Open ocean gural are sea-dwelling travellers who spend the majority of their lives out on the open ocean, only coming on land during the initial stages of their child-rearing.
Built to live out in the open ocean with very little land, these gural are buoyant, and rest by floating on the ocean’s surface, and take off by diving under the waves and swimming to the surface at speeds enough to launch themselves into the air. When sleeping, a flock will join hands so they do not become separated.
These feathers of the open ocean gural resemble those of seabirds, with waterproof oil coatings and colours ranging from white and grey, to brown and red. Even their manes are waterproof, with a slicked-down look, rather than a gural’s usual fluffy appearance.
Common Disabilities and Health Issues
Imperforated Scent-Glands
Rarely, a gural may be born with scent-glands that cannot drain themselves. This is usually caused by the skin lacking the necessary perforation for the hormones to secrete through. Gural who suffer this condition without seeking treatment risk blindness due to their scent-glances swelling and putting pressure on their eyes. Luckily, the treatment for this condition is relatively simply; surgically inserting a small catheter into the edges of each of the glands to allow them to drain. Often, gural that undergo this procedure will request small stoma bags for their glands to prevent needing to clean their faces in public.
Splayleg and Brittle Beaks
Usually co-morbid conditions, splayleg and brittle beak are caused by very similar genetic deformities that affect the development and hardening of cartilage and keratin. Those born with either or both of these conditions may suffer from chronic pain, difficulty with day-to-day tasks such as walking or eating, and often need aids such as leg braces or protective beak covers.
Relationships and Life Stages
Friends with Benefits and Aromanticism
In general, gural do not take part in long-term dedicated partnerships, especially not in a romantic capacity. They much prefer to have friends with benefits over romantic partners, and most gural identify with the aromatic label, with less than 1% of the population identifying with different romantic labels. Those that identify differently may feel displaced in gural culture, and it is common for them to leave their homelands for other countries where they can meet other romantic people and potential partners.
The longest partnerships in gural culture are, generally, between men who choose to raise children together, with the relationships only lasting until the children are old enough to leave home. These relationships are extremely rare, however, as most gural prefer to raise their children in single-parent households, with parenting responsibilities being given solely to the father of the children.
Life Stages
Reproduction for gural is, culturally, a rather transactional undertaking. With the men of the culture being given full custody of children unless otherwise agreed upon, the women often seek incentives in trade for giving men children to raise. Between friends, this may be as simple as the promise of favours or financially providing for the woman during her body’s recovery from the process of child-bearing, though there are also professional surrogates that charge flat-rate fees for their services. Generally, 1 full-priced surrogacy can fund 2-3 years of a gural woman’s lifestyle. Most gural women who choose to have children will only have 1-2 pregnancies in their lifetime, with the exception being professional surrogates who may work for up to 15 years. Likewise, most gural men will only raise 1-2 clutches of children.
Though gural are sexually active throughout all of the year, the women are only fertile during the early weeks of Jasfe. For the first 14 days of Jasfe, gural women are able to conceive children; a process that is both rather strenuous on their bodies, and rather boring for their thrill-seeking natures, as if they wish to conceive they have to spend several months recovering from the process of having children and cannot go out and partake in their usual activities.
A successful conception will be noticeable in a matter of weeks as, though gural are egg-layers, their eggs are extremely energy-dense and the process of developing them is very draining. Without proper management, a gural pregnancy can lead to several health conditions, ranging from vitamin deficiency, to feather loss, to anaemia. These health conditions are often worsened by the fact gural pregnancies are rarely single-child, and come mid-Morah, they will lay anywhere between 2-6 eggs. Each egg is about the size of a 350ml jar.
Once the eggs are laid, they will be passed on to their father for care. As male gural egg-pouches can only hold 5 eggs, some men will seek help from their friends when dealing with clutches over 3 for the sake of comfort as the children grow; or, very rarely, if the woman is interested in raising her own child, she make take one of the eggs for herself. Usually, however, the preferred family unit is a single father with no co-parent.
The incubation of the eggs within a gural’s egg-pouch is extremely important, as gural are a type of monotreme and provide their young with milk. Milk production is stimulated by the stretching of the egg-pouch, with the inner wall of the egg-pouch sweating milk when needed. Gural who choose to co-parent or adopt will stretch their egg-pouches with prosthetics, so they can help nurse any children they adopt or foster.
Gural will incubate their eggs for a month and a half, until they hatch at the beginning of the year during the first week of Lorane. As all gural children are born at the same time of year it is thought that gural culture has influenced the way that age is measured across the explored territories; with the yearly eclipse marking the ageing ceremony not just for gural, but for all Sentient races.
When a gural hatches, they are bald and blind, their eyes sealed shut and their feathers not growing in for several years. Their beaks are rubbery, so that they may safely nurse, and their scent-glands do not function. They are completely reliant on their parent for everything, including temperature regulation. Because of their fragile nature hatchlings are kept consistently in their egg-pouches until they are 6 months old, when they first open their eyes, and from there are in and out of the egg-pouch until they are 2 eclipses old and officially considered toddlers.
At around 3 and a half eclipses gural will begin to develop downy feathers (with no sexual dimorphic features), and their beaks will harden, allowing them to properly begin eating solid foods and wean from their milk. By four eclipses a healthy gural child will be beginning to speak, with proper speech developing consistently over the next few years until they are 8 eclipses old. At 8 eclipses, gural go through their first growth spurt and their physical and mental growth accelerates very quickly as they begin to develop proper coordination skills, the ability to maintain independent relationships without parental guidance, and they develop a proper sense of self-awareness. By 10 eclipses they are able to be left alone for significant periods of time, though most are not left without supervision for more than an hour until they are teenagers.
Puberty generally begins around 13, though for some it may come a year earlier or later. This is when the first signs of gural’s sexual dimorphism begin to show. They shed their down to develop their adult feathers, with boys and girls growing different styles of manes. Their scent-glands begin to change and develop and they are able to find out their sub-sex, rather than simply being male or female. Whether they choose to adopt the terminology and pronouns common with the genders they are offered is a personal choice, though most choose to do so.
It is this time that gural girls find themselves pumped full of energy that gural boys lack, and they begin to show thrill-seeking behaviours. They are encouraged to take on physical activities such as sports to channel this newfound energy, though some choose to look for much more dangerous thrills, often putting themselves and others at risk doing so. Ages 13-18 are considered the most dangerous times in a gural girl’s life due to their sudden need for adrenaline, and there are many programs in place to try and keep them safe from their own self-destructive behaviours. By 18 eclipses, most girls have calmed down enough to stop putting themselves in danger, though they still live active, high-energy lifestyles and often take part in sports or other extreme physical activities.
By 20 eclipses gural are considered adults, though they will generally wait until they are 25 before deciding if they wish to have children.
Lifespan Facts
• The average gural lifespan is around 50 eclipses for females, and 72 for males. This statistic is thought to be skewed by gural women’s thrill-seeking behaviour. Especially teenage girls, who have a very high mortality rate when compared to their male peers.
• The oldest known gural was a woman known as Ar Ti’ma Kat, who died at 94 years old. She was the reigning champion in a competitive wrestling ring until her forced retirement and died during a police raid on an illegal fight club; being shot down with a crossbow while beating an officer with a chair.
• The colour of a gural’s eggshell is determined by the mother’s side of the family. The most common colours are brown, white, and cream, followed by light blue, and rarely, a greenish-tint. Eggs with speckles or other patterns are considered normal, while single-tone eggs with no patterns are believed to be a sign of health issues in the mother. Despite this, there are no known correlations between egg patterns, and the health of the child.
• Less than 2% of gural eggs do not hatch once laid, and those that do not hatch are generally contributed to poor care from the father, with few exceptions.
• The largest clutch of gural eggs ever recorded was 11. They were raised by their father and his 3 brothers.
Culture
The gural people prefer to live in more suburban communities; with neighbours close by but not densely packed together. There is a very heavy emphasis on community within gural culture, and there are generally multiple activity centres available within a single suburb.
There is, however, a rather significant divide between gural men and women, with lots of clubs and activities being gendered. It is also of note that a lot of masculine activities are devalued in gural culture; with women-led hobbies and professions being considered more important and held in higher regard.
Women: Thrill-Seeking, Sports, and Fight-Clubs
Gural women are encouraged to follow their thrill-seeking nature, especially in their youth, and it often leads to them putting themselves in physical danger. Many of the hobbies and careers gural pursue women have formed as safer outlets to these urges (though many men are discouraged from taking part, as they are often considered “too intense” for a man to handle). The most popular outlets for these behaviours are extreme sports and fight clubs.
The most popular sports that gural women take part in are full-contact team games such as football and hockey, followed by competitive racing such as skating and obstacle courses (both grounded and in-flight). These sports can both be hobbies and professional careers.
There is also the culturally-significant sport of diving, which is believed to have roots in their old fishing methods. Though it is not as popular as other sports for professional entertainment careers due to its relatively safe nature, it is considered a good entry-level sport for young girls to get involved in and it is commonplace in most communities to have community pools solely for diving.
Fight clubs are extremely popular amongst gural women. It is to the point that, if no legal clubs are available to join, there will be a significant rise in crime as illegal ones open. Fight clubs are treated within gural culture much like other cultures treat gambling venues (and rightfully so, as much gambling takes place within these clubs) and they are government monitored with strict regulations they must comply with in order to legally operate. Though a popular hobby, professional fighting is one of the hardest careers to get into in gural culture; it is one of the best paid jobs, however.
Men: Domestic Duties and Child-Rearing
Gural men, unlike women, are expected to be soft-spoken, passive, and kind. They are pushed to take on domestic duties and discouraged from vigorous outdoor activities. There is a stigma that follows gural men who thrill-seek, and it is often treated as unnatural or a flaw of character.
Generally, gural men are thought of as the naturally more caring sex due to their biological ability to incubate eggs, and so are in charge of child-rearing in both personal and professional settings. This push for gural men to be caretakers leaves an added expectation that they be able to perform most domestic duties with ease; being unable to do household chores such as dishes, laundry, and cooking, are seen as personal failures on a man’s behalf.
Because of the expectation of gender roles, the careers of gural men tend to lean towards work such as carers for the elderly or disabled, cleaners and cooks, nursing staff in medical facilities, and other “assistant” jobs to professional women.
Language
The gural’s spoken language has a crackly tone to it, sounding much like a parrot’s mimic. Some gural struggle to make certain sounds due to their beaks and their native language has adapted to accommodate this. Similar to some other Rendi races, they have trouble with volume control and speak in very high-pitched voices. Their native spoken language is made of gurgled words and clicking sounds.
The gural laugh is high, crackly, and often described as sounding put-on and acted. Though the laughs often sound fake gural actually have difficulty laughing on command. It is commonly said that if a gural is laughing, they are being genuine.
Their written language is runic and chunky with a simple printed look to it. It is also often a lot easier for foreigners to understand than their native spoken language.
Naming Conventions
Gural names are made up of three parts, with every gural having two given names and one name inherited from their biological mother. The first and third names of a gural will be either one or two syllables in length, while their middle name will contain two syllables separated by an apostrophe. When addressed formally or signing legal documents, their full name will be used; but otherwise, usage of the name will depend on circumstances.
Examples of names include things such as: Tar Ka’ri Den, Eah Ti’min Zo, Pikki Ter’ki Lah, and Co Vy’lit Ber.
The third name of a gural is inherited from their biological mother; her first given name becomes all of her children’s third name, much like a family name that is passed down in other cultures.
Their first given name is considered their “personal” name. Usually this is the name that close family and friends address them by within personal settings. It is considered inappropriate to use someone’s personal name when out and about, even if you are a close friend or family member. An example of this usage would be “Co Vy’lit Ber” becoming “Co” within a family setting.
The second given name of a gural is their “public” name. This name is usually used in combination with their third name (eg, “Co Vy’lit Ber” becomes “Vy’lit Ber”) in all public settings that are not formal. This name is the name most-associated with a person’s individuality.
Common Religions
Aurn
Okara
Emaltoni
Clothing
Gural people see caring about clothing and fashion as a very masculine trait. Because of this gural men are known for wearing custom-tailored outfits with colourful patterns, while gural women are more likely to wear less flashy outfits such as singlets and shorts.
Though fashion is highly-valued in men and most get their clothes tailored specifically for them, the fashion trends tend to be relatively simple. Shirts, vests, pants, and belt-sashes are amongst the most common items of clothing used by gural men.
Because their scent-glands are considered a part of their genitalia, many gural choose to wear modesty accessories such as eye covers, tinted glasses, or goggles in order to keep their glands private. These are not seen as a necessity, however.
Most gural do not wear footwear or gloves; but earring-like clips for their feathers are common.
Other
Misc
Gural, like many other Rendi races, are buoyant and can float on water due to their hollow bones.
When travelling, gural tend to travel in even-numbered groups. This is due to their ability to fly whilst sleeping. Gural pair up when flying and take shifts sleeping; the dosing gural glides above the awake partner, who guides the sleeper and prevents them sinking too low. A level of spacial awareness is kept by the sleeping gural, who are able to sense the movement of their partner below and follow it; rising when they rise and turning when they turn.
Because of the security of their egg-pouches, many other egg-laying races will hire gural men to act as caretakers for their unhatched eggs.
Gural war heroes wear a tattoo known as the Ocelli Crest on their cheeks. They are tattooed into the sensitive flesh directly under the scent-glands.