WIP: This article is a work in progress.

Pragmatic and stubborn, the Nightwalker people are actually more open-minded about certain aspects of life than their surface dwelling cousins.

Standard familial practices.

The Nightwalkers are the only Abwehrans with an active coming of age ceremony, which is a long and tedious one. It involves the child of 5 Abwehran Years (18 Standard years) going through a series of three tasks. The first task is of purification. The child goes up to a mountain peak for spiritual cleansing and meditation. This meditation lasts for three days straight. Once this is done, the child should then come down the mountain to perform the second task.

The second task is a duel with their father. Though to other races, this maybe considered barbaric, the Nightwalkers consider it a necessity. To them, if the child can hold his own or win against his father, the child is then considered to be ready to protect himself and his future family without the need for help.

The third trial is created specifically by the mother to test her child for his or her days as an adult. It can be anything and is usually wither something the grandmother did to her or completely original. Once the child passes the three trials, they are considered an adult. A celebration then occurs for the new adult of the family.

Nightwalkers are an extremely family-bound society, all branches of a family will sometimes live together in large apartment-like complexes. Some families stay together for twenty generations in the same location, building ties to other families and even becoming influential in their home city.

An example of such families are the Löwenherzt based in the capital of Abwehr. In Großartige Festung, the Löwenherzt family is more of a clan than anything else. With nearly fifty generations living in a neighborhood with families who have married into the Löwenherzt, they have a long history of military service with in Abwehran Society.

Traditional heroes of legend and mythos by region.

Typical practices of Marriage.

The male to female ratio of the Nightwalker population is an unprecedented 20 to 80 percent. This means for every two males there are 8 females, which is fairly close to the former Nepleslian gender ratio involving male and females (only reversed). Because of this, Nightwalkers have developed a polygamist society when it comes to marriage.

There are several types of polygamy practiced by the Nightwalkers. The most common due to the gender ratio is polygyny, the union of one male to several females. The next most common union are group marriages. which involves the union between multiple partners. This form of union allows for even more open minded unions between male to male and female to female partnerships. The rarest union is in the form of polyandry, one female to multiple males. This is often frowned upon in Nightwalker society due to the female taking more of a 'limited resource' than she should.

The Nightwalker marriage is a simple wedding, though quite large due to family. Traditionally, the male wears a black on dark gray suit with his sword on his left side. The female wears a forest green or teal evening gown-like wedding dress with no lace or frills on it. Unlike the male, she has a choice whether or not to have her sword with her. If she chooses to have it with her, the sibling or cousin closest to her age is asked to carry it for her.

During the ceremony, both man and woman walk down the aisle together. Once at the alter, they turn to face each other and clasp hands. A special cloth with the coat of arms of both families is draped on top of the clasped hands and the couple pledges to the universe and to the people attending their love and devotion. Once that is done, the couple can then share a kiss together to cement their marriage. Afterwards, a celebration is thrown that can last from four hours to eight whole hours, depending on the size of the family.

Due to living in areas with high concentrations of metals and minerals, it's easy to realize just where the Nightwalkers predisposition towards the sciences and engineering comes from. Since even the Great Conflict Era, Nightwalkers have been ingenious in the technical fields and have always been the more technologically advanced of the two Abwehran races. Though this doesn't mean they've never been artists or diplomats, it just explains why the Nightwalkers have their technical talents.

There is also a varying degree of wander lust among the Nightwalker people. Many behavioral scientists attribute this to the subterranean environment Nightwalker society has developed and the natural curiosity of its people.

Recreation trends of Nightwalkers.

While religion is more based upon the individual Abwehran, many Nightwalkers tend to lean towards Universalism as their religion. In fact, the vast majority of Nightwalkers are in some sect of Universalism. The only religion that comes close to competing for converts is the Empress Cult, but that is still a small percentage of the Nightwalker population over all.

Recreational reproduction in the Nightwalker community is fairly loose in terms of gender equality and same gender relations. With a rather large female population, female-female tendencies and activities involving multiple partners are not frowned upon by society. This doesn't necessarily mean this activity is talked about in public. Nightwalkers are more conservative when it comes to the actual discussion of recreational reproduction in public places, though it is quite alright to talk about it within small groups of friends and family.

However, some taboos can be found in the Nightwalker society involving this, most often the more depraved actions are found as seen as such. However, even when same gender activities involving women are acceptable, activities involving men are more tolerated than accepted. This is mostly because of the very small male population in Nightwalker society and the need for male chromosomes in the gene pool for their race to survive.

This page was originally created on 2013/03/09 12:02 by Abwehran Commander.