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Need help creating a culture for an alien race called the Avari

Kei

Acolyte
Need help creating a culture for an alien race called the Avârí.

I am currently trying to create a culture and Religion for an alien race called the Avârí. My current ideas are:

-Avârí population consists of a 2 to 1 ratio of females to males. So the Avârí race is very women centered with governments and religious leaders run by females. A Matriarchy.

-Also, the Avârí are so technologically advanced that they have the technology to induce pregnancy in lesbian couples as long as they have DNA samples from the 2 lovers without any need for a male.

-Their culture and religion requires them to be rather peaceful and it is looked down upon to be trigger-happy.

-Homosexuality is very common among the Avârí as the majority of the population is overwhelmingly female.

-Avârí religious leaders are usually lesbians, rather it's recommended and preferred that they are lesbians.

-The Avârí are currently very high tech and are one of the known powers in the Universe and interstellar relations.

-Their home world has 3 moons which is where the Avârí religion is stemmed from:
Avâr Goddess of Life and Light
Avír Goddess of Love and the Pâvír
vet Goddess of Death, Darkness, and the ruler of the Afterí

-Afterí: The Avârí Afterlife.

-Pâvír: A ceremony of great cultural and religious significance to the Avârí. The Pâvír is also a unique ability of the Avârí. It is believed that Avír blessed the Avârí with the Pâvír as a way to perform a soul bonding. Mentally, emotionally, and in soul a Pâvír pairing are combined. They share all of their memories and thoughts and emotions to where they practically are the same person in essence, but their other half is more of a secondary self to their original self (like a second language). It is common for Pâvírí (Pâvír pairings) to lose track of which memories are theirs and which are of their partner's, but essentially/culturally they are both theirs (if that makes any sense). Pâvírí can be of different alien races as long as one of the pairing is Avârí. Basically, if 2 complete strangers were to become Pâvírí then although they are complete strangers, it will be like they have known each other for all of eternity as well as they have known themselves. The Pâvír ceremony is done kind of like sex but without any need to fornicate. It is normal and fine for Pâvírí to fornicate as well but that is unnecessary. All that is required for the Pâvír Ceremony is to be as physically close as possible where they make themselves entirely vulnerable to each other. Being in a nude embrace is the most common way since most Pâvírí tend to become lovers, partners, and often marry. Pâvírí are of the same Avârí race, they can be interracial as long as 1 of the pair is Avârí. Pâvírí can also be homosexual, asexual, heterosexual, bisexual, etc. If a Pâvírí is interracial than the Pâvírí essentially becomes half and half. Say a human and Avârí become Pâvírí then the Avârí and human both become half human and half Avârí. Pâvírí also gain an increase in strength and health and extreme longevity. Both sides of the Pâvírí can also heal injuries that normally would never have grown back. Like a human can slowly regrow an arm and an Avârí can regrow her wings.

-Avârí: skin color usually vary in a combination of types blues and purples, short noses, almond shaped eyes, and hair & eyes of a wide variety of colors. The Avârí body shape is rather close to that of a human, except for pointed ears, fang-like teeth, short claw-like nails and toe nails, and big feathered wings (usually the same color of the hair) that stem from the bottom of their shoulder blades. These wings are strong enough to fly, but not for long distances, they are better/stronger at protecting themselves from attacks than to fly. It is also an extremely shameful thing to have your wings torn or cut off. Avârí will exile those whose wings are taken off regardless if it was consensual or against their will. Avârí often do not have their wings out as a precaution against getting their wings taken out. When an Avârí's wings are hidden there is a sapphire color tattoo-like mark in place of where the wings are on the back in a very intricate and beautiful pattern. Another difference is that the Avârí are much stronger than humans, with higher reflexes, heightened senses. Avârí also have the aptitude for high tech abilities and biotics.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Just an fyi, I fixed a glitch associated with the special characters in the title of this thread.
 

Jesse

Dreamer
Sounds like you've already gone pretty deep, Kei. What exactly are you asking for? One thing I might note: we tend to value that which is rare. So if you've got one dude Avârí for every two gal Avârí, then the men might hold more prestige than I'm seeing in your description.

I'm curious why you chose this high-tech, peaceful people to have large fang-like teeth. That, to me at least, indicates a genetic heritage that leans very much toward carnivorism (if that's not word then I'm coining it) rather than the omnivore predecessors we humans had. Not to say you can't be a peaceful carnivore (my Mastiff would agree), but it could give rise to some internal conflicts in your story, both internal for individual characters ("why do I feel the need to sink my teeth into that guy's throat?") and to the society as a whole ("why aren't we just slaughtering these pesky humans?").

Also, I'm curious how/why the population would be so overwhelmingly one gender? That's rare here on Earth, and is usually a temporary (of course, temporary can be a relative term) condition caused by selective hunting of one gender over another or some odd chemical imbalance that favors the survival rate of one fetus over another. Despite what Jurassic Park teaches, the frogs that they reference don't jump genders to breed. They typically resort to cloning themselves. This works for a time, but cloned generations don't adapt to changes in the environment and can't be sustained for long.

But you mentioned that reproduction can be done artificially, I believe, so perhaps that practice is what has lead to the gender imbalance? Male Avârí don't survive the transplant procedure, perhaps?

I'm just looking for origins and consequences of what you've already put out there. Let me know if any of this is helpful and I'd be glad to keep going.
 

Kei

Acolyte
Avârí

Sounds like you've already gone pretty deep, Kei. What exactly are you asking for? One thing I might note: we tend to value that which is rare. So if you've got one dude Avârí for every two gal Avârí, then the men might hold more prestige than I'm seeing in your description.

I'm curious why you chose this high-tech, peaceful people to have large fang-like teeth. That, to me at least, indicates a genetic heritage that leans very much toward carnivorism (if that's not word then I'm coining it) rather than the omnivore predecessors we humans had. Not to say you can't be a peaceful carnivore (my Mastiff would agree), but it could give rise to some internal conflicts in your story, both internal for individual characters ("why do I feel the need to sink my teeth into that guy's throat?") and to the society as a whole ("why aren't we just slaughtering these pesky humans?").

Also, I'm curious how/why the population would be so overwhelmingly one gender? That's rare here on Earth, and is usually a temporary (of course, temporary can be a relative term) condition caused by selective hunting of one gender over another or some odd chemical imbalance that favors the survival rate of one fetus over another. Despite what Jurassic Park teaches, the frogs that they reference don't jump genders to breed. They typically resort to cloning themselves. This works for a time, but cloned generations don't adapt to changes in the environment and can't be sustained for long.

But you mentioned that reproduction can be done artificially, I believe, so perhaps that practice is what has lead to the gender imbalance? Male Avârí don't survive the transplant procedure, perhaps?

I'm just looking for origins and consequences of what you've already put out there. Let me know if any of this is helpful and I'd be glad to keep going.

This helps a lot thank you. When you ask these questions it makes me think of details that never even crossed my mind. Thank you very much and by all means please do pick this apart so I can come up with answers. That's how the culture can be developed like in a Persistent Universe.
 

Kei

Acolyte
So to answer why the peaceful people with fangs. An idea is that the Avârí were originally a very violent people torn by war. Eventually fighting meaninglessly due to their instinct became viewed as barbaric and was heavily looked down upon by the race as a whole. There are Avârí warriors but they are an entirely separate class that the rest of society prefers to keep them separate.

As far as why the lack of males in the Avârí population, in the story that I have written so far, that the Avârí culture belongs to, There is another race of aliens that I guess you can say are much like the Saiyajin from Dragon Ball. A very brutish race that gets its technology from a high tech race it enslaved and the 2nd alien (Saiyajin for the sake of not having a name yet) race go around as paid mercenaries and slave traders. And since the Avârí are rather adept for fighting like the Saiyajin, the Saiyajin have caught and enslaved male Avârí over the centuries so it created the imbalance in gender population. And since the Avârí have the tech to induce impregnation they did not need to go and save the male Avârí. And a reason for why they wouldn't save them can be because the Saiyajin cut off the wings of all Avârí that they enslave, so the enslaved Avârí are effectively exiled.
 

Jesse

Dreamer
So to answer why the peaceful people with fangs. An idea is that the Avârí were originally a very violent people torn by war. Eventually fighting meaninglessly due to their instinct became viewed as barbaric and was heavily looked down upon by the race as a whole. There are Avârí warriors but they are an entirely separate class that the rest of society prefers to keep them separate.

As far as why the lack of males in the Avârí population, in the story that I have written so far, that the Avârí culture belongs to, There is another race of aliens that I guess you can say are much like the Saiyajin from Dragon Ball. A very brutish race that gets its technology from a high tech race it enslaved and the 2nd alien (Saiyajin for the sake of not having a name yet) race go around as paid mercenaries and slave traders. And since the Avârí are rather adept for fighting like the Saiyajin, the Saiyajin have caught and enslaved male Avârí over the centuries so it created the imbalance in gender population. And since the Avârí have the tech to induce impregnation they did not need to go and save the male Avârí. And a reason for why they wouldn't save them can be because the Saiyajin cut off the wings of all Avârí that they enslave, so the enslaved Avârí are effectively exiled.

Well, this might show my age a bit, but I'm not much of a Dragon Ball fan. So rather than Saiyajin, these sound kind of like Klingons as well. And the Avârí's (BTW: do you just leave that word in your clipboard and paste it each time like I do? That would drive me nuts trying to write a novel with special characters in my words) brutal past suppressed by current cultural expectations sounds a little Vulcan. But I'm not terribly bothered by parallels to existing lore.

I could have sworn that you described the Avârí as being galactic masters or some such, but now I can't find it. So I was curious whether you'd call this other race super-masters or something, since they seem able to pick them off at will?

I'm not sure that selective hunting of the males over time would have led to a lower male population, since that wouldn't affect the ratio of male-to-female births. It would affect the total number of males in the short term, if the hunting was exceedingly successful, though. Maybe the females simply don't bother defending against the theft since they can breed without them? But that's pretty cold.

I like where you're going with the cut-off wings being something that gets them shunned. It makes getting captured essentially a death sentence since even if you escaped, there's nowhere to escape TO. BUT with the Pâvír, an ex-enslaved Avârí could get nekkid with a human and grow their wings back, correct? Sounds like there could be quite a market for willing humans, provided the enslaved Avârí come from a wealthy family (I don't know what the economics look like). Or a human slave-trading opportunity if you're looking to go darker.

But back to history and culture, which I realize is your actual question. I read an article a while back about how they think manners and politeness in humans goes back well beyond cave-man days. We've always been social creatures and manners go a long way toward that. If an ape-man from a neighboring group comes over to our ape-man group, we might want to mate with them rather than kill them, so being polite allows that potential genetic exchange.

But since these Avârí seem to be descended from something more carnivorous than an ape, then that underlying social structure might be somewhat different. The reason dogs were domesticated so early in our history and cats so late wasn't just because dogs are awesome and cats suck, though I suspect that that had a lot to do with it. It was because dogs had a rigid social structure that was easy to subvert. They had an alpha, and if you could convince them that YOU were the alpha, then they fell into line rather quickly. It didn't take too many generations of breeding to make them lie at your feet or defend your hut against attackers. (Two books I highly recommend for some more information are Guns, Germs and Steel, and The Greatest Show on Earth.

So a dog-based society would be fairly easy to extrapolate, I think, with absolutely defined chains of hierarchy. A cat-based one... I don't know. I think they'd just do WTF they wanted and wait on someone to change their box. Again, I'm not sure how deep you want to get into a different culture, but the fangs in your description made my l'il brain go there.

Why would the Avârí turn away from violence and war? What prompted that shift?
 
If there is a female to male dominance in power and number now then that may not always have been the case. Perhaps historically the society originally evolved as male dominated - with harems of females (and perhaps aggressive males that fought over those females). A total reversal of what the society has become.
Perhaps this is something that is hidden in the records of the past - something suppressed by the current powers in fear that the current status quo would fall apart if it were widely known.
 
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