Author: Marek Kapral, Peldak Chronicler
Date: 32 AP
From: The ‘Tendori Menace’ news bulletin, posted in adult newspapers across Peldor. One of several articles discussing how the new Peldak Protectorate will be focusing on the relgi nation of Tendor for the foreseeable future.
****
For those who fought in the Founding War and experienced the tendori firsthand, you no doubt would have noticed that my recent summary of Relgan was somewhat sanitized. There was no mention of the common sights, sounds, and smells we all had to suffer through.
The reason for its omission was the simple fact that that summary was shared with the people of Tendor. It wouldn’t have been good to spend their entire section insulting every aspect of their society. But I’ll share that common experience now, with this writing only being distributed among the peldaks.
The people of Relgan, specifically the nation we conquered, known as Tendor, are all viscerally disgusting.
Allow me to explain.
****
The planet of Relgan is divided amongst hundreds of nations. The majority of these nations are ruled (or are greatly influenced) by a class of demon-worshiping shamans known as druids. They believe in all sorts of paganistic tree spirits and nature folk, they’re swindlers who have successfully tricked millions upon millions of hapless idiots that their silly rituals and sacrifices carry real power. The specific flavor and practices of the druids will vary from nation to nation. A few nations successfully purged the druids from tainting their lands, while others have sidelined them to be a harmless society of outcasts and misfits who dance around trees while singing odd songs in strange outfits.
The tendori are no different. The nation is ruled by secular kings and princes in a sort of patchwork confederation, but across all their lands rest an underbelly of druidic corruption. These druids are popular among the people, and carry an outsized level of authority and influence in the state.
The network of nobility ties a mosaic of ethnicities and languages together. Tendor, prior to our invasion, officially had 37 languages -each with hundreds of regional dialects-, and thousands of ethnic groups, clans, and tribes which dotted the subcontinent. During our invasion to stop their slave trade, several northern regions broke away, so I don’t know what the official count is now.
The druids are organized into a secretive, scholarly group which has representatives in every settlement. They safeguard the knowledge of their rituals, train recruits in accordance of their own customs, and are well respected among the lower castes. Tendor’s long history shows that, every time the secular authorities tried to crack down on the druids, or limit their authority, the subcontinent was always hit with a multi-year drought, or plague, or some other natural disaster. The current Tendor nation was created about 150 years ago, after the previous nation tried, and failed, to crush their order.
To clarify, Tendor refers to the region. It’s a massive peninsula attached to a northern continent, with a vast mountain range separating the two. Their records show that Tendor has housed one civilization or another for at least the last 4,000 years. We’re just calling the nation Tendor, and the people the tendori.
The tendori were divided into 11 castes, with each ethnic group given arbitrary placement. Caste determines things like tax rate, and what sort of jobs are acceptable, and intercaste marriages are banned. The firryans, prior to our conquest, were in the lowest 11th caste, reserved for slaves. Our conquest abolished that caste, so now there’s only 10.
Druids existed outside this caste system, which is why the enslaved firryans always tried to send their children to join that order.
A half-blooded firryan would join the caste of their non-firryan parent. Given how beautiful firryans are, this meant the top three castes were full of half-bloods.
Now all of this seems fine. Or, rather, it seems fine now that the 11th caste has been destroyed. So what’s the issue with Tendor? Why does everyone call them a revolting people?
This mimics my attitude when I joined the war three years after it started.
I landed on the east coast of the subcontinent, where most of the larger cities sat, and I thought the people were fine. A little short, a little weak, hygiene wasn’t as good as it could have been, but it’s a tropical region and everyone was sweaty due to heat and humidity. What was the big deal?
The issue came when you traveled into the interior, which is what I eventually did with a few friends.
We hired a costal interpreter to come with us. We had a specific region in mind, and he was fluent in the three languages present there.
We traveled for around five weeks, staying in some larger settlements that our warbands had haphazardly conquered, or made deals with. Then, we broke off from the main roads to go exploring the villages.
You see, in the interior, specifically in the north east, Tendor has a lot of jungles and rainforests. These forms a strong barrier that make it hard to bring armies through. Therefore, control was very loose. A collection of villages rising up against the local princes would be a big issue. Therefore, there’s a mutual understanding.
The villages would give their quotas to the local lords. Taxes, crops, lumber, whatever was necessary. In exchange, the local lords wouldn’t try to displace the absolute dominance of the druids.
The costal regions were nice because such an arrangement was unneeded. The cities were bigger, more cut off from nature, trade flowed, the druids had no leverage. But in the interior? The circumstances allowed the druids to maintain their power. Absolute freedom for the druids to do whatever they wanted with the ignorant populace.
The first village we went to. I remember it clearly.
I had three friends with me, and the interpreter. I can’t honestly that man my friend due to the cruelty he pulled.
It was a hot day, unbearably humid. I hate the sun, and the trees offered a decent shield from its oppressive rays, but it was still rough. We were making good pace along a muddy dirt road, only traveled by cart and horse whenever the nearby town came to collect tribute.
Our ears detected the noise before we saw the buildings. Dozens of men and women speaking in unison. I didn’t know the language, but the words were uniform rhythmic, like chanting.
So I told the interpreter what we heard, and he just started giggling. “You’ll see,” he said, refusing to elaborate further.
I’ve lived a long life. I’m over 2,000 ‘years’ old (I’m still not sure how the new calendar converts from the ‘cycles’ we’ve always used). I’ve killed all sorts of men in all sorts of gruesome ways. This little punk was teasing me about what I’d see? He thought I’d be surprised?
Laughable.
So we continued our march.
We saw the buildings. Crafted of mud, thatch roofs, and wooden beams for support (I spent a few centuries as an architect, and I could tell they were well designed with the tools available). The chanting got louder, but there were… other noises.
We reached the village square, and then I saw it.
A standard druidic ritual.
Every adult male and woman (thank God the children were excluded) was having sex, out in the open, in the mud. Passing around partners in a disgusting orgy, there were several druids walking around. They were inspecting the villagers, and they were the source of the ritualistic chanting.
There was a very old man, the head druid, with antlers glued to his balding head, and a very long grey beard. What hair he had reached to his waist, and of course he was naked. You could see everything, wrinkles everywhere, dead skin pealing off in thick patches, moss and mushrooms growing off his flesh. He stayed near the middle, observing, occasionally directing his subordinate druids, rather than directly interacting with the villagers. He paid us no mind, even though we should have been an odd sight. Four pale-skinned giants armed to the teeth, and wearing strange clothes.
Our interpreter laughed, but I still fail to understand the joke.
The smell was a nightmare.
The sight was even worse.
These people don’t bathe. None of them. Zero understanding of hygiene. For how disgusting the old man was, he wasn’t particularly unique in that regard. But I’ll get back to that.
The old man clapped his hands once, and everyone stopped and switched partners. Men went with men, women with women, young and elderly, there were no rules!
But one woman met my eyes and tried approaching me.
The sight has been burned into my brain.
She was a young adult, probably. But rashes everywhere, acne and blister scars, patchy hair, body hair. She smiled warmly, but had several missing teeth, and the rest were rotted and black. A unibrow, cracked skin, a body lumpy and hard from a mix of hard physical labor, and over eating.
I was just… too stunned to move. I could barely comprehend what the hell was happening.
I smelled her long before she approached.
When our interpreter got a whiff, he turned tail and ran, followed by my three friends. I soon came to my senses and fled too.
I’ve never run so fast in my life.
I’ve fought many battles. I’ve killed many people. I’ve served Pelda with honor and distinction for centuries. If we ever lost a battle, I made sure to fall back in a calm, orderly fashion, and only after the battle was well and truly lost. That disgusting woman was the only foe to ever make me retreat.
I certainly gave our interpreter an earful for not warning us, but the little bastard just kept laughing.
This account is the best summary I can give for why everyone hated Tendor. Ask any veteran of the war who reached the interior, and they’ll tell you the same sort of story.
The costal druids are basically fine. They’re like religious officials. They officiate ceremonies for funerals, childbirth, marriage, and sometimes they’ll take some local herbs and craft them into a potion. Though, any effect that potion would have would be due to the natural properties of the herbs they put in, so it’s not even magic.
But the interior druids? It’s a sex cult, plain and simple.
From what I’ve heard, they don’t even pretend to worship demons or anything. When the villagers go to them with any issue, their only resolution is sex. Often sex with a druid while they mumble some mystical nonsense and throw ground-up tree bark at their poor victim.
See, druid ‘magic’ varies from nation to nation, but the central idea is that you give up something in exchange for something else, with ‘nature spirits’ acting as the medium of that exchange.
If there’s a drought, the druids of other nations will organize rituals where they sacrifice a beast, and then burn the beast’s body (giving up the meat of the creature), so the ash and smoke rises up to the sky to cause rain. Either it will rain within a few days and the druid will claim credit for it, or it won’t rain, and the druid will say they need to sacrifice another beast since the rain spirits are very angry. They will continue this process until it rains, and then take credit for the favorable weather.
Or another ritual might have the druid cutting someone’s hand and spilling their blood on some demonic idol. This will be exchanged for good luck, or better health, or what have you.
At best, the druids are a complete waste of time, and totally unnecessary.
At worst, these fools are actually communing with demons, and endangering the souls of everyone who puts their faith in druidic magic.
But interior tendori druids don’t even make the pretext of that exchange. It’s just about sex, and the poor illiterate villagers don’t know any better.
I can’t even blame the local lords. I’ve seen the situation, I fought in the Founding War, there’s very little they could accomplish even if they wanted to go against the druids.
We peldaks, of course, will change that.
Mark my words. It might require groundwork, it might not come quick, but the day will come when we excise demonic influence from the interior of the subcontinent.
We peldaks will do what no other tendori civilization could do, and we’ll break the backs of the druids.
While we wait for that day to come, we can address the issue I’ve lightly touched on a few times now: The complete lack of hygiene.
Let’s say we could snap our fingers and get rid of the druids and the sexual degeneracy. Would that fix all their problems? No. They’re still gross.
I only need to (and I only want to) share one story. You’ll perfectly comprehend the sheer depth of the issue, and you’ll regret reaching such a level of understanding.
We walked into a new village.
It was early in the morning, and the villagers were engaging in a morning ritual.
In the center of every village we visited, there was a large wooden barrel. Every morning, this barrel was filled with fresh water from a nearby stream. To start off, the eldest man in the village came forward, leaning over the barrel. He took his dirty hands and splashed water on his face. He cupped the water to his mouth to rinse, then spat the water back into the barrel. He brought his wet hands to his armpits, then rinsed his hands, then did the same for his feet, and groin. Finally he took a wooden comb, wet it, and ran it through his greasy hair, rinsing the comb to get rid of clumps.
With the elder finished, the man with the next highest seniority came forward and do the same. Then the next, and the next, over and over, never changing the water as it continually turned black. Globes of mucus, strands of hair, skin flakes, all of that was swirling in the barrel by the time it was the youngest man’s turn.
After all the men were finished, it was time for the women to do the exact same thing with the same water.
Druids never did this. They revel in their foulness. It was a point of pride for druids to lose their last tooth by age 30 and have them be replaced by wooden dentures. They never clipped their finger nails, they never cleared the gunk from between their toes, they never combed their hair.
I only saw the ritual once, but the image has been burned into my eyes. I can’t stop hearing the guttural clearing of throats as men spat globs of bile into the water that the next man or woman used to rinse his or her teeth.
When I was about to see it a second time, I ran through the crowd and kicked a hole straight through the barrel, letting the water drain out and turn the ground into thick mud. The villagers got mad at me, they didn’t even understand what was wrong. My friends and I spent the next several days building a system of aqueducts to bring fresh water from the nearby river. We even built a shower room for them.
When the shower was complete, they didn’t care. They refused to use it. Eventually we were so fed up with their smell that we grabbed them by their greasy, snotty hair and yanked them into the showers. By force, we introduced them to the miracle of soap.
They looked better afterwards, but a single shower can’t undo a lifetime neglect and abuse.
The only way this issue gets fixed is if we flood the interior with soldiers, build thousands of showers, and import tons of soap. At knifepoint, we’ll force these people to be clean. We’ll introduce indoor plumbing, we’ll build it all ourselves. Paved roads too so our deliveries can reach the villages, and military bases so our soldiers don’t need to stay in these villages.
Given tendori lifespans, it should only take some 20 years for this to have the desired effect. Babies born in the first year will be adults by the time the process is complete. By then, proper hygiene will be so engrained in their heads that it’ll be impossible for them to go back to the disgusting horrors we all witness.
If you weren’t a witness, keep in mind that the barrel story wasn’t even the worst I have locked deep in my memories.
I once crushed a man’s skull in my bare hands, and I felt nothing. But now? I can’t even go into a public bathroom without suffering a small panic attack.
But of course, let us imagine 30 years from now. We accomplished the goal of hygiene, and every villager in the interior is properly groomed and hygienic.
Does that suddenly make it okay for there to be druids? Can the horror of systemic rape, adultery, orgies, and blister scars from various STDs be washed away with soap and water?
Of course not.
There are two problems facing the interior tendori: Their hygiene, and the druids.
But this whole state of affairs is due to the fact that the terrain makes it impossible for the secular authorities to clamp down on the druids. So what do we do?
Step 1: Under the guise of increasing hygiene, build military bases in the region to house our soldiers while they can go out and build showers and plumbing.
Step 2: Under the guise of streamlining shipments of soap, shampoo, and repair parts for the showers and toilets, build paved roads through the jungle.
Step 3: Take it slow and keep the villagers clean, build a habit of cleanliness that will continue even after we’ve pulled out.
Step 4: Using those military bases and paved roads, send our forces out into the jungle to kill every last disgusting druid we can find. End their barbaric practices, and kill or imprison every villager who resists.
Step 5: Adopt any child left behind, teach them how to farm or hunt, then release them back into the villages once they’re ready. Druids don’t enact their sex crimes on children due to that being a step too far with the local lords, so we can easily break this cycle of abuse within one generation.
And there you go. Every problem with the interior of Tendor solved, and it should only take us 60 years at most. I had a son born eight years ago. He’s still just a toddler, but if we start this process now, it’ll be complete by the time he’s a man.
****
This completes a much more in-depth view and understanding of the tendori people, and the issues that will need to be addressed eventually. As much as it pains me to say, they will be our interstellar neighbors for the foreseeable future, so we need to get along with them.
Part of getting along includes helping your friends by ripping out their savage impulses.