BEFORE THE ATTACK
A History of the Tribe of Agh'mahaiil, predating the catastrophe in Tacoma
Characters: (by [
xido])
Lori the Gazing, Agh'mahaiili
Chedlil the Ragged, Aghmahaiili tribal lord
Redeye, Frag
Spitshine, Frag
Dahkmil the Inept
Knifetosser, gang thug
Shotput, gang leader
Corn, Frag House Lord
....
Lori the Gazing sat out on the roof of a five-story apartment building, long ago run down and once filled with humans who lived far below the poverty line of the American people. Now this building is abandoned for all but a few brash hara, a small band of street thugs known as The Grip on Society's Heart, and a large hole in the first floor which drops twenty feet down to the open sewers that had been accessed by rioting hara when they had first secured the area of most humans. Some had come back seeking inception, but most fled in fear... it was their way.
Today, noting the brisk, late-fall breeze rushing past him off the open ocean air just a few miles north of the abandoned apartments, Lori could see why the earth called out for the changes that were at hand... It was so evident in the way the human buildings had all begun to decay from within, the way in which most of the local society did the same, almost as if in some cosmological mirror. Nearly sick on heroine and mescaline brought in from the rioting cities just south of them, Lori had consumed so many psychedelics this week that everything had a divine, fated and spiritual purpose, though most of these purposes were forgotten the instant they were made in Lori's dilluted mind as he rocked back and forth on the edge of the building, staring off over the cities backside, an area he was accustomed to seeing. Covered in rags, humming lightly to himself as he rocks back and forth on his ledge, his eyes streaked on thick with black grease that he rubbed off the railcars' bottom parts. The city transportation had abandoned the city to hara, and now only about a tenth of the rail was now functional, and used by little but the most educated of hara.... who didn't live anywhere near where Lori was sitting. On this side of town, the long, well-designed railcars lie on their sides, burned, looted and generally in bad condition where they had been lain wasted.
Lori, a har of about thirty years of age (only six since the year of his inception), was a rather repressed and lonely human, suffering terrible anxieties and social isolation. Born as a true hermaphrodite human, Lori or Lawn (depending on the stage of his/her life at the time) was isolated, hurt physically and emtionally, and had a very difficult time being accepted by most other people. Being the subject of intolerance under human gender stereotypes had worn the very fabric of her life thin, especially at a point when, as a woman, she was turned down by the love of her life (a man) who was disgusted to find that his girlfriend was really both male and female and now a har. Fraught with frustration and anger at the world and her parents, she was horribly depressed, nearing schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder, when she tried to commit suicide several times in several different fashions.
Born as both male and female, her parents, being the nature-loving, liberal individualists that they were, decided that the child would grow up as a true hermaphrodite, able to decide for itself which gender it would pursue as an adult, and making the promise to themselves that they would pay for whatever surgeries were necessary in order to attain that when the time was right. Unfortunately for all parties involved, the local cosmetic surgery centers were blown up, rioted, raided, burned, or otherwise destroyed for the most part after very hard economic times had hit the western coast and all over the country, and soon after, tribes and gangs of hara and humans decided to turn against one another and begin fighting and in-fighting. Humans and hara were known to turn against one another and their own kind in an effort to find a permanent settlement for both sides... ultimately no one won the matter. Having all of the potential locations for such a pricey procedure destroyed or lost has a way of creating hopelessness in such already-turmoi
led beings such as the saddened Lori. When the city of Tacoma (under its human name) became infested with gangs of hara, it was almost like an overnight procedure, an event that happened as if by a calling. Carmine City had been experiencing events like this for almost a year and a half when it showed up. No one expected it, as if it were a catastrophe of natural means.
Lori, locked in a mental ward for disturbed or dangerous individuals, was loathe to stay penned up forever. He chanted personal mantras of strength and pleas for help, and called out in near lunacy through the barred window of his room to the streets, crying out for someone to save him for the depravity of this life, and this humanity.
Within days, the asylum was raided by Rodrae tribe members, the guards and employees slain or kidnapped for inception... Most of the mentally stable guests in the asylum were taken for inception, but Lori's cell was not included, apparently because a har did not think he was competent enough or too old to be incepted. After the hara had left, Lori managed to pry a way out of the doorway and escape into the streets of his city, a place he had only lived in for eight years. Before then, she was still a resident of a city farther south, on the prominent western coast of the ocean.
Skulking in the shadows at night, walking the tense street by day, it was only a week before she found a real har. The junkie rebel kid had been incepted only a week prior and was already living the life of a rock star. Lori found the child stunning and androgynous as all get-out, and was quick to decide what to do. "Take me to your tribe," she asked, still dressed in her ward robes. "I want to be one of you."
It was the most competent decision she ever made.
Now stronger in mind and spirit, Lori enjoys a life of health and beauty, one where she can indulge in the pleasures of the enhanced sensations of ecstasy and euphoria. Still a bit light on the common sense and intellectual departments, Lori is now a truly happy har, one who delves quite deeply in his own gazing, which is where he got the name. A Fragment har named Redeye gave it to him while he was messed up on crystal meth and a harrish psychedelic and psychometabolic called Fairy Wing. He was actually angry that Lori was not paying attention to him at the time, and cited that he should be called Lori the Gazing, since that's all he could manage to do all day.
Lori now writes a diary on paper he collects from local factories, abandoned office buildings and stores and blank books from the guarded human bookstore, which the Vistari had made a top priority of theirs. This diary houses most of his inner thoughts, drug-induced visions and his notoriously vivid dreams, which paint pictures of gods, angels, demons and devils, as well as faeries, hara and other, more fantastic creatures and environments.
Once, invited to a harrish congregation in an old warehouse, Lori had taken too many downers and passed out. When awakened, he speeled off almost automatically what his dream had been. Within hours, the dream had come true, and the building he had seen crumble away in his dream came tumbling down in reality, killing the har he had told the dream to within its devastation.
Lori was deemed a prophet that day, and was invited to see the tribe medicine man of the Fragmented, Chedlil the Ragged, who was a charismatic and mysterious har who had lain claim to a vast portion of the underground sewers, many abandoned factories around the city, and one major station of the lightrail transportation system, one of the few that still worked on the track that was left undamaged in the riots. Housed in a newly-made secret chamber below the sub-basements of the lightrail station, Chedlil and several other tribe members and gang leaders were meeting, when the event was stopped.
Lori remembers back on that day, lost in a sea of euphoria and memories...
"Gentlemen, please." It was as if he had the conversation put on pause. "I would like to know more from this har," he had said in that low airy voice of his, almost as if it were scripture of some lost tome. "You are Lori, a har of the Fragmented, are you not?" His eyes pierced deeply into Lori's soul, as if he could see it all, though only the har's eyes were under his observance.
Lori swallowed and spoke, "Yes, I am. You have sent for me. Your man... har, um, found me near, um...." He was interrupted, as if being spared the embarrassment, by Chedlil.
"Stop fidgeting. We will not kill you, and you have our full attention... I was told that you have the ability to see visions... dreams."
Though he could have become less tense, he did not, and the har now stood wringing his hands and fingers, shifting back and forth on his feet.
"Well, um, I only had one.. A dream, that is.. uh, once. It was..." again he was interrupted.
"The crumbling of the state building and the death of Shetna, a Frag har from across town, I know." Chedlil's eyes stared into Lori's, who now distinctly forgot about his nervousness, and instead was focusing on the eyes alone. "I have great interests," Ched continued, "in seeking out the most talented and adept members of this truly depraved and mindless tribe, in order to further the progress we are losing each day. Other tribes have already shown that they are more resourceful without human technologies and materials, but we are not in their positions nor locations. The military forces seek to further their entrances into the borders further south of us, and the air attacks are becoming dangerously more frequent. Any advice on the events or times of these activities would be greatly beneficial to us and our allies, but aside from this, it is the future events of the world in which we are interested."
Some of the other hara turned to him in shocked curiosity, as if it was not something that was often spoken, and one even tried to interrupt, when Chedlil put up his hand as if instinctively to end his words on his breathless lips.
Lori stood abashed, wondering if this har were for real, or if this was just one more drugged-up har-in-charge. So far, none of the stories about Chedlil had conveyed this sense to Lori, but he could have been wrong about it nonetheless. The serious look the har now had in his eyes told Lori that he was for real.
"Well, I can't make any promises, but I guess I could.. try. I mean, I've only done it once..." he muses, holding up his hands.
"I've been told otherwise," Chedlil responds immediately, not missing a single beat. "I've been told you have visions often, and that you record them in your own personal diary, like a human. Is that false?"
Lori felt as it in attedance at a prison board meeting
"Um, no, not really... I, uh, I do... uh... um... Am I gonna get in trouble for doing something a human would do?" he answered, unsure of what to expect.
A few of the hara in attendance laughed, though Chedlil only raised a single corner of his lips in a half-smile of amusement that was the rarity of his emotions.
"No," was his simple response.
"Well, I keep a journal," Lori felt a moment of pride, and kept going at full speed, as if someone had opened him up like a can of peaches. "And in it, I have all of the dreams that I have at night, and a lot of the thoughts I have throughout the day, and when I'm very bored or inspired, I write about stories of men and women of the world, and how happy they will all be when they are all hara like us, when they can all be less worried about their genders and more worried about themselves and their own ways. I see a day when hara rule the world, and when mother nature will rise up once more in ecstasy as the hara of the world mind her ways more that those before them, when she will consume the cities and send angels to live among us."
All of the hara in the room were astounded at the sudden pride and courage of the har in front of them, and sat for a moment in silent appreciation of the visions.
"I'd like to read this diary of yours some day," was Chedlil's only response.
"I will send somehar to you in two days, when our goals have been decided, and I am in more of a state to address your needs and issues." Chedlil looked at Lori in a way that few had ever looked at him before in that moment, and Lori knew immediately that it was worth it. He smiled that day for the first time in a month.
Now stepping back from the ledge, Lori heads back toward the stairwell that led down through the messy hallways, many memories flitting through his mind as he steps almost silently back into the dark insides of the building.
After the electricity to the City had gone out, most anyone without a generator was left in the dark. Most on this side of town could afford to light their insides, but this building was not one of them. There were nearby schools that housed a few petrol-fuled generators, and having stolen them weeks ago, hara were currently using all the gas they had to power their lights. Many of these hara were gang lords, and housed many of the local rancid gang members in such structures, slowly tearing away their insides to make huge communal houses, some with no floors, so that the entrances to the sewer systems was exposed for quicker access to other portions of the city cut off by tribe wars, military quarantines, man-made walls, and many other variations of the ways in which umanity felt they could 'keep the raythoo threat out'.
The Wraeththu had been verbally embarassed by politicians in federal power, in an attempt to down-play their worth and honour, in a ploy by the government to try to misdirect their pride into guilt or shame. Their name had been corrupted, their honour and dignity formally revoked, and their priority apparently down-sized. In reality, the world powers had already been exploring ways in which the harrish culture could be curbed or destroyed, but when nearly the whole of wraeththu culture rose up in a series of rebellions, riots, massacres, kidnappings and incepting sprees, the leaders of men in Megalithica's old country called upon their military forces to tackle the homeland threat. It was, as they said, 'just another form of terrorism'.
Special task force units from every military division now constantly sent out units to scout, enforce, and map all moved in and out of City locations, attempting to learn all about wraeththu tactics, and what they found was that no tactics existed. Nomadic gangs moved wherever their brute force could secure a location, raping the place of its supplies and resources, killing or incepting all human innocents, and moving onward within days, still keeping gang members to watch over previous sites while althaia changed the humans they had taken, making sure to note who would take aruna with all of them when it was over. The guards of these events were happy hara indeed. Not one of them feared the risk of military incursion, nor did they care when it did happen. Homemade bombs, triplines, street mines, chemical-dust in sewer entrances, carjackings, kidnappings and guerilla tactics made the new hara one of the most challenging oppositions in human military history. The mere fact that hara could conduct hundreds and thousands of innocents to put themselves between the military and the hara's activities inside the cities was a major advantage in the battles to date. Hara knew of the military's use of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear, biological, satellite, laser and subatomic frequency manipulation, and did not fear their use, because of the amount of innocents in the cities they had taken over. The military would be afraid to put such extreme measures to use, as far as they could see, because it was on domestic soil.
Lori, still connecting with his old days as the dark, dank halls moved past him while he descended the stairs into the old apartment building, did not fear the coming military threat, despite their relative closeness to his portion of the city. From the roof, he could look out over the treetops, south to the huge base that lie in wait, claws readied while it sat like a panther, waiting to pounce on hara within the city. Often, Lori could see forces moving through nearby portions of the city, and make the call to move to the sewers when they came near. Fake flooring would be pulled across the huge gaping hole to the sub-floors, and hara would migrate around below the city long enough to evade the forces, sometimes going up to initiate physical and meta-magical skirmishes in the streets.
Walking out onto the railing along the third floor, looking out over the walkway that could see down to the first floor and beyond, Lori saw the small oil-lanterns and make-shift torches lit on a few of the floors, where hara sat smoking, laughing, taking aruna and partaking in many various illegal drug substances. Olly Olly Onari was often seen injecting heroine or 'jolly juice' into his arm's inner bend, where many dark veins lie in wait, accustomed to the almost-hourly injection.
"Where do you get all that stuff?" Lori would often ask him as he sat in his room-sized alcove on the thir floor, shooting yet another vial into his blue veins.
"Oh, here and there," he'd often say, evading the subject.
After close and careful examination of his excuses and words, Lori would often feel that the only plausible answer was that Redeye, his chesnari and a fine gun- and knife-fighter, would steal or rob it from some har or human. Sometimes Redeye would instead bring Olly home methodone, morphine, or some other drug he'd steal from a Tura or human hopsital raid, or when raiding an old human pharmacy.
Currently, Olly sat on the ground with his head leaned back over his pile of clothes stuck beneath his old, half-broken bedframe, with his skull lolling over as if asleep, eyes closed but repeating his nickname over and over.
"Olly, olly, olly olly olly, olly olly..." over and over and over again. Knowing that he was not in any real danger, but curious, Lori spoke his name out loud.
There was no response as "Olly Olly" Onari continued only to repeat this word as if it was a funny joke on his smiling lips.
Lori decided to walk over and give him a jostle, and he only laughed.
Grabbing his lower jaw and saying his name out loud again, Olly came to as his eyes opened.
"....Olly olly olly Onari. That's my name, hehe. Don't wear it out." Olly's glazed eyes depicted a sense of euphoria that Lori had only known once before, and had not been impressed.
"Go back to sleep." Lori said as he tossed his head back down.
"Heeeeyyyy.... Oowwwww..." Olly emitted as Lori walked away once more.
Lori did not like heroine at all. Lori enjoyed mescaline and psilocybic mushrooms.... A couple things that had not been seen in large numbers since his inception days. He still had a few more stashed away in his small chest downstairs, in case of a special event or grissecon, which his gang friends sometimes held. Grissecon in Frag areas more commonly appeared to be nothing more than a gang orgy, though when serious and intimidating hara like Chedlil were around to keep the order, the formality seemed to be a bit more evident. However, drugs and hallucinogenics were not frowned upon, and Lori made sure every event was a memorable (or at least euphoric) one.
As he continued down the corridors of the inner now-warehouse-sized apartment complex, he wondered back on days even before his meeting with Chedlil and his assisting hara, when he was younger, more restrained, quiet and generally more placid than he was now. Not that Lori could be called an extrovert or even a lunatic in the present day, but he was always a very internalized, sad creature, and often dreamed of being anyone but himself for many a reason.
He looked back on how his life had changed in so many ways, the very meaning of the breath he took being more apparent and enlightening, being reborn a joyful har at his inception.
It was difficult by anyone's standards to be a member of this shambled and grief-stricken tribe, a family of street-thugs gone awry, but not so difficult when your human life was an even worse shamble of sadness and grief that only caused depression and loneliness, which it had been in Lori's case. This sad, dilapidated, dysfunctional new family had been almost a release from the world in which he could hide away for ever, and still manage to get snickers, smirks, jokes, and flat-out bullying for the 'he-she' he had been before his re-birth into Wraeththu through althaia. He could handle the taunts he got from these siblings.
Most of the hara that frequented the rooms inside this apartment complex had been incepted into the Fragmented around the same time Lori had, and so was in that respect an equal to most of his tribe-kin. Though he did not understand it, nor the reasons for it to occur, it was true that most of the local hara of the tribe respected Lori, though the only reason he could formulate would have been that his initial hermaphrodite existence as a human must have been a prior lesson or challenge, and in this, Lori figured, the other hara must have had a subconscious and underlying respect or admiration for him. He was, after all, in many har's mind, already wraeththu before his inception.
Lori had been one of the lonely boys who had hidden away in the homeless shelters and orphanges that had housed many of the runaways and vagabonds that had been a product of humanity's steady decline. Lori had been hiding out, still a confused and angry teenager, when the first gangs of the Frag came and snatched them all up in one night like a plague that ate young boys in one fell swoop. He and a whole mess of other homeless, orphaned, lost, runaway, and distraught boys and girls came, often willingly in those first, clumsy, childish first days, when wraeththu was still new. It was only after a good many female deaths inside the city that the hara began turning them away, or kidnapping them to do dirty-work for the hara, like sewing, cooking, and the like. Lori had counted himself lucky that he did not perish like the other girls, since he himself had been both genders for his entire life.
Hara like Redeye, Olly, Corn and Shotput all looked to Lori for guidance, sympathy and counseling in their worst moments, which they would not reveal to any other individual, human or har. Lori had never had an older sister, but he suspected that the other incepted boys had always looked upon him as something of the sort. Lori understood what it meant to be half female without having ever been har before, and it meant that he was in that way alone, more mature than the others, and for that he was respected more than most others in this tattered, mangled tribe of gangs and thugs.
As Lori made his way to the rooms he called his own, he closed the door. He couldn't think about them anymore. He couldn't think. He needed to sleep.
Chedlil came into the apartments sometime mid-day, while Lori was sleeping in his rooms. The Frag har was in a fret, obviously concerned with something, by the look on his face. Everyone knew not to question such an intention, and as he shortly dealt with the task of finding Lori's whereabouts by asking hara from the building if he was in, it was obvious that they remain reluctant to ask him.
As he opened the door to Lori's apartment without knocking, Lori instinctively opened his eyes halfway and looked over his bedframe at Ched as he entered wordlessly. A look of concentration was on his face, and Lori knew something was unusual.
"Hey, babe. Are you okay? You look like you're all up in a fret. Is everything alright?" he asked Chedlil, still groggy and with the sound of having woken up still on his normally lyrical voice.
Without answering verbally, Ched walked immediately from the door to the bed, leaned down to kiss Lori's forehead, then kneeled beside the bedframe and pushed his head into Lori's arms as Lori sat up, curling them around him without hesitation. Within moments, Chedlil was weeping like a child in Lori's arms.
Lori's eyes opened wider, but he did not say anything yet. After several long minutes of listening to his heavy sobs, Ched's weeping began to lessen, subsiding into grief-filled heavy breathing.
"Can you tell me?" Lori asked quietly, leaving him open to reply as he felt necessary.
Between the sobs, "I... saw...." is all he could get out in nearly a full minute.
"Sssshhhhshsshhhhh, it's okay. You had another dream?" Lori asked him, softly cooing into his ear with his head holding Ched's. He nodded as his only response.
When Chedlil had finally calmed down, he looked up into Lori's eyes, his own full of tears and red with grief.
"What did you see?" Lori asked him patiently.
"It was... total.... It was death and chaos. Complete oblivion. Heat that burned the soul. A fear and a hurt that cannot be named. A light in the sky tore my soul from my body, and I watched as millions of people and hara died instantaneously. Blood filled the streets like a river. The moon never rose again and the sun became hot like an oven, baking the land into a red brick of pain and death. I could not see tomorrow at all..." Chedlil tried to explain.
It was another of his dreams, visions of horror and insanity that he could not bear to see as often as they came to him.
"In the moments before I awoke, I saw a circle in the sky, and heard a voice. It was like Terror Incarnate. It spoke a word, a terrible sound of power and fury..."
"What did it say?" Lori pressed him on to continue.
"It was a word not from our language. I can only say it. I don't know of its meaning, if it even has one," Chedlil answered him.
"Say it," Lori beckoned.
"Ag... Ag-ma-hi-il, I think. I am not sure," he stutters, looking down for the first time since he raised his eyes to Lori's own.
"I can see it in my mind," Lori told him.
"You can? Can you say it?" Ched beckoned him, now somehow excited after his outburst of sadness.
"I can write it. It's not like Megalithican... More like Almagabran. Let me up, I will write it for you," Lori commented, gesturing that Chedlil should let him rise. Ched moved aside, and Lori rose up out of bed to find a pad of paper, which he had lain on the nearby desk. He often recorded dreams that had deep or obvious meaning. Often after taking aruna with Ched, he would have great visions of hara and their tribes, and great figures of power and glory.
Scribbling it quickly onto a pade of paper, he crossed off the word a few times until he had a final rendition that he deemed correct.
"I can't believe you talk about the world in harrish terms," Ched commented as he writes the words on the paper. "Like humanity never was... Like hara will rule the world."
"Hara will see a fine day of glory one day, though far from now," Lori answers, handing the pad to Ched.
The word AGH'MAHAIIL was written on the paper, crossed and changed several times. It was indeed, more like an eastern language, like an Arabic or Indian word, and it had a tinge of essence about it that gave it an almost spiritual ring. It felt as though it were the gateway to an even greater word. Chedlil agreed that the word written now on the paper had been similar enough to the word in his dream that he would regard it as correct.
"Yes, that's it. How did you know of it? Did you dream it as well?" Ched asked him.
Lori smiled.
"I think we have been together enough that I can understand your inner tones. Your aura is like a book to me, Ched, you are no mystery. Your thoughts and dreams are my television, my radio broadcast. How is that? Human enough for you now?"
Lori leaned down and sat in front of Chedlil, who set the pad on the bed. Leaning into his arms, Lori pulled Ched hand's around him and layed back into his chest on the piled up bedding on the floor of the small apartment.
They sat holding each other for long enough to make them comfortable once more, then Chedlil broke the silence.
"I want you to move in with me. This place is too small for you, and I'm tired of having to come find you. These guys can do without you for a while, I'm sure. You fight and raid less than any other har here, and for some reason they keep you around."
Lori was hurt by that comment for some reason, but did not show or say it.
"These hara, dear... You called them guys. They are no longer men. They are har. Call them hara. It is better for us to know that we are what we are," he began.
"And you know why I won't move in there..." Lori answered his speculations.
Ched sighed, letting Lori rise and fall with his chest.
"Tiu?" was Ched's only response.
"Him, yes. He is an irritation waiting to get infected... But you know what I mean. If hara knew that we were chesna, there would be no end to the fights over you as an independent who subscribes to no gang... They would say that you are allied with us, and that you had ties that were not fair to the other gangs you are working with. And beyond the gossip and drama that would ensue if hara knew about us, but then I would have to explain to 'the guys' that I was lying the whole time about us. Lying is the number one rule, Ched. I am going to hurt them and myself in one swift fall. I can't do that..." Lori sighed, thinking for a moment.
"But I will consider it. That's all I can promise."
"I will move closer," Ched replied immediately, as if it changed things.
"We are close enough already," Lori said, pulling his arm in more tightly around his shoulder. Ched reacted and grasped him, kissing the top of his head.
"Just keep thinking about it, and I will take care of the rest," Ched assured him.
......
For integration:
Plot: Lori the Gazing intro, intro to the tribe, Chedlil enters, Chedlil's nightmare, Lori's roof scene, Lori approaches Ched and the gang leaders, the Pact of the Fragmented, Tribe conclusion.
Agh'Mahaiil Notes:
-unorganized, desparate and clashing gangs that infested the hidden, dark places in the city
-usuals:
Psychedelic-using theurges, aura readers, psychics (and con artists), poisonists, rebels, street thugs, previously diseased individuals
-Many of the tribe bring with them, through althaia, the regrets, pains, stereotypes, guilt and repression of their human lives, and these stand out most in the members' interest in sadomasochism, intravenous drug use, interest in disgusting and wretched activities like seeking aruna in the most dirty or disgusting location possible.
-Chedlil the Ragged is often extremely forgiving to tribe members, and attempts to remind the hara of the Fragmented to remain wary of their actions upon other Agh'mahaiili and the result they will ultimately bring. He is forward-thinking and tolerant in most cases, though he shows little to no personality on the surface when in public, often speaking not a single word at a meeting of the most powerful minds of the Fragment. He has close friends in the tribe who stay close to him and are often spoken of as his own personal servants, aides or harem.... perhaps all of the above. These include:
Dahkmil the Inept, Knifetosser, Spitshine, Lori the Gazing, Shotput, Redeye, Corn, Tiu'mahab, Collinae, Betmaker, Deathless Bob, Berzerker, Festa, Dippiron, Velgamest, Jioran, Pestulent Percy, Imra the Haggard, and Wellam of Duwamish
-Piercings, tattoos, wounds, marks from past human diseases and illnesses, inception scars and decor denoting them are all common Frag fashions.
-Ignorance was often met by violence and more ignorance.
-Tribe Council:
congregated under the light of a single shallow lantern, under the watch and ear of one of the most mysterious hara of the city, Chedlil the Ragged, who kept note of the intentions and goals of all of the lost and wandering tribeless misfits that would crawl to their hollowed locations. He watched and listened as the most horrendous of pleas were made to make a single tribe, one that could defeat its enemies if given enough strength in numbers.
Its motivations were set, but its name was ruthless and depraved and sad. Known most commonly as Fragment or The Fragmented Ones, Filth, the Wretched or the Corrupt, the newly-spawned tribe of narcissists, drug-users, insatiable aruna-seekers, previously-diseased or radiation-poisoned humans who fled to Wraeththu life to escape a terrible or horrific death or suffering. Many older individuals are incepted (though the common youth is prevalent as in all harrish tribes), often those with HIV, radiation sickness or severe clinical illnesses such as cancers or defective organs.
The Agh'mahaiil (Ahg-ma-hy-il) treat these lost souls of humanity as their own little spawnling children, a clan of rats drowning their victims in the sewers for supplies and drugs.
Violence is not uncommon in Fragment areas, though in-tribal fighting is not encouraged or tolerated for the most part. Serious personal offense or incursion is often met with unbridled vengeance or head-on challenges, and that is sometimes priority in some cases such as these. Bad deeds are never met with much pity or sympathy. The wrecthed are a hard and hardy bunch, though not altogether without emotions.
Post Tribe-Council:
These days, a Frag can be found on almost any corner in town, hanging around or guarding any given shot warehouse or factory near the more run-down areas in town. They are often found trading drugs or supplies for more or better drugs, more potent chemicals and laboratory equipment for making better drugs and toxins.
Stumble!