Echo Village

Echo Village

A modern town with a bamboo shrine located at it's core. The town is peopled primarily with tamandua (northern) beastmen as well as a smattering of all sorts of other beastmen that the Patriarch had found and brought to the town, including a number of his own otter beastmen children. They do not refer to themselves as beastmen, but instead as the Sons & Daughters of the Moon or more commonly as simply the "Máni".

Beyond the many craftsmen & farmers that live in Echo Village, there are a few other notable positions.

The Watchers are guardians & scouts that keep watch, patrol the area and man the watch posts. They watch for outsiders and warn the Cowled Priests and Green Wardens so that the village can be moved before any potential threats come close and prepared in case intruders arrive before the island has been moved. Some of the Watchers are chosen for shifts in places beyond the village and do not travel when the village is moved. Each of the five locations has a station where a pair of Watchers remain while the village is elsewhere. If trouble arises during their watch they dispatch a message, leave a sign & hide or flee whichever is more prudent. This way the village is warned to avoid that location until they receive an all clear. A sign is left in case the village shifts to that location, so they will see the sign and know to immediately move the island again as soon as they can the following day. The Watchers work closely with both the Green Wardens and the Cowled Priests of the temple who control the village's movement.

The Green Wardens are the warriors and protectors of the village. They work very closely with the Watchers.

The Seekers are a small group of scholars, alchemists and thaumaturgists.

The Cowled Priests are devoted to the Patriarch and pray to him for the good & salvation of their people. They also tend to the Bamboo Shrine (manse) and know the secret of how to move the village. The priests act as advisers, mediators & counselors in addition to their temple duties.

The village produces a great many crafts and have an abundance of crops, fish and livestock as the village movement gives them access to five times the surrounding resources a normal community would have.

The manse had been inactive for a long time. It had been sleeping since the native tamandua children's creator had died two generations before. They had buried his remains within the shrine and the magic of the land vanished with his passing. Then the Patriarch had come to find them with children of his own. They sought a home and when he came and meditated within the temple grounds the magic returned to the land.

The manse not only makes the entire village invisible to outside detection but it grants the power to literally move the entire village between five locations. The manse priests normally move the village once a month when the moon is invisible in the sky.

The máni do not yet have any relations with outsiders, but look forward to a future when they can venture beyond the village boundaries and trade with other communities. The Patriarch travels the West with Sublime Huntsman and his máni crew seeking to make this dream a reality for his people.