Real-World Influences: Kazakh, South Slavic, Hungarian Talens tend to have light, but not ‘fair’, to mid-brown skin, and often have amber eyes. Generally, they’re highly communal, tend to be stoïc in public, and place value in honor and kinship– with a strong tradition of sworn bodyguards exchanging a perpetual oath of military service for standing as a member of a house, regardless of birth. Houses are large, with house membership determined by kinship to the house head. They are more strongly egalitarian in terms of sex than either the Sasinthēnes or the Arpeneans, with most women of high status receiving said status from their own kinship ties, but also the kinship ties of their spouse. This strongly communal culture has proven resilient against long centuries of occupation. They migrated to Ōchis sometime before the rise of the Sasinthēne Empire of Tanthes, settling along the river Vorad, south of Calassy, and in west Arpenea. During the Empire of Tanthes, they were deputized as mercenaries to fight on the southeastern frontier, and when that empire fell, they founded a kingdom in Gesena. Their resistance to Sasinthēne rule has left a lasting impression on the very idea of revolution.
The Talens are religious and orthodox, at least since Sasinthēne rule, but value oaths to a ruler and even oaths between peers as binding under the God. Talenic art is generally intricate and impressionistic, rather than lifelike. Their culture is highly equestrian, especially among the nobility. Their paintings reflect long traditions of woven portraiture, stemming from wool-and-horsehair tapestries prior to some ancient migration across the Calassine highlands. They maintain a similar tradition of woven crafts. They wear duller base tones for their clothing, made of heavy cloth in square cuts, with intricate embroidery patterns which are sometimes as extensive as their portraits. They favor the horse, the tidewaters of the rivers Vorad and Orod, and the ring-wearing hand as symbols.
They’re represented by the Kossän language.