Waygar'i

The waygar'i are one of three peoples that inhabited the world leading up to and including the events leading to the rise of the Great Man (the others being keshal'i and sammonish'i, all of whom share a common ancestry). The name is of keshal'i origins and means "people of the plains" (waygar = plain/field, the 'i is possessive.  People or folk is implied, rather than said outright in this situation.  It is important to note that the possession here refers to the place rather than the people.  It is the plains owning the people, not the people owning the plains).

Despite all sharing the designation, the waygar'i as a people display an astonishing variation in appearance, much more so than their distant kin the sammonish'i and keshal'i. A shocking variety of skin shades from brown in the north to the palest peach in the south match the remarkable variety of eye and hair colours (tending towards darker the further north one travels).

The waygar'i of Doma share a cultural heritage with the fír suthr, though thousands of years of distance and circumstances have rendered their cultures quite distinct. Both have regional dialects, and a 'high speech' spoken by all of their repective people (High Domanian and Suthrish, respectively), though those high speeches are mutually unintelligible. On Doma, many dialects are also mutually unintelligible, despite continued regional contact. Interestingly, few people on Doma can speak Suthrish or any of its dialects whilst most every southerner can speak at least a smattering of High Domanian.

Similarly, cultural practices vary greatly between various groups of waygar'i. Doma had the influence of the Church of the Sun, which dictated the religious life and customs of the entire continent from the Great Purge (c. 3E 2990) for close to a thousand years (they were prior to this, if the number of idols uncovered to date is any indication, a polythesitic people). This unity lasted until the ending of the third epoch (c. 3E 4016-4033), when the then high king distanced himself from the Church of the Sun and enacted a law guaranteeing religious freedom and the separation of church and state. Since that time, a number of cults have risen in popularity, giving rise to a variety of deities and worship rites.

The fír suthr have always been a polytheistic people, each individual giving rites to whichever god, spirit or ancestor they feel personally connected to or wish to honour. Though overseen by a class of sages they call the anu, their religious life is freer than that on Doma, with all but four of their rites considered optional to attend. This has given rise to a perplexing spiritual life that is almost impossible to navigate for the casual observer.

In accordance with the dictates of the Church of the Sun, it is believed that the waygar'i were born of the union between the sun god, who seeded his consort, the earth mother with his feiry semen, giving birth to the waygar'i. As the Great Purge was so thorough in its inquisition, nothing of the beliefs of the cults prior to the rise of the aforementioned church exist to challenge that narrative.

It should be noted that the keshal'i and sammonish'i both have very similar creation myths to one another that dispute this version of events.

The waygar'i once shared the continent of Doma with the keshal'i, but sometime near the ending of the second epoch, the keshal'i vanished from the continent, leaving the waygar'i to settle the breadth and width of the land. They remain the only peoples of Doma to this day.