Welcome to Gaia! ::

The territory that the Songseekers inhabit could probably be called an artist’s retreat: it certainly fits the definition. Remote and difficult to find, it’s difficult to locate unless you know the desert around it well.

But the isolation doesn’t particularly bother the Songseekers, an extremely focused group of musicians who seek to perfect their crafts. The beauty of their oasis’ clear water and of the nearby sand dunes – majestic, welcoming, responsive – inspires them, and the focus on art allows them to all hone their craft.

The Songseekers emphasize art over performance – that is, they don’t care about showing off or pleasing viewers with their song, although of course art will do that anyway. Creating music is in itself a reward, and the Songseekers find the wildest calm in it. They practice, seemingly, at all waking hours (although any observant kin will realize that they do obtain food somehow), and at hours when they shouldn’t be awake, too. The oasis in which they reside is constantly brimming with noise – no, not noise. Music.

Despite the difficulty of locating the tribe’s territory, visiting them is rewarding in its own way – it’s said that nowhere else can sounds like these be heard.

xxxabout the tribe

In all honesty, the Songseekers began with a story: Rumble's story. Singing Sands' naming dream starred the primal rumble of moving sand dunes, and it has been the fount of his inspiration for starting this particular tribe. He believes in a story in which the fireflies that make up the stars dotting the night sky were lifted there by a song from Matope herself in her crane form - a song of insurmountable beauty and harmony, the sort that vibrates within a listener and uplifts them and lingers. Rumble grew up surrounded by acha who enjoyed choral singing, though, and marveled that this (so very rich and warm and lovely) sound was still not enough to lift more stars into the sky.

It took a curious child and well-timed travels for Rumble to make the connection: his dream had been telling him something. What the acha had always been missing was collaboration: not with each other (they had that in spades), but with the world. For the achas' dunes could sing, and so could the ocean with the dull, soaring roar of the waves. The avalanches and snowfall of the totomas' usually quiet mountains created their own stark, powerful sounds. The kiokotes' plains whistled with wind through grass, and the abundant nightlife of Matope, too, could be beautiful, joyous, and soothing. And finally, the drips and echoes of the zikwas' caverns

rituals
- four holidays
- joining audition!

beliefs
- crepuscular times = sacred

xxxterritory and lifestyle



If anything, Singing Sand had been fortunate to stumble upon the oasis.

It had been on his way back home to his sister and to his newfound children, but apparently he’d just always missed it. Or maybe he’d spent too much time gazing, longingly, at the dunes that towered above it like so many golden monoliths. He’d known when he’d seen it, though (and by it, naturally, he meant the oasis) that it was the ideal place to finally set his choir up.

It would be far more than a choir, of course, but he couldn’t think of a better word for it. Choral singing, he knew, was new enough to other kin. It would probably be bad enough that he was introducing the environment into his music. Asking kimeti, so accustomed to the tame, wet swamp, to spend their lives in the achas’ wild, sweltering desert would not go over too well, he thought. The oasis was a perfect compromise: far from the swamp, certainly, but it was wet, and it was so close to the desert’s dunes that – why, Rumble didn’t think it’d take more than an hour to reach them.

Now, then, they could begin to really make music.

xxxplots and announcements

xxxreserved reserved reserved


yeah i guess the rest of this is just counting out posts and reserving stuff

welp let me just finish the rest of the thread up first before getting any of that done