Chapter 01: Ishval
This story begins on the smallest planet in its solar system. Although extremely small, its inhabitants, having no comparison, named her Ishval meaning the giant green planet.
Its size was not the only inaccuracy since Ishval is mainly made up of arid land. Water is a very rare resource. Only 200,000 km² of its 100 million km² contains living beings, vegetation and fresh water.
When such a crucial ressource is limited, it is not far-fetched to imagine war would be constant there. Which is not far from the truth. The Ishvalians adopted a less chaotic but equally cruel system.
After many calculations, the inhabitants of the giant green planet decided that only a thousand of them could have access to water per year. Including, of course, the births and deaths of that year as well as children under 8 years old.
For an Ishvalian, nothing matters more than his ability to survive. That's why the thousand ishavalians that would get water and survive would be decided through fist fights.
At the beginning of the year, two ceremonies are organized at the same time. One with children aged from 8 to 14 and the other with adults that were older than 14 years old. Before 8 years old, children are not considered fit to fight or hunt. There is no physical difference between the sexes among the Ishvalians since the hunters are at the same time gatherers. Which explains why there is no distinction between male and female in the ceremonies.
The poor souls who do not manage to win one of the thousand places, are presented with two possibilities. The first one, try your luck outside of the city or the second one kill yourself. As you may have guessed, the Ishvalians are a primitive group of people who have evolved very little in as much time it would have taken for others to reach the Iron Age. Nevertheless, they still discovered fire and crafted simple tools manly used to craft weapons and furs.
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Their physique on the other hand has greatly evolved from generation to generation. The inhabitants of Ishval, are of average size between 1.70 m and 1.80 m. They have slim bodies and bony faces.They are endowed with an incredible number of bones since they have more than 500. Which perhaps explains their incredible flexibility. They are just as agile as they are flexible and that's why they are great climbers. However, this is not their most fascinating feature. Their eyes in addition to being gold-colored have the particularity to see in the dark and adjust any high-speed movement to a visible speed. Such characteristics could be explained by greater peripheral vision or higher than average optokinetic reflexes.
Of course, for this system to work it must be controlled by an iron fist. And that's the role of the Queen of Ishval, Atae Elendral.
The Elendral family, never reigned using strength or power. The family that has reigned since the beginning of time, as the people of Ishval like to call them, has kept the way to extract water from the soil a secret. Thus, if anyone opposed them, it would sentence all the Ishvalians to a certain death.
Atae Elendral has a son, Rahn Elendral but no husband. Indeed, only an Elendral could reign. That is why he or she who shares the bed of the king or queen has no power and can sometimes only be used to provide an heir. Nevertheless, it remained one of the greatest honors that could be attained. Only the one that won the ceremony the most for the past decade could be chosen for that task.
Tannyl Kelralei had never lost a ceremony in the past decade. He was chosen to conceive an heir and was not dismissed at Rahn’s birth and participated in his martial education. Rahn is now eight years old and preparing to participate in his first ceremony.