vashothari headcanons

notenoughdragons:

for the brand spanking new @vashothculture blog

• vashothari very often have two names: one their
  parents/caretakers give them, and one they choose for themselves. given
  names tend to be either descriptive, or aspirational, like words that
  mean/have connotations of strong, enduring, etc. children very, very
  rarely get names that are (similar to) job descriptions, as they would
  have under the qun.

• forehead-touching (both the gentle
  and the more headbutt-y variant) is the vashothari equivalent to
  hugging. of course they also hug each other, but with the horns it can
  often be p difficult to arrange everyone’s head right.

• VITAAR.
  they have a metric fuckton of patterns, often unique to different
  groups or even individuals, for festivals, rituals, for weddings and
  burials and coming-of-ages, for good luck when you go off mercenary-ing,
  for when you choose your own name, for looking pretty and for looking
  intimidating (both of those tend to feature dragon skulls), and a
  million other things. there is also a key difference in composition
  between combat vitaar and other vitaar: combat vitaar is made of the
  stuff all the in-game vitaar is made of, meaning it hardens their skin
  and grants them +5% crit. chance. i’m kidding, but still, my point is
  the magic/biochemical components of vitaar important for combat are
  fucking expensive and hard to get, and so only get used when they’re
  needed. otherwise, it’s simply very durable bodypaint.

• one version of burial customs is to burn
  the remains, and then scatter the ashes from a high, preferably very
  windy, place – so that whatever remains of the dead can fly with dragons
  again. i suspect burial customs vary a lot, and the degree of involved
  spirituality, if you will, varies even more, but i think one red thread
  that runs through all of them is the importance of those left behind, of
  those who have to carry the loss and grief, and move forward.

• SPEAKING OF DRAGONS, i’m 100% here for the vashothari identifying hugely with
  dragons. the qunari already sort-of-rever dragons, but they still
  consider them/their power to be untamed, chaotic, savage, and thus in
  need of killing. but here’s the thing: dragons aren’t really aggressive,
  they’re just territorial. they’re fiercely protective of their own, they’re really fucking strong,
  they came back in force after everyone thought they’d been wiped out,
  and they live and die free. tell me that’s not something the vashothari would feel kinship with / aspirations towards.