Yellow Jacket

Origins

The Stilt-Walkers are a community born of necessity. They live on the margins of the reefside bogs, where the land is never dry and the waters teem with hazards. Insects swarm thick as mist, leeches cling, and hidden creatures wait in the mud for anything foolish enough to wade through. Generations ago, a storm stranded a fishing family in such a place. To survive, they lashed together stilts from driftwood and poles, walking above the muck and the biting water. When the storm passed, they never returned to ordinary living. Instead, they built a life where their feet would never touch earth again.

What began as survival hardened into tradition. Over centuries, families raised on stilts came to believe that the ground itself was cursed, a place of decay and hunger. Their motto is simple: "The ground lies. The water speaks truth."

Habitat & Way of Life

The Stilt-Walkers build villages balanced on spindly wooden poles, homes perched high above bog water and reeds. Rope bridges connect platforms, and entire neighborhoods sway in the ocean breeze. Children learn to walk on stilts before they can run, and most never set foot on bare ground once past infancy.

Their bogs are treacherous but abundant:

Fishing Platforms. Stilts sunk deep serve as fishing decks, catching schools when tides recede.

Harvest Racks. Nets strung across channels gather reeds, kelp, and seabirds' eggs.

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Crab Ladders. Tall poles are smeared with bait, luring climbing crabs upward where they can be picked off by hand.

Stilt-Walkers are agile, balancing for hours without pause. Outsiders compare them to herons, tall and steady, stepping from post to post while others would drown in mud or waste.

Beliefs

The ground is distrusted, almost hated:

The earth rots. They say soil festers with hunger.

The stilts save. To break a stilt is to break faith.

To walk above is to walk free. Only those who rise above endure.

Ritual burnings are held whenever a child accidentally touches the ground. A stilt broken in use is thrown into fire with solemn prayers.

Traditions

The Stilt Rite. Adolescents craft their own stilts from reefwood, carving symbols of family and faith into them. Once mounted, they may not remove them for a full week, sleeping on platforms while learning to balance.

The Pole Dance. Weddings are celebrated with elaborate dances on stilts, whole families stepping in spirals across rope bridges to prove agility and trust.

The Sky Feast. Banquets are held on hanging platforms, food passed by hand above the bog as if daring the ground to claim it.

Symbolism

To outsiders, Stilt-Walkers seem eccentric, even fragile, perched above the bogs on thin legs of wood. Yet their way of life is practical genius. Where others see only filth and danger, they see abundance. And their children grow into the finest balance-keepers in Hemera, warriors and hunters who never stumble.

The ground lies. The stilts endure.