Dancers

''Imagine a race that makes you feel like the entire world is a stage, but they're the only ones who can hear the music. That is but a taste of the Dancers.''

The Dancers are a race of beings created by Liral during the Seven Days Darkness that that marked the beginning of the time of the Shards of Mortan made Gods. Formed from the creatures that had come to follow her when she had travelled Gaia, Liral's Shattered self found the blueprint for Humanity that Mysto had inadverdantly brought into existence - and so part of the Weave - and blended all her followers into something that approximated humanity in form, if not at all in mind.

Society
The Dancers were formed in great part out of those creatures that worked patterns within the world - no surprise really that they were drawn to Liral. Liral's nature as a pattern drew those things like an open flame did moths. One of the most common of these was spiders, who clustered in great number around the Broken Weave when she walked upon Gaia before she found her name. And some things, at least, endured from those spiders when they were merged with the other creatures by the power of the Pattern. Changed, yes, changed forever. But not where it came to how they saw the world.

Birth in Aodamo
The Dancers were born within the Wood of Aodamo, the place where Api-Niyap is first known to have walked into the world of Gaia. They remembered the passing of the Goddess of Fire, a sparking heat around which many of what they had once been had clustered and watched long before they had been made them. They did not see the Pattern that would one day lead her back, but they did remember, for the forest could not forget.

The Weaves
Initially the Dancers thought to stay upon the ground of the Wood that they had found themselves born to, but that soon changed as they realised what bounty there was above them, and how in the air they could show the wonder of the Pattern far easier then upon the ground. For all one would have to do would be to look up. So the Weaves were formed, woven from branch and leaf and grass and moss before the Gift was given. Villages built into the very fabric of the Wood, slipping from tree to tree and expanding as they needed.

The Weaves were then a marvel of the Dancer's craft, shaped painstakingly from the still living wood of their home. There were none of the lights or melded Gift-borne wonders that would become as much a part of them as the trees around which the were built, but that did not detract from their incredibly nature. To build such things, and so many - enough indeed to house an entire fledgling race - was a feat that many would envy were it ever explained to them the circumstances of the first building.

Social organisation and politics
It is in this, the way in which they organise, that Dancers separate themselves from every other race known upon Gaia. They are not a hive as the Aktai'Parapon are, for all that they can show great unity almost eerily similar to that of a hive mind. And yet for all their individuality, they are also not individuals in the way that humans or demons or Variations are. The nature of this duality is tortuously complex, but it can be reduced to a reasonably simple - albeit inaccurate - statement that the Dancers themselves use to describe themselves to those that would not understand their actual truth.

"All is the Pattern. The Pattern is All."

The Dancers do not see the world in the way that most other beings do, in the manner of "this or that", requiring to seek the opposities, the differences from themselves. They search for what is alike, for unity and friendship and alliance, because in those the Pattern can be made stronger. For all their strength, the Dancers are only one race, they know that their Pattern could be eclipsed by others, or even wiped clean if their own is not given anchors in many place. So their Webs cross the lands and search for other Anchors, places that they can butress their own Pattern through friendship and sharing with others. One of the greatest compliments a Dancer can give to another race are the words "Together we hold the Pattern", for it implies a level of commitment and trust that goes far beyond what most understand.

Warfare
To Dancers, war is anathema, for what is war but Chaos in the Pattern. A Dancer will never willingly start a conflict, and will make every attempt to prevent such a thing occuring, for conflict within the Pattern causes pain to all. They do not argue unless sorely pressed, and are often so passive in their disagreement that it can be almost unnoticed long after the Dancers have gone. They are gifted negotiators, relying on their innate connection to the tiny shard of the Weave that they are linked to to guide them, but even the most gifted negotiators sometimes fail. On those occasions however, the Dancers take to the chaos of war with a cold lethality that utterly belies the rest of the picture that they present to the world.

All Dancers know how to use their Gift to form weapons with which they are trained from the age of 16 to fight. Every Weave in Aodamo has a sizeable militia, although few of them have ever seen actual combat, and even a single Dancer is not something to be ignored if they are skilled with the Gift. In war, as in all things, the Dancers play for keeps on a grand scale. The lengths to which they are willing to go are just more evident when conflict forces their hand.

Webs
All Dancer organisations are formed around the idea of Webs, each serving different purposes within the overall Pattern of Dancer society. They all, however, have a few defining characteristics. Each is generally specialist, serving a very particular purpose in the Pattern. Their numbers rarely deviate far from certain norms except in very particular circumstances. And perhaps most importantly, in all of them there is a Beat, a Dancer who is said to hold the Pattern of the Web. Exactly what this means is not known, it seem to count as some form of leadership within the the Web but it can also be freely passed between members of the Web. At present there are a total of three Webs known - although to different civilisations.

Web Curious
The first Web to be brought to the attention of another race, Web Curious fit the part of scouts for the Dancer Weaves, sent out across large distances to observe and - at their choice - open avenues of interaction with those that they find. Numbering no more than ten, Web Curious are small and usually made up of those Dancers most Gifted with becoming one with the Pattern of places, allowing them to watch unseen the work of other races until they can decide on if they should begin a rapport.

Web Protector
The closest thing to military units that the Dancers have been seen to have, Web Protectors patrol the borders of the Weaves, acting to repel monster attacks and also working as first contact teams when other races wander into Dancer territory. They are larger than Web Curious, although this is at least in part due to the appearance of monsters within the world, being composed of at least twenty members. Web Protectors are well trained in the use of the Gift in both Patternsense and Patternshape, however they are generally far more skilled in the latter than the formed, as it is on the whole more of a tool for those who must fight on occasion.

Web Weavespeaker
Web Weavespeakers are the Dancer's diplomats, those who come after Web Curious to interact with a newly contacted race and open avenues of friendship and trade. They hone their ability with Patternsense until it becomes almost second nature, but are trained to use it to feel the texture of the Pattern of those to which they talk. It makes them magnificent diplomats, but it also - unfortunately - makes them far more vulnerable than most to Liral's Shattering.

The Web Weavespeakers are also those who speak for each Weave, as their name implies, holding the Beat of those places for all Dancers who walk to its Pattern and acting as the leaders of the place. In truth, the nature of this role almost transcends the basic idea of Weavespeakers, but the Dancers are still stretching towards a fuller understanding of the idea of leadership as something beyond what Weavespeakers already are. Although understanding, of course, doesn't mean they'll care about changing.

Sex and gender
The Dancers share the same genders of humanity, as to be expected from a race formed from a stolen template of the same. Their culture holds no intrinsic difference between monogamous and polygamous couplings, and both are seen as equal within Dancer society. They see the purely monogamous nature of observed human cultures both somewhat quaint and rather cute - in an only slightly patronising way.

Death
Dancer lifespan is about that of humans, although their average is rather higher than most human cultures with most Dancers living to around the age of eighty through the aid of Gift made medicines combined with the fact that Dancers take great care of their elderly. For all the care they lavish upon them however, Dancers do not fear the death that comes to them, for they know (in a way that makes them seem utterly inhuman sometimes) that their place in the Pattern is but a fleeting one. And this they accept, for it is as it must be.