A homeland can tell you where someone lives. A culture begins to tell you what living there means: what a community remembers, what it values, and how its people make a life together.
Cultures explores the traditions and shared histories of Rhuna’s Astralkin, Vathian, Nuhlrin, and Orvah peoples, alongside the Unbound communities of the Stranded, Irenuk, and Zhe. Its chapters move between broad cultural accounts and the settlements, institutions, and places in which those identities take shape.
Visit communities such as Duranel, Erendor, Imarand, Corvia, and Meridia; explore libraries, colleges, and the lives built around them; then turn to illustrated galleries for glimpses of the people behind the names. These accounts offer context for a Hero’s upbringing, relationships, beliefs, and encounters with unfamiliar ways of life.
Begin with a people or place that interests you and follow its related chapters. Read for patterns, histories, and possibilities, leaving space for individual differences. A Hero may embrace an inherited tradition, question it, or find belonging elsewhere; these chapters help you understand the communities involved in those choices.
Seed, Kind, Culture, and HomelandCopy link
Origin Seed is the broad nature of a Hero’s beginning: Astralkin, Vathian, Nuhlrin, or Orvah. Origin Kind identifies a people within that Seed, such as Zaltar, Pahric, Duranine, or Tyrru. Culture describes shared traditions and belonging; Homeland is the place that shaped the Hero’s upbringing. These describe different parts of a life and need not all point to one community.
© Charles Hildreth / Rhuna Games, LLC. 2019
Rhuna is a fantasy RPG in active development.
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The Cultures of Rhuna Copy link
Rhuna is home to peoples shaped by ancient Origins, distant homelands, shared histories, migration, faith, conflict, and survival.
The cultures of Rhuna are not simply divisions between peoples. They are the traditions communities have carried forward: how they live, what they value, what they remember, and how they understand their place in the world.
This book explores those cultures and the people who continue to shape them.
Origin and Culture Copy link
Every person in Rhuna belongs to one of four broad Origins: Astralkin, Vathian, Nuhlrin, or Orvah.
Origin describes a people's deeper inheritance and ancestry.
Culture describes how they live.
Two people of the same Origin may speak different languages, follow different traditions, worship differently, dress differently, and consider entirely different places home.
Origin connects people to their past.
Culture describes what generations have built from it.
The Four Origins Copy link
Every Hero in Rhuna belongs to one of four great Origins: Astralkin, Vathian, Nuhlrin, or Orvah.
Origin describes the deepest circumstances of a people's beginning. It speaks to the forces from which they emerged, the nature of their existence, and the ancient histories carried forward from those beginnings.
It does not determine personality.
It does not dictate morality, allegiance, profession, faith, or worldview.
Two Heroes of the same Origin may share the same fundamental beginning while becoming entirely different people.
Origin is where a people began. Culture is what people built afterward.
Astralkin Copy link
The Divine-Fragments
The Astralkin are mortal peoples with divine or cosmic beginnings. Zaltar, Rhunai, and Karthine were deliberately willed into existence; Veloth emerged unintentionally from Astravae consumed by Vel.
They are not descendants of those Deities in the conventional sense.
They are fragments of the Deities themselves, given mortal existence.
This places the Astralkin somewhere between the divine and mortal worlds. They live mortal lives. They possess individual identities. They form families, communities, and cultures. They experience love, loss, ambition, fear, faith, doubt, and death.
Yet at the deepest level of their existence, something divine remains within them.
The nature of that divine inheritance differs between Astralkin peoples because the beings from whom they descend are themselves different.
Zal is a Deity.
Kar is the Lesser Deity of Reflection.
And each Astralkin people carries fragments of the particular divine being who willed them into existence.
This should not be mistaken for incarnation.
A Zaltar is not Zal walking through Rhuna in mortal form.
A Karthine is not Kar reborn.
Each is an individual mortal person carrying only a fragment of the Deity from whom their people originated.
That fragment gives them a shared beginning.
It does not give them a predetermined life.
The Astralkin include the Zaltar, Rhunai, Karthine, and Veloth.
Across generations, each has developed histories, cultures, relationships, beliefs, and identities entirely their own.
Their divine inheritance explains what they came from.
It does not determine who they become.
Vathians Copy link
The Fractured Peoples
The Vathians are the mortal continuations of the Astraleth after their Fracturing.
Before their Fracturing, the Astraleth created Threads of their own. Those Threads remained within Rhuna after their creators were broken.
The Vathians are not those Threads.
They are what became of the Astraleth themselves.
Gahl drew forth Dalo and Cora. The Gahlians are the mortal continuation of Gahl after his Fracturing.
Kalthi drew forth Nari. The Kalthir are the mortal continuation of Kalthi after her Fracturing.
Pahr drew forth Jatu, the Green Thread. The Pahric are the mortal continuation of Pahr after his Fracturing.
Ezhan drew forth Sere. The Ezhani are the mortal continuation of Ezhan after his Fracturing.
The distinction is fundamental.
The Threads are creations of the Astraleth.
The Vathians are their Fractured creators continued through mortal lives.
Yet an individual Vathian is not simply an incomplete Astraleth waiting to be restored.
The Fracturing produced something new.
Generations of mortal existence have created families, communities, cultures, beliefs, relationships, and identities that belong to the Vathians themselves.
Their ancient origin remains part of them.
It does not invalidate everything they became afterward.
The Fracturing explains their beginning. Their mortal lives belong to them.
Nuhlrin Copy link
The Peoples of the Call for Balance
The Nuhlrin are mortal peoples who entered Rhuna through the Call for Balance.
They were not willed into existence as fragments of Rhuna's Deities.
They did not emerge from the Fracturing of the Astraleth.
They came into Rhuna as living mortal peoples, carrying their own bodies, histories, traditions, relationships, and ways of understanding existence.
Their arrival changed both them and the world they entered.
Some established new homelands.
Some adapted to environments unlike those their ancestors had known.
Some developed distinct Kinds and cultures.
Some saw the societies from which they came shattered and created entirely new identities from what survived.
Generations passed.
The descendants of those first arrivals were no longer visitors to Rhuna.
They were born there.
They lived there.
Their families and civilizations became part of its history.
The Call for Balance explains how their ancestors entered Rhuna.
It does not assign their descendants a continuing cosmic purpose.
The Nuhlrin are not guests fulfilling an ancient obligation.
Rhuna is their home.
Orvah Copy link
The Tangled Bloods
The Orvah emerged from the catastrophe of the Astral Wars, when severed Threads became tangled and life took new and unexpected forms.
They were not willed into mortal existence from fragments of Deities like the Astralkin.
They are not the mortal continuations of fractured Astraleth like the Vathians.
They did not enter Rhuna through the Call for Balance like the Nuhlrin.
The Orvah arose from the Tangle itself.
Threads that had once possessed distinct patterns were severed, crossed, and recombined. From those tangled remnants emerged living beings that had never existed before.
Over time, three great Orvah peoples emerged, each developing a different relationship with the instability carried within their Origin:
Daathru — Order.
Tyrru — Balance.
Uthuru — Chaos.
These are not simply philosophical affiliations.
They represent different ways through which the Tangled Bloods came to exist within a world born from conflicting forces.
Other peoples have sometimes regarded the Orvah as aberrations—evidence that something within Rhuna had gone wrong.
But the Orvah are not temporary mistakes waiting to disappear.
They are peoples.
They have endured, changed, created communities, developed traditions, and become part of Rhuna's history.
Their existence demonstrates something the other Origins cannot:
The Threads were broken.
They tangled.
And life emerged from what remained.
Origin Is Not Culture Copy link
Origin is among the oldest truths a Hero carries.
It is not the whole of who they are.
An Astralkin may carry a fragment of a Deity without sharing that Deity's perceived purpose.
A Vathian may descend from a fractured Astraleth without defining themselves by what existed before the Fracturing.
A Nuhlrin may descend from those who answered the Call for Balance without feeling any obligation to that ancient event.
An Orvah may carry the Tangle within their existence without behaving according to what others expect from a Daathru, Tyrru, or Uthuru.
Culture adds another layer.
A Hero may embrace the traditions in which they were raised.
They may question them.
They may belong to several cultural communities.
They may leave their ancestral homeland and make another place their own.
They may reject traditions inherited from their family and later rediscover them.
None of the entries in this book describe what every member of a people must believe or how every Hero must behave.
They describe patterns.
Histories.
Traditions.
Values.
Conflicts.
Relationships.
And the countless ways people have learned to live together within Rhuna.
Origin describes what gave a people their beginning.
Culture describes what generations made from it.
Who a Hero becomes remains their own.
The UnboundCopy link
The Unbound include Stranded, Irenuk, and Zhe of Nuhlrin, Vathian, or Orvah heritage, including mixed ancestries. Astralkin are excluded. An Unbound identity describes culture, belonging, or a way of life; it is not a fifth Origin and does not erase a person’s underlying heritage.
The Nuhlrin descend from mortal peoples created by gods and deities on distant planets across distant galaxies, using uncorrupted Threads. They had families, histories, and established lineages long before they answered the Call for Balance. They were not created for that Call.