WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK 0068 0068
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to them—leaves, fruits, and seeds are common, while
roots and tubers are rare. Meats from common tree animals such as the black squirrel and branch lizard supplement their diets, though they avoid eating any birds.
Penmai enjoy dining, and family cooks and professional chefs are prized members of society. Penman
recipes indulge in a variety of spices, as well, so their
common fare is highly spicy and can be inedibly hot by
some human standards.
Penmai drink water warm and cold, flavored or unflavored by fruits or spices. They also concoct a bewildering variety of wines from high-hanging grapes and
fruits. The do not brew beers and ales themselves, since
they have limited access to the grains necessary, but
Penmai Language
The penmai language, Penaian, is a mixture of vocal
sounds and hand-finger (and sometimes even foottoe) signing, making it particularly difficult for outsiders
to understand or master. As a general rule, hand-finger
signs convey physical concepts such as direction, size,
and indication of a sentence’s focus, and so on. Verbal language most often conveys any psychological or
emotional contents.
• For instance, a penma saying “I put the cup over
there” would be conveyed almost entirely through
hand-finger signing,
• The sentence “I remember what it was that upset
me” would be almost entirely spoken.
• Most sentences and statements use an artful
combination of both voice and signing.
• To completely silence a penma, one must gag and tie
his hands; if either mode is left free, he can still gets
his point across, however awkwardly.
Non-penmai who wish to learn and emulate their
speech must prepare for long study. Their verbal
tongue uses all the common vowels and consonants,
but also includes a collection of whistles and tongue
clicks that bear their own meaning or alter those of
other words and signs around them. Natural Penmai
tone is high pitched, so hearing their language in lowerpitched voices can sometimes be hard for Penmai to
understand. As for the signing component, their long
fingers and additional knuckle give them nuance that
lesser-digited creatures can never come close to mimicking. At best, a non-penma might be able to master
hand-signing at the level Penmai expect of their toddlers. They often call humans who speak their language
flotkwoi, or “stumble fingered.”
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import human and Pachyaur brews, paying premium
prices for them.
Penman Village Migrations
Penmai villages are always slowly on the move. While
it is possible to pin down a particular village to a specific forest, exactly where it will be in that forest from
week to week changes. Huts and dwellings are always
being taken down and reassembled on the far side of a
village, and rhallor (see below) are untied and maneuvered similarly. The whole community shifts slowly but
surely away from where it was and towards where it is
going. On any given day, at least two dwellings or huts
or locations are under simultaneous disassembly and
reassembly.
Huts and all penman architecture are made from interwoven layers of plant fronds, vines, leaves, and living branches onto which Penmai anchor a temporary
dwelling. The most common type is one simple domed
room with a chimney hole on top and an access door in
the floor. Some larger buildings have been constructed,
though they tend to have larger central chambers with
supplemental smaller chambers used for storage slung
below the main in hammock-like structures.
The most surprising constructs of the Penmai are their
water-collection stations, of which they always have at
least three for each village. Whenever they can, Penmai water-collectors adjust and change leaf positions or
shift vegetation clusters among the canopy to allow any
rain or precious morning dew to follow a downward path
and collect in a small chamber for easier use.
For the most part, village movement is never planned,
but serves as a defensive advantage (enemies cannot
attack the village so easily if it has changed location)
and urban renewal, since most structures are torn down
and remade every few weeks (though often using the
same materials and built in largely the same manner
each was before). The move is a community effort from
which no Penmai are exempt, though only a small fraction of the citizenry is actively involved at any one time.
Why this activity of keeping a village mobile started
is unknown, though some speculate it has much to do
with the health and stability of the trees or other substructures on which the village rests. Others hint that
the Dragon Kings who aided the Penmai in the Classic
Age may have set up this pattern with them, again for
reasons unknown.
It is possible for one migrating village to intersect with
another and for a time even occupy essentially the same
space. On the rare occasions when this happens, the
citizens retain a completely distinct identity for each
community until such time as they finally wander away
