Täy people

The Täy people (Winqomtäy: ) are an ethnic group native to central Soco that share the Winqomtäy language.

Gender roles
In contrast to the gender binary, Täy society recognises between five and seven genders: ete, ndusitäm, tämala, ti, wägen, wäkoe and wetuxa.

Wäkoe
The firstborn children of afluent families, either male or female, are assigned wäkoe (Winqomtäy: ) as their gender. However, male wäkoe (also known as wämbutel) will lose their status and be demoted to tämala or ndusitäm wäway as soon as the family gets a daughter. The upbringing of a wäkoe is highly privileged, providing them access to high quality education in the sciences, arts and humanities, giving them a great advantage to get high earning, high influence jobs that require little to no manual labor.

Wäkoe make up most of the owning class with most of them owning companies, like factories, plantations or naval floats. The political scene also sees an overrepresentation of wäkoe, with most small-scale executive, judicial and legislative roles being delegated to noble and non-noble wäkoe. They also have access to education on warfare, making them the de facto leaders of the military.

Wäkoe are one of the two genders, along with ndusitäm, that is allowed to marry and create a harem, but unlike ndusitäm, wäkoe can be married off to other wäkoe and ndusitäm as concubines as payment for debt or fines if their family has no other eligible children.

Ndusitäm
Ndusitäm (Winqomtäy: ), also referred to as amazons in English due to the fact they are mainly made up by females, are a class of highly skilled warriors, sometimes classified as a distinct gender. They are scouted young, often during prepubescence, from the lower to middle strata of society and trained to perform high endurance and dangerous tasks. They make up the bulk of the military population, but in times of peace, they are delegated to hunting, harpoon fishing, scouting, surveying, policing and fighting off domestic threats.

Ndusitäm are not allowed to become concubines, meaning they cannot be legally be part of a harem, but they are able to marry concubines of their own, create a harem and have children.

Being selected to become a ndusitäm is considered one of the best forms of upwards mobility in Täy society, as one need not relinquish their individuality or autonomy or struggle with the stigma that comes with being a new money family amongst many old money families that have held influence for generations, as they are already considered elite warriors worthy of reverence and respect.

Tämala and wägen
Tämala and Wägen are the closest genders to men and women in Täy society. These refer to striplings and maidens respectively and they constitute the bulk of the Täy population. The maiden genders are the most flexible out of all of them with not much expectations or constraints set upon them as long as they don’t tread on the privileges of Ndusitäm and Wäkoe. The upbringing of maidens tends to be focused on trade and religious skills rather than on academic ones, with Tämala tending to practices, cults and trades associated with water and Wägen tending to ones associated with earth. Following the elemental divide, Wägen tend to focus on trades associated with earth, some of these have a clear, direct connection with earth, like pottery, construction, jewelery or metallurgy, others have a connection with plants, like medicine, cooking, agriculture, textiles, woodworking or wicker, and animals, like husbandry, hunting, bone carving or leatherworking, while others have a more indirect connection to earth like midwifery or music. Tämala often focus on directly water related jobs, like fishing, brewing, grooming or cleaning, and ones only culturally related to water, which were associated with charisma, economics or service, like merchanting, theater, banking, minting or valuing. Maiden genders are not allowed to marry and create harems of their own, so most of them live all their whole lives outside of a formal marriage, with most maidens building informal families with others like them. Despite all of that, maidens can be married off to Wäkoe and Ndusitam, becoming Ti and Wetuxa, leaving their life as maidens behind and transitioning into their new role as concubines.

Ti and wetuxa
Ti (Winqomtäy: ) and wetuxa (Winqomtäy: ) and are the married counterparts of tämala and wägen respectively.

Ete
People assigned ete (Winqomtäy: ) consist of those from poor or criminal backgrounds. Males undergo castration and circumcision and females a double mastectomy and clitorial hood circumcision to remove any identifiable sex characteristics. They are sold either into indentured servitude or slavery. They are not allowed to leave their owners' house or space designated for them to leave unsupervised, bare, adopt or rear children or own any money or possessions.

Funerals
The Täy funeral process begins by removing the brain, burying the deceased and, after a certain time, exhuming the body to remove any soft tissue vestige that has not been decomposed, and later burying it. The Täy believe that once the dead has lost its flesh in its entirety, death process is complete.

Täy graves are primed with a layer of sand, a layer of stones and shells and finally a layer of pelt on which the deceased will rest.

The soft tissue free skeleton would be retouched with reddish and ocre dyes, then it would be posed in a special way, extended, flexed or dismembered depending on the wishes of the deceased, his family or his rank and placed in a burial site of significance. Feathers, tools, weapons and personal items often accompany the body in its grave.

Ritual cannibalism
The Täy peoples believe the soul resides in the brain. They consume the brain of their deceased loved ones and teachers to keep a part of their soul within them, acquire their wisdom and preserve their memories.

To get to the deceased's brain, they carefully carve an incision along the circumference of the posterior side of the skull with sharp carving tools. It is believed that this practice gave origin to Täy treppanation brain surgeries.