The Sudai are a species/culture I've been developing for part of a big nebulous worldbuilding collaboration with my long-lost sister, ~SunshineKitE. It recently occurred to me that having SPECIES and CULTURE so closely intertwined may be a subtle form of racism. (Like it implies that being born with certain genes limits one to only certain patterns of behavior? I DON'T KNOW.) I think I remember that criticism being leveled at Tolkien for his Orcs and stuff. Maybe that's where I got it. For the moment my only justification is that the Sudai are a very small population that occupy only one area, so variations in the culture of native-born Sudai are unheard of. A Sudai raised apart from their own culture would assimilate into other ways without difficulty.

THAT WAS A TANGENT I DIDN'T MEAN TO GO ON.

I drew influences for Sudai culture from a few sources, namely faerie folklore and African tribes. Stuff about the Sudai (pronounced SOO-die):

- They have pointy canines and the one on the dominant side of their body (as in left- or right-handed) is always longer. They use their dominant tooth for puncturing food, beads, and anything else that calls for a pointy tool.

- Blood is sacred to them. Their culture evolved in arid scrublands and the reverence for blood stems in part from its water content. Sharing blood with another person is an incredibly profound act of kinship among Sudai and is not to be taken lightly. Outsiders who witness the Sudai's use of blood in rituals are often appalled and confused, not understanding the cultural relevance of it.

- They believe themselves to be terrestrial incarnations of giant, fiery wolves which, according to their belief system, circle the sun of their world. Upon dying, a Sudai's spirit returns to its greater form to join the pack in the eternal euphoria of the chase. They consider their humanoid bodies to be inferior to their true spirits and much of their culture revolves around trying to emulate the ways of animals.

- This includes: making use of clothing predominantly for protection only (they don't wear much--shame has no part in Sudai values), resisting the development of complex tools and technology, a nomadic lifestyle and a general closeness with nature.

- For these reasons, early explorers in the Sudai's native range thought them to be horrible, sub-human barbarians. The Sudai were treated as animals, rounded up and oppressed, and because of their all but nonexistant technology, they were largely unable to resist.

- Thorns and the sun also figure largely in Sudai spiritual imagery. A circle with spikes radiating out from it is a combination of the two images and has profound meaning to them. The Sudai don't ornament themselves heavily, seeing it as a practice counter to animalistic ways (it implies posession, property, etc.), but beads made from thorns are common.

- They have robin's-egg blue scleras and electric blue irises.

- They've also got tails. Wolfy tails.

- Their hair is naturally thick and spiky and doesn't grow much longer than that of the woman pictured.

- Their skin is unusually opaque; one layer of it holds a high density if lightly-colored cells that reflect harmful UV rays before they penetrate deeper layers. The yellowish color of their skin is well-suited to camouflage in their environment.

- They are not sexually dimorphic; males and females are the same size and both have horns.

MORE THAN YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT MY FAKE ANTHROPOLOGY. I dig the Sudai.
Eventually I'll start drawing things that aren't portraits.