Hkamisëbiwmtë

The Hkamisëbiwmtë (also known as the Ko Hkamitho, Kansyë, etc.) are an ethnic minority group within present day Meó. They are descended from the purple-haired tribes of the Raiwlawbiwmtë that migrated northwards into the Meó basin after the Htaevic peoples displaced them from their native lands in the Shattered Islands. Estimates vary on what percentage of the Meó population is ethnically Hkamisëbiwmtë from 2-5%, though a significant minority of ethnic Meó peoples having purple hair may suggest some Hkamisëbiwmtë admixture in a minority of ethnic Meó. The Hkamisëbiwmtë have long had a turbulent history within the Meó/Htaevic realm, especially due to their language largely being ignored by states due to the omnipresence of the Htaevic & Meó lingua francas. Nonetheless, their culture persists, and indeed many Hkamisëbiwmtë have even attained high roles within Meó society.

History

The Hkamisëbiwmtë are predominantly descended from the purple haired tribes that fled from the Shattered Islands following the Htaevic invasion. Many of them assimilated into the native Meóic tribes of the southern coast of the Htasei Basin, and for many years ethnic boundaries within this region were blurry and fluid, existing on a continuum of the indigenous Meóic tribes to the new Raiwlawbiwmtë. The later arrival of Hsuqliht and Htaevic peoples would further complicate the ethnography of the region.

Language

The Hkamisëbiwmtë speak a multitude of dialects, though they can broadly be classified into two families. One family being the Meóic languages, part of the wider Meó-Hsuqliht languages, and the other being the languages directly descended from the language of the Raiwlawbiwmtë. Many creoles between the two language families exist, and the influence of the Htaevic and Hsuqliht languages due to their cultural prestige is significant, especially in technical vocabulary.

The Raiwlawbiwmtë languages are distantly related to the Unuvi language. This relationship has been known throughout history, and indeed there have often been political alliances between the Hkamisëbiwmtë polities and the Unuvunese. Many Htaevic rulers would even go so far as to hire Hkamisëbiwmtë in the earlier years, due to the relation of their languages, enabling a degree of mutual intelligibility.

<<A shared ethnic conscious between the Unuvunese and the Hkamisëbiwmtë would be the justification for Unuvun's naval dominance and piracy over the Shattered Islands on many occasions throughout history>> ? Maybe