Mayakai

The Mayakai people lived in Polynesia before European colonization.

Culture
The Mayakai believed themselves to be the chosen people of the Moak, meaning "god" or "giant" (albeit giants of spectral rather than physical nature). They were said to be able to "step out of time" with the same skill as the Doctor. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)

The Moak also taught them to "read" the bones of any animal. As a result, the Mayakai viewed all animals as weapons and were obsessed with animal biology. Simply by pointing bones at enemies and performing small rituals, they could cause cardiac, nervous, and muscular system reactions in targets. The six male chiefs of the Mayakai council of war wielded ornate and fearsome bone-staves. In late 1769, one of the few Europeans to ever encounter a Mayakai war party suffered from apparently inexplicable and severe brain damage. (COMIC: Political Animals)

The Mayakai felt they had a special relationship with time, and their language abounded in words describing the shape, size, and direction of time. As a result, their culture let them see the world like tantrists, but without muscular techniques or rituals. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) Mother Francesca of Faction Paradox believed the culture had been designed as a weapon during the War. (COMIC: Political Animals)

Mayakai tradition held that men were less able than women to perform rituals. Woman were only initiated after having sex, and they shaved off all hear from their scalp except for a small patch, which they let grow indefinitely, letting the strands fall loosely over their faces. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)

Fall
In 1773, less than a decade after the first European contact with the Mayakai, a South American survey of their native island found "a blasted and appalling land... bodies lie wasted on the shore, and no man has reason to give them decent burial." Many believed that it was European disease which had decimated the population, as with so many Polynesian peoples. While the few survivors did mention a European disease (which they inaccurately called "pox"), they had a different reason for the destruction, saying that it had to do with a generations-long war the Moak had suffered. Their opponent, the (untranslatable) Na Koporaya, had smote many of the gods, so the greatest Moak passed onto the Mayakai the duty of guarding the ancient wisdom, ready for the day when they would return to the world to reclaim what had been lost in the battle. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)

Survivors
An American naturalist named Fischer captured a Mayakai warrior they called "Mayakatula" and brought her to England as a diplomatic gift for King George III in 1774. (COMIC: Political Animals) She escaped her bonds and went on a killing spree, but she didn't kill Isobel when she had the chance. Instead, she trained her in Mayakai ritual. (COMIC: Bêtes Noires &amp; Dark Horses)

By 1776, Mayakai survivors were taking refuge in Europe and the Americas. In this year, Sabbath first met Tula Lui, then a ten-year-old girl, who was younger than seven when she escaped into the Western world. By 1780, he took her in as his apprentice.

The oldest known surviving member of the 'pureblood' Mayakai line was an old woman who lived in St. James'. Her joints had become paralysed and her breathing was stifled by a growth on her lungs. She rarely spoke, and when she did it was in a croaking, snapping Polynesian language. In 1783, she blessed Scarlette upon her marriage to the Doctor; Scarlette saw her among the ruins of the Mayakai homeland in a vision of the Kingdom of Beasts. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)

Tuluku Venn was a descendant of the Mayakai. His ancestors came to Britain in the eighteenth century wearing bones in their ears. Tuluku married Fiora James and taught her how to read everyone's invisible spirit-guide, telling her, "We're all half-man and half-beast." He died in 1891. (AUDIO: Movers (audio story), A Labyrinth of Histories (audio story))

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the genetic survivors of the Mayakai people had interbred and assimilated to the point of being unidentifiable. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)