The Sahaani of the "southern" snows (Patreon)

When you're carrying everything you own from one place to the next, one tends to favor weight, durability, and practicality over aesthetics.  If something could be dyed with berry juice or if fibers could be woven into a pleasing pattern, it would occasionally be done.  But every now and then a zebra would be seized with an urge to create something beautiful.  That zebra was said to be 'possessed by Sahaan', a spirit of creation that flitted from place to place, fickle and unsure.  

Sahaan could appear in a Propoli village and compel a foal to scribble on the walls, telling their parents 'Sahaan made me do it.'  They could appear in the wilderness, compelling someone to stack rocks in interesting patterns out in the playas.  Some of these lithographic art remain, even after the Day of Doom, sitting in the Empties where they were created millennia ago.  Sometimes Sahaan could affect entire villages, compelling them to draw huge images in the earth to appease the spirit, so it would leave and they could get back to work.

It's not that early zebras had anything against artistry, but every zebra making pictures or art were zebras that weren't working growing crops.  A foal visited by Sahaan would be more likely to be visited in adulthood.  Some even fears Sahaan was infectious, and would jump from one member to the next.  Fortunately the zebra knew how to deal with disease: isolation in the sick hut.  However, as populations grew, so did the number of Sahaan infested individuals.  More than a hut could manage.  So people touched by this fickle spirit were sent away.

Because many associated Sahaan with the heat delirium that affects some, people suffering from Sahaan stayed in cold locations, near mountain peaks, glaciers, or in the far southern regions where cool climates prevailed.  Here, it was hoped, they could live and indulge in their creative urges until they exhausted themselves and could return to be productive members of society again.  And as one may expect, mares met stallions and babies happened.  Many never left these cold climes, instead electing to stay.  They were Sahaani, hopelessly tormented by the creative spirit.  As one may expect, they developed longer and thicker coats as a result of generations born in the cold climates.

The Sahaani very well could have been a dead tribe except for one fact: their 'art' was incredibly valuable in the nearby Propoli villages.  For a time, the source of these goods were hidden behind stories of being crafted by spirits and found mysteriously in the woods.  They soon realized that if they supported Sahaani, art could become a tradable good.  So roads were cut to their hermitages and compounds, and every few months new art would be presented in the nearby villages.  The appeal soon had people travelling for the purpose of buying their art.

Like much of zebra kind, the enslavement of the Starkatteri affected the tribe profoundly; it caused its population to explode!  Thousands of zebra trying to process the fear and trauma of that nightmare found relief in artistic expression.  The tiny Sahaani settlements became full villages, and even towns in their own right.  The phenomenon was simply too large and profound to be ignored any longer.  Thus the Sahaani went from being a group to a full tribe of shaggy coated zebras.

The first empire saw the Sahaani as a valuable, if odd, collection of zebras.  Propoli would given them gold, gems, ivory, and colorful stones and get back valuable carvings... or horrible junk that would be quietly melted down and returned for hopefully better art.  The medium the Sahaani truly loved though was ice.  It was translucent to light, freely regenerated, allowed infinite practice, and when there was too much of it, you could just let the excess melt away.  Sahaani sculptors would carve an ice sculpture to help plan how they would carve a block of sandstone.  In winter, Sahaani villages would overflow with icy creations, up to and including whole buildings made of ice.  In the largest, and southernmost towns, some of these lasted year round.

Nightmare Moon's long night didn't traumatize the tribe so much as inspire it, and caused the tribe to explode outwards.  There were so many seeking artistic, creative relief that the Sahaani villages simply could not handle them all.  Thus the tribe's elders sent artists out to the towns and cities of the empire.  By making art there, and teaching others to make art, the Sahaani hoped to help their fellow zebra.  Instead, they found themselves the darlings of society.

Rich patrons would set up studios for artists to create interesting art.  It was this time that pigment was mixed with an adhesive to form the first reliable paints.  Sahaani adored this expression as well.  Some painted on canvasses, others on entire walls.  A Sahaani with a paint brush and a determined look was cause for alarm and interest.  Because while Sahaani art was interesting, it wasn't always 'good' or 'appropriate.'  However, because Sahaani were interesting oddities in towns, they tended to attract the curious.  This lead to babies.

Sahaani sexual rules were simple: there weren't any.  If two people had sex, it didn't matter if they were of different tribes, genders, or even species.  Sex was just something that happened, and thus Sahaani families tended to be equally odd.  Their foals were often regarded as neglected or even abused by other tribes who didn't understand that if you have paint around children, someone's going to end up painted blue.  Sahaani children tended to be terrible in school settings.  Some even accused the tribe of being 'uneducationable' and the Sahaani would smile, shrug, and agree before moving on to their next work.

As centuries passed, the tribe went from celebrity to menace.  A Sahaani was interesting.  Twenty were a lot.  A hundred were a menace.  Some towns and villages passed laws and ordinances forbidding things like painting houses or carving faces on sidewalks.  Sahaani tended to 'forget' about these ordinances anyway, but the cannier ones either reigned in their impulses or learned to seek inspiration elsewhere.  Sahaani art styles developed regionally as a result.  The south east sought realistic depiction.  The south west favored wild abstraction.  The northwest lived for geometry, while the northeast favored impressionist art styles.  And in the Empties, anything went!

There was one hitch, however.  Sahaani cartographers found that maps with Roam at the top center sold well.  This put their homelands in the south, in the "southern snows".  Princess Celestia's arrival, and later maps of Equestria and the world turned the world upside down, literally.  Maps were flipped so be more in line with Equestrian maps, much to the relief of Atoli navigators.  Now situated in the 'north', the Sahaani pondered this and promptly made a spat of art showing zebras balancing on their heads in protest.

Sahaani villages developed around strong communal lines.  Food, art supplies, and other goods were shared freely.  Property itself is fairly abstract to the tribe, up to the point that things like 'your spouse' or 'your child'  were sometimes ignored.  What mattered was the child was fed, not whose it was.  Some Sahaani loved raising children to be artistic and creative.  Some shouldn't be parents.  It was simple to move one to the other, and give the first more help in supporting them.  If someone needed to sleep, why not spare that corner?

The irresponsibility of the tribe was so paramount that a shaman serving the Emperor claimed to have captured Sahaan forever and bound their essence into a stone faced book.  The Sahaani took one look at it and claimed it was so ugly that any spirit that lived in it could keep it.  The shaman sullenly passed it to Celestia for safekeeping, who agreed it was dreadfully ugly and secreted it away in the castle of the two pony sisters.  Needless to say, the Sahaani didn't find their inspiration diminished in the slightest.

In the late second empire, most tribes tended to frown on Sahaani, expecting them to meet societal norms.  Some concessions were attempted.  'Academies of Art' were founded, supplied at great expense by the Empire, to try to get Sahaani to conform to styles of art and standards of behavior.  These Academies were regarded as prestigious, important, and vital to social morality.  Sahaani regarded them as jokes, but conceded they WERE useful in making connections in the Empire.

Replication was particularly challenging for Sahaani, who maintained that prints were mere replication of art.  Many Sahaani protested and prevented duplication of their art via industrial means.  Others said this was a way to make art ubiquitous by making it more affordable.  Some Sahaani flicked their tails at traditionalists and embraced mass production.  While successful, these Sahaani were largely alienated from their tribe, who saw their art as formulaic, repetitive, and devoid of Sahaan.

And this saw the third transformation of art to the imperial level.  Sahaani became more and more entranced by architecture and engineering.  Objects and buildings could be functional as well as beautiful.  The abrupt shift was alarming to some Logos and Propoli, but Sahaani artistic tastes swept across the Empire in a mighty brush.  Ugly, polluting factories were cleaned up and replaced.  Dull bridges were replaced with newer constructions of steel and glass.  Brass and gold decorated imperial buildings.  A full quarter of Roam was rebuilt in the new 'Sahaani style'.

When the election of the last Caesar came up, the Sahaani saw no reason what so ever to upend the arrangement between ponies and zebras.  Equestria was a source of inspiration, same as any other.  While Sahaani rarely settled there (though there was a sizeable population living near the Crystal Empire) they would tour galleries and see their works.  An artistic cutie mark showed that Sahaan was universal!  They teamed up with the Zencori and Tappahani blocks to try and preserve the union with Equestria.

They failed, shrugged, and thought they'd go back to the status quo.  However, the third Empire would break their creative spirit.  As the war began, the tribe found that the Empire's tastes had suddenly shifted to 'the imperial aesthetic'.  This catch all term was applied to every artistic endeavor.  Pastorals and abstracts gave way to depictions of Roamani soldiers clashing with Equestrian knights.  Images of sacrifice and glory were everywhere, and it was expected that the zebras would always be victorious.  Sahaani that refused to do so quickly found themselves accused of disloyalty, and even subject to mobs raiding their studios and burning their work.  

With the assent of Princess Luna to the war, the tribe found itself utterly sidelined.  They couldn't get supplies, only 'practical' designs were being built, and if art wasn't propagandistic, it was ignored or attacked.  Some accused the tribe of being treasonous, but in reality they were simply, utterly alienated from the Empire in general.  Some Sahaani enlisted in a futile attempt to try and show patriotism, but the realities of war harrowed the tribe.  Those that made it home were broken by images of the war.

This led to the last official art style of the tribe, desolationism, and it was prophetic.  Sahaani sketched in charcoal and painted with their own blood.  They drew images of the horrors of the battlefield as graffiti on walls in terrible detail.  While officially illegal, these images propagated due to their style and increasing ubiquity.  One even appeared on the wall of the imperial palace, showing the last Caesar standing proudly over a field of bones.  Thousands saw it, and it kicked off protests that prevented its removal for hours.  This inspired peace talks that would fail utterly at Broken Hoof Ridge.

The Sahaani member of the Magnificent Twelve was Bjorn, who while being born Sahaani, struggled with abysmal artistic talent.  Bjorn's skills lay in destroying unwanted pieces of work, a task few Sahaani relished.  While his public face was cool and cheery, Bjorn was torn with feelings of failure both artistically and for his teammates.  His fate is unknown, as he was last in the capital when the Day of Doom began, trying to help evacuate civilians.

The Day of Doom simply swept away most Sahaani.  Their communal way of life was overwhelmed by the desperate and art became superfluous in a world of survival.  Most starved or were killed in the waves of violence that followed.  Only a few isolated hermitages, too far for refugees to reach easily on hoof, survived.  While individuals might survive as part of a community or join a legion, they were rarely identified as Sahaani and artistic creations were usually not tolerated.

New hermitages did sprout up in isolated reaches.  Fatalism became the new art style, as the tribe tried to understand what had happened.  Macabre scenes were set up glorifying death as something beautiful, or at least relatable.  Others sought to memorialize the dead.  In the Eastern Empty, a Sahaani created a spiral of pebbles, one for each death.  It's unknown how many Sahaani were involved.  to date, it is thirteen kilometers across and holds over two hundred million pebbles, and still is not finished.

The only large population of Sahaani, ironically, is the White Legion.  Many Sahaani engineers made fortifications during the war, and those skills were turned to fortifying enclaves.  With relative safety, it's not uncommon to see carvings, murals, or paintings in their bases.  Other tiny scatterings of Sahaani can be found abroad in the largest settlements where a luxury like art is welcomed.  Bastion and Sanctuary have a few dozen Sahaani each.

Some think the Sahaani are on the verge of extinction, yet Sahaan persists.  A raider who makes an artistic arrangement of bullet casings is Sahaani.  A teen who scribbles some lewd grafitti on Bastion's walls is, for the moment, Sahaani.  A lone wanderer who stacks some rocks in an interesting pile is, Sahaani.  And so long as zebra find the urge to create, Sahaani will always exist.