Aiel


Gai'shain

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Gai'shain are Aiel who has been touched or captured by an enemy while carrying a weapon.
The word Gai'shain is from the Old Tongue and means as much as 'pledged to peace in battle'.

The Aiel system of Ji'e'toh requires captured Aiel to serve for a year and a day as gai'shain. Touching no weapon and doing no violence for that time, completing their service humbly and obediently with no complaint or thought of escape. Many of the gai'shain end up serving the Wise Ones, but any Aiel can be served by one.

To understand the gai'shain system, one must understand the Aiel's Code of Honor, the Ji'e'toh. To Aiel, becoming gai'shain is not shameful, it is quite the opposite. They earned shame by being captured in the first place. Serving as gai'shain allows an Aiel to regain that lost honor and undo the shame earned. By meeting their toh, they rob their enemy of the honor they gained by capturing them. This is what the Aiel believe to their core and they will die defending their right to restore their honor and meet their toh.

Gai'shain wear nothing but white cloths, which makes them stand out in case of a battle or raid. For it is forbidden to harm or kill a gai'shain. They can be taken, but they can not be harmed. At least, that is the rule. Some Aiel, however, are far less honorable than one might think and will take advantage of a gai'shain if they can. While there are those, honorable and just, that will act as protectors to the gai'shain if they come across such practices. Others will try to use the year and a day to try to win the heart of one of the gai'shain, so that they may marry them when they put off the white. This is not a dishonorable thing to do, but it is also not exactly encouraged. The Aiel have a principle that says that a person can not be held responsible for any actions they did while wearing white, for gai'shain do nothing that was not ordered to them or that would endanger their honor any further. Then, there are those Aiel who have an exaggerated sense of honor that they would demand being taken gai'shain for the slightest reasons. As serving as Gai'shain is considered a regaining of honor, which is in turn each Aiel's own responsibility, the demand to be made gai'shain can not be refused. No matter how silly it may be.

Aiel have a rather liberal view on nudity and find nothing strange about prisoners sitting stark naked in the open, waiting patiently to be clothed in the appropriate white. Upon being taken, the captured Aiel will immediately and without hesitation strip to their skin and sit where their captors point. A thing that would cause not a little shock if done in the wetlander world.

These otherwise fierce and ferocious warriors become so docile as gai'shain that a ten year old child could easily manage a group of twenty gai'shain.

 

Wise Ones, blacksmiths, a child under the age of fifteen and a woman with a child under the age of ten are all exempted from service as gai'shain.
In other words: these can not be captured.

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