Eltohan

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Eltohan, also known as 'The Clan-Bonds' and 'The Patterns of the People', is a traditional Elgan form of body art.

Natural paints (mud/clay/plants/powders) used to create well-known cultural designs on the bodies of a large group. The group then dances a dance that goes with the design until either sweat or rain washes the designs from their bodies.

The Eltohan is a cultural lexicon of temporary tattoo designs and accompanying dance patterns: water-soluble paints made from clay, mud, plants and powders are used to decorate the entire clan, who dance the relevant dance until their paints wash away (traditionally from rain, but sweat is far more common in the modern era).

Each pattern is intended to invoke good fortune, prosperity, peace, victory or any other favourable thing, from the well-known Argisan wedding knot-dance and its complex, looping knot work tattoos, the funerary Host of Glory and its dancing skeleton tattoos, the colorful Flower-Bears-Fruit and its celebration of fertility and newborns via the metaphor of fruiting plants, the visual spectacle of the Grim Fang war-dance and its many mouths and coroxodon-scales and many more.

Modern observances tend toward more casual renditions, though they remain a staple of family gatherings. Some flash-mob styles are popular in off-Krell populations, with those Elgans favouring luminescent body paints and elaborate choreographed movement through nightclubs or dim streets.