Era: Two to three generations after the end.

This tribe is known as the Pale Ones. They dwell at the very center of the dead city, emerging from an old subterranean shelter. More organized than most, their ways are rigid but fragile — a flickering echo of a lost civilization.

The Pale Ones trace their origins to a sealed subterranean shelter where, over the years, leadership and nobility developed full albinism. Those of lower rank display only partial albinism or imitate it with powders and ash to gain social acceptance. Purity of pallor has become a silent but powerful marker of status.

Their society is stratified and unusually complex for the Stone Rebirth era. Underground reside the nobles, priests, and the scholars or scribes who preserve fragments of old knowledge.

There also live the reproducers — young women selected from the first years of fertility through their early pregnancies. Their role is temporary and tightly monitored. Each of their children is evaluated for traits considered vital to the tribe: strength, adaptability, and especially the degree of albinism. Once a woman has carried one or more pregnancies and her offspring's “quality” is assessed, she is exiled from the reproductive caste. She is elevated to the huntresses and she leaves the sheltered life forever.

Above ground move the two active castes. The huntresses are those proven strong and capable, often mothers of the tribe’s most valued children. They patrol the ruins, protect the entrance to the shelter, and bring back fresh game.

The scavengers are women whose bodies or offspring were deemed unsuitable for further breeding — or who have simply aged beyond safe fertility. “Too old to bear children and too worn to hunt,” they sift through the ruins for tools, scrap, and remnants of the past. Though physically diminished, they carry long memory and cautious wisdom, making them indispensable in navigating the dead city.

Together, these castes maintain a fragile balance: a society clinging to echoes of structure while surrounded by the raw, brutal simplicity of the Stone Rebirth.

A collection of portraits from the huntresses. Their near-white skin, ash markings, and braided pale hair reflect a strict social order shaped by generations underground. Some bear the full albinism of the noble bloodlines, others carry only traces of it or mimic it with ritual powders.

Each face shows a different fragment of their world: resilience, lineage, and the fragile echo of a lost civilization trying to live again.