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Cultures

Being a primer on the cultures of the world of Leeland.

Humans:

Human, Humans, Human, Humanly.

Common Appearance:  Pink.  Average height.  Varied proportions.

This is a time of expansion.  Pushing west into the arid west, pushing north into trapper territory, pushing east into Elflands, pushing southeast into the independent towns.  Some of the Barons are newly created and self declared since the Plague by might of hand and sword.  With 4-5 generations of Barony at the time of the storyline, they are becoming acknowledged with their heirs.  Main holdings are settling down.  Most are still expanding to encompass and reclaim old abandoned farms and land.  Also clearing forests that have grown up the last 100 years.  There is an ebb and flow associated with Baronies and their families.  Some have huge families to encourage expansion. Others have small ones to encourage concentration of wealth into a few people.  

For most Humans many of the conveniences of magically-influenced life were rudely swept aside and, eventually, forgotten.  Now there exist plenty of weird religions based on forgotten magical precepts, old wives' tales, childrens’ songs, and little trade-based rituals woven into the tapestry of Midland culture.  Villages are just beginning to look outside their borders again, reconnect.  Other small cultures believe that magic was the cause of the Blight and have forsworn it.  Some abhor it with maniacal passion.

Human cultures are diverse and depend on the area they occupy.

Midlands:

Location of Midlands:  between Knothaven and the Western mountains.  North to the foothills where the Trappers and Traders live.  North west to No Man’s Land.  Southeast to the foothills of the [Ozarks] but not as far as the Great Lake.   South to the Forest and Plains Thals.  Mostly farms and plains for growing food centered around castles.  Wooded areas between Baronies are heavier in the East and South.  Scrub and plains exist in the southwest.  

Ruled by Barons in medieval style, straight-up feudalism, reinforced by the Plague.  Some wiped out; some thinned out.  Barons provided castles to Humans as  place to hide from the Plague, and security from Bandits and other predators.  Also some Barony to Barony predations for food. Strong barons had the infrastructure in place.  Also had all the infrastructure bakers, metalsmiths, etc.  to allow segregation by fiefdom.

Disputed lands

 (No Man’s Land to the Elfes)--Lands to the east that Elfes have abandoned.  Baronies pushing up making farmland and expanding their borders.  Cutting down trees.  Elfes angry.  Trappers are angry as other Humans take the forest, the free farmers who keep moving on to stay ahead of the Barons.  This clearing moves lowland species into the Trapper’s lands upsetting the balance of nature and affecting the trapping and hunting. 

Common knowledge is that bad things live in the area.  there one can find ghost towns and tumble down castles and towns.  Places that are ruined and some not so ruined.  Where the bandits live and grow.  Where Trolls reign supreme.  Where the boogyman and Green Maeve live.  Where nightmares run and undead roam.  Still filled with plague and other miniature nastiness.  Where a lucky and strong person could make a fortune, finding and collecting old riches and artifacts. 

The disputed lands between the Baronies are anarchic and up for grabs.  There are yeomen, freelanders, and bandits in these areas.  This is a time of conquest and expansion. 

Calabria:

One of a set of habitually grumbling city-states on the southern peninsula of Leeland. Citizens, called Calabrese, are very Italianate, like Verona, Padua, Florence, etc.  Italian-style villas exist in the hot, dry land. There are lots of artists/artisans and longshoremen/sailors.  To the west is the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the east is the long archipeglio of the Island Cays.

Family - All Calabrese have large patriachial families. Sons are expected to help Papa in his trade or craft. Papas do not want their daughters to marry and move away.  Daughters do such a good job for him at the little additional cost of food and a few clothes.  Girls do most of clothes-making.  Finely embroidered shirts.  Brothers often help to supply/supplement their sisters’ dowries.  Dowries are expected and are a main part of the marriage contract negotiations.

Food - Calabrese love salty foods.  Fish, pickled or fried in olive oil, too.  Wheat and rye breads, flat peasant breads with stuff piled on them.  Cheeses, especially stringy types.  Wines of all kinds.  Calabria is a jajor exporter of wines - red, white, and blue.

Trades - Obviously wine and cheese exporters.  Vineyards require group efforts every late summer.  Also, lots of fishermen.  Big docks allow for dock handlers and wharf rats.  Seamen.  Trawlers, trading ships.  Artisans, tiles, frescoes, sculpture from clay deposits.

Clothing - Women often wear light, scoop-necked chemises with skirts and bodices.  Peasant blouses also common, as well as kerchiefs and light silk or linen scarves.  Bright colors everywhere, especially blues, yellows, and browns (dyes common to the area); brilliant red dye is rarer and prized.  Men wear Cossack style or Neper shirts with wide sleeves and side button-up collars, and loose-fitting pants with either top boots or low-heeled slippers.  Embroidery is common on clothing of both sexes.

Mountain Men:

The mountain men live in the mountains in the very North of Leeland. Bitter cold winters, mild summers, somewhere like the winters of Poland or Saskatchuan.

The area has lots of small villages. Og is from the very small town of Frampole, near Łwow. Łwow is considered to be a large town.   Home town has primitive technology.  Carving and embroidery.  Trade goods are trinkets, toys, hair ornaments, buttons, embroidered clothing.

Training - Campaigning is similar to normal life in the north, except for growing crops. Boys and girls are trained together, group style.  Men & women are equal partners. Women are equal, but special -- not cossetted, but loved.  Super strength.  Men trained to use their Bear-sark rage capability in battle.  Club, mace.  Rock throwing for distance weapon.  Later a mace.  Toys include toy weapons, hand-carved wooden rattles, string- and knotting-games, nesting kachina dolls.

Food:  herds of pigs, cattle, elk & reindeer (like the Lapps)? Wheat, rye, barley for ‘lower lands’ crops.  Lots of beer, vodka.  Kielbasa, kaska, pieroghi, Gowumpki, goulash.  Sausage.  Head cheese.  Cabbage.

Family - Big families.  12 children not unheard of.  Need help with farms and herds, as well as the fact that children often die young.  The first born, or First One, helps raise youngsters.  It is a status symbol as well as biological; they assist the parents with the rest of the offspring. 

Clothing - Bearskin, Slavic soft leather pants & jacket of Reindeer skins.   Reindeer are the animal of choice for these people. 

Religion - They have a religious culture featuring strongly-built beautiful churches.  Labyrinths are a common feature inside for people to contemplate or walk to help them find resolutions to problems thru meditation.  Small villiages have little chapels everywhere.  Very common to wear holy symbols like jewelry.

The mountain men are frank in their emotions—they laugh big and cry big. 

The biggest festival for the Mountain Men is the Snieg Ice Festival - Ice carving, snow sculpting etc.  

Schwarzwaldkind:

The group of foresters that live in the Black Forest are called the Schwarzwaldkind. They are an individualistic people [much like Pa in Little House series].  Seeing someone pass by once a day is way too settled for them.  Most either live off the woods in small families; self-sufficiency is the norm.  Neighbors a minimum of 3-5 miles awa are mostly relatives.  That way you can see them when you want to — they’re only a sleigh ride away; meet up for barn raising, threshing. 

The area is much like the Dakotas, lots of trees - conifers, black gum, sugar maple with areas of "bad lands" and some grasslands to the south.

Most of the Schwarzwaldkind are trappers and hunters. Some do subsistence farming, although most of the "farming" is done by Goodies - the goodwives who keep small gardens, in addition to the sewing, mending, cooking, preserving, tending the children, washing, and tapping the sugar maple trees.  Women while tending children will also go nutting in the fall and berrying in summer (bramble berry, wine berry, mulberry, some wild raspberries and goose berries cultivated around houses as hedgerows to keep in small livestock). 

The Schwarzwaldkind are far enough north that the brigands and barons don’t bother them much, and their land isn’t currently prized. There is still plenty of land in the south for ambitious people.  Lots of valleys, lots of hills, lots of rocks (not to mention the trees).  Any killer or brigand stupid enough to attack the Schwarzwaldkind [and survive the initial attack] are hunted down by vigilante groups. They don't get mad, they get even.

Any larger group infestation would cause the Schwarzwaldkind to band together into a rough militia and guerrilla their way into complete destruction of the stupid attackers. They always win because they are strong, fast, and efficient fighters and they know the forest better than anyone.

Trappers go upstream to get pelts, as well as meat.  There are little trade towns along the river in southern areas for the foresters to get the trade goods, metal tools etc, they can’t make for themselves. A little further downstream there’s the one city (a whole 250 people) called Trading Post at Lost Creek, with a real cobbled street, and a town square which is where they have the dancing for socials, and music every Saturday night (with rebecs and krumhorns and hurdy-gurdies).  That’s where people go maybe once a year for the socials, meet up, make friends, get your girls married off.

Having to rub elbows with the Elfes causes anyone in the area to hate magic.   “If you cain’t do it with yer own two hands, you shouldn’ be doin’ it.”  We’re Humans.  Too often Magie is used as a crutch, and it’s shifty.  Using magic leads to grey, leads to duels that burn half an acre of forest, and leads to bad creatures. [They are right about that -- the Trolls that are currently running around Schwartzwald were originally ported in by by Magie U.]

Pirates 

There is a rapidly rising problem of Piracy. The Mediterranean style pirates had control of the last island Cay West for a while and were using it as a safe dock/hidey hole/ambush site, until the natives kicked them out. The Calabrese fought back when they attempted to barge into their area, so the Pirates swung east and up the coast a bit to establish their own port and town.

Not much is currently known about the pirate community.

Geography * History of the world, part 1 * Cultures * Seasons * Magie * Spare * Spare * Spare *