Overview
Key Locations
Ela Tel (City's largest freshwater source)
Taluk (Brackish/salt pools if we carry on with tidal breeding carried from ancestral home)
Reputation and Relations
Reputation
Attitude Towards Others
There are three distinct classes of people in the Vishazan culture, the Veraat, the Alaat, and the Keslaat. The boundaries are strict and play highly in the life of the citizens. This creates a simple structure of attitude towards everyone. The Veraat remain exclusive to all but the most wealthy foreigners and foreign leaders, their acceptance of others almost always accounts for business. Among the younger Veraat there are sometimes trysts with those below their class, always with promises of elevated status, and almost always falling out of style shortly after.
The city Alaat are of a far more open and hospitable vein. They are a public people, spread through the streets happy to talk while they work, often hosting a guest or two through the day. Foreign Alaat are treated much the same as city Alaat, although not all foreign Alaat return the hospitable nature of those raised in the city.
Keslaat are much the same as Alaat in attitude, open, friendly, although they don't have nearly the time or space for hosting, it holds important significance among the Keslaat to be invited to their home.
City Relations
(Essential trade with Rasambel, minerals/stone, colored gems?, cave growing foods)
( " With Oukdan, Felt, wool, embroidery )
(" With Kothinar Wheat, bamboo (?) metal, metal products)
Everyday Life
see also Asar Resource List
see also Asar Households
see also Asar Politics
Lifestyle
The strict class divisions mean that there are three lifestyles in the city, although for the much is shared between the lower two. The upper echelon would seem to live in a city all their own, rich with imported foods, acting and dressing as though they had no inkling of the struggle of those below them or what it takes to deliver their fine imports.
Social Structure
The Veraat are born from the founding families, they are exclusive to such a degree that they have no acceptable social contact with the other two classes. They are, however, known to spend their wealth often among lower classes, sometimes elevating the pristige of an Alaat vendor with return visits and tokens of favor. The families own most of the agricultural land, business ties allowing for the splitting of crops between them as the land requires. Slaves work the land while the families work trade and business.
The Veraat are known secondly for their high society behaviors, a tradition of gathering that redoubles when the swamps flood and other work becomes the central focus of the wealthy. Parties typically are held at one's home as a display of their wealth and worthiness as a business partner, often these parties are an announcement of some sort see Rites and Observances. These events are exclusive, and no one of a lower class is allowed.
The Alaat make up the majority of the population in Vishaza they lead lives of artistry, encouraged from youth to study a craft and nurture their skill through their lives. Many children will have a number of mentors among the Alaat, strengthening existing relationships among families or forging new ones. Not many Alaat seek to leave their class, rather they seek the favor of the Veraat to further their tradeskill. There is often trade between people of this class, both inside and outside of the city.
The Keslaat are the very poor, some slaves, owned almost exclusively by the Veraat, and their time is often spent in agriculture or heavy labor. They are the working hands of Vishaza, laboring hard days of work in the marshes or collecting minerals and clay; digging and loading materials for their families who own the rights to them.
Gender Roles and Marriage
Women of Vishaza are the responsibility of their patriarch or Nokal. It is the Nokal's responsibility to make sure that their daughters find good mentors, and to make sure that a marriage will bring pristege to both his daughter and her new husband. However, once married, the husband takes responsibility for the continued health and happiness of the woman, her Nokal having chosen a good husband, steps down his actions in her life.
Marriage among the people of Vishaza is often a business arrangement furthering the good of both people (and their families) as they enter into the bond. Typically a match would be made between two people of complimentary skills. i.e. a painter and pigment maker because a single work of the painter would display the skill of them both. Arranged marriage among the Veraat is similar but on a larger scale, binding two families who share different agricultural lands or textile markets.
Government
Hazards and Defense
Arts and Entertainment
Vishaza is a home of artistry, the mass of the people having mentored under a master of the craft they find suits them best. Artiseans are the rich and wise of the Alaat, the better their mastery of their crafts the more people seek not only their artistic advice, but their wisdom as well. The greatest honor is to be asked to act as a mentor in the arts, and teaching is a task that falls upon anyone who has the chance. Over time this has shaped the lower city into a center for all kinds of art. Small classes of children display partially crafted paintings, the fronts of homes are marked with clay and finished works.
People who have chosen to entertain over create are just as public, busking in the streets, panning their act as others may offer their art.
Worship and Beliefs
Rites and Observances
see also Asar Holidays and Festivals
Veraat
- Age of Eligibility
- Business Success
Alaat
- Skill finding
- Harvest Festival
- Pregnancy — Playing with fertility (termekenyseg) joy (Orom) and festival (unnepely) but also blood (ver)
In the fall, the city awakens to celebrate an old tradition. Homes are decked with the colors of fertility, offerings of silver, shells, and gemstones hang in the doors and windows bringing color and life to the darkening days. Those with the wealth to posess an altar offer food and drink to the goddess, seeking fertility of body and mind. Not only homes are decorated, men wear , and women dress in vibrant veils shimmering and glittering with metallic embroidery and delicate jewels.
Keslaat
- Planting Season
- Harvest Festival
- Flooding Season
History
see also Asar Timeline
Origin Story
Starting a Character in Okudan
Character Name
Lifestyle and Housing
Housing
Most houses in the city are made from cob, in the marsh this is typically clay, wood ash, mud, oil, and reeds. This material allows the citizens to shape and decorate their homes the way they desire. The wealth of a district and the family who owns the home is apparent by the size and general design of the homes.
Housing in Vishaza is also divided by class with both Alaat and Keslaat sharing similar homes, varied mostly in size. Among the lower classes homes are made of cob pressed with beautiful objects. They often add decoration representing the life they have or plan to live with their family. Houses are typically built and owned by a Nokal, although males can inherit a home in which case they often add rooms or other decoration to bring their influence into the home. These homes are often set up for hosting with large central spaces in the front,and smaller private spaces in the back of the home.
The Veraat often have very large homes crafted from the materials their family holds access to. These homes tend to be large and impersonal - save the artwork inside - fit for hosting grand balls and feasts. Displays of wealth and power are often built into the exterior of the home, opulence the desired takeaway for any visitor.
Lifestyles
Destitute: A Destitute character is one with neither Hearth nor herd. They have no shelter, no transport save their own feet, and very few options for obtaining food. A Destitute character is not likely to survive a full season in Okudan, and PCs are not recommended to start with this lifestyle. A destitute character is uncommon in Vishaza, if you can't afford a home, most commonly you are drafted to work in the agricultural field as a slave.
Impoverished: A PC beginning as Impoverished in Okudan likely falls into one of three categories: someone who has severed ties, whose Hearth is on the verge of dying out, or who is a visitor with few connections in the band. They do not have a family shelter, but only a personal tent. This lifestyle includes a single companion animal, most typically a horse (bonded if appropriate).
Ordinary: The Ordinary lifestyle in Okudan encompasses most living situations a character might fit into. This level includes those who live with a Hearth, whether native or adopted, and any visitor who has associates within the band. Residents will live with their Hearth, while visitors either stay with a Hearth or sleep in a personal tent or small wagon. This lifestyle includes two animals; one should be a horse (bonded if appropriate). The other is typically either a dairy animal, perhaps part of their Hearth's herds, or a companion animal, such as a dog, usually related to the PC's profession.
Skills
As for all PCs, no matter where they start, the first expertise one takes should be the character's primary professional skill. Generally, most members of a Hearth will be collectively involved in a professional endeavor, so (if native) bear in mind that whatever the PC's profession is, the rest of their Hearth will likely pursue related skills as well. For example, one Hearth might be made up of hunters, leatherworkers, and bone carvers; another might focus on breeding quality goats, making cashmere yarn, and turning it into cloth or blankets.
There is little call in Okudan for knowledge-based professions; the band lives a simple lifestyle. Similarly, there are few service professions (e.g. cooks, brewers, teachers) as most Hearths see to their own needs in those regards. Professions relating to magic and medicine are generally limited to Hearths with long traditions in shamanism; these families have generations of local knowledge and familiarity with the land to draw upon when providing guidance to the band.
There is some room for jobs focusing on food production (hunting, foraging, managing larger herds and producing dairy products), for while most Hearths are self-sufficient, the more food they can buy or trade for, the less time they have to spend producing it themselves. Craft professions (spinning, weaving, pottery, carving, etc.) are highly regarded, but potentially limited in materials and infrastructure; timber of meaningful size is uncommon, for example, and blacksmithing impractical. Breeding and training useful animals (horses, livestock, dogs) can be lucrative for those who succeed in setting their stock apart from the normal run of beasts found in the band. There is also always room for more guardians (weapon skills, riding) due to the pervasive hazards of the nomads' exposed lifestyle.
For PCs who are old enough to take multiple skills, Riding is recommended as the second choice, due to the importance of horses in Okudani life. Alternately, PCs may find it useful to take another skill complementary to their main professional expertise, such as Painting for a potter.
I've torn this from the Okudan page as we don't have a 'dummy' page. Some of it is untouched from Okudan where I wanted ideas of what might go where.
That's more than fine. There will be a template eventually, of course. I wouldn't want to launch more polity pages before that's designed but working on one each is great. We can use that experience to make any adjustments to the format.
Speaking of polity pages, though, you should rename this to Vishaza. (Rename is under +Options at the bottom.). Cultural information like this all goes with the society, not the race.
I don't have high enough privilege to rename (because it is considered a page move?) Whatever the case if you don't mind just doing it instead when you have a moment to spare I think that solves the problem.
Fixed on both accounts (page & permissions).
For the male head of Vishaza, I'm trying to come up with a name…
Leader vezető
Male férfi
Father apa
Monarch uralkodó
I've played with Apko, Ferto, Veral…. nothing I much like…. Thoughts?
Chief, boss, master - fonok
chief, boss, queen - vezer
Apanok? Vizapa? Apazar?
Fenok? Paral? Kofer? Nokal?
Lawmaker törvényhozó
Venok? — I think I like Venok and Nokal the best so far… what do you think?
Of those two, Nokal.
I've been thinking about how a marsh will work, geographically. The one thing we don't have is a river delta, which is the easy solution…
One possibility is that there's a local upwelling from springs. This is one way to get an inland salt marsh if the spring in question is a brine spring, so there's no reason we couldn't have a freshwater marsh from ordinary springs. I think it would have relatively little fluctuation in water level, being fed by an underground aquifer; possibly there would be intermittent flooding due to rainfall and also due to snowmelt in late spring and early summer.
Another is that Vishaza is located in a watershed with no outlet, so that runoff from the surrounding mountains collects there. This would be a fairly classic inland marsh, with 'seasonal flooding' although I'm not sure in which seasons.
Something else that I learned about today are the prairie potholes of the Upper Midwest, which are almost classic inland marshes, but in depressions formed by glaciation and fed more by precipitation than rivers. That seems like a particularly unique environment, and might be interesting to play with. I think it could be prone to flooding in times of heavy rainfall and from snowmelt, until the potholes get filled up and water flows out.
I pictured a monsoon season that would flood the swamp/river. That doesn't have to be the case, but it's where my head was. I like the prairie potholes, they seem to be about the right environment for the city. It would explain why the Veraat are able to live differently (they probably have the land that floods less, etc)…
I realized that after I started thinking (and reading) about what makes a marsh. We could put them over the mountains on the coast, which although probably not true monsoon climate could justifiably have pronounced wet/dry seasons, but that's going to make travel to and from Vishaza a bit more difficult and longer.
I've been mulling over a few things… I think that Vishaza would value finding beauty in nature or cultivation the earth to encourage beauty. Not dissimilar to the Akalak tradition law? of keeping the city beautiful. 'Path of unbridled nature' 'Path of earthen beauty' 'Path of the mother's beauty' I suck at naming things
Aspects
Edge of Civilization - Prefers to be close to nature, finds cities to be overly uniform
Transience - Finds beauty in every stage of life or use
Cultivation - Seeks to bring the beauty of nature into all aspects of one's life
Abilities
Nourishing Touch - promoting growth and fecundity (e.g. improving plant health, aiding sickly young animals)
Green Communion - plant communication
Cultivating - encourages shifts in color depth and tone; shifts in blending of plants and genetic growth
Clearly there will need to be more, but… it's a start
It's a good start. I like the idea, and it's nicely distinct from everyone else in this region. Artistic paths are definitely lacking up to this point.
Paths are probably what I want to work on next, after I get the Okudani and Shamanism mostly done. (Of course, there's still a lot pending on those…)
Name-wise, I would propose the "Way of Living Beauty", how's that?
Calling - Bring forth the commonly extracted materials from a plant or mineral with added ease and purity (this could apply to healing aspects in another Way) it could concentrate to make this less fantastically strong…? It would also require the philtering/ extraction skill that is the basis of this
Bear in mind that's essentially what Invocation and Evocation do. I also don't think it ties into the central premise of "beauty".
I read it as a way to bring forward the pigment from a mineral, or a richess of color from a fruit… not that that isn't invocation/evocation because clearly my grasp of that is slippery.
But I want it to be an ability to bolden or purify colors in extracted pigments, or pull the color of flower petals used into the food they cook. Is that still the same thing?
Note that "vocation" is quite literally the Latin for calling, summons, so yes. This ability would particularly overlap with Evocation, because that is centered around calling forth a specific property, e.g. evoking brown from pigment, evoking a therapeutic compound from an herb, etc., and then applying it to something else.
As a general rule, I don't mind overlap on specific functions — having multiple means of reaching the same end is fine by me — but this hits the core mechanics underlying Shamanism and Witchcraft, so I'd consider it to be too much overlap.
Also, I still don't think the ability fits into the core premise of this Way. It has applications, as you say, in being used to purify colors… which can make things pretty… but I think it has wandered afield from the essence of the lifestyle. It feels… industrialized, in a sense. Rather than taking something natural and beautiful and enshrining its own inherent glory, you isolate one little specific property, extract it, and fold it into something manufactured that doesn't necessarily have any association whatsoever with the original source. You could, I don't know, use blueberry concentrate to turn a knife purple or something (to give an extreme example). That doesn't really say 'Living Beauty' or 'Natural Beauty' to me.
Does that make any kind of sense? I find myself trying to explain an impression that's really subjective and abstract here.
In any case, here are a couple possible alternatives:
You could argue that "fixation" has the same problems as "color-purifying", except… Given the tech level, there is no mundane means of fixing colors, aside from using mordants with dyes and maybe some varnishes/glazes on murals — which don't work on stuff like dried flowers. They have no equivalent of aerosolized artist's fixative, nor rust/tarnish proofing that isn't "pack it in oil". So as something that can't really be done any other way, that makes sense for an ability. And because it specifically preserves 'beauty' where it already exists, where it was natively grown, that fits with the core of the Way.
Both of these abilities can also preserve natural beauty independent of any artistic skill on the part of the user. Any Follower can take a pretty flower, fix its colors, and hang it on a wall to enjoy its beauty forever. There's a lot more oomph if someone with a crafting skill goes on to make things using such flowers, or whatever, but that's an amplification not a prerequisite; there is still magic and beauty to be realized even if one doesn't have cooking or tailoring or pottery or whatever skill.
My two cents.
Apologies again. I am, as usual, slow.
Main aspects:
Artisans - esp in reference to Ways
Marshland/swamp (think we settled on prairie potholes?)
Agriculture manned by slaves
Mentorship for craft skills - young children are encouraged to move through the city trying different crafts with different people until they find their skill (heart skill? needs a name leads to a celebration of finding it)
- I had at one point written this as a cultural value although it is written as an attribute of the race "To cultivate beauty is a task of spiritual and external efforts, one must not only create inner beauty and emotions but to create beauty in themselves externally through care for oneself and through the expression of craft skills."
Clothing in vibrant colors/ luxurious veils… mostly the veils… ( asar reproduction is difficult, long time between estrus. Lead to the wearing of a veil to signify fertility, carried over to the city as a fashion statement for eligible young women, fertile women, or women actively attempting to conceive) — this is why there is a pregnancy celebration, but perhaps it is better to have a fertility holiday/celebration… both?
- Cultuivation of internal and external beauty in order to please, become closer to the mother goddess (creation story; shaped from mud by the goddess, gemstone eyes to show her favor for the asar, seeps into polity culture?)
-
I think that's all I have…
We're all slow, it's fine.
Thank you for this. I'll put it on the to-do list.