Re: Wenelians

From: bryan_thx <bethexton_at_LQeoLjEXK7MiKqksroBygdT5wu72og8LL0Hdr2reDaU0mCrMwV0bNWTOToF5JKwGKT>
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 13:41:09 -0000

I think one key thing with the Wenelians is that with a low population density and many culture fragments, there are few large temples and also comparatively few religious specialists. There just is not the people or the organization to support a large number of full time priests, especially not of the kind not immediately useful in day to day survival.

As a result, although there are many cultural groups in Wenelia, there are some things that would tend to make them all look similar to outsiders. They rely more heavily on common magic than many cultures, including worship of landscape entities. This does not mean that they are less religious than other peoples, to outsiders from lands with more strongly organized religion there may be a remarkable lack of obvious religion. Secondly, where useful magic can be found, many of the groups will find some way to justify using it. So even a helerite clan may deal with a local shaman, the nearby ancestor worshipping clan may have a few warriors who visit the helering temple to the Black Ram (existing only because of a powerful natural holy site), and all of them no doubt sacrifice to the Salmon Spirit which ensures good runs of fish. In the hard-scrabble land of Wenelia, those who don't grasp every advantage tend to slowly die out, so the groups who refuse to accept outside magic are often the ones down to their last couple of clans.

However, this only applies to "local" magic. Historically the people have been conquered, abused, and betrayed by various groups of outsiders. Many are very suspicious of foreign magic, no matter how powerful it might seem. The gradual destruction of Slontos has also hurt Wenelia, and one of the lessons learned is not to be as trusting of outsiders as those fool Slontons! If it hadn't been for them, their land goddess would never have been hurt, their coastline destroyed, and so on. (They don't know that they goddess was switched with another, but they do know that in the `good old days' their farming was easier).

Finally, a lot of the land is not arable. Some is bare rock, other is very shallow and poor soil over rock, and yet more parts are nasty bogs and swamps which are not easy to drain enough to farm. So clans tend to be based on where there is enough good soil to support a modest population. Tribes tend to be clans joined by river routes, as the rivers and streams almost always give easier travel than over the hills. So there tend to be large areas with sparse human presence between groups of people. However there are also nomadic groups, from the purely nomadic Pralori to clans practicing slash and burn agriculture in areas with poorer soils, to groups living almost entirely off of their herds, who pass through these emptier areas. So even with all of this space between settlements, there is plenty of scope for low level conflicts. If you have ever read any `westerns' this can come out a lot like the conflict between ranchers and farmers. Like the `old west' there is a real shortage of government to help settle these disagreements, but likewise there is seldom full scale war, because almost nobody can afford that.

-Bryan            

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