> I think we have a different images of hillbillies! I was imagining a family group distantly removed from any town or settlement of size; hunters who may never have seen an outsider enter their lands. Folk whose own local history barely touches the great conflicts of the time, without grand kings or high politics.
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> The Tarsh Exiles are not that. They are a violent, suspicious warrior culture but their own local history is grand - they are the people of Arim who once ruled all Dragon Pass and in their grandfathers' time they ruled Tarsh. They know the Lunars, for they have war with them for many generations and suffered terribly for it. They know the Sartarites, who once were their allies but now have submitted to the Red Moon. They seek vengeance, and a return to their lawful rule.
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> To me the Tarsh Exiles are not inbred hillbillies living in ignorance of the outside world. They are Jacobites that were never conquered by the English, revanchist Magyars in the Transylvania wild seeking an independant Hungary, or exiled Norwegians in Russia seeking to reclaim a usurped throne. They are dangerous fanatics, driven by vengeance and hate, hardened and cruel. But they are not hillbillies. :)
To be fair, there absolutely have to be some uncivilised and inbred populations of stickpickers and pig farmers tucked away in the more isolated parts of Tarsh -- but having said that, I don't agree that they would be hillbillies either.
The thing about these populations in Tarsh, as I see them, as is somewhat typical for similar people in our own history, and furthermore as they are described in the sources, is that they are staunch old-time traditionalists under siege from the vicious and immoral lowlanders. So that just as a matter of survival and self-protection, at least this is how I understand them, they simply have to provide each other with support, trade, cultic rituals, and other such forms of assistance. ie, they are not in fact so isolated as they would appear ...
Therefore, I don't think that isolated hillbillies fit into the narrative themes of Tarsh any more than you do, Jeff :)
Julian Lord
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