Arachnia Turn #0: NARRARATIVES

Area Overview
This is an overview of what your goddess knows about the area. It is not meant to be a complete view of your area, but is instead based on what your people know, and what glimpses you got as you set in motion the mutations over the last thousand years. There are many, often important, things to discover still in your area, and some information may not be entirely accurate as it is based on your growing connection to these people, plus impressions gained through the filter of a mysterious force that helped you do your birth action.

Historically many people lived on a vast open plain surrounded by two rivers and the marshy lands around their floodplains. These people hunted a wide variety of large animals as their primary means of sustenance and lived in settled villages of clay or reeds along the shores. Some people also fished in the rivers. Further south people lived in more mountainous and rocky lands dwelling in caves amongst vast evergreen forests. You get the impression of some of them fishing along a vast body of water. Other people lived by hunting in the hills and mountains and by trading hard rocks to the peoples of the floodplain for food. Other peoples lived between mountains and a large body of water in the direction of the rising sun.

Then things began to change quickly, without warning or meaning. Small plants began to grow larger. Bushes started growing on the plains, and then trees. For a time the people rejoiced at the presence of scarce and valuable wood, yet the trees just kept growing and changing. They stacked one on top of the other. People came in from the north east to settle these forests, and the natives had to go further and further to find the large game they sought. Entire villages moved and the people fought over the wide open spaces. Yet wherever the people settled the strange mutations followed spreading the forests of Arachnia wherever fertile soils beckoned. Until finally the hunters were forced out into the arid deserts of the south.

Trees stacked on top of trees, and the ground became black and dreary, people moved out into the newer parts of the forest, pushed out of the old good lands by the spreading darkness. Cultures fought, traded, and interbred within the forest edge. Some moved up into the trees. The deserts became more moist, becoming dry plains called Sahel. It was the end of the world, everyone feared the coming of the darkness and then the people began to change. Children were born with strange eyes, extra eyes, or extra legs. Entire groups killed the malformed and fled the rising evil.

Over several generations the old people, the doomed ones of the past, were transformed. New eyes made the darkness light and cozy, new legs made climbing easy. Those who had persevered and embraced the change, or who had not run quickly enough, or been able to run quickly enough eventually had children of the new breed, the Orempyk, or the people of the spider. Over time these people grew in numbers, and the fear of the past receded away. They are the chosen people and they have prospered in peace and plenty for generations though they have not spread far from the lands their ancestors had fled into when the final change hit. For a time the old breed was seen moving into the area from the northeast, but their children always were born orempyk, and eventually nobody more came. For generations it has been concluded that they are no more.

The overall impression you get is of a rich and populous area, with widely varied terrain. There are, or were, large rivers, and large bodies of water, deserts that became Sahel, and many many mountains filled with caves. The area has a turbulent history but you also know most of it is now covered by your forests, and that your own people are doing well, expanding their numbers, and taking possession of the legacy you have built for them on the bones of all that might have been.

Cultural Overview: The Statten
This is a cultural overview of one of the races currently living in your area. It is meant to give you a broad, brief, idea of their personality and lifestyle.

The dominant culture of the dry plains at the southern end of your area centers around the Blutstaat or blood state. The central theme of these people's life is the institutions of family, clan, and village. The culture is patriarchal but the line of descent and inheritance go through the female line. Men are born into one clan, and grow up to hold power in another, power they inherit from their wife, and pass on to their daughters in trust for their sons in law. In theory the oldest surviving man in each clan rules it, and the council of these elders rules the entire village. In practice the politics are much more murky and convoluted than that with each elder depending on the support of slightly younger men, who depend on the support of the sons of their line, who do the manual labor, hunting, and defense jobs within the town.

The typical Statten village is built along the edge of a small lake, what would have been an oasis when the sahel was desert. Each building has only one free standing structure. This is the central council chamber at the very heart of the village. This building however is distinctive in style and very representative of the people's level of building sophistication. The walls are made of glazed and colored bricks laid out in elaborate geometric patterns. The roof is supported by square interior pillars that are build like miniature buildings in their own right, and is perfectly flat and covered over with glazed clay tiles. The floor is also lined with glazed clay tiles, and in it's very center is the inlaid fire pit where young males are expected to keep the fire going continually to provide light and heat for the chamber, along with a lot of smoke since they know nothing about chimneys. Woven mats rest on the floor to provide fairly comfortable seating areas, and are hung from the open doorway to close off the chamber from the outside world.

Around this central courtyard is built an outer wall of the same glazed clay bricks with an opening facing towards the doorway of the central building. Around this wall the family homes of the various clans are small stalls roofed over with flat glazed tile roofing. During the day woven mats help to keep the interiors shaded and cool, and woven mats on the bare ground and walls serve as further insulation. At night the doorways are opened and the women keep fires burning in inlaid family fire pits covered in glazed tile.

Larger villages have multiple rings of walls and stalls, and the rank of a family and clan within each village is measured by how near to the walls central meeting hall it's families are allowed to live. All economic activity is based on the clan system, and an exchange of gifts. Strong blood ties between clans and between villages, holds the people together, as do the liberal exchange of gifts and favors between all levels of society. These people aren't politically sophisticated yet, but if they continue on this track they may become that way soon as their technology and economy expands.

These villages are elaborate and sophisticated places, but they also are filled with trash, manure, and the rotted remains of game animals within the various interior courtyards.

Cultural Overview: The Khanti
This is a cultural overview of one of the races currently living in your area. It is meant to give you a broad, brief, idea of their personality and lifestyle.

The people of the Mesopotamian Super Forest are organized into clans of related lineages who collectively hold a large area of territory, sometimes many miles around, as their hunting and gathering preserve. Within these territories these people organize themselves into large semi-independent villages consisting of a single extended family. Each member of this extended family has it's own wigwam like structure grown into the rounded layers of weeping wheat trees. Layers of rounded platforms are grown and the living structure of the dome are grown and shaped form that before the insides are lined with leather.

Within a lineage married pairs hold power based on how many children they have and how many resources they can bring in for the group. Men and women both dress in leather tops, and complex arrangements of belts and pouches that wrap around between their legs. Often sling-shots and gathered stones are held in these pouches, as are birds eggs, scavenged or killed small animals, and a wide variety of grains, grapes, pea pods, olives, and other wild foodstuffs.

Each clans territory is marked by elaborate geometric carvings etched into the trunks of specific trees at various levels and by specific clearings on the ground level where the people of related groups of lineages meet to exchange gifts, meet the relatives, and share a cooked meal. These clearings have a special importance as it is the only place where the people actually cook, as they are very uncomfortable and have an ingrained fear of fire natural to people who live in a very combustible environment.

At the center of each clan territory is a larger clearing of this type where entire lineages meet to share food, stories, trade carved goods, and exchange prospective mates amongst distantly related bloodlines thus keeping the people close together in ties of friendship and blood relationship. Only specially selected emissaries carrying carved sticks representing their lineage and clan are able to travel into the territory of another clan, often for the purpose of establishing marriages between bloodlines from entirely different clans or to settle boundary disputes.

Currently contact between the clans is limited though they have merged into a common culture over the past several hundred years of shared history within the spreading super forest. This could lead to them splintering, or it could lead to greater trade and communication as technology develops and scarce resources, information, and technology are able to be traded between the disparate clans.