Sakana Turn #0: NARRATIVES

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 the people in the area know, as you could sense things from all of them as you were just coming into existence.

A long stretch along a curved coastline is home to the many (sometimes short lived) villages of the Kedad. Lots of wild rice, animals, and berries to forage. The weather is fairly good year round, fairly tropical in many ways. The Kedad do not know much beyond that, as they are pretty much just in that area, killing, and getting killed.

Further north, a large jungle, many sorts of wild animals,and plants. Pretty much, the Specus know large chunks of its current layout fairly well, and so do you. Many lakes/ponds/watering holes and animals to track. The most notable feature to the Specus being the large subterranean caves they have their encampments based around, that they have some sort of primitive rituals based around.

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

A jungle living grouping of tribes living around the sacred caves. Although the tribes each have their own encampments, ruled over by the clan leaders, all inter-clan disputes are handles by a higher power. That is, the deliberations of the shamans.
The shamans are those people, both men and women, who used to be members of many different tribes, but now belong to none, of them, but are responsible for all of them.
The shamans, who have the sacred knowledge of fire, and how to go deep into the caves, the dark caves where the darkness of night spills forth when the torch in the sky goes down.
The shamans, who commune with the spirits of power, and have trained the Orglot, warriors from all the tribes, who both guard the shamans in the great caves of night, and the people themselves during the evening dark, as the Orglot gather around fire, weapons in hand, ready for any threat, be it dark twisted beast of darkness, or a bunny with an attitude.

The Specus hunt and gather, they know the forest well, and are gifted with the presence of the Shamans and the Orglot. The Orglot have a rotating schedule shifting from village to village, so all Orglot guard all villages given enough time.

Culture Overview: The Kedad(and Arminshians)
This is a cultural overview of one of the two races currently living in your area. It is meant to give you a broad, brief, idea of their personality and lifestyle.

Killing animals, Raiding encampments of other kedad, taking slaves, and making them work in your fields. These are the daily concerns of the male Kedad. These are a bunch of tribes that were thrown together in a mass exodus from somewhere in the west some time ago, and they all have reasons to hate each other. Alliances can be transient in nature. It is a situation in flux, and one were things are evolving rapidly. Some tribes develop better traps, others figure better ways to evade/disarm them. Different tactics work on some raids, other groups figure out how to defend... The situation is one of frequent arms race in both actual tech and strategy between the groups as it pertains to screwing each other over.

However, there is one clan/group that is not involved in all this constant bloodshed. The only group all the others consider neutral, and forbidden to screw with. The Arminshians are traveling bards, storytellers, that travel the rivers, and entertain villages, although they are almost always required to keep to the outskirts.. They are valued both for their stories, entertainment, AND their neutrality. For, the different tribal leaders know they sometimes must meet with other leaders to work out alliances/deals/trades/whatever. The Arminshians provide the only true neutral ground...er..boats, and if need be, will knock people out of the boats for violating protocol.

Other than the rare diplomatic situation, or the much more common theft of females, the members of the tribes do not breed with each other. Arminshians are discouraged from breeding with the other tribes...but it happens..oh boy does it happen... kinda an open secret. But nobody ever joins the Arminshians. The tribal leaders find the idea of losing a warrior to be distaistful, and the Arminshians value their neutrality too much to allow something that would endanger it.

Specus Main Village, Shamans accompanying the retreating darkness (Daily event)

The pairs of Orglot stationed at the different watch points throughout the village were all awake in the early morning, and had gathered in front of the Sacred Cave of night, Their distinctive facial tattoos marking their rank and possisiton as special warriors of the dark time. Shortly, a group of many men and a few woman stood in front of them, their faces also marked, but in very different patterns, marking them as the wise ones, the shamans.
The Orglot quickly gathered in formation, each group, in order sounding off on their evening, this morning, like most all giving the distinctive report call the signalled nothing of note the night before. The head three shamans then threw lots on the ground, each with a different name symbol of each of the present orglot. the six closest markers indicated the guardians the spirits wished them to take into the dark today. The rest of the orglot, and all but the head three and three other shamans (also picked by lot in a non public ceremony earlier) then followed the retreating night into the caves as the sun came up. The village was up and about and doing it work, while the shamans were doing theirs, making sure the night did not come back too soon.

Kedad: Raid (Common event)

Early morning, Dalak was on guard duty, looking carefully for any signs of raiding parties who had approached in the night time, and today, he spotted one! Clearly not too far away, a band that was clearly not one of their own was approaching with spears drawn. He let out a yell of discovery, the warriors who had stayed on guard duty started waking up, grabbing spears and heading to either the wall, or to guard the food supplies. Upon hearing the call, the invading party gave up attempts at stealth, and started running at the village screaming war cries. One of the invaders failed to see the telltale signs of a pit, and fell to his doom, impaled on wooden spikes, the remaining ones leapt over the waist high earthen wall surrounding the village, some of them even picked spots that did not have very sharp blades pointing up embedded in the ground.

The defenders dispatched the wounded quickly, they few who were not horribly injured from this very unskilled ill fated raiding party were quickly subdued, disarmed, and bound. The defending tribe rejoiced, for they had some brand new slaves for the rice paddies, and they did not have to go out to try to take them. The woman and children jeered the new captives as they were put under guard.

Not all raids ended so nicely for the defenders, but the current defenses had worked well, and the woman who had invented the current defensive setup were once again hailed as heroes. And that night, the same sadistic woman skilled in defenses headed back out again around the village to modify defenses, plan new ones, and figure out where to install new devious pits.

Kedad Village outskirts: Visit from the Arminshinians (Common event)

The sun was high in the sky, and the Arminshinians had recently arrive on the river. The families, with brightly colored flowers and other items in their hair, had been shown to the outskirts, and were setting up to entertain the people. The Arminshinians had set up large colored items on poles indicating their presence. Other tribes would avoid attacking here today, but of course such protections were only good for a day, they next day, any tribe that saw it who has also seen it the day before would attack figuring it was an attempt to fake a visit.

The people gathered around during the day, being unable to do so at night, do to having no way of lighting the night.
During the day, different people entertain this village, juggling, acrobatics, and finally the tale telling. Until the sun fell, tales of how the people were sent from their home by giant walking trees, tales of strange and exotic animals, and of course, tales of the ancestors of the ruling clan chief.

The tribe nodded and howled waving spears at the end, they much approved of the day of rest and entertainment, and then fed their guests, before they headed off to the next village.