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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 5832968" data-attributes="member: 6670763">The people and culture of the Barbarian LandsAfter the background, I now want to give you an idea what kind of world the Barbarian Lands actually are, and what kind of people the PCs will be.The Lands of the Barbarian Kings are a mostly Bronze Age to early Iron Age world. However, the people are neither cave men, nor are they all covered in mud and plagued by disease and filth like you would see in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That portrayal is just nonsense and has been repeated much to often.The Barbarian Lands are a world in which the concept of nations does not exist. The primary unit of society is the clan. A clan consists of some thousand people ranging from ten thousand to a hundred thousands individuals, who all share a common culture and a shared ancestor. In reality not all members of a clan are actually descendants of the clans founder, but in the eyes of the people, when a warrior asks his companions to join his family, that makes them all relatives equal to his brothers and sisters in blood. While the exact structures and hierarchies vary between the many different people of the Barbarian Lands, they all share many common features that are found almost everywhere. At the head of the clan is the chieftain, who usually is a man, or more rarely a woman, descended from the clans founder, but any member of the clan can be named as a successor. Below the chieftain are the sub-chiefs, who are usually descendants of the founders companions or siblings and who lead groups of smaller villages that do not lie right next to the chieftains castle. At the end of the Age of Clans, when the fight for control over land changed to a fight for influence and control over trade, some chieftains formed powerful alliances, that often became permanent in nature. The leaders of these alliances are often called kings and elected from the chieftains of the alliance. It is quite common that kingship is held by a single clan for many generations, but sometimes it can also shift to the chieftains of another clan. Altogether, there are about 500 clans throughout all the Barbarian Lands.Almost everyone in the Barbarian Lands falls into one of five social ranks.At the top of society are the nobles, which in most clans are more an informal group than an actual established genealogical elite. The nobles consists of the kings, chieftains, and sub-chiefs, as well as their immediate families, and shamans and priests are also very often ranked of equal status.The majority of the people are the clansmen. These are all the other people whose forefathers have joined the clans founder or have later been admitted into the clan.Below the clansmen are the free men. Free men are not members of a clan, but have been given the right to live on the clans land and gain protection by the clans warriors in return for higher taxes they have to pay the chieftain. Free men are usually farmers or merchants and not accepted among the warriors. When a free man has proved his worth in combat, he will usually be elevated into the ranks of the clansmen and be adopted by the clans chieftain along with his immediate family. Free men can not own any land that belongs to the clan, but can be given part of the chieftains land to work. The number of free men in a clan can range from one in eight to as much as two in five.At the bottom of society are the slaves. In most societies, slaves are owned by the clan and are under command by the chieftain alone, to be assigned to sub-chiefs who oversee their work on the clans land. Clansmen who have distinguished themselves may also receive some slaves form their own farms and households, but may lose the privilege if they don't treat the chieftains slaves as the chieftain deems appropriate. It is not uncommon for most clans to have between one in four and one in three of its people to be slaves.In addition, there are also the outcast, who do not belong to any clan. Within the great cities, clanless people can become quite wealthy and powerful, but everywhere else they are usually regarded as being even lower than slaves, as they don't have any clan who would support them and protect them from enemies. Many outcasts are bandits or witches, who have no place in the society of the clans. Being banished from the clan is one of the worst punishments a chieftain can decide, as few clans will accept an outcast into their ranks.Most people live in villages of a few hundred people, which are often closely bunched together for mutual safety and ruled by a sub-chief. Chieftains usually reside in a castle that is surrounded by a town, which is the center of trade for the clan. True cities are rare and usually exist outside the system of clans and kingdoms. Most of them are important centers of trade near conjunctions of several major trade routes, where the clans come together for negotiations and trade, but also to find allies and mercenaries for plots against their rivals.In the Barbarian Lands, worship of the spirits of the land plays a very important role in the society of the clans. Spirits can be found everywhere and it is only through there support that the humanoid people can grow the crops and hunt the game to feed their villages. Friendly spirits are powerful protectors, who can guard the village from famine, plague, monsters, and bandits, but a spirit who has been angered is a terrible foe who can destroy a whole village in just a single year. To appease the spirits and maintain a peaceful relationship is the duty of the shamans. Every village and town has at least one shaman and one or two apprentices who will bring offerings to the spirits and consult them in times of crisis. In this capacity, they stand both above and outside the rest of society. Most of them are both highly respected and revered for the vital service they perform, but also feared for the magical powers they wield. This holds true even more so for sorcerers and witches, who usually live entirely outside the villages or even the clans and provide their services to anyone who is willing to deal with them and can afford to pay them.The most numerous of the humanoid people are the lizardfolk and the elves, with the lizardfolk being greater in numbers than either the wood elves or the dark elves. These peoples are also the most advanced when it comes to culture, technology, and magic, as they have been the first who learned about these things from the fey people. The lizardfolk are the dominant people in the Mahiri Jungles and the Nazraja Islands. Standing taller than most other people and being significantly stronger, they are a common sight as bodyguards and mercenaries throughout the Barbarian Lands. While most of them are not of the intellectual type, visitors to their cities are often surprised and amazed by the grandeur of their architecture and the huge libraries maintained by their priests and scholars.In the northern lands, the most numerous people are the wood elves, who are at home in the great forests and the Mherian Islands, but even they rarely venture far away from the safety of their villages and into the unknown wilds beyond.Between these two major civilizations lie the lands of the dark elves, south of the Kaidis Valley. Dark skinned and with excellent eyes, the dark elves are perfectly adapted to live in the twilight and the darkness of the night. Making their villages in large caves or elaborate underground halls, they are also as home in the dark depths of the world as the gnomes, with some of them only rarely visiting the surface world, if at all.In addition there are also the gnomes, a race of short humanoids who are only small in numbers, but also look back on a long history. At home in several of the hills and mountains of the Barbarian Lands, they are the undisputed masters of metalworking and alchemy. Almost all steel that is worth anything comes from gnomish forges and the are the only people who known how to make heavy steel armor.Far in the north lives a race known as the kaas. Similar to humans in stature, they stand well over seven feet high and are entirely covered in short brown fur and sport long, dark brown manes. With faces that seem to combine features of pumas, dogs, and bears, they seem brutish and bestial in nature, but are a very sophisticated people that lives of herding reindeer and mountain goats in the plains and mountains of their frozen homelands, in addition to hunting.The latest additions are the humans, who have existed in the Barbarian Lands as small groups in remote regions for a very long time, but have become one of the major races only a few centuries ago when they migrated from the Western Lands in large numbers, following the promise of riches from serving in the armies of elven lords at constant war with one another. While lacking the grand cities or magic traditions of the older races, humans have firmly established themselves as capable warriors and crafty merchants and explorers, who play an important part in the discoveries of new wonders and treasures that are still hidden in the wilderness of the Barbarian Lands.</blockquote>

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