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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 1000278" data-attributes="member: 5328">Perhaps it is, but that's not what I think is interesting. What I think is interesting is the very narrow overlap of subject matter between our two screeds. I don't present more detailed history and cosmogony than you do. On the contrary, I present very little history an no cosmogony at all. Instead I concentrate on what the place and its people are like.I wonder whether you consider yourself to have been influenced by Tolkien. Tolkien's world-building is much more elaborate than mine, but like you he paid almost no attention to how people lived, what they wore, etc.Let's get away from the issue of detail. Look at this sketch:RamastaarnRamastaarn is an archipelago of low but extensive atolls about 4600 kilometres East-North-East of Thekla (well beyond the bounds of Gehennum and, for that matter, beyond the Terminator, on that face of the World of Isles from which Indarian cannot be seen).The people of Ramastaarn are not related to the Gehennese and their kin of the Blessed Isles, nor to the people of Fairon. They are tall, taller even than the Faironese, but less heavily built. Their skins are extremely dark, their eyes are brown, and they have curly or frizzy black hair.Among the most accomplished builders in the World of Isles, the Ramastaarnii make massive palaces and lodge halls, and enormous step-pyramid temples out of porous limestone. Yet, like the people of the Blessed Isles, they lack mineral resources and must import their metal tools at considerable expense.Ramastaarni society has a marked and unusual division of roles between men and women. A woman is born a member of her mother’s matriclan. This group owns and rules a swatch of land, often at least one whole atoll. Each matriclan is ruled by an hereditary queen.Boys are born without status. On coming of age at thirteen most are are initiated into one of the totem lodges that span Ramastaarn. Each lodge controls either a trade or profession or certain fishing or hunting rights. Initiates are taught the economic skills of their lodge in a type of apprenticeship, and also learn the secret rules and quasi-religious mysteries of the lodge. Lodge membership and status provide a man with his means of livelihood and social position.Many Ramastaarni totem lodges have ideals, training disciplines, and mysteries designed to promote the creation of avatars. The better hunting and fishing lodges aim at creating Persiflegians and Khryseians, the craft lodges, at training Timeonides, while the Raven Lodge of mercenary guards trains Luciphagians, the Pearl Shell Lodge of weapon-makers trains Vesperian martial artists, and the privileged Red Flower Lodge trains Jolianides to protect Ramastaarn against monsters and pirates. On a less martial trend, the Eternal Lodge trains Amaranthi bards, and the Sky Dome Temple Lodge trains the Chansithi shamans who assign boys to their proper lodges.Men without lodge membership—rejects, outcasts and criminals—along with junior members of poor lodges and unemployed members of professional lodges, must emigrate, starve, or work as labourers on buildings or in the women’s fields.No marriage is allowed in Ramastaarn, and men are not allowed permanent residence in the women’s palaces. Tradition forbids anything that might suggest that a woman belonged to a man. Women expect to be courted with gifts and compliments, to enjoy flirtation and a liaison no longer than they wish for, untrammeled by masculine possessiveness. Lasting affaires are enlivened by the impossibility of cohabitation and a thousand rules and accidents that threaten to part the lovers. Apart from this, no taboos restrict sexual opportunity.In Ramastaarn the cadavers of queens, heroes, and grand masters of lodges are not cremated with the normal run of folk, but mummified over smoky fires and preserved as objects of veneration.Ramastaarni clothing is simple and scanty. A simple loincloth, perhaps secured by a leather belt, or a maxcatl, will do. Embroidered, smocked, and tasselled ponchos and semi-circular mantles are formal or festive wear. Jewellery and head-dresses proclaim wealth, status, and lodge or matriclan affiliation.Typical artifacts of Ramastaarn are made of wood, shell, bone, and bamboo. Weapons are spears, slings, atl-atls, and wooden clubs and swords set with shark’s teeth and splinters of shell or bone. Ramastaarni boats are fast, two-masted sea-going catamarans.See? That's not more detailed than your work. It just shows a completely different focus.Regards,Agback</blockquote>

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