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## Culture Focus: Senicia

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Username17
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### Culture Focus: Senicia

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Post by Username17 » Tue Mar 22, 2005 8:11 pm

This is the seventh in the Cultural Focus series. It focuses on the rich and flood-prone farming country of Senicia, a land fed and ruled by blood.
Senicia: To Give and Receive
Lay of the Land:
The grassy lowlands of Senicia are green for most of the year. The topography of the land is rolling and there are few areas of truly flat land – but the highest elevation in the country is less than 100 meters. Small streams flow erratically between the hills, and many of the valleys are quite marshy at the bottom.
The Senicians recognize three seasons: the Moist season, the Dry season, and the Wet season. A typical day in the moist season begins with a light to heavy fog that burns off within an hour of noon – only to return again in the evening. During this period, the ground is fairly soggy and the grass is green and wet, all the time. During the Wet season, the ground is often dryer than it is in the Moist season. Hard rains fall about one day in three, and during this period flooding is quite common. Nevertheless, during the days that rain does not fall the tops of the hills can dry out almost as much as during the Dry season. During the Dry, rain generally does not fall, and during this time the hills actually turn tan as the grass dies back before the Moist season.
Mosquitoes hatch from the stagnant pools left during the Dry season and flock in huge numbers everywhere except actually in the villages themselves. Flowers bloom at the beginning of every Moist season and blanket the hills with multicolored swathes and the subtle hum of bees. The Wet season transforms many of the valleys into lakes, and these lakes teem with fish for this part of the year. Residents say that these fish live under the ground when the rains don't come.
Major Cities:
Senician settlements rarely have more than 30 people in them. Each village is defined by the pasture land and planting space surrounding it, and Senician settlements don't claim that much relative to other agricultural communities. As such, while standing in the center of one Senician village, it is quite commonplace to be able to see two or three other villages. Roads usually connect these adjacent villages, but they are often no more than game trails.
Villages are traditionally named after the most prominent family in them, and that name can change during marriages or population shifts. Many villages have similar or identical names, and even Senicians are sometimes confused as to which is being referred to in conversation. Noone knows the locations or names of all of the villages, and this is hardly surprising as the beginnings and endings of villages are somewhat arbitrary and the entire country side is dotted with a total of about 1.4 million people – such that the local expression for certainty that something “is known in a hundred thousand villages”, is probably not far off.
Architectural styles are based largely on the powers of sod. Homes routinely have living grass growing out of them for privacy, and to the untrained eye the villages often look like nothing so much as slightly lumpy hills.
Economics:
Bloodvines are the backbone of the economy. Villages grow hay and various manners of livestock (aurochs, oxen, chickens, and geese being the most common because they can give milk or eggs in addition to meat). But while the diet is supplemented by the cheeses and eggs and even the occasional grain, the vast majority of Senicia's food comes from the bloodvines themselves.
The bloodvine is a dark and fast growing vine that grows thick stalks and has brood thorny leaves. Under the ground it has kidney like nodules that have a rubbery consistency and bleed a bright red blood when cut. The bloodvine digs up metals and even shapes them for the Senicians. It also produces a wide variety of multicolored hairy fruit that are both delicious and nutritious. Finally, the bloodvine produces a straqnge sap-like substance that is used as if it were a fabric to make clothing, and when combined with fruit juices during the drying phase comes in a rainbow of vibrant colors in addition to its inherent color of a milky yellow – leather is still produced, but it is a material used only for work garments.. The bloodvine requires the blood of animals to grow, and livestock are milked from blood as much as for milk.
Animals are also raised for other reasons than food for human and vine. Senicia boasts the fastest riding deer, the most reliable messenger crows, and the most vicious attack cockatrices. Some villages raise more exotic animals, such as razor bats, or griffins. Bees and hunter spiders are raised in some places, but are regarded with some suspicion because they have no blood.
Each village is largely self-sufficient, but there is a limited amount of trade both between villages and with the outside world (largely through Redarkhan and the Lifarian League). The currency of the land is essentially blood, so it is very difficult for traders to operate. Goods caravans are by necessity also animal drives – as only living things are regarded as having much value.
Law and Order:
Nominally every village belongs to the Senician Federation and is subject to the same laws, in practice those laws are kept orally by bards and not written down. Legal disputes over property that is not alive are settled by the intervention of a bard and merely divide up the property in such a manner as satisfies the law speaker. It is not uncommon or questionable for those petitioning a bard to side with them to use gifts in addition to words. Disputes over matters that involve the living, be they animal ownership or murders carry the potential of “fines” which mostly take the form of spilling blood onto the lands of the aggrieved party (or their family).
What many travelers in Senicia fail to understand is that stealing a knife or even a cart is behavior which is more rude than criminal; while stealing a chicken is the same potentially capital offense of “Life Stealing” that is murder or rape. The implications of this are long reaching, and Senicians will regularly borrow non-living objects without asking if they perceive an immediate need.
Magical Traditions:
Senician magic is based on the principle of Life Bargaining. The concept is that life itself is a convertible currency of sorts that can be used to purchase goods and services from the world. While the most obvious use of this magic is the growing of the bloodvines themselves, there are a number of other uses for their blood magic. Blood can be used to 'buy' knowledge or health – and Senicians use animal sacrifice to assist in divination and in medicine.
Senicians believe that they have 4 senses, which are each associated with directions. They have sight, taste (which also includes smell, strong odors are “tasted”), touch (which also includes hearing. Loud noises are “felt”), and life – a sense which is difficult to translate into other languages as most creatures seem to lack this sense entirely. The life sense allows even small children to pick up on emotional states and know the presence of creatures to a considerable distance that is independent of intermediate non-living objects. A creature can hide from the life sense by covering themselves with living matter, but not with inanimate matter.
Bloodvine maintenance is a cornerstone of life in Senicia. The vines speak directly to the life sense of the people, and make bargains which they hold to exactly. Blood is given to the vines, and in return the vines give back food, and metals from the earth. The value of the exchange depends not just upon the amount of blood, but also upon the elan of the creature whose blood is being spilled. Even a small amount of human blood outweighs even the heart's blood of an entire chicken.
Voluntary connections to living creatures are common, and Senicians often bind their senses and their fate to a specific person or beast – sharing their elan and information. Senicians traditionally take geese, rats, crows, or cockatrice as their companions, but virtually any living thing will do, there are even rumors of Senicians who bind their lives to trees. Even attempting to bind with a bloodvine is considered to be lifetheft and is never acceptable behavior.
Government:
Individual villages are essentially ruled by the acknowledged grandmother of the village. Grandmothers rule until death. Each Grandmother in turn reports to a Representative, which is a woman who holds a position which is like unto a lord save that she is not specifically able to pass the title on to her daughters. Representatives are chosen by the Queen, but this choosing is largely ceremonial, because in practice the Grandmothers of a region privately confer and then give a single “recommendation” to the Queen. This recommendation has been followed flawlessly for three generations. The Queen is a direct descendant of the regional lord of the war leader who defeated the old empire's armies in Senicia, and her power is entirely ceremonial (she approves all of the decisions made by the Representatives. All of the decisions).
-Username17
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