TROS in the Hammer:Setting Political People

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The People

Before the Gezag came

General Description

The People are a society descended from hunter gatherers, and still very close to those older traditions, even though they are now at an early medieval level of technology and development. From a current Earth perspective, the People's culture is like a combination of Northeast Native American tribal culture and the South Asian caste system.

The Tribes

At the highest level, the People are divided into tribes. Tribes can be considered a cross between an actual Native American tribe, a Indian caste, and a craft guild or trade union. Tribes are of various sizes, with the largest numbering in the thousands and the smallest with maybe 70 or fewer members. Tribes can be differentiated by the following features, in rough order of importance:

• Niche - Each tribe usually has one or more areas in which its members excel, called its niche. For example, the Soft Black Earth tribe is a large tribe whose focus is primarily agricultural, with large land holdings devoted to growing maize. Another example is the Sweet but Painful tribe, a very small tribe whose sole focus is the collecting of wild honey from the massive bee nests that can be found in the forsest of the lands of the People.
• Geography - Each tribe usually has a particular region that it is concentrated in. The size of the region varies with the occupation that the tribes members are involved in. For example, the Dancing Salmon in the Sun tribe is a tribe of sailors and fisherman who roam the eastern half of the Big Circle Lake, although its members can be found on larger vessels anywhere in the region. The Grinning Blue Moon tribe, on the other hand, is a tribe of entertainers, actors, and storytellers who can be found just about anywhere in the lands of the People, competeing with other similar tribes, such as the Did You Hear The One About tribe.

Roles of Men and Women

The culture of the People is matrilineal; one's family name comes through one's mother. Women and men have different but complementary roles in society. The men are expected to get the job done right now; the women are expected to look out for the long term interests of the tribe. Men are considered the primary laborers/workers of the tribe, and generally perform the lion's share of whatever occupation the tribe is known for. Women are the ones that safeguard the intellectual property of the tribe. Each tribe will have its own types of allied spirits which its women will know the ways of summoning. Also, the women will be the keepers of any secret techniques, legends, or other that the tribe has collected over the years. For example, the women of the Deep Shadows Pierced With Light tribe, a mining tribe of the Big Circle Lake area, not only know the ways to summon deep earth spirits to protect miners or seek out new veins of ore, but they also are the keepers of the various techniques used by the tribe to get at ore, move it around, how to properly brace a tunnel, etc. This means that while the women are not the primary laborers, they are actively involved in the occupation, if for no other reason than to maintain the knowledge and skills and to improve upon them.

Marriage

The People have several important practicies and traditions regarding marriage. Marriage among the People happens at both the tribal and personal level. Certain tribes have are considered "husbands" of each other. This relationship means that those tribes have a relationship in which men of the one tribe interact with the women of the other tribe. For some tribes, these are very tightly governed arranged interactions, for others its more of a preference. For two tribes to be husbands means that those tribes will have a strong alliance with each other, as many of the children in one tribe will be sired by men in the other. Some tribes, especially the very small, the very large, or the most geographically spread out, may have multiple "husband" relationships with other tribes, representing a web of kin-ship alliances.

At the personal level, the People are essentially polygamous. Both women and men may have a number of husbands or wives at any one time. This is because the husbands and wives do not, in general, live together; they stay with their own tribes. Therefore a woman may have several husbands from different tribes with whom she maintains a relationship, with the husbands visiting her at different times to renew the acquaintance. Men may have wives in several tribes in several locations; for the sailing tribes this may literally be a wife in every port.

The basis for these marriages is usally mutual fondness developed during courtship. Courtship among the People usually takes place during semi-formal meetings (dances, entertainments, dinners, etc.), arranged by the tribal matriarchs of two or more husband tribes. In some tribes, however, these marriages are completely arranged, with little choice for either the man or the woman. An example of this would be a debt marriage. In a debt marriage, a tribe essentially "pays" another tribe for a debt occurred, usually from an oath-breaking (see below) by providing a husband to a woman in that tribe who has not been able to find one of her own (perhaps due to disfigurement, personality, whatever).

Except in the largest tribes, marriage never takes place within the tribe. In some large tribes, marriage between clans is allowed, but not within the clan; this is one way new tribes come into being, as clans slowly become more and more autonomous. Sexual relations between members of the same tribe is viewed with varying levels of approbation; in some tribes it is considered a minor transgression, a kind of kissing cousins that is never allowed to blossom into full romance. In other tribes (especially the smaller ones) it is a full taboo, with extreme, sometimes fatal punishments involved.

Child-rearing

Children are reared in the tribe to which their mother's belong. They will usually know who their fathers are, or at least who the short list of possibilities are, but are actually reared by their uncles; usually their mother's brothers, but also her male cousins and other relations. Some tribes centralize child rearing in communal creches, while others maintain a strong mother-child relationship.

An important custom regarding child-rearing among the people is the trade or exchange of sons between tribes. Sometimes, either as payment of a debt, as part of an ongoing alliance, or to cement a newly established alliance, a tribe will either give one or more of its male children to another tribe, or exchange male children with another tribe. In an exchange, it is typical for two mothers to swap newborn children. This is often referred to as swapping seeds.

Relationships among the Tribes

Relationships between the tribes are governed by a system of relationships primarily driven by oaths. Oaths are very important to the People, and are the glue that keeps society running properly. Oath-breaking is just about the worst crime imaginable. Commerce is conducted using both barter and coinage; there are several tribes whose sole niche is the minting of trusted coins and function essentially as banks for other tribes. Many oaths consist of agreements between two tribes to regularly exchange commodities at some fixed rate of exchange.

The League of the People

The People once were much better organized, with a League and a joint tribal council as a decision making body. But the Gezag's conquest about 50 years ago destroyed this organization, as some tribes allied with the Gezag and others opposed it. One note; the People's lands are very rich in metals, and mining has been one of their occupations for a long time.

The Left and Right Hands

One vestige of this federation, though are the Right and Left Hands of Justice. The Left Hands are universally female, and are roughly the equivalent of hired judges/justices of the peace. They are brought in by tribes when oath-breaking or other crimes have occurred, and asked to render a verdict and specify punishments. The People, as a general rule, don't go in for imprisonment as punishment; punishments are almost always exacted immediately and involve fines, corporal punishment, public shaming, and sometimes death. The Left Hands come from all the different tribes and are to some extent tribeless; they maintain their ties with their former tribe but are held to a standard of impartiality. The Right Hands are universally male, and are the executioners of the justice of the Left Hands. This involves both the tracking and apprehension of fugitives as well as the administering of the punishments handed down. As with the Left Hands, the Right Hands swear oaths of impartiality and fidelity to their commissions. Persons who have sworn an oath to be Left or Right Hands can be recognized by the silver plated bracers that they wear on the appropriate side.

Language

The native language of the People is just called Speech. The People also have two other languages; Hunting Code and Spirit Tongue. Hunting Code is a kind of high level sign language/noise language/body language that the People use when hunting/fighting/speaking among themselves. Even tribes that no longer have anything to do with hunting or outdoor activities still maintain their knowledge of Hunting Code, although they are liable to have their own dialect that involves signs and codes appropriate to their own niche. For example, the miners of the Deep Shadows Pierced By Light tribe could communicate with the entertainers of the Grinning Blue Moon tribe in Hunting Code, but the miners dialect will also include light and sound based codes for communicating information deep in a mine, while the entertainers will have their own set of body cues and signs to communicate key information in plain sight of an audience without the audience knowing. Spirit Tongue is a strange language that spirits find very easy to understand (a Shaman using Spirit Tongue is at +1 to any Shamanic Pool) but is VERY difficult to learn. These two languages are closely guarded secrets among the People and almost no one outside of the People will know them.

After the Gezag

The invasion of the Gezag 50 years ago changed the culture of the People profoundly. First, a large proportion (perhaps 20-30%) of the population of the southern and eastern portions of the People were made Bezit (property); half of these have remained behind as slaves working in various C.O.V. enterprises, and half were carted off back into the territory of the Gezag. In some cases, entire tribes were enslaved; this was especially true of agricultural tribes who had the misfortune to be operating on lands near where the Gezag wanted to build an Inrichting (town/fortress/resource center/factory, a difficult word to translate). Therefore, almost everyone who remains among the People has had a least one family member made a slave.

Second, those that remain behind have a heavy tribute exacted on them, at various frequencies. This is essentially a kind of extortion the Gezag perpetrates; "pay us what we want, or we will enslave some of you and kill the rest". This has caused serious strains in the economic and social life of the People, as a large fraction of their net output of goods and materials is siphoned off to the Gezag.

Third, a number of the People have essentially gone over to the Gezag, as Arbeiders (employees). These Persons get a lot of special priviledges and wield a lot of power over the rest of the People. However, not all work willingly; some are essentially given a choice between death, slavery, or taking a pay check, and simply don't have the courage to choose death or slavery. This causes a number of strains as well, as loyalty to an outside group like the Gezag is foreign to the system of relationships between tribes that previously governed the People. Some entire tribes have essentially turned coat and now work for the Gezag in almost their entirety. This is particularly true of the Town Tribes (tribes whose niche was the administration and operation of towns and their organization) and some tribes whose niche was highly skilled labor, such as the coining and metal-working tribes.

Among those who are not Arbeider or enslaved, life continues in a similar fashion. There is MUCH less trust among the People, and the old joy for things like courtship dances, son exchanges, etc. has faded. But the Gezag tends to leave well enough alone; as long as the tribute is paid, no sign of brewing trouble, and no pressing need back home for more slaves or materials, they generally leave the People to themselves outside of the immediate area of the Inrichtingen. However, the Gezag has its agents everywhere, including paid informants and the dreaded Poemavlaggen (Puma Banners); think Gestapo with rapiers and cougar masks.

In the Northern and Western reaches of the lands of the People, there are some tribes (often with ill-defined niches and very close to the original hunter-gatherer customs) that have been largely unaffected by the Gezag, mostly because they are farther away and don't have much the Gezag wants.

List of Tribes

See here for more full details on the known tribes.

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