Editing Raksir (section)

=='''The Thread'''==

Now to the thread; the people of the world.
  
The best way to describe them is "incomplete but short and functionally direct".  They are a generous people, open, with few taboos and few needs unmet by their environment.  I've heard them described as Polynesian in temperament.  And they really know how to build their boats.  As an Amberite I appreciated their seamanship despite their not have an interest in great voyages.  Ask them to make you a canoe and they will say, "T'is a pleasure".  Freaky.

They have large gap in their culture that can only be explained as an effect of shadow.  While there are exceptions from the norm, of course. in general they don't tend to concentrate.  They don't tend to plan ahead.  Anything more then a week's menu away they get foggy on them.  Ask one to go fishing with you they will drop everything, except their children, and they will grab their pole and go.

They are not literate and they don't miss it.  They keep some financial records for commerce's sake but tend to think in terms of what they have in their pocket. T heir's is a barter culture.  They keep record by looking at what they have and trading it for what they and their people want.  If you are inclined you can cheat them outrageously but having done so I hope you feel bad about it.  If you don't, that says something about you now, doesn't it?


They like seeing large collection of things and are distracted by them in the way some people are distracted by shiny objects.  Groups of fish, piles of melons, stacks of cut wood, racks of dowels, fields of Ragdat leaves on the water's surface.  

It gets a bit difficult to be around them if you are used to people having ulterior motives or finishing conversations.  There are few sneaky racsirians. Even the ones who do manage to run businesses and plan ahead are fairly clear of dark motives. 

This does not mean a Racsirian won't stick a knife in you. Just that he won't spend a life time planning it.  They are direct and determined once they set their mind to do something, at least for a few weeks.  

They have loving families that are a bit cloying if not demonstrative.  People fornicate casually and without a particular concern about gender or proximity of others.  Couples pair bond and sex plays little part in the reasons for it.  If the couple bonds along gender lines that allow child bearing, they do so.  If they don't, they look for foundlings or orphans to take in.  Couples, triads, quads, all usually group for life.  These become the nucleus of small extended families or communities but when a community reaches a certain size some instinct makes a portion break off, peacefully, and seek new islands or new places. They rarely strain the local supply of food, both plant and animal.

Children are raised communally and if they do not gather into the community at some point they take to the sea and find other communities to join when they reach a certain maturity.  Child rearing is important but if a child decides to move on they often don't keep in touch and while the parents may miss them but they rarely talk about it. If the kids drop by for a visit its cause for a celebration but they don't nag them about coming by more often.  

There are no holidays that would encourage relatives to visit even if they are not inclined to.  Strange for me coming from the nightmare of family ties I did, to deal with a people devoid of familial angst. 

The elderly tend to be given tasks suitable to their declining skills, even to the point of gathering in elderly to manage such tasks as if they were orphan children.  They are treasured in a way that's endearing.  Yet when they pass they are sunk into the sea with almost no ceremony.  People are remembered for their handiwork, not their mere existence.  There is almost no portraiture art, per se, but crafts and artwork are common and the creators are remembered for them.  If someone makes you a burlwood pipe, their descendants will recognize their work or their mark.  Freaky.  

The Racsirians develop an ability as they get older to end their own life at a time of their choice.  Its somehow hard wired into their brains to end themselves when they have outlived themselves. Its common for a person in extreme old age to pack a nice lunch, take their pole, go out for a swim and never come back.  Freaky.

There are few loners in this world.  The people who have no family, lose them, or are cast out, find some group that will take them in.  "More hands make less work" is the motto of the urge to be part of a group, even a group of outcasts.

Personally I think "Find a Group you get along with" is one of the conditions of shadow that Obirin was using when he originally found this place and introduced us to it.  "I want to find a place where the people like to find groups and fish a lot" might be all he had in mind.  But that's just my guess knowing that Obirin could be both tricky and dense.
  
Random and I had both been brought here by Obirin when we were younger.  Fishing is one of the things Obirin shared at some point with all his children.  Some of us took to it, others didn't.  The Flora in my family hates fishing.  The one in Bleys with an E's family loves it.  Freaky.  

There are some large cities on this planet to be sure. 

There are a couple on the Big Island mostly near the places that Iron crosses and the seaman of the world come south.  Crasatans is a good example of the cities there.  It has nearly a hundred thousand people and deals with a lot of the mining and metal communities outside the ring around the big island.  The collection of connected derelict ships around the Handle could be considered a city as long as one is not picky about a city being efficient.  Zadalaz is probably the biggest city in the islands but its so sprawling its not easy to figure out how to get around in it.  And people are as likely to get lost there and take up with people they meet till they find their family again.  They don't go in for big government here.

Now the Hook.

Well, I did say it had great fighting fish.  There is something about this world that makes it have plentiful sea life.   The ocean is far richer with life then the scattered lands.   Both plant and animal life are rich with diversity and to describe them all would be the work of volumes so I'll just point out a couple of things. 

The geography of this world is very sharp in places causing needle-like mountains nearby each other to have the winds erode the tops poking from the oceans to make islands.  So some archipelagos might be the top of one mountain that erosion has cleared enough off to the waterline to create groups of islands with shallow waters and lagoons between them that one could walk through without getting one's shirt wet.  Good canoe lagoons.  Others are step rocky needles where the distance between shores might be forty or fifty meters but the depth a kilometer or more. Freaky. 
 
So depending on the geography of particular islands one could stand on a beach and cast a line to catch bass or halibut or perch or any number of small to medium sized coastal fish.  Or on a lazy morning you could cast a line and find yourself fighting for your life with some 300 kilo blue-fin tuna or a 1000 kilo great white shark.

 I could go off on the details of rods, reels, lines, and tackle but who has the time?  Racsir is a technology light world where generally the most complicated land machinery are olive oil presses, fishing reels, and sawmills.  Once you bring the water into play the sophistication goes way up. Fishing reels are surprisingly ingenious devices considering the general technology of the world.  Most are quite simple, even elegant, while others are deigned to catch the big monsters.  I've shown Raksir wooden reels to experts on high tech worlds and had them say they would never have thought to do it that way but its a great solution. 

Their sailing ships are marvels of wood and rope technology and these people have figured out tricks that I know Obirin, Garret, and Kain have emulated and included in the Navy of Amber.   

  Freaky.   

While poles are the most common weapon against the local sea life the Raksir have made great net-making an art form. Knotwork is a common art in this world and it decorates nearly everything in representational art as well as practical decoration.  Knotwork for nets, traps, and construction of all kind is learned in the cradle and practiced till they toss the dead into to the sea.  However, net repair and assembly of traps is often the work of the elderly as it does not require a lot of heavy lifting and needs a skilled hand. 

Ships fishing particularly good lanes for schools bring in hauls of herrings cod, tuna, flounders, sardines, and frigging anchovies just to name a few.  Trap fishing is common as well but if not done at sea is often managed my the young in the coastal regions.  Lobsters, crabs, and a huge variety of colorful crustaceans find their way to local tables.  Clams, scallop, abalone, conch, and more are commonly harvested.
 The scallop is a common art motif and conch shells are ubiquitous as well.  The sound of conch horns is the music of Rakir.
The deep waters have some of the best fishing for challenging catches to be found in shadow.  There is a balance of bragging rights over how big a thing you caught on how small a line in how small a craft that plays in to many of the fireside tales and the songs of these soggy fish loving people. 

Two last things about the Hook.  

I could go on for days on this fishing of this world but I am getting hungry.  While fishing is the most common enterprise and sea-life the most common food there are many birds and no small number of mammals on this world.  Suffice to say they end up on the grill as well.  Seabirds tend to be plentiful and the people are not bashful about using their rods to bash a few to the ground to put fowl on the table.  There are flightless birds like chicken and turkey as well as water birds like ducks, geese and swans.  There are flamingos of many different colors but for some reason the Raksirians frown on eating them and consider them pets.  That doesn't mean they don't get eaten but they feel bad about it afterwards.  

There are pigs, rats, mice, rabbits, lizards, snakes, and a number of other small animal all of which end up on the table. Cats and dogs are common pets but get eaten occasionally too.  There do not seem to be any large mammals on this world with llamas being about the biggest.  Dogs and llamas are common beast of burden as well. Cats are found on nearly every ailing vessel big enough for rodent stowaways. Freaky. 

Lastly, animals beach themselves here a lot.  Whales, sharks, tuna, grunions, and goldfish are among the sea life that occasionally just throw themselves up on the land.  Garret once told me it reminded him of the instinct these people have to just pick up and go off to die with little or no fan fare.  He might be right.

=='''Marauders, Salitors, and Monstrous Fish'''==.
I know I have gone on and on about plants and fish and people but this world while rich with people and pleasures is light on violence with three exception; the Marauders, the Salitors, and the monstrous fish.

Marauders: This is a friendly world top to bottom and there seems to be little interest in conquest or other activities that boil down to taking away other people's stuff against their will.
 
However there is a type of madness that occurs occasionally in people that causes them to become violent.  Once these psychotic breaks occur the person tends to have a few incidents then they simply pick up and leave their groups to wander on their own. This tendency to pick up and leave with little or no fanfare, leaving family and friends behind without a backwards glance occurs in many of the people of this world as a function of interest, population density, and pure randomness.  It is expressed here as a psychotic change in a person. In time they run into other wandering psychotics and they bond together in the family way others do here.  In time these wandering groups get large and begin to engage in theft, vandalism, robbery, piracy, assault and murder.  

To say this is disturbing is an understatement but having little military experience on this world they have trouble dealing with marauder bands.  As an outsider I found the marauders equally inept at being violent wackadoos.  Its just not in their nature and having gone violently crazy they really prove how bad they are at it. Marauders are often caught and inefficiently killed and doing so is seen as an act of mercy.  They do not seem to recover from this madness once it takes place.

There are a couple very large Marauder bands that sail the seas as fairly disorganized pirates. These groups developed as marauder pairs and trios ran in to other pairs and trios and eventually became too large for local family groups to put them down.  In time these groups become too large for their area, and being crazy, don't get involved in growing things and so they take to the sea to find places with stuff for them to steal.  When I arrived this world after Patternfall the area I was visiting in was raided by a large marauder force much to their woe. Being inefficient killers they had little hope against such an efficient killer as me.

Salitors: The second group are the Salitors.  These killers are more to my liking and I may have to look into their origins closer someday.  The Salitors are shadow traveling pirates.  They occur occasionally sailing in from a nearby shadow to raid an archipelago, stay for a few months, ravage the place, disrupt family life, steal about half of the produce and products, enslave a few people, then sail off after a wicked residency.  

Once they sail off they don't go to the next archipelago to repeat there barbarities. They sail off into shadow rarely to return.  Other Salitors turn but particular criminals can never be found and people stolen never return.  

I traveled around a thousand nearby shadows or so and found these salitors well traveled but could not find there home world. The other groups I found had no experience with Racsir but also could not remember a homeworld. Something is incomplete about them as well.  There is something tricky about them and one of the reasons I am writing about them now is to enlist the aide of the other mes, especially the extraordinarily violent and resentful Brandy Amberton.  I am also visiting my own kin, and since I am technically in fealty and have a clean slate as far as the pardon from Obirin can allow maybe Garret, Kain, Random, or even Benedict will take time out of their busy conspiracies to come do some fishing with me and put these Salitors to the sword.

Monstrous Fish:You knew in a watery world like this that there would be sea monsters, right?  Well, there are.  Giant sea serpents, kraken, massive tuna, wickedly huge crabs and lobsters, schools of piranha, and a variety of nasty creatures that must have followed the Salitors in from other shadows.

While these people may not have a military instinct they have a well-developed sense of survival.  When these monsters occur to endanger land settlements everyone drops what they are doing to run down to the shore and fish these bastards to death.  I watched a family haul in a 5,000 pound tuna.  I helped a community take on a dozen idiotically huge crabs.  Ships at sea have been destroyed of course but some have sunk hooks into a monster and been towed for weeks till the beast dies, dives, or turns on them. When these things are hauled in its a bonanza for the locals of course.  Crab steak 2' across grilled in lemon and butter. Freaky, but delicious.