Sikaari

The Sikaari (lit. "The Searchers in the Waters"), sometimes called the Lizardfolk, the Skinks, or "Swampkin" by outside civilizations. They are a native race to Wisteria and are found mostly in the Great Fen. Much like the unrelated Carcolie, they have a loose societal structure, though they are far less nomadic, instead forming cliqueish "bands" which control hidden villages in the swamps of the Fen, known as "Wallows".

The Sikaari culture is inherently isolationist, and Sikaari individuals living in other lands are almost always outcasts from their native communities in one sense or another; this is an artifact of the effects of the war between the Almighty and the Enemy during Bastonia's Time Before The Walls, where the passage of armies on both sides through the Great Fen often lead to the destruction of Sikaari wallows. As a result of these factors, especially in the north, the Sikaari are seen almost as legendary creatures; those who do exist are viewed with extreme suspicion in Bastonia. The largest congregation of expatriated Sikaari is in the city of Twowaters. Their cultural isolation was further increased during the Desolation of the Bleak, which lead to a loss of their territory.

The majority of cultural worship among the Sikaari is directed toward spirits of nature and the small gods of the Sikaari, lead through their own endemic druid's circle, the Deepened. Their druids have idiosyncratic beliefs unique to the Sikaari but stay in good communion with those from the Confederacy of Sages; druids travelling on missions of communication between the Great Fen and Star Rock are also a major source of Sikaari adventurers.

Sikaari tend not to be prone to wanderlust, but their adventurers are of course the assumption. Some are outcast from their society for being problematic (this has lead to perceptions of criminality by other cultures). Others got a taste for adventure during journeys, either because they were druids or because they were escorting druids, usually to Star Rock. Still others are from families near Twowaters or along the coast of the Western Sea who learned of the rich lives in other parts of Wisteria and set out for their own adventure, glory, or wealth.

Sikaari Geography and Government

The Sikaari are endemic to the Great Fen, especially its central and eastern reaches, though a few bands do live in the west of the fen, along the coast of the Western Sea. As a culture, they are deeply insular and independent. Several families collectively form a polity known as a Band, and bands occupy a given territory of the Fen as their birthright holding, though individuals from any band may travel by right of way anywhere through the Great Fen. When Bands are of sufficient size, they may establish semipermanent settlements within their territory known as "wallows", usually no larger than a village.

There is no central authority among the Sikaari, or indeed a level of government above the Band Level. Indeed, while the Deepened maintain a peace among the various bands and individual figures among the Deepened are often asked to settle disputes, the government of the Sikaari is effectively anarchic. Individual Sikaari have wide cultural lattitude to see a problem and immediately solve it, though violence against one another (beyond occasional wrestling and some light brawling) is culturally taboo. What few professional combatants exist in Sikaari society are more likely to be specialist monster hunters than actual soldiers; their relative isolation from other cultures, and the perceived uselessness of the Great Fen in economic terms as considered by most other nations, means they rarely have cause for professional warriors.

The druids of the Deepened themselves represent an odd niche in Sikaari society; a shortcut to thinking of this is that they are effectively their own band. However, members of the Deepened are not expelled from their native bands when joining the cult, and instead occupy both social structures. Also, while they are respected in their own areas of expertise, and are often invited to judge disputes, those judgements are by invitation; a Deepened does not have any special authority over other Sikaari.

Sikaari Culture

Arts and Architecture

The Great Fen is, almost by definition, deeply unsuitable to grand acts of architecture. Most Sikaari buildings are ultimately temporary, and with very few exceptions (usually sites of special significance to the religion of the Deepened) have been constructed within living memory; on average, even within the lifespan of the current "youngest-adults" generation. They favour huts and buildings constructed largely of bamboo or mangrove-wood and make great use of stilted construction to keep their homes and storehouses above the water even during the lengthy rainy season.

The rich plant life of the swamp gives the Sikaari unusual rich access to pigments, and they have a deep history colorful presentation through paints (including body paints), dyed fibers for woven textiles in brilliant geometric patterns, and so on. By comparison, they do not have as strong a use of metals in their arts and architecture as almost all metal used by the Sikaari is traded for, usually from the Orcish Nation via the city of Twowaters.

Religion, Festivals, and Timekeeping

See: the Deepened

See: Sikaari Pantheon

The native religion of the Sikaari is deeply disorganized on a fundamental level, with most of the ritualism, holy tales, and responsibility infused in the Deepend, a caste of druidic shamanism. This belief system places a great importance on the liberty of the individual and balancing that liberty with the needs of the Band, and combines animist elements. A small number of archetypal spirits are raised into a collection of small gods, each considered more or less real (and given more or less priority) by individual Sikaari. Amongst these, perhaps seen as chief, is a paragon-ancestor known as Sikaavi, the Found in the Waters.

The Sikaari have festivals for most celestial events - each of the four phases of the moon, solar equinoxes and solstices, eclipses, commits, and even some rare conjunctions. These festivals are usually marked with feasts, music, dancing, and drinking.

The Sikaari traditionally marked the passage of the years as pairs of wet and dry seasons. Those that live near Twowaters have also adopted the Rophalin Calendar as a general means of convenient accounting when dealing with other races.

Fighting, Warfare, and Death

While they are not violent amongst themselves, and do not suffer much by way of depredations from their neighbours (being on good terms with the Confederacy of Sages and the Orcish Nation, plus with only the Bleak to their immediate south), the Sikaari still live in Great Fen, a hazardous swampy, marshy, lowland full of hags, rogue fae, dragons, and monsters stranger yet. There are no shortage of ways to die prematurely for the Sikaari, and very few live to be killed by the passage of time itself.

Every Sikaari, to an extent perhaps only seen equally among the Orcish Nation is a warrior in some sense. To live in the Great Fen is to be taught from infancy what can and can't kill you, what is or isn't safe to eat, and how to work your way around knife, hatchet, or spear. Indeed, the Sikaari are perhaps the most warlike pacifists on all Ahren, certainly in all of Wisteria, in this way. While there is no higher cultural taboo than for the bands to turn against each other, each Sikaari is trained more or less from their first days walking how to defend themselves in combat; their very lives depend on it.

Accordingly, they have a high estimation of death. The Sikaari believe that the souls of their departed are guided away by the spirits and the smaller gods into the paradise of Elysium, for the most part, specifically the realm of the Warmlands.

Language and Scholarship

The Sikaari speak an eponymous language, and usually, at least among the bands near Twowaters, learn Orcish. Unlike many of the other Lordless Lands cultures, the Sikaari do have a system of graven writing, usually etched onto bone, wood, or embossed upon leather. Those who wind up living as exiles or take on a life of adventure often learn the common language of the region they are in, though as this is usually undertaken as an adult, they often speak it with a heavy and characteristic accent.

Diet, Libations, and Entertainment

Sikaari cuisine is high in forage, as the Great Fen is largely unsuitable for agriculture. A few industrious bands produce limited agricultural staples, mostly wild rices, though ironically this is usually traded away. Starches do not occupy a large part of Sikaari dietary culture as they are not especially useful except as raw calories to Sikaari physiology. Given that the Fen is rich in forage for suitably talented hunters, gatherers, and fishermen, the diet instead consists of large quantities of fish, fruits, and foraged vegetables (especially various forms of foraged greens).

The Sikaari also have a rich culture toward alcoholic beverages especially, largely avoiding other intoxicants (which are mostly used by experimental younger members of their culture), produced from the aforementioned wild rices or from surplus foraged fruits. These beverages are usually reserved for use during festivals, but such festivals are especially common.

Sikaari Economics

Geological Depletion

The Great Fen is not universally swampland, but it is very low land, and even its dryest spots are near the water-table. This means, functionally, that mining is impossible to the Sikaari. Stone, metal, and gemstones are especially precious to them, as almost all such materials are imports; in the modern era this makes them heavily trade dependant, but also not stunningly obvious or enticing partners for such trade.

Bounty of the Waters

The Great Fen, the shorelands with the salt marshes near the Western Sea, and rivers to their north and south are the wealth of the Sikaari. For fresh-water fishing, there are almost none better. Sikaari are experts at hunting, fishing, and foraging in the Great Fen, a skillset considered so rare among the other nations of western Wisteria that the area is usually otherwise thought of as impassible.

Technology and Craftsmanship

Siikari love the reliable, the true, and the tested. Their designs for devices change rarely, even if they have an ultimately-temporary view of everything they make. As a result, the Sikaari can make things quickly and make them practical, even if they are ultimately unconcerned if an individual building is lost to the swamp, or a tool only survives its intended hunt.

They are particularly known for their lack of use of metals in their goods except where absolutely necessary. The few cataloguers who have commended on Sikaari architecture note with great impression that their joinery is often sufficient to hold a structure together under its own weight.

Siikari also abhor waste. If a spear breaks, the head might still be salvaged to make its replacement. If a house is starting to fail and can be saved, they will undertake what they can to do so, even dismantling the house to get at the five or six useful members.

Siikari and the Classes

While nothing typifies the Sikaari ideal quite like mold breaking, it nevertheless remains that the Siikari have a fairly decent understanding, culturally, of the adventuring class.

Barbarian – a surprisingly common class. Many Siikari specializing in hunting the larger monsters of the Great Fen wind up tapping into The Rage and following down the path of the Barbarian.

Bards – somewhat rarer. While neither divine nor arcane magic are alien to the Siikari, most professional musicians are simply that. Some Sikaari adventurers, however, are bards, and favour the pipes or drums traditional to the musical traditions of their homeland.

Cleric – Prevelent among the Deepened, some of the "larger" small gods of the Sikaari Pantheon are true divinities and occasionally bless particular faithful with their miracles, usually in the otherwise-rare arrangement that that individual worships that one spirit alone. Such clerical Deepened usually act as masters of ceremony for relevant festivals, but overall make up a very small slice of the Sikaari population.

Druid – Very common, and the bulk of the Deepened religious leadership caste. Sikaari druids have their own independent circle and traditions, but still traffic with the Star-Counters.

Monk – Unarmed combat specialists are not wholly unheard of among the Sikaari, who have a few native wrestling and boxing traditions. However, most of these combatants are variant monks at best - there's no true culture of monasticism among the Sikaari. Many such individuals wind up outside the mainline Sikaari society and are prize-fighters or enforcers in other lands.

Fighter – Also fairly rare by comparison to other martial classes, at least as fighters are thought of in much the rest of the world, with Barbarians and Rangers being far more common. Some fighters nonetheless exist and tend to be specialists in the extreme, having gotten very good at one particular style of combat, and usually act as teachers of the same within their own band.

Paladin – Known by the Sikaari to exist, but Sikaari Paladin is almost an oxymoron. The Sikaari economy of metals does not support the sort of weaponry and heavy armor typically associated with the paladin lifestyle, which itself is too hidebound.

Ranger – Common. The Great Fen is more or less a factory for producing rangers, and Sikaari rangers are very often experts of the environments of the fen and hunting both the game and monsters that call it home. Endeavours by other nations to cross the Fen are strongly advised to contract with such rangers.

Rogue – Common, especially outside the mainline society, since being a career criminal is a good way to find yourself cast out of your band. "Mainstream" rogues within the Sikaari also frequently exist as a flavour of specialist scout.

Sorcerers – Very likely, this is the most common arcane class among the Sikaari, who lack the knowledge-infrastructure for wizardry to become widespread as it is understood by the rest of Wisteria. The vast majority of Sikaari sorcerers have dragon or aberrant bloodlines.

Wizards – Not unheard of at any rate, but rarer by far than Sorcerers. Sikaari wizards tend to fall into the same line of arcane understanding as Orcish wizards as they are mostly found among the bands nearest Twowaters and the practice was introduced by the resulting cultural cross-polination. Still, Sikaari put their own spin on wizardry and incorporate elements of their own unique shamanistic beliefs into the teachings of the Orcish Shamanism promulgated by Gul Spell-Speaker