Common folken

These are the people that comprise the majority populace of nations. They eat to live, work to eat, and have quite mundane lives. They grow up, go to schools, academy's, or institutes to become educated. They gain jobs and raise families and doing extra ordinary stuff isn't very desirable.

In the city lands they work to gain currency to buy what they desire and require to maintain their lives. In the country lands they work on their own farm or with their own small business to trade or sell the fruits of their labors so that they can obtain what they desire and require in their life.

Sky Pirates

While not a nation as such the sky pirates do exhibit enough cohesion in a number of areas and so warrant an entry of their own.

The Vertkin

The Vertkin are a tribal comunity that live amongst the vast Rainforest that exists south of the Vallum Mountains. As far as international relations go, they keep to themselves. It's difficult for land vehicles to traverse the rainforest and impossible for air-based vehicles to land. There's hardly any port economy (except for metals) amongst these people because they have learned to use what renewable resources they have around them. They have had some feuds with the Empire due to deforestation and have been defending the forest. What contact they experience amongst other cultures is through various initiations that teenagers and young adults go through with the purpose of becoming educated. They are a race with alot of cultural fusion due to these initiations.

--Overview--

-Resources: For apparel, utensils, few tools and food they use organic materials. Plants provide fruits and vegetables to eat as well as herbs for wellness. They also provide the fibres used in fabric and paper making (most commonly Hemp for both). They use hard flora like bamboo for eating utensils, furniture, tools, et cetera. They don't use slow growing hard woods because bamboo is nearly as hard and grows much faster. Hardwoods are used for something else in this culture. Animals they hunt and the few they farm provide food and also leather, and fir that can be used for apparel. Metals like copper, silver, gold, et cetera are not in resourcable quantities in the rainforest so they do expeditions through the rainforest to do trade at the ports. They don't use much metal because only so much can be carried back into the forest, but what is had gets turned into tools and other items of great practicality. Fresh water and clean air are no problem to come by in this environment.

-Education: The Vertkin prize knowledge and view it as something required for living, just as water or air. One must always be receiving new knowledge and becoming ever wiser or else the mind will become ill. When they're children, they're taught by the elders and Maegi of the community. They learn the basics of life (i.e. what is one's purpose, the ability to be responsible, why we do what we do, about life and death, et cetera). When they grow into their teens they learn crafts, survival when not within the community, and they begin to train their bodies. They use martial arts to maintain fit and healthy bodies. They use an idea similar to that of a river where the body should remain flowing so that the energy of life and wellness can flow throughout the body and not be like that of a stagnant pool.
After their teen years they go through an initiation where they are tested to verify that they have learned all the basics to life and understand how to properly live. They then are sent out into the world as a Shen Ku (Pure Traveler) accompanied by a guide, or Weerden, who will lead them to a port so that they can then go a much further distance from home. They then travel the world learning of other cultures and teaching those who care to listen. Years after they first set off they have two choices, to either go home to raise and have a family and educate their people or to remain a Shen ku and have the world as their home. The ones who go back to their homeland are the ones who bring new technology, ideas and views to their people.

-Religion: They have adopted a religion that doesn't worship a single being or set of beings. Instead they see the universe as a single being or mind (the Zenith). Everything is a thought of this one being, and just as thoughts come in and go out of our mind, so do thoughts come in and go out of the universal mind. Because of their large quest for knowledge they don't believe they in such a thing as evil and good. For good to exist in the first place there has to be evil, and they don't believe in evil. Only ignorance. They're taught that if they experience something they don't like to change their point of view and see it as a learning experience to help them in their personal evolution. They also don't believe in coincidence, only what is. Because of this,they believe in the use of divination if the future wants them to know what is going to happen. They also believe strongly in symbols. Everything in their life can be symbolized, and commonly is in their art, food, architecture, et cetera.
On the outside they appear to be a rather superstitious lot, with their majique and all. However, they believe there's more to the universe then mundane sciences are able to define.

-Architecture: The Vertkin see common architecture (making buildings out of wood, rock, or metal) as undesirable. Their structures are alive. They use hardwood, like Ginkgo, to construct and graft buildings. Knowledge of this first came from a traveling teacher by the name of Caracus in the year 1276 NT who came home and began doing experimentations on trees and plants. They start off by picking a tree that is in the area they desire there house to be. They then begin to add wedges of other tree trunks to widen the base. It is then opened up in the center and more wedges are added to the tree to begin to widen it. It can be related to a massive tattoo on the body. Do a bit, let it heal, do a bit, let it heal, do a bit, let it heal and continue this 'till it's finished. They can add rooms if it's needed, create windows, doorways, et cetera. If they don't want a specific part of the tree to keep growing, they kill it off, like at a window space. The oldest buildings, like meeting centers, are the largest. It is like unto Bonsai, but a bit larger.

-Government: At the head of their culture they elect the wise ones. Whenever the requirement arises they put men or women through a series of challenges to identify the wisest and most intelligent of the few. This person then becomes part of a group called the Maegi and singularly they are a Maegus. The Maegi are ones who make decisions that will effect large numbers of people.

The Namoto Empire

The Empire is the larges political and geographic power in the last world.

The Burbah Peoples

The Burbah are a nomadic people who's ancestral land lie on the fringes of the Empire. Territorial disputes have made them bitter enemies of the Empire as the Empire's mining operations continue to disrupt the routes along which the Burbah have for generations driven their herds of muskox.

In recent years what was once sporatic and scattered outbreaks of violence has turned to war as the Empire attempts to assert their influence on the area in order to extend their transcontinental railway to the seaports of Doneram and Listan on the far side of Burbah territory.

Burbah life and Culture

Burbah life revolves around the muskox. For general informations see
the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskox

They follow the herds from the summer hunting grounds to the mountain
heights for the winters to avoid the snow. They live in yurts made
from muskox hide. They clothe themselves in muskox hide. They light
their fires with muskox dung. They fashion cudgels from muskox bones
and use muskox guts to string their bows and musical intruments.

The division of labor is traditional, men tend to the herds and go
hunting and warring, women rear the children, cook, sew, and gather
plants. This is not to say that the women aren't fierce warriors,
they're trained from a young age in the bow and bolo and are more than
a match in hand to hand combat than most Imperial men.

Like most traditional peoples, the Burbah women are the spiritual
leaders and the keepers of the secrets and tales of their people.
Tribes will have an old wise woman who tends to the spirit world.
There are also male shamans who dispense the psychedelic reindeer piss
that is used in the visionary rituals fo the Burbah.

Like most peoples who live in the frigid parts of the world the Burbah are
unaccountably happy and cheerful nearly all of the time. The
exception to this is when outsiders are around which gives rise to the
tales of the Burbah's unforgiving dourness which form the basis of
most Imperal's conceptions of the nomads.

Clothing of the Burbah

Clothing of the Burbah is marked by layers of long formless robes of
various materials and a compleat lack of fasteners. All the layers
are held together at the waist by belts and sashes.

Materials for Burbah garments come almost exclusively from the muskox. Underlayers are made of various weights of muskox wool, and
outerlayers are made of the braintanned hides of the beasts
themselves. One musk ox hide is used to make a standard male's
longcoat. Clothes are also made from the hides of animals killed by
hunting parties.

For pants the Burbah tend towards loose-legged woolen jawns with
leather reinforcemnt in the crotch, seat, and inner and outer legs.

Our only example of Burbah wear can be seen here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastwear/sets/72157594519262150/

Note this is reproduction clothing and not authentic as evidence by
the use of synthetic fleece and canvas. Very little authentic Burbah
clothing makes it to the markets of the outside world, though there is
some trade with the merchants of the Hinterland. Reproduction Burbah
clothing is widely available and varies in quality from shoddy to
excellent.

On their feet the Burbah wear big furry boots called valenki of muskox felt with lots
of lacing around them. Underneath they bind their feet with strips of
muskox wool called protyanki.

Weaponry of the Burbah

We believe that the Burbah use air rifles as their primary weapon.
These have been around since the 15th century in our world and the old
guns look really bitchin'. They have the advantage of being able to
be fired when wet, no muzzle flash and quieter shot, and needing only
easily made lead balls as ammunition.

Here's some links to various examples:
http://www.beemans.net/images/Austrian%20airguns.htm

The Kunitomo airgun shown in the Wikipedia article is probably similar
to the guns the Burbah use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gun

The Burbah also need some sort of a cudgel for close in work. This
should be an integral part of Burbah life and culture and should have
a suitably significant name.

The recurve horn bow is also widely in use, particularly in the tribes furthest
from the civilized world, to whom guns are still a rarity.

A spear would round out the standard Burbah male's arms. These are
probably eightish feet long and most likely break down in to two parts
to be stowed on the back for traveling. They would also be used in
the more Northerly regions of the Burbah wandering lands where
glaciers rule the land as a precaution against falls into crevasses.

Hookah Smoking Cats

The Burbah have established an alliance with a species of snow cat, the cathod Y Mwg, resembling a lynx only bigger. The cats have become enamoured with
tobacco which they smoke habitually from specially designed cat hookahs made by
the Burbah. As cats cannot trade with tobacco merchants, they rely on
the Burbah for their supply of the leaf. In return the cats
provide a number of small services for the Burbah, such as alerting
them when predators move in on the herds and bringing back children
that have run off.

The Skyborn

Needs to be filled out.