Entering Snakebite 1: The Cultures of Kocari’s Domain

Who are these people, and why?

This is the second entry in Snakebite Lore, my articles about the setting of my Snakebite RPG and stories. In it, I explain my racial system: I don't have one. Players are all human, but they can come from one of several cultures! 

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Fantasy creatures are more or less the same as cartoon mice: they represent people, but people helpfully shaped into a distinct configuration for the aid of the audience. When a dwarf appears, the reader knows this character will be gruff, industrious, no-nonsense. An orc will be greedy, cruel, selfish, violent. An elf will be graceful, mysterious, and otherwordly. These conventions are so established they’ve become trite, and now most writers attempt to subvert these images. As a writer, I respect the effort to do something new. But as a storyteller, I ask: Why bother?

Why bother with an elf, if you’re going to make it cruel and ugly? Why bring in dwarves only to make them feral, magical, and bloodless? It’s not wrong, but to what end — why even use dwarves at all? The big gain is a sense of subversion, which might intrigue and entertain the reader, but only because their expectation is subverted. The story in itself gains nothing from this; therefore I’m not a fan. I always want to tell the best story, not write the greatest novel.

So in Snakebite, I’ve forced the issue: players are all humans. You can be a surly, greedy, industrious man! You can even be a short, stocky one with a beard. But your mother and father were humans, just like everyone else’s. I think, ultimately, this forces a truer character; people can’t rely on stereotypes, not even as things to revolt against.

The main reason I don’t think this is actually restrictive is that humans are dizzyingly diverse, and that’s true in Taurica. Any flavor of pulp adventurer fits in; from the charming thief to the swashbuckler to the swordsman to the explorer. If you like slender, mysterious, aloof characters, skip the elf: just be such a person! (I've been called 'elven' more than once.) Relying on the “Race” descriptor is problematic to me not for any modern sociopolitical reason, but simply because it shouldn’t matter: human stories are the best stories, and in my mind fantasy races are a crutch that hinders those characters development.

Be the character you want to be. Be gruff, brave, alluring, mysterious, inquisitive, reckless, bombastic — be a person! If you’re in a game for the story, be part of the story, not just some leftover set dressing from Tolkien’s imagination. And if you’re in the game for the mechanics and adventure, that’s fine too! Most people are, ultimately, pretty bland the majority of the time. Go out, get your treasure, cut your way to safety, and relax in the tavern — don’t worry about every move contributing to a sweeping psychodrama. Either way, do it as a person — a real person, even if in an imaginary world.

I do realize those stereotypes do offer one vital other service beyond pure aesthetics: they offer a known soil from which to build a person. Most roleplaying games, even ones set in well-known fantasy locations like D&D’s Forgotten Realms, are exercises in theoretical spaces. Further, the players are inhabiting a world fundamentally built and run by a different mind, the dungeon master. It can be hard to build a sense of character in someone else’s world, especially when the world is mostly a blank slate, eg. at the beginning of a campaign. I've noticed that pretty much all beloved characters come into established campaigns and settings, or “arc” noticeably as a campaign evolves. As the player grows to understand and feel part of the game world, they’re better able to connect to it; their character feels more believably grounded in the world around them.

Snakebite is intended to do so mechanically. Players do not need to learn an in-depth history of the world and its tribes and factions to be on the same level as the GM; the world is simple but deep, allowing for someone to feel at home there quickly so they can then tailor it, through their adventures, to their liking. The game starts out with a blank page, and then characters rotate in to the world as the party change it: ideally, no matter what the outcome of any particular adventure, even a total party wipe, the players continue in that world with their reserve characters! 

But I'm getting distracted. Ahem. Races and cultures:

I don't really buy into racial differences. There's no mechanical difference between any race in Snakebite--but there are cultural differences. 

Humans are cultural creatures; there is no such thing as a “default” human being. There were classical Athenians, there were 5th-dynasty Egyptians, there were pre-plains 18th century and plains-dwelling 19th century Arapaho and 21st-century Americanized Arapaho. Each one of these societies created thousands and thousands of vibrant, unique individuals — one might call them characters. But each of these characters also had an at least partially shared history, worldview, upbringing, values, and all the other concepts and practices embedded in human culture.

Humans in Taurica are no different. The Blacklanders are industrious farming people with advanced metallurgical skills and a complex legal and social structure; drawing inspiration from Babylon, Sumer, and other inhabitants of the ancient middle east. The Greenlanders are nomadic, pastoral, competitive, and tribal, drawing inspiration from ancient steppe cultures. The northern Bluelanders are an urban minority inheriting elements from ancient Germanic tribes but also post-diaspora Judaism. Particular members of any of these cultures can be quite diverse, but overall they tend to be more alike than different. Ashlanders are classic sword-and-sorcery tribesmen, coming more from old fantasy novel covers than historical reality. 

These cultures aren’t meant to be exhaustive, or even restrictive: Snakebite, the city at the center of the game, is distinctly cosmopolitan, and most old tribal traditions fade away there; sometimes lingering in an accent and a diet — becoming the cosmetic flavor that many players want in a character, nothing more. But others can embrace fully their heritage, or push against it, or critique it from within, or call for its revival — any of the fascinating things that real people do, and have done, since the day we created language.

If that intrigues you, I’ve summarized the primary human cultures of Kocari’s domain, and therefore the city of Snakebite, below. Read on!

From my Snakebite RPG manual, draft 1: 

All humans speak derivatives of Jotn, the language taught to them by the giants. Regional accents and slang can vary widely, and speakers from different places can sometimes struggle to communicate with one another. However, there is enough overlap that differences are more often annoyances than true hindrances to communication. Only a tiny fraction of the population is literate, and while there is an alphabet there is no standard system for grammar or spelling, making written texts almost unusable without carefuly study.

Kocari is a culturally diverse realm. Four principal populations overlap here, with different concentrations in the different regions. There are no anthropologists or nationalists to name them, so they generally are referred to (by other cultural groups) by the area they inhabit. In descending order of proportion, the groups are Blacklanders, Greenlanders, Ashlanders, and Bluelanders.

Taking their name from the dark soil of the Black River and its tributaries, blacklanders are the closest thing to a native population for the region. Most blacklanders descend from the local cities of the giants; when those collapsed, they fled to the riverbanks and took up agriculture.

Blacklanders typically have dark to light brown hair, olive to copper skin, and brown eyes that are frequently hazel. When properly fed, they are typically the tallest, broadest humans in Kocari. Blacklander men wear beards, and trim their hair relatively short. Women usually keep their hair long and braided during the day. Clothing consists of layers of light and flowy fabric, though farmers often work in only breeches or trousers. On formal occasions, blacklanders favor gold or brass jewelry; only the richest wear precious stones.

Blacklander culture is agrarian, with families forming tight kinship bonds. Villages are concentrated in dense, defensible clusters, often less than a mile from the next village over. Farmers travel out to their fields each morning, often fully armed. Only the largest manors and estates are typically well-guarded enough to stand outside the protection of the village. In Kocari’s domain, wheat, barley, and oats form the ‘spine’ of Blacklander agriculture, though they produce a wide variety of vegetables and fruits as well.

Blacklanders favor sandstone and mud-brick architecture, with most homes being two stories. Most windows open up to inner courtyards, which are often planted or shaded with cloth covers. The public-facing exterior of a home is considered community property, and villages frequently collaborate to decorate these faces with murals, shells, and decorative patterns.

Blacklanders primarily settle along the tributaries of the Black River, including the thousands of creeks that feed into them. Their cohesive, agrarian lifestyle leads them to create large families, and their population far exceeds that of any other ethnicity in the region. They form the majority of the population in Snakebite as well, though that population has adopted more a mercantile, cosmopolitan culture. Visitors to Blacklander settlements are received warmly, as hospitality is considered a critical virtue. However, outsiders are not allowed to cause trouble--an entire community will rally against even minor provocations, and unwelcome adventurers risk being “ridden out on a rail:” carried from the town and thrown into the dirt after a beating commensurate with the adventurer’s troublemaking. Against a genuine danger, the local militia can form in hours, with word spreading out to the neighboring towns. Kocari’s soldiers are not aroused by any but the most serious of threats and the villages are accustomed to looking out for one another.

Blacklanders have a democratic spirit, with village politics being decided through semi-formal meetings. Given how most neighbors are in some way related and have known one another since birth, this system works with a minimum of formal law.

With a relatively conservative social structure, the majority of Blacklanders spend their lives as peasants, dedicated to hearth and hoe. However, given the sheer quantity of their children, Blacklanders also form the majority of adventurers, mercenaries, and explorers in the region--there are many who find the prospect of village life stifling. 

Lord Kocari is a Blacklander, as are nearly all of his retainers and servants. The majority of Snakebite’s oligarchs are Blacklanders as well.

Greenlanders come from the vast steppe beyond the Hinterlands, where they adopted nomadic, pastoral lifestyles. Greenlanders typically have dark eyes and hair, worn long regardless of gender, and light-brown skin.

Greenlanders are capable of agriculture, but the majority of their populations live off of their animals. Goats, cattle, sheep, and horses form the majority of their herds, though some keep more exotic animals. Hunting and foraging forms a large part of the non-dairy part of their diet, and they eat meat more often than any other humans. They typically wear hides and furs, though they buy and wear fiber clothes as well. Spending most of their lives in direct sunlight, they have a particular affinity for headwear, which can range from veils to turbans to enormous tasseled helms.

Greenlander settlements are highly portable, and they relocate frequently in search of greener grass, better hunting, or to avoid dangerous rival tribes. Most of these tribes reside in the flat, grassy plains in Kocari’s east, though many have pushed deeper into the hillier west and south. Some tribes have even abandoned their horses and become primarily a walking people.

Archery is a major focus of Greenlander culture. Metal being rare, they often use bone or wood-tipped arrows, especially when hunting small game or practicing. Swordplay, spearfighting and wrestling are practiced by male children as soon as they are able.

Greenlander social structure is based on kinship, clan, and tribe, in that order. Children are primarily raised by the parent of their gender, with girls in particular often barely interacting with their fathers. Within the clan--the traveling group--there is clear delineation between the male and female spheres, with every task rigidly categorized. Men hunt, fight, scout, tend to the animals, butcher and trim the dead. Women craft and mend, cook and preserve, paint and switch the leather tents, invoke the tribal gods, and carve the arrows. Men and women rarely mix during the sunny hours of the day. 

Men often have multiple wives, and women are not infrequently abducted by new husbands, such that any particular Greenlander might have multiple sets of siblings. Baffling to outsiders, the institution of wife-stealing is unquestioned amongst Greenlanders, to whom it is simply how courtship is handled. Women are not wholly powerless in this equation: it is a woman’s right alone to confer legitimacy on her children; bastard sons are outcasts, destined to leave the clan, and a shame to their father. 

Wealth is measured in horses, with most men owning 2 or 3, and the most powerful clan leaders boasting dozens of high-quality stallions. Women are allowed to ride and keep their own personal horse, but they are otherwise excluded from owning significant wealth. A few shrewd women have circumvented this system, earning not scorn but admiration for their achievements: despite their patriarchal bent, Greenlanders respect strength more than anything else. 

Greenlander life can be brutal, as even the greenest prairie hosts not only rival clans but predatory beasts as eager to take a man as his goats. They are a suspicious, wary, and silent people, famous for their fearlessness and resolve. Vengeance is a cardinal value and most men have at least as many sworn enemies as friends. 

Greenlanders do not practice slavery themselves; captives are ransomed, assimilated into the clan, or killed.

Greenlander tribes are organized patrilineally into clans. These clans have extensive, complicated internal politics based on old grudges, new marriages, and overlapping grazing lands. Raids between clans and tribes are frequent, and a source of constant regional instability.

Outside of Kocari’s domain, Ashlanders form the bulk of the human race. “Ashlands” describes the ruined world left behind by the dragons and the giants, littered with ruins, battlefields, residual enchantments, perpetual curses, and whirring infernal machinery. Life did not evolve naturally on Taurica; it was the product of two warring empires. As such, it is a hostile world, where every forest hides secret histories and aberrant mutations. The fertility of the Black River and rule of Lord Kocari has allowed for a strip of settled civilization; most of the world beyond has not so advanced. This is the realm of the Ashlanders.

Ashlanders groups come in a myriad of shapes and forms, suited to their specific way of life, which in turn is generally the product of their particular environment. Generically, these groups are called “tribes,” though these are distinct from the kinship networks maintained by the Greenlanders. Ashlander tribes rarely have the luxury of tracking distant relations--in the Ashlands, your kin is whoever is living with you at any given time, as at any moment you might have to stand together or die. 

Ashlanders are invariably hunter-gatherers, living nearly animal existences. They use crude, generally salvaged, weapons and tools, and wear hide and bone. They are shamanistic and superstitious--and logically so, as aberrant magic and inhuman creatures frame their existence. They can speak to outsiders, barely, in simplistic Jotn; often their dialects are so degraded that outsiders rely on gestures instead of words for communication. None of this is to suggest they are stupid--stupidity cannot survive long in the ashlands. They are often keen tactical minds, deeply in tune with their physical abilities and the terrain around them, able to perceive subtle details in the change of the wind or the smell of the dust. 

In Kocari’s realm, the Ashlander tribes have been largely pushed away from the central riverlands, as well as the grassy hinterlands. However, they are frequently found everywhere else, roaming the mountains and forests in small hunting groups. 

Relative to the settled peoples, Ashlanders are shockingly egalitarian. They have no private property, no aristocracy, and no inheritances. Men and women alike carry spears and slings; young and old contribute what they can and take no more than what they need. Though they seem barbaric to the folk of Snakebite, ashlanders are surpassingly loyal, fearless, and stoic. Ornlu the Wolf, the legendary ashlander swordsman, is famous for wandering into Snakebite with gemstones worth enough to buy a palace, and instead buying the freedom of two hundred young slaves before departing for further adventure. 

Bluelanders are the least populous human culture in Snakebite, found almost entirely in Snakebite itself. The “Bluelands” refers to the icy mountain ranges jutting up in Taurica’s north, carpeted by evergreen trees that seem as tall as mountains themselves. Bluelanders were designed for such a climate, and are frequently mistaken for elves, with pale skin and light-colored hair and eyes. Like elves, they have relatively small, slender frames.

The severe Kocari sun disagrees with Bluelanders; their flesh and eyes singe easily after only a matter of hours of exposure. Those who work outdoors anyhow typically have reddened, leathery skin relatively early in life. They have thus found their niche in the larger villages and Snakebite itself; where they form their own insular communities. Most work specific crafts, but they are also particularly mercantile, operating networks of long-distance trade networks linking Bluelander merchants across Kocari and beyond.

Within the towns, Bluelanders are visibly distinct. They have a fondness for adornment, with men typically wearing sumptuous clothing with intricate embroidery, and women wearing jewelry. Bluelander women often have a flair for the dramatic, favoring heavy makeup, perfumes, and flowing, suggestive garments; they are often found as dancers, fortune-tellers, musicians, and courtesans.

Far to the north, there are organized Bluelander kingdoms. In Kocari, however, they are a marginal people, and have no political organization. Though Lord Kocari is a Blacklander, his daughter Saga has bluelander features; in fact, she is what some call a ‘true blue:’ the golden-haired, sky-eyed bluelanders who most resemble the elves. It is both rude and exceptionally dangerous to point out the obvious fact that a dark-haired father like Kocari is very unlikely to have sired a golden-haired child.

Other than sharing pigments, there is no known connection between the elves and the bluelanders, and none seems particularly likely. Nevertheless, the comparison is often made.