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Culture of Faneria: Difference between revisions
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The '''Fhainn''' are a group of peoples in northern [[Levantia]]. While the core Fhainnin peoples are distinguished by ancestry from the pre-Celtic Fenni civilization, modern Fhainn are largely defined by language, shared culture, and historic pluralism. An 'ethnic' Fhainn is primarily of shared descent between Fenni peoples and the Celtic ''Oestrynetes,'' but many Fhainnin | The '''Fhainn''' are a group of peoples in northern [[Levantia]]. While the core Fhainnin peoples are distinguished by ancestry from the pre-Celtic Fenni civilization, modern Fhainn are largely defined by language, shared culture, and historic pluralism. An 'ethnic' Fhainn is primarily of shared descent between Fenni peoples and the Celtic ''Oestrynetes,'' but many Fhainnin people have significant Coscivian, Faeskt, Aenglish or other Gothic descent. | ||
''The Fhainn are a subculture of the [[Feinii|Fheadhainn Culture Group]] specific to northern Levantia and southern [[Faneria]] in particular, with small communities around the edges of the Great Inner Sea and in the former colonies of the aforementioned nation.'' | ''The Fhainn are a subculture of the [[Feinii|Fheadhainn Culture Group]] specific to northern Levantia and southern [[Faneria]] in particular, with small communities around the edges of the Great Inner Sea and in the former colonies of the aforementioned nation.'' | ||
''Some Fhainnin people, specifically westerners, have a tendency to nudge strangers with their elbows, poke them to get their attention, or just start talking to strangers as if they know each other. The reason behind this behavior isn't clear, as it bothers other Fhainn almost as much. Westerners are also more likely to be redheads, which has created the odd stereotype of annoying, redheaded Fhainnin tourists, especially in countries with less social openness. Non-redheaded Fhainnin tourists thank their lucky stars the stereotype has a physical trait tacked on.'' | ''Some Fhainnin people, specifically westerners, have a tendency to nudge strangers with their elbows, poke them to get their attention, or just start talking to strangers as if they know each other. The reason behind this behavior isn't clear, as it bothers other Fhainn almost as much. Westerners are also more likely to be redheads, which has created the odd stereotype of annoying, redheaded Fhainnin tourists, especially in countries with less social openness. Non-redheaded Fhainnin tourists thank their lucky stars the stereotype has a physical trait tacked on.'' | ||
''Northern Fhainn, however, have an habit of touching or using things without asking. This is a result of living communally in larger family complexes being more common in the northern countryside, and leads to some urban culture shock as well as culture shock abroad. Luckily, most of them unlearn it quickly, and it's not universal, but it's enough to be stereotyped.'' | ''Northern Fhainn, however, have an habit of touching or using things without asking. This is a result of living communally in larger family complexes being more common in the northern countryside, and leads to some urban culture shock as well as culture shock abroad. Luckily, most of them unlearn it quickly, and it's not universal, but it's enough to be stereotyped.'' | ||
''Most Fhainn living in the north or in the mountains don't take their shoes off indoors unless asked, and will idle awkwardly around the entryway for permission to 'make themselves at home' or explicitly being told where to put their shoes, as it's a cultural habit to give permission to enter by allowing a guest to remove their shoes. Guests don't have to remove their shoes per se, but in rural areas, it can be taken as an insult to not allow guests to remove their footwear.'' | ''Most Fhainn living in the north or in the mountains don't take their shoes off indoors unless asked, and will idle awkwardly around the entryway for permission to 'make themselves at home' or explicitly being told where to put their shoes, as it's a cultural habit to give permission to enter by allowing a guest to remove their shoes. Guests don't have to remove their shoes per se, but in rural areas, it can be taken as an insult to not allow guests to remove their footwear.'' | ||
''Southern, or Ninerivers/'proper' Fhainn, tend to be more educated on average than northerners and inland easterners and slightly more educated than most coastal easterners, and show that by being (again, stereotypically) argumentative about policies, belief systems, and the like, and often fail to read the room when doing so with foreigners. The disconnect is that when most Fhainnin do it, they do it for entertainment value and to show off their civic virtue; this is very easily misinterpreted as deliberately picking a fight. Fhainnin have, partially because of this, been stereotyped as more decent than not at semi-sober and buzzed fighting , though if you place the same man against a Coscivian with both fully drunk, the latter will generally be considered a better fighter simply due to Coscivians always being drunk.'' | ''Southern, or Ninerivers/'proper' Fhainn, tend to be more educated on average than northerners and inland easterners and slightly more educated than most coastal easterners, and show that by being (again, stereotypically) argumentative about policies, belief systems, and the like, and often fail to read the room when doing so with foreigners. The disconnect is that when most Fhainnin do it, they do it for entertainment value and to show off their civic virtue; this is very easily misinterpreted as deliberately picking a fight. Fhainnin have, partially because of this, been stereotyped as more decent than not at semi-sober and buzzed fighting , though if you place the same man against a Coscivian with both fully drunk, the latter will generally be considered a better fighter simply due to Coscivians always being drunk.'' | ||
=Religion= | =Religion= | ||
====Pagan Antiquity==== | ====Pagan Antiquity==== | ||
Fhainnin from the Ninerivers, West, Transisthmus, Nordskan coast, and the Interior varied significantly in ancient worship rituals, with the Nordskan and Transisthmus communities worshipping Gothic deities, while the remainder fused ancient Fenni gods with the more diffused Celtic concepts of many spirits. This lead to the formation of a pagan faith which worshipped both a primary pantheon of gods by various names as well as a number of spirits, primarily based around bodies of water and family units. As a result, Fhainnin pagans worshipped one or several of the gods of their pantheon while also paying homage to the local river or lake spirit. The concept of ancestor spirits eventually evolved into the practice of interring the dead first beneath the home after cleaning the bones away to ward off scavengers, and later | Fhainnin from the Ninerivers, West, Transisthmus, Nordskan coast, and the Interior varied significantly in ancient worship rituals, with the Nordskan and Transisthmus communities worshipping Gothic deities, while the remainder fused ancient Fenni gods with the more diffused Celtic concepts of many spirits. This lead to the formation of a pagan faith which worshipped both a primary pantheon of gods by various names as well as a number of spirits, primarily based around bodies of water and family units. As a result, Fhainnin pagans worshipped one or several of the gods of their pantheon while also paying homage to the local river or lake spirit. The concept of ancestor spirits eventually evolved into the practice of interring the dead first beneath the home after cleaning the bones away to ward off scavengers, and later cremating and interring ashes inside a family shrine nearby. The original Celtic invaders who conquered the Fenni continued to build cairns for several centuries but increasingly adopted local burial rites even as the local language was extinguished by Celtic legal and trade tongues. | ||
While not common, human sacrifices were introduced by the Celts between 600-400 BC and ended sometime around 300 AD after a dramatic decline in the 200s BC. These sacrifices were used as a way to remove criminals or outcasts from a community while appeasing the more violent deities, as well as to hopefully prevent water spirits from becoming angry and flooding. | While not common, human sacrifices were introduced by the Celts between 600-400 BC and ended sometime around 300 AD after a dramatic decline in the 200s BC. These sacrifices were used as a way to remove criminals or outcasts from a community while appeasing the more violent deities, as well as to hopefully prevent water spirits from becoming angry and flooding. | ||
The primary deities worshipped in the Ninerivers around the time of Christianization were: | The primary deities worshipped in the Ninerivers around the time of Christianization were: | ||
* Braess: God of stars and the sky. Mythologically, he was killed and fell to earth, creating the Vandarch sea and creating freshwater and fertile soil from his spilled blood. | * Braess: God of stars and the sky. Mythologically, he was killed and fell to earth, creating the Vandarch sea and creating freshwater and fertile soil from his spilled blood. | ||
* Nehaeleni: Goddess of freshwater and sailors. The wife of Braess, she primarily oversees his human descendants. | * Nehaeleni: Goddess of freshwater and sailors. The wife of Braess, she primarily oversees his human descendants. | ||
* Maponus: God of music, poetry, and arts; loaned from Gothic cultures. | * Maponus: God of music, poetry, and arts; loaned from Gothic cultures. | ||
* Lungh: | * Lungh: God of metalworking and stone; raised mountains to protect the Vandarsh from harsh storms, presumably from the [[Kilikas Storm Belt]]. | ||
* Bovaero: God of medicine, literacy, and architechture. | * Bovaero: God of medicine, literacy, and architechture. | ||
* Benelus: Sun, fire, and farming god; associated with the Latin god Benevelus. | * Benelus: Sun, fire, and farming god; associated with the Latin god Benevelus. | ||
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* Cerunnast: God of birth, death, and the night sky. | * Cerunnast: God of birth, death, and the night sky. | ||
* Epona: Goddess of beasts, hunting, and war. | * Epona: Goddess of beasts, hunting, and war. | ||
==== Christianization ==== | |||
Christianity in the form of [[Levantine Catholicism]] was introduced to Faneria beginning in the Fourth Century AD, with a number of travelling preachers moving into the Vandarch and finding refuge with the few surviving latin coastal colony towns initially. Missionaries found integrating Christ as a deity within the polytheistic faiths of the northern Basin easy, but the transition to full Christianization was agonizingly slow by the standards of the era and did not reach a majority of the population until the Twelfth Century. The gradual replacement of existing traditions and the syncretic sects that formed as a result eventually grew to be a severe issue in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Eventually, the locals translated the Bible directly into two local dialects - a transgression so severe that it incited several Christian states around the Vandarch to go on crusade against the developing Northern Rite, pushing outright pagan worship out of the lowlands in the 10th Century. This shattered the tolerance between pagans, Northern Rite syncretic, and hardline Catholics, and removed Pagans from the heights of political power in northern Levantia permanently. | |||
====Mythologies==== | ====Mythologies==== | ||
* The Wyrm of Whyllisge was a legendary monster with six legs and a serpentine body roughly a hundred and eighty hands long that lived on the coast of the Vandarch Sea, slipping ashore to steal livestock and the occasional person for food. It also supposedly was capable of speech, and was possessed of a fickle nature, at times trading favors and bountiful catches of fish for toys and trinkets and at others tearing fishermens’ nets to ribbons or even attacking and sinking small ships. Some versions describe it as a demon possessing a sea monster. The Wyrm was supposedly killed when a Priest came along to Christianize the coastline where it prowled, and depending on the version you hear, either the Wyrm was killed instantly by the priest speaking the name of God, or the Wyrm was hunted and killed by a band of knights called the Four Fellows. In either version, the Wyrm is cut apart and its pieces thrown back into the Vandarch. Water serpents were one of many minor objects of worship in pagan times, and the Wyrm of Whyllisge in particular is a conglomeration of sea monster tales and an allegory about the Christianization of most of the Ninerivers. There is no known place named Whyllisge on the Vandarch coast (there is a town inland named after the legend, however), which continues to puzzle scholars. The Wyrm myth is known to have had at least some roots in myths of krakens and sea serpents spread through trade with other early civilizations, but the earliest literature describing it is heavily damaged and currently preserved in a sealed case in the vault of the ''Peoples' National Grand Library'' in Teindún out of concern for its condition. | * The Wyrm of Whyllisge was a legendary monster with six legs and a serpentine body roughly a hundred and eighty hands long that lived on the coast of the Vandarch Sea, slipping ashore to steal livestock and the occasional person for food. It also supposedly was capable of speech, and was possessed of a fickle nature, at times trading favors and bountiful catches of fish for toys and trinkets and at others tearing fishermens’ nets to ribbons or even attacking and sinking small ships. Some versions describe it as a demon possessing a sea monster. The Wyrm was supposedly killed when a Priest came along to Christianize the coastline where it prowled, and depending on the version you hear, either the Wyrm was killed instantly by the priest speaking the name of God, or the Wyrm was hunted and killed by a band of knights called the Four Fellows. In either version, the Wyrm is cut apart and its pieces thrown back into the Vandarch. Water serpents were one of many minor objects of worship in pagan times, and the Wyrm of Whyllisge in particular is a conglomeration of sea monster tales and an allegory about the Christianization of most of the Ninerivers. There is no known place named Whyllisge on the Vandarch coast (there is a town inland named after the legend, however), which continues to puzzle scholars. The Wyrm myth is known to have had at least some roots in myths of krakens and sea serpents spread through trade with other early civilizations, but the earliest literature describing it is heavily damaged and currently preserved in a sealed case in the vault of the ''Peoples' National Grand Library'' in Teindún out of concern for its condition. | ||
''Generally, the local faiths held that you could only experience the things you did to other people after death, and people who were evil either stopped existing or doomed themselves to an eternity of reliving what they did to others, depending on the local specifics. Good people supposedly got to be stuck in a dream/trancelike state. Since the afterlife was based on others' perception of you, slander was considered a crime comparable to murder in the more extreme areas and could easily lead to a duel or feud'' | ''Generally, the local faiths held that you could only experience the things you did to other people after death, and people who were evil either stopped existing or doomed themselves to an eternity of reliving what they did to others, depending on the local specifics. Good people supposedly got to be stuck in a dream/trancelike state. Since the afterlife was based on others' perception of you, slander was considered a crime comparable to murder in the more extreme areas and could easily lead to a duel or feud'' | ||
====Christian Medieval==== | ====Christian Medieval==== | ||