Istria is the more southern of the two nations; its capital city, Maratha, is the game's setting. Its terrain is predominantly on the flat side, its people generally darker in color. Agriculture, textiles, and metalwork are the three most important exports — or they were, before the country lost half of its land to the comet's tainted power. What remains of Istria is always under siege by that power and the lives it has claimed.
Terrain and Climate
Istria is the southern human nation, a predominantly lowland region of farmland and forest, bounded by the north-flowing Surain river on the east and the Casdren mountain range to the west. Once, its borders reached all the way to the southern jungles, where dense growth hampered civilization's spread — but fully half of Istria's land has been lost to the comet's creeping taint, surrendered to the monsters its power has spawned.
Far from any large body of water, Istria tends to have a significant difference between day and night temperatures. Summers are warm and humid, with frequent thunderstorms; winter brings bitter temperatures and ample snow in most areas. Snowshoes are a common household item; however, the lack of much up and down in the landscape makes skis far less useful.
Culture and Beliefs
Naming Conventions
Istrian surnames are derived from the name of one's mother, because that side of a person's parentage is generally above question. Orphans who never knew their mother's name may use the name of their guardian, any word or profession, or no surname at all.
Nationality, Race, Gender, and Profession
Istria's people are an egalitarian lot. They come from all walks of life, in all sizes and colors, though there is a definite trend towards dusky and dark coloring. Race and gender are, in most circumstances, irrelevant; Istrians just don't think in those terms. Everyone is welcome in every profession, if they're any good at it; skill matters much more than any other trait.
Religion and Superstition
By and large, Istria isn't any more religious than Kalmar. The sun is life, the natural order, civilization, all that is good; comets are aberrant, chaotic, corrupting, all that is evil. While the sun may be invoked in blessings or curses (e.g. 'sun scorch you,' or simply 'scorch you'), it is never as a deity; it is a distant entity that doesn't involve itself in the daily affairs of its children, once it's given them the tools necessary for survival. As such, curses and blessings that involve 'god', 'lord', 'damn', or any other religion-derived phrase are not ICly appropriate. Comets are never, ever called upon, for fear of attracting their attention to the speaker.
When a comet is sighted in the sky, no business is undertaken, nor any work that is not necessary for day-to-day survival; smiths let their forges remain cool, weavers their looms untended. Farmers still work their fields as necessary, but little else happens. The fear is that the comet's malevolence will permeate anything made or any deal struck beneath its dark eye. Animals born when a comet passes over are promptly destroyed, no matter the money lost; children are often killed, sometimes abandoned, and only occasionally kept (in which case they are considered to be bad luck incarnate, and shunned by most).
Shooting stars are believed to be pieces of a comet broken off and sent to barrage the planet, testing its defenses; if a meteroite's impact site is known, it is shunned and feared. Very few will sit out and observe the display; most hide in the shelter of their homes. Being born on the night of a meteorite shower is less of a stigma than being born beneath a comet — not even in these times are animals killed for such a circumstance, much less people — but it is still considered an ill omen.
Midsummer is the most auspicious day of the year, as well as the first, and children born on that day are considered to have a charmed life; while no ceremonies are performed on midsummer proper, the weeks to either side are thought lucky for such events.
Midwinter, while not exactly ill-omened, it's not a "good" day, either. Births on that day are often considered unlucky, if only because it's a day often given over to prayer for the sun's blessings and safe return, and reflection upon one's life and goals; the birthing interrupted this contemplation, which may bode ill for the parents and child alike. The weeks to either side of midwinter are generally quiet, both because of bad weather and because ceremonies are often postponed until longer days.
Regional Cultures
Maratha
In the past couple of decades, Maratha has gone from a neat and orderly city to one teeming with people, most refugees who fled from the tainted south. The main streets are carefully maintained and kept clear, but many of the others are shadowed by ramshackle add-ons to buildings and cluttered with the inevitable debris of such a population. It is a melting pot of all types; the kind and the selfish, the backwoods and the high society, the wary, the cocksure, and the fearful. It is a city threatened by monsters both without and within, whose continued survival depends upon its ability to withstand the menace posed by their simple existence.
Most of Maratha's people possess some sort of weapon as a matter of course, though that doesn't necessarily mean they know anything about using it. The smart ones shut and lock their doors by sundown; the shady and the desperate risk catching the attention of whatever tainted creatures take over the streets at night. However, most crime takes place during daylight hours. There is a small knot of soldiers stationed at every major intersection, there to provide aid if anyone needs it, at least during the day — chiefly to respond to an attack by something tainted. Patrols are fewer at night, conducted by complete squads (or more), heeding the adage that there is some measure of safety in numbers.
The city's walls are quite tall and thick, fully half of their mass erected within the past twenty-five years, with absolutely no building permitted outside their perimeter. The southern gate has been sealed shut, and one of the eastern gate's two doors has been blocked in place, so that it is only ever half-open at best; the northern gates close at dusk, not to open again until morning, no matter who stands on the outside. Mages are stationed on the walls day and night, along with a number of guards. Only the eastern edge of the city is not walled, but composed of docks on the Marisal River, a tributary of Surain; these neighborhoods are considered the most dangerous, come dark.
The nobility is still learning to adjust to what the common people now take for granted — that every day carries the threat of an encounter with something tainted. In many ways, they continue as they have always, with few exceptions — those families which owned land in the south are no longer wealthy, and all social events are either concluded before sunset or come with an invitation for the guests to sleep over. Some believe taint can't touch them, or isn't as severe a problem as everyone claims — never mind the fact that there is at least two mages and usually a Hunter at every event, and a Hunter always present when the court is convened.
In Maratha, the dead are always burned in an attempt to keep taint from spreading, whether human or animal. Births are cause for celebration, but only if the newborn isn't visibly tainted; miscarriages and stillbirths are also blamed upon the comet, no matter their real cause. All of these are considered signs of bad blood, and in recent years have become common reasons for couples to break up. Marriages are conducted by judges or other ranking officials (e.g. officers in the guard), if they are held at all, but there is no legal benefit nor any official hoops to jump through for divorce.
Farmlands
The eastern reaches of Istria are occupied by farmholds; once, the southern lands now lost to taint were very similar. These farming villages are generally composed of only a few large households, famous for their openness and generosity towards strangers. While farmers are generally not the best-educated of Istria's citizens, often with little skill in reading or writing, hospitality is at the core of their outlook on life. They are always willing to help someone in need, even if it requires stretching already-thin resources that little bit further. Prejudice on any basis save taint is a very rare thing — aside from the general mystification cityfolk tend to arouse.
The households themselves are usually not composed of blood relatives; their center is a web of kinship reckoned in affection and love, rather than birth. Good friends forge a household together, bringing their significant other(s) with them; the words 'husband' and 'wife' are often used within a household towards any other adult member, even if the speaker and subject don't have any romantic feelings towards one another. Children of one couple are the children of the entire household, raised by communal effort; if they refer to anyone as 'mother' or 'father', it's every adult in the family, not just their biological parents.
The farming families have little traditional, widespread recognition of a marriage; there is no set ceremony, no customary token designating a married couple, nor any legal status different from what is accorded any other adult. There may, of course, be a local party to celebrate an announcement, but what happens at such celebrations is entirely up to the family involved. Far more weight is accorded to the formation of a new household, be it a group of young adults breaking ground on a new house or moving into one where the prior generation is old and few.
Births are welcomed and celebrated; deaths are mourned, and in most villages, the dead are buried. In those villages nearer to Maratha, where the presence of the tainted is more keenly felt, corpses of any species are burned.
Foothills
Istria's western border is poorly defined; it falls somewhere in the Casdren foothills. There are few villages, and very few farms, but a couple of mining towns and a few that subsist on timber. Furs and hides are also common items of trade and craftwork, along with some dyes that cannot (yet) be obtained anywhere else. Miners tend to be more gregarious, but the mountaineers are solitary and inclined to suspicion — possibly because they either moonlight as bandits, or have had too many run-ins with such. Most who take to the mountains prefer to live in the outdoors, and scorn the city and its dwellers. Similarly, they shun the 'help' the city offers, and deal with the tainted on their own — no matter their profession, the mountain folk are a fiercely independent lot, doing very little as a group and anything they please on their own time.
Government
Istria is ruled by a monarch, currently Queen Elora, although she is nearing the end of her reign. A council of all the noble houses, along with a few advisors hand-picked by the monarch, advises her in her decisions, but custom holds her word as final.
Custom has begun to fray a bit as the extent of taint's reach is more understood. The council has veto power over any royal decree, assuming three quarters of them can come to an agreement. Similarly, the succession no longer passes to the monarch's eldest child upon death or abdication. Rather, when the monarch deems their reign complete or the council unanimously decrees them unfit to rule, the council selects the successor from a pool composed of every adult blood relative save the elderly. The monarch has the right to select their favored candidate and personally instruct them in governance, but there is no guarantee the council will agree with that choice. This law was set in place only four years ago, as Hunters and mages identified a handful of tainted among the noble houses, bringing home to Elora the fact that not even royalty is immune to taint.
Four days out of the week, the monarch holds audience, any citizen of Istria having the right to come forward and present a complaint, grievance, or plea for official assistance. The desperate can use other avenues to get royal attention on off days, although it's a longer route by way of several councilors.
Istria has very little in the way of an organized educational system. Most of the outlying citizens are responsible for their own education; they learn what their parents know, and follow in the family's footsteps. In Maratha, there is some remnant of an attempt to teach all children at least basic reading, writing, and figuring — but the neighborhood schools, held in some well-meaning individual's home or a public building, receive less and less government funding each year.
Most major professions are present in the city, usually passed down in families, although there is also a general use of the apprenticeship system. The arts and other not-immediately-useful fields have been on the decline, between the decay of the southern nobles' wealth (effectively halving the number of potential patrons) and the city's collective shift towards a survivalist orientation, with fewer youths willing to study them and less of a market for such ornamental niceties.
Economy and International Relations
(See also: the economy page.)
Taxes are collected after harvest time, and higher than they were in decades past, although still as fair as Elora can manage to make them. While the government no longer has to pay for maintaining roads, soldiers, or anything else in the south, the southern lands were also the most fertile, and Istria no longer gets any income from that quarter.
The government puts a significant amount of money into running the mage academy, as well as supporting the army which has increased in response to the influx of tainted. It's also responsible for maintaining the roads north and keeping the city wall suitably fortified. No new waves of refugees have been forthcoming in some time, and all predictions indicate there will be no more, but government money also goes to supporting them until they can be transplanted.
Because of the loss of its most fertile lands, Istria has more trouble feeding its population than in decades past. Most years, there is a slight surplus that can be stored or sold to Kalmar, but if the weather is just slightly off at a critical time, everyone feels the pinch. Almost all of Istria's trade goes through Kalmar, the nation having no ports, although some crosses the Surain River in the east.
Mages in Istria
(See also: the glyph overview and magic academy pages.)
Maratha is the home of Istria's mage academy, where aspiring mages are housed and taught. It is a very old institution, going back as long as the city; in truth, it is estimated that the academy predates the city, people having congregated about the school and eventually created Maratha. However, no known records exist to confirm or deny this hypothesis.
Although the academy is highly regarded by the city at large, only the poor dwell near its campus; no one with the money to live elsewhere wants to put themselves and their property in the line of fire when novice mages are practicing. Not with the unpredictable ways incorrectly scribed glyphs might backfire.
Even student mages, however, are much beloved by the populace, because eventually they will be full-fledged mages, and mages help keep the city together. While mages still have to buy things, many merchants will accept payment in kind, trading some amount of goods or services for a spell of preservation, good fortune, or other useful effect. Experienced mages tend to be regarded with some measure of awe, commanding as they do a power the average person doesn't understand well and couldn't hope to use. Otherwise, mages are just another sort of people; they have no special official status, nor any particular benefits either by law or tradition.
Tainted in Istria
(See also: the taint overview and hunter pages.)
Quite a number of low-level tainted are hidden amongst Maratha's human population. Most appear human; in fact, the majority don't even realize they're tainted as such, because everyone knows about physical taint. Everyone has lost someone to the attack of a tainted creature, a warped monster… but very few realize it can affect the psyche without altering the body, much less that it can lie latent and have no effect at all.
Even those hidden tainted, however, will join the mob and turn on anyone who is outed as being tainted. If they don't know their own nature, then it's because they fear and hate the tainted just as much as the next person; otherwise, it may be for any number of reasons, from that fear to protecting their own secret.
Those who have a physical taint keep it hidden as best they can; if it's serious, they may live a fugitive life, skulking in the shadows and haunting the nighttime streets, when few humans dare walk. Less significant and/or visible manifestations allow the possessor to live a normal life… as long as no one else knows.
Tolerance for one tainted is quite rare. The truth is greeted with fear, blind hatred, threats, and often the summoning of a lynch mob if guards don't show up quickly enough.
Character Options
(See also: the wanted characters page.)
Maratha is home to many people, from soldiers to merchant houses; the poor, those who get by, and the noble-born; nobles whose wealth was based upon southern land, and with its loss are no longer considered nobility. There are refugees from the southern reaches who are settling into Maratha, mostly displaced farmers; others come from the east, eager for a glimpse of city life. Mountaineers come in with furs and leather, miners with metal ore, or because they can't cut it in that independent, difficult lifestyle and want an easier life. Mages, though not common, are not rare, especially because the academy concentrates them here; taint lurks in the population, on top of those carriers who move up from the Fringe.
The majority of Istrians are either mage or tainted; very few have no magical heritage at all. Most of those have one mage parent.
