Ysvalian Culture

Ysvalians are the simplest and least pretentious of all Valernian cultures. Their lives revolve mostly around their farming or fishing activities, which they complement with evenings of merrymaking or quiet gatherings. They enjoy the small pleasures, such as good food, warm drinks and camaraderie; but they also like the sun on their backs as they toil on the fields and the sweat on their brow after putting a load down. They enjoy the pride in a finished chore, but they also like a good jest and the occasional vigorous dance. They have a saying that life consists of ‘farm, fish and frolic’, meaning that hard work comes before fun, but fun remains an essential part of the recipe.

Overview
As Ysvalians prize the simple life, they embrace simple values; tenets that anyone can live by, without complex laws or codes. Respect your neighbor, help others. Ysvalians frown on any rules that go much deeper than that. A complex law can be twisted, interpreted, abused. A simple law leaves no room for bullshit.

By the same token, Ysvalians distrust sophistication and luxury. Everyone likes a full belly and a warm embrace; any added spices and perfumes are just dress-up. A good, thrilling yarn by the fire is enough to fan the heart; ornate terms add unnecessary weight. An individual, or a civilization, that pursues the unnecessary, that focuses on the decoraton, is just pretending. Real life is about satisfying needs, not putting faces and words on things.

For Ysvalians, the greatest source of both pleasure and virtue, and the core of their culture, is community. Everything they do, from farming to dancing, from cooking to storytelling, they do for others. Parents dote on their children, youths stand for their siblings, whives hunt for their husbands and husbands cook for their wives. But men also cook for their neighbors, and children also help passing travellers with their load. There’s no time better spent than doing things for and with your kin - sharing stories, sharing a meal, sharing the weight. This, more than anything else, is what makes Ysvalians what they are.

The second most important pillar of Ysvalian society is the Galadyan Temple, their all-pervading religion. Most Ysvalians worship the light, obey its church and swear by its tenets. Priests of Light do not hold any authority, but their word is never questioned, and their advice is always followed. Ysvalians don’t boast or preach about their piety - they quietly live by the tenets of the light, and expect nobody to look up to them for it. They will, however, frown on a neighbor that rejects Galadyan values or doesn’t share with the community. The Galadyan temple is an insidious presence; its priests don’t give sumptuous masses or acts of faith, but they quietly share the fire and watch families as they practice their daily chores, expecting them to follow the light. The temple doesn’t organize the town festival, but a priest will be there at the dance, sharing in the food and stories, and listening to who in town has done what.

These Galadyan priests are not attached to a single city, instead travelling between them as messengers of the faith. Thus they work as a moral thread that joins Ysval’s different, remote, and often unconnected settlements, In fact Ysval is barely a cohesive Realm, with every city in the Alliance ruling itself as they see fit, but for their common adherence to the Galadyan Temple, the one set of rules that all Ysvalians agree upon and live by.

The third core element of Ysvalian culture are its knightly orders. While all Ysvalians can, and must, fight to defend their lands and their kin, knights are the leaders and organizers of this defense. Given their task, they have become the leaders of Ysval; each city is under the rule of its own knightly order. Knights serve as judges, spokespersons, constables, military leaders and keepers of the peace, and the head of a knightly order will also be the head of their city. Ysvalians place great pride on their city’s knightly order, and belonging to it is a dream of every boy and girl. The only authority above the knights is the Galadyan temple, which can unofficially recommend, appoint or remove order members by its blessings, condemnations or advice.

Enforced Community
Ysvalian culture has developed many subtle ways to enforce the feeling of community among its citizens, innately observed by all Ysvalian citizens.

As Ysvalians are aware of their own boisterous, crude nature, they constantly watch themselves, and each other, for slips in observance, and are always ready to censure each other for unrighteous behavior or minor transgressions against the holy law. They are their own cultural and religious police, and usually watch for their community’s weakest link, knowing that if it breaks, their society would disintegrate. Such is their credo - to kindle the light through others.

This doesn’t mean that an Ysvalian belongs to the community in body and spirit. Each citizen must be free and independent; else their efforts to help the community would be worthless. It is the act of giving one’s own freedom to others which the Light blesses; it is the sharing of one’s own possessions which makes gifts count.

While this sense of enforced community works at a nearly unconscious level, and very few Ysvalians actually run around tattling on their neighbors, the danger of losing one’s community is always there, in the recesses of every citizen’s heart. The worst punishment Ysvalian law contemplates - and that priests suggest, but never directly enforce - is exile from the community. There is nothing sadder than watching a band of banished Ysvalians from a distance, trudging against a blizzard, looking wistfully back at the town that cast them out. One’s crimes against the light must be terrible indeed to earn such retribution.

The Adoption
One of the first cultural customs to be enforced by the Galadyan temple was the adoption - a rule by which every family, once a year, must send one of its members - the father, the mother or one of the siblings - to live as an adopted member of another family for a full season. The ‘Adopted’ is treated in all respects as a full family member, with all the privileges and responsibilities entailed. An adopted father will love and care for the mother and vice versa; an adopted child will love and respect their adopted parents as if they were their own. Any Ysvalian family is likely to have one Adopted member at any given time. Often, the links and bonds that bloom during an Adoption become stronger than those tying the Adopted to their own family.

In an Adoption, It is much more common to trade children than adults, but sometimes a house without a father or a mother will request for a parent Adoption to help during a hard season, or two families will trade mothers or fathers by previous agreement - which more often than not involves discreet scheming by one of the future new couples. Children conceived during an adoption belong to the home they are born into, but may be Adopted by their other family as often as desired.

During the Tyverian conquest, it was the Adoption which inspired Tyveris to impose the Blood Geas, requiring the third child of each Ysvalian family to live in the Empire as a blood serf. But it was also the Adoption which steeled Ysvalian families against the loss of their children. While the Blood Geas remained active, families that gave a child to Tyveria were exempt from sending their members for Adoption; conversely, they were considered first to receive Adopted members.

Common Combat
One of the most dangerous - and fun - means to enforce community in Ysval is the rule of Common Combat, supposedly enounced by Galadyn himself, though he ‘forgot to write it down’, allowing anyone to participate in any fight they witness. If two Ysvalians get in a public fight, all onlookers are entitled and encouraged to chime in, attacking either of the combatants, or both. This makes most violent disagreements into massive, brutal, bloody affairs, allowing the whole community to vent off some steam and perhaps discharge their pent-up tension against such or such neighbor. More importantly, it makes fights into a matter of responsibility - if you engage someone in a fight, you will cause someone else to get hurt. Thus, Ysvalians only fight among themselves for very good reasons - or when they want everyone to join in.

Knights and militia are the only Ysvalian citizens forbidden from taking part in Common Combat, although it is not rare for soldiers to slip through a side street, ditch their weapons and uniform, and join the fight pretending to be civilians. But knights and militia are also the only citizens with authority to order a Common Combat to stop. As a rule, they’ll allow it to proceed for a few minutes - people need their outlets - before dispersing it, unless it grows too boring, too dangerous, or nobody else seems to want to join.

Whaling
One unique trait of Ysvalian culture is the widespread practice of whaling. Ysvalians apply the term ‘whale’ to a large and mostly uncategorized number of marine creatures, be them fish, mammals or reptiles, which occasionally cross into Ysvalian seas from Sikaria, where they were created.

All whales are dangerous, not only for their massive size or because they attack other creatures on sight, but also because they upset the environmental balance of the Dreamsea, having no natural predators and no end to their appetite. Some species of sikarian whales are better designs, and as such are less dangerous or aggressive to the ecosystem, and Ysvalian whalers have learned to more or less let them be; but as a rule whales are to be hunted or driven away from the Dreamsea, which requires long and dangerous ocean expeditions.

Most Ysvalian soldiers and knights have served a stint in these expeditions, as the whaling practice is considered an honorable trade, an effective training, an exercise in building character and a community service.

The Hearth
Fire - not ‘fire’ as an element, but ‘the fire’ as a symbol of home, camp and hearth - has a sacred cultural value for Ysvalians. By its light, it represents the Galadyan faith. By its warmth, which gathers the people around it, it represents the Ysvalian community. By its very nature, a spot of life and heat amidst the harsh cold, it represents the nature of Ysval itself, which has survived the darkest of powers and the darkest of times, and still stands as a bastion of home and fellowship, rising in the darkness.

All Ysvalian homes maintain a continuously lit hearth, which is never allowed to burn out. Most Ysvalian rules, particularly non-religious ones, are somewhat flexible; not this one. A fire is not only a cultural symbol but a necessity. The fire should always be ready to cook a meal, to receive a cold traveler or to summon one’s family members to share time together; most importantly, if the fire goes out, the family risks dying from exposure. A house without a burning fire is not an Ysvalian house. One of the most important signs that one is ready to form a family is one’s ability to kindle and maintain a fire that won’t go out. Watching the fire and keeping it lit is one of the most important chores in an Ysvalian home. Most Galadyan priests will bless your hearth to never go out in exchange for a bowl of soup or a night’s hospitality; however, many Ysvalians reject the blessing, as they consider it a point of pride to be able to keep their fires going by their own effort and tireless vigilance.

On a bigger scale, a town’s torches and beacons are subject to the same doctrine. A city with a dead beacon is a dead city, and other cities know not to approach the area, for raiders or monsters have slaughtered everyone. The city’s street torches are always lit, to mark a way during the night and to melt snow during the day. In peacetime, Ysvalian militia and soldiers are mostly dedicated to keeping the city torches going.

Finally, there is the Festival Fire, as Ysvalians informally call the great bonfire that a city will light during special occasions. When a whole city or a whole neighborhood gathers around for a religious festival or a town dance, a large bonfire is lit at the plaza, and it remains lit for the full day, or the full week, of the festivities. The most common holidays and celebrations that require a Festival Fire are Blessings (midwinter), Galadyn day (summer’s eve), Goblin Candles (the first night of autumn), Goldfire (the eve of spring), Redfire (midfall), Repentance (midsummer) and Silverfire (the eve of winter).