Çeridgul

Ekançeridgul-terashedostli
Flag Coat of Arms
Motto: Not agreed
Anthem: Not agreed
Map versions	Not yet present
Capital	Gultaj
Largest city	Gultaj
Official language(s)	Çervelik
Official religion(s)	Taghlishen
Demonym	Çer, pl. Çerid
- Adjective	Çeril/Çerian
Government	Unregimented Confederation
- Great Speaker	(changes frequently)
- (no head of government)	N/A
- Legislature	Vocal Assembly
Establishment	6881 ASC (fictional) August 25, 2018 (real)
Area	~12,800 sq. km
Population	~2,500
Active population	-
Currency	Barter economy
Calendar
Time zone(s)
Mains electricity
Driving side
Track gauge
National website	-
National forum	-
National animal	Capra aegagrus euranus (Euran feral goat)
National food	Spiced goat stew
National drink	Ejikad (Çerian gin)
National tree	Gymnosporia aqabiana (Western Euran spikethorn)
Abbreviation	CDG

Ekançeridgul-terashedostli the gathering of the courageous Çer people beneath the celestial eyes, known more briefly as Çeridgul the gathering of the Çer people, is the nation of the Çerid, a nonhuman species that, according to their legends, originate in another world.

Or so it might be gathered from speaking to them, if anyone had the opportunity. The Çerid are neither socially organized nor scientifically advanced and are not familiar with the idea of worlds per se; they appear to assume there is only one very large, geographically continuous world, and that it is no less unrealistic to have different lengths of night and day in a faraway region than to have different species of animal.

Whatever their origin, the Çerid, despite having no known prior existence nor any apparent relation to a Micrasian species, now inhabit one of the larger islands off western Eura, which had been devoid of human life since the nuclear devastation of Babkha nearly nineteen centuries earlier. The residual radiation appears not to have caused them undue problems, as, due to their Bronze Age level of development, life expectancy is already such that most individuals do not have the opportunity to be struck down by cancer.

The Çerid appear to have a biological tendency to social anticoherence above the family level. They view society as a collection of individuals who go in a similar direction, rather than any kind of whole: there is no such thing as a person, or even god, whom one has a duty to follow or be governed by, only individuals whose opinions one may or may not graciously accept. They are a unified nation only when faced against a threat large enough to require one; otherwise they remain affiliated to family and, more loosely, to special interest groups of one kind or another. To non-Çerid, they often appear prickly and argumentative toward even their dearest relations.

The Çerid had, with some bemusement, noted the passage of ships by their island for a number of years - mostly merchant vessels bound to and from the Constancian port at Aqabâ, and it appears that at least some note had been made of them. Actual contact, however, has only been recently made with the ovareshid, the no-scales, and it remains to be seen what impact this will have upon them.

The Translocation

Hearing-stalks be held high! I am Shorhad! I speak!

In the time of our mothers' mothers' mothers, we were in thrall to the Tall Ones. Cruel mockeries of the People were they: clumsy, lumbering, with misshapen stalks. They huddled together in great and miserable masses, each a servant of some higher and haughty one. And, so that they could appease those lowest among them, they enslaved the People to be lower still.

(Woe for the People, thus to be bound!)

But there were those among the Tall Ones who, greedy and fat, gathered many things; and among these were atimes books of travel, which, when a paw was placed upon a page, could send one away to another place. Cunning and careful was brother Tibed, who took the book of his haughty ruler, and generous was he when he brought it to his brothers and sisters in their cages. One by one, they departed the Place That Was; and last of all was Tibed himself, who held the book above the flame as he passed through, that none might follow.

(Joy for the People, thus to claim their courage back!)

For his deeds did many seek him as a mate, but his heart was claimed by sister Kadri, to whom he and he alone gave many children. Even here among you are those who came forth from them. And like them, the People have become numerous in this new place where the sky is strange. There is no life without courage, and without sufficiency, and without being unbowed before anyone.

(Learning for the People, thus to guard them from tyranny!)

History

Note: As with many primitive cultures on Micras, the flow of time appears to have defaulted to the same rate used by the ASC calendar. It remains to be seen whether this will continue into the future, or will change as local timekeeping becomes more sophisticated; however, for the present the Çerid have no calendrical system of their own, and therefore dates are represented in ASC.

Founding and Growth

• 4973 ASC: Babkha, the intermittently dominant power on Eura for millennia, self-immolates in nuclear fire. At the time, the island is part of North Molivadia province in the Emirate of Razjania. Its name, cities, and population are no longer recorded in existing archives, but it appears to have been of extremely minor importance next to the nearby port cities of Aqabâ and Aden. The island remained unclaimed until the arrival of the Çerid.
• 6881 ASC: Approximately 800 Çerid arrive from the Place That Was. Among these are Tibed, the hero of the translocation, and the smith Kadri, who he had been courting prior and who married shortly thereafter; theirs is the first child born on Micras.
• 6883-6885 ASC: The First Plague. Nearly 300 Çerid perish, including nearly all children born since the translocation and most roving males. The remainder scatter, avoiding Çerid outside their own families. Kadri and Tibed survive.
• 6900 ASC: As a new generation, raised in isolation, approaches maturity, inter-homestead contact begins to resume.
• 6907 ASC: Tibed passes away. Out of twenty-two children with Kadri, seven - three daughters and four sons - survive to adulthood.
• 6910 ASC: Kadri passes away.
• 6913 ASC: An unusually rich site, already home to several homesteads in close proximity and centrally located, becomes Gultaj after having attracted a number of new families to it. It becomes the largest of a number of villages founded around the same time as the population increases.
• 6917 ASC: The thirty-sixth year since the translocation, there is a celebration of what, in base-6, is an important anniversary. This marks the beginning of an annual commemoration of the event, known as the Feast of Unbinding.
• 6921 ASC: Malachite and azurite, copper ores, are found near the southern end of the island. Combined with tin deposits in the streams flowing into the Bay of Winds, this gives the Çerid a far more reliable supply of bronze and spurs further migration into the arid lowlands.
• c. 6925 ASC: Gultaj's central location, both between the major copper and tin deposits and with respect to the distribution of the population, results in it becoming a booming market town. Gultaj acquires a number of new shrines to the local zeren as a result.
• 6927 ASC: The Verdigris Wars break out. Increasing competition between landowners for copper-bearing ores results in the breakout of hostilities. The resulting coalitions, though consisting broadly of owners of small estates versus those of large ones, are nonetheless extremely fluid, as anyone who gains too much more territory than others often finds themselves a target of their former allies. Matters are complicated even further by the bands of males hired as mercenaries by various factions, since - though they provide much-needed manpower - they often prove spectacularly unreliable, either plundering the lands they are supposed to be delivering to their employers, or extorting higher fees immediately before important actions.
• 6931 ASC: After dragging on for several years, the Verdigris Wars sputter out. None of the coalitions prove stable enough to be said to have won anything; instead, there are many individual winners and losers, with the net effect broadly being that the winners carved out territories among themselves in a more or less equitable fashion, with the losers either becoming tenants on those territories or being pushed out of the region entirely - mostly toward the coasts, where they subsist on fishing. The most immediate damage done is economic, with mining operations and homes repeatedly destroyed and stockpiles of goods stolen; fairly few people died in combat, though about 55 died from exposure, starvation, illnesses, or injuries related to the conflict.
• 6935 ASC: What is held to be the first Vocal Assembly occurs in Gultaj, originating as the 54-year celebration of the Feast of Unbinding. The close proximity of such a high proportion of the population is seen as an opportunity to discuss the news, accomplishments, and issues of the day. Being an utterly unofficial consequence of the gathering and dominated by shameless gossipers, it is soon recognized that the Assembly has produced a number of tall tales and conflicting accounts but spectacularly little hard information - but, just the same, entertaining and worth doing again. One particular benefit recognized is the reduction of tensions left over from the Verdigris Wars, with representatives of the wars' losers getting into a drunken fight with those of the winners and prevailing, to the cheers of onlookers. After sobering up, the copper miners offer to start buying fish from their former adversaries, and the demands of honor are considered satisfied on all fronts.
• 6939 ASC: After several annual repeats of the Assembly, which have become popular as an excuse to socialize and make money, it is felt that the collective information store needs to be more rigorously distributed. As many scribes as can be gathered are set to recording tales and accounts brought to the Assembly from across Çeridgul in writing. To minimize the risk of undue exaggeration, it is decided that a prominent member of the the community should announce the most interesting or relevant information publicly, so that, if found to be untrue over the following year, it can be debunked equally publicly at the following Assembly. The first election of the Grand Speaker eventually results, after a spirited contest, in the victory of the copper baroness Sabiri, who duly announces the year's news and then sits back satisfied with a job well done.
• 6940 ASC: The year's Assembly begins, rather than ends, with the election of the next Grand Speaker, so that this contentious part of the proceedings can be disposed of first. A huge percentage of the previous year's findings are determined to be either outright falsehoods or so exaggerated as to be useless, but one previously unclear point is reasonably well-confirmed: the land of Çeridgul is an island, albeit a big one. This fact had not previously been apparent, partly due to the harsher climate in the lowlands, and partly due to a superstition of the sea. The result is almost immediately challenged by those who feel that other, wider lands are waiting to be found, though there are partisans in favor of almost every conceivable direction in which it might be found.
• 6942 ASC: The most fanatical partisans of the peninsular theory, after endless marching along desolate shores, are either forced to concede defeat or are dead (in one notable case, by marching directly into the waves, certain that the sea was merely a shallow veneer). The exercise does, however, have a somewhat more useful result, in that a party exploring the southernmost tip of the island spotted objects in the distance, traveling on the surface of the sea - human cargo vessels, although the explorers thought them to be particularly large and odd fish.
• 6953 ASC: The 72-year Feast of Unbinding, and the associated Vocal Assembly, is not only a numerical milestone but a cultural one; it was announced by the Great Speaker that the last known individual to be born in the Place That Was, Ebelad husband of Hali, had passed away. Sobering as this news was, there was a sense of euphoria at the thought that they were now entirely creatures of their new home.
• 6966 ASC: Constancia, the major presence in the Euran interor, decides to survey the area around the Gulf of Aqabâ; this includes the island of Çeridgul, which they call, among less flattering names, Malachítis Nísos (Malachite Isle).
• 6971 ASC: The 90-year Feast of Unbinding is held.

First Contact

The Constancian survey mission arrived in 6975. First contact was made on the east side of the Bay of Winds, somewhat to the astonishment of the crew - who had heard of the "scaled-demons" but thought them the literary creation of some functionary of the Autokrator back in Vey - and very much to the astonishment of the Çer fishing families they first encountered, who, up until they saw the ship heading in to shore, were partisans of the "fish" theory on the identification of human vessels.

The meeting was peaceful, less due to any natural inclination on either side than to simple mutual incomprehension. Not sharing even the same body plan, much less bodily or verbal language, they managed to misinterpret, or miss entirely, many potentially hair-raising cues (the surreptitious pointing of a rifle in the general direction of one Çer was regarded with little more than a polite glance; it was a damn strange-looking blowgun, but after all the unscaled one hadn't had it anywhere near its mouth, so obviously it wasn't dangerous). While each side learned a few of each others' words, any kind of in-depth communication proved elusive.

After landing at several points along the coast and having similar encounters - the only meaningful insight being gained was that the creatures became agitated if they tried to cross any lines of poles or crude cairns to head inland - the survey crew decided to move on to Aden, leaving the problem of dealing with the Çerid to those with a higher pay grade. They paused only long enough to produce some pamphlets, done entirely in pictograms, on the benefits of switching to the Norton calendar as their national timeframe and hand them out to the confused Çerid.

The annual Vocal Assembly was dominated by news of the ovareshid and the perusal of their pamphlets, many of which had by this time been repurposed as nesting material but enough of which had been preserved and passed along that some study could be made. The scribes, conferring among themselves, agreed that while they appeared to show the Burning Eye moving at different speeds in different places, this in itself was not a particular revelation - they had known about this since the translocation, when they had been confused by the unseemly speed of the sun whizzing around the sky. The use of different numbers of tally marks in association with each place was no more revealing. Somewhat more interesting were the accounts of the aliens' abilities. Clearly they were rich and powerful people; they had carried many objects made of metal, like their strange blowguns, and been clothed in strange fabrics. Their ship had not been a raft made of logs or driftwood, but a sleek and shiny thing.

It was, perhaps, a testament to the Çer worldview that when they contemplated these things, their overwhelming thought was not how do we know their intentions? or what might they do to us?, but how can we get a piece of that?

There was no clear ultimate answer to that question, but the first step, at least, seemed clear: though the Çerid lived on an island, they were not trapped on it. The ovareshid had vessels sturdy enough to travel the sea in defiance of the Abyssal; therefore, the courageous Çerid, despite the danger, could do the same (it being inconceivable that the Çerid were inherently inferior to anyone). Perhaps they could build vessels; perhaps they could buy them from the ovareshid; perhaps (though the thought rankled) they could even hitch rides. One way or another, it would be done. New lands beckoned.

The Age of Exploration

• 6979 ASC: Several years of experimenting fail to result in a ship nearly as big or impressive as those of the ovareshid, but some success is found in the development of an outrigger canoe. These are able to cross the Bay of Winds much more efficiently than a raft, but are too small to carry much cargo, and those that attempt to leave the island entirely fail to return.
• 6981 ASC: Several merchant ships develop a habit of stopping by the island to barter for local resources, usually in exchange for suitably shiny or useful objects. Some linguistic understanding develops, and from a reasonably friendly merchant who reads them selections from newspapers, the Çerid are introduced to the concept of diplomatic communications. Trying out the concept, they send a missive to the Queen of Caputia congratulating her on her pregnancy.
• 6987 ASC: Keledi of Ezintash combines the concept of raft and outrigger canoe by attaching a canoe to each side of a raftlike platform. The resulting watercraft was both surprisingly fast for its size and surprisingly difficult to capsize, and successfully completed several voyages to the mainland.

Geography and climate

The island making up Çeridgul is the largest of those lying in the Gulf of Aqabâ in western Eura. It has the approximate shape of a bident head, the 'base' pointing northwest and the peninsular 'prongs' to southeast, toward a neighboring island; the southern peninsula is rather longer than the northern. The island is approximately 360 km from the northwestern end to the tip of the southern peninsula, and 200 km at its widest, in the northeast/southwest direction, just as the peninsulas bifurcate. Several spines of highlands dominate the interior, with the rest of the terrain tending to be gently rolling throughout.

The aridity of the island generally decreases sharply with altitude. The inland highlands are considerably more humid than the lower elevations, and are largely laurisilvan, shrouded in fog and cloud and densely vegetated. The lowlands, meanwhile, are generally desert, especially along the western and northern coasts; those around the Bay of Winds and in the southeast are semi-arid rather than arid, bordering on a Mediterranean climate near the head of the Bay. However, the amount of rainfall in the highlands tends to generate a large number of streams and brooks running toward the sea, and around these are strips of denser vegetation.

'Government'

Çeridgul has little of what a human would call government. Embedded deeply in the Çer psyche is a resistance to the notion of ceding personal sovereignty out of anything other than familial ties: one might obey one's parent or mate instinctively, but otherwise no one is held to be owed respect or loyalty except in a transactional sense, and only for exactly as long as the transaction continues. What counts as a transaction for this purpose varies: the ability to speak and convince, social respect from great and praiseworthy deeds, payment for services rendered, or even coercion.

The nearest thing that the Çerid have to a notion of an institution invested with legitimate authority is the collective will. Every year, therefore, the Vocal Assembly (sheglaçenid-tegrik, lit. "the collection of voices speaking") convenes at Gultaj, one of the few dense Çerian settlements and the effective national capital, to discuss matters of wide importance and attempt to come to decisions about them through consensus. Should the Assembly do so, the decision is held to have the force of law until reconsidered in the same way. Should no consensus be reached on an issue for which it is felt a decision must be made, usually some other method of breaking the impasse is required and may take whatever form is convenient to the members, whether through a game of chance, a contest, a sign from Taghli, or a disorganized brawl, many of which are going on outside the actual decision-making in any case and in which alcohol is frequently involved. From this it can be deduced that the Vocal Assembly is less of a legislature and more of a large-scale combination of town hall meeting, county fair, and pub night - a sort of marginally more functional draconic Oktoberfest.

The task of presiding over the Assembly falls to the kalashegtin, the Great Speaker, whose election and inauguration are traditionally the first event of the Assembly's annual activities. The position is, in fact, a mainly ceremonial one, given to community stalwarts, and mostly involves publicly announcing the Assembly's decisions. Nonetheless, a Speaker serves for the entire rest of the year until the following Assembly, and in being the one to announce the decisions the Speaker is held, in a sense, to take ownership of them. Should an act of the Assembly turn out particularly well over the following year, the Speaker may find herself widely praised; should it turn out particularly badly, she may find herself subject to complaints and verbal abuse. Her only solace, in that case, is that one is only eligible for the Speakership once.

Acts of the Assembly have no formal method of enforcement, and their willful violation is generally met with various forms of informal justice. How likely this is depends on the perceived severity of the violation, and indeed is far more often practiced for those things considered so heinous that the Assembly has found it redundant to explicitly discuss them.

Usually, punishments are intangible, such as loss of social standing, refusal to do business, or ostracism. Only in the worst cases, such as unwarranted crimes against one's person - murder, severe injury, rape - will reprisals be delivered through physical deprivation or violence. Crimes against property, while not subject to the same moral outrage, are nonetheless taken seriously and there is, in particular, an extensive body of etiquette surrounding one's behavior when on a female's land, willful failure to observe which will result in expulsion, often with the collaboration of neighbors who do not want similar trouble.

Demographics

Population and distribution

The total population of Çeridgul is small by modern human standards, approximately only 2500 individuals. This is a function of the small founding population, the difficulties of adapting to a new ecosystem, and the plagues that ravaged them during their earliest years. However, the capture and redomestication of feral goats, often herded by bands of roving males, has begun the extension of relatively stable food supplies to the population and their numbers are now growing steadily.

The Çerid are concentrated in the island's higher-altitude interior, where rainfall, humidity, and therefore biodiversity, are highest. This is the only region where concentrated settlements of any size have developed, most of them mere villages with a handful of families; the largest settlement and site of the Vocal Assembly, Gultaj, swells enormously in population during Assembly season but maintains a base population of approximately two hundred.

Most of the rest of the population is found in family homesteads, either scattered throughout the interior or along the indented southern coasts of the island. That said, there are few areas of the island that are completely devoid of Çerid presence, and even in the arid western littoral there are an increasing number of families making a living extracting minerals from streambeds.

Çerid have a latent fear of large stretches of open water - they will build rafts as fishing platforms on navigable streams or shallow bays, but they were unfamiliar to the concept of sea travel until witnessing human ships passing by the island. The revelation caused something of a stir, since it had been thought that nothing could travel in that fashion without being devoured by the Abyssal, and an ongoing debate on the sidelines of each Assembly is whether the strange creatures manage this feat despite Its danger, or by selling their souls to It.

Language

The main language of the Çerid is Çervelik; it is universally understood, and all public business is conducted in it. Its primacy is due to the fact that most of the Çerid's slave ancestors were captured from a cluster of closely related ethnic groups, who spoke either the same tongue or related tongues so similar that they were able to assimilate relatively easily. While two other known languages, Hwimpilh and Pa'irkai, are also spoken, they persist only as the home tongue of particular families and are decreasingly used by new generations.

While Çervelik was not historically a written language in the Place That Was, some domestic slaves among the Çerid evidently learned the writing system of their masters and, after the translocation to Micras, applied and adapted it to their own language. Most of the population is not literate, and those who are - generally descendants of particular families - form a caste regarded with respect and superstition for their power to preserve words.

Religion

(For further details, see the article on Taghlishen.)

The Çerian religion, Taghlishen, is named for the celestial creator-goddess Taghli. While considered to be ultimately benevolent, Taghli must work for the good of the world rather than of individuals, and is seen as too "big" too be able to make an impact that is reliably favorable for mortals, in the same way that a human might struggle not to step on ants while walking among them.

As a result, Taghlishen has a strong animist aspect in that mortals can seek supernatural aid from the other numinous beings with which Taghli has populated the world. While it is convenient to classify all of these as "spirits", in the minds of the Taghlishentinid there are several classes of such beings, which share little in common beyond not having a recognizable body.

Culture

(For further details, see the article on the Culture of Çeridgul.)