Çeridgul

Ekançeridgul-terashedostli
Flag 85px|Coat of Arms of Çeridgul|frameless 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	~2,000
Active population	-
Currency	Barter economy
Calendar
Time zone(s)
Mains electricity
Driving side
Track gauge
National website	-
National forum	-
National animal	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 have only recently begun noting the existence of humans, mostly from merchant vessels bound to or from the Constancian port of Aqabâ. It is uncertain how often the Çerid have been noted in turn, as they have so far avoided those who come ashore.

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.

• 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 had had been courting prior and who married shortly thereafted; 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: As a new generation, raised in isolation, approaches maturity, inter-homestead contact begins to resume.
• 6907: Tibed passes away. Out of twenty-two children with Kadri, seven - three daughters and four sons - survive to adulthood.
• 6910: Kadri passes away.
• 6913: 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.
• 6921: Malachite and azurite, copper ores, are found near the southern end of the island.

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; the lowlands, meanwhile, are almost entirely desert, though streambeds fed from the highlands often support narrow bands of vegetation.

Sociobiology

The Çerid are a warm-blooded, scaled species, generally of a brown, yellow, or red coloration, with six limbs: two wings, two hindlimbs that serve exclusively as legs, and two forelimbs that serve either as legs or arms. When traveling over long distances, they walk on all fours, on the knuckles of the forepaws, but they can also stand and walk on their hind legs if carrying or manipulating something with their forelimbs. Their wings permitted them to fly easily on their homeworld, but resisting the heavier gravity of Micras is a more difficult prospect; any healthy adult can glide for a considerable distance from a height, but sustained flight now requires one to maintain a certain physical condition. Fliers are male by an overwhelming majority.

This is due in part to the fact that females are the larger sex - and are more frequently too heavy to fly - and also the more territorial, so that once they have established themselves in an area they think of as theirs, they are less likely to travel far from it. In human legal terms, females are the holders and transmitters of real property. They tend to form unstable pecking orders with other local females, depending on personality, available resources, and luck; the highest-ranking ones may parlay their influence into large holdings for their families, while the lowest-ranking ones may be left with little or nothing in that area and may have to move elsewhere to advance. Adult females all have approximately olive-colored markings on their faces and across their backs, which darken with one's self-perceived social rank.

Male Çerid are smaller and more wiry, more numerous (by about 2:1), more gregarious, and less territorial. They often own personal items or sometimes portable wealth, but rarely own territory, and if they have a permanent residence it is generally under a female's aegis - classically as a mate or husband, but sometimes for the purposes of chores or employment. A significant fraction of the male population has no fixed abode, and wanders the landscape, usually in groups. Often these are temporary, a way of conveying members to new opportunities of marriage or livelihood, but some have attained a semistable identity, maintained through internal rituals and active recruitment of new members to replace those who leave or pass away.

Çerid have a tendency toward polyandry: it is frequent, though not universal, for females to have multiple husbands. This, combined with some female control over their own reproduction, makes the determination of biological paternity by anyone other than the mother effectively impossible without an understanding of genetics, and indeed the very concept is not acknowledged at a societal level. If a female with more than one husband bears children, the latter are said to have more than one father; the question of which one is the "real" one does not arise except in the context of being significantly closer to one father than another.

Vision

The visible spectrum for Çerid mostly overlaps with that of humans, although the Çer eye is able to perceive some near-infrared wavelengths that the human eye cannot. Çer vision is, however, much more sensitive to low-light conditions due to the presence of a tapetum lucidum in the eye. Çerid have forward-facing eyes with binocular vision, and therefore capable of depth perception.

Aside from the main eyelids, xtauh have a transparent, sideways-closing nictitating membrane. Among other functions, it protects their eyes from bright light and flying particles, allowing them to see even in adverse conditions.

Hearing

The Çerid hear through the long, stalklike antennae curving to either side of their heads, beginning above the eyes. The antennae pick up sounds in a range that is downshifted to lower frequencies compared to human hearing; they can hear noises of a lower pitch than humans can, but are insensitive to a certain range of high-pitched noises. In water, the sensitivity of the antennae is much greater.

Smell and taste

The Çerid have a greater sensitivity to meat- and protein-related smells than humans do, and are able to make finer distinctions between the quality and types of meat and other organs; otherwise their sense of smell is comparable to that of humans. Their sense of taste also does not differ greatly, although they are more likely to experience sourness as a pleasurable sensation.

Empathy

A distinctly nonhuman sense that the Çerid employ is empathy: the ability to psionically detect the state of feeling of another being. This sense can pick up some finer shades of feeling but is most sensitive to the most primal: hunger, fear, arousal, weariness. This sense can perceive direction, but has no "depth perception"; that is, there is no way to distinguish between a weak signal close up and a strong one at the limits of detection, except with the assistance of the other senses and by deduction.

Its sensitivity depends on the strength of the feeling, the distance at which it originates, and the capacity of the mind for feelings; in general, the smaller the organism and the less complicated its brain, the weaker the signal is. For practical purposes, the limit of detection is 15 meters or so from the Çer's head for other Çerid and for many types of land prey, but less for fish; insects are barely detectable except at very close range.

The empathic sense is passive, like hearing; unlike hearing, it cannot be blocked by any action or device of the possessor, though it is possible for a wandering mind to cease to pay attention to it. It is possible, however, for thinking minds to "muffle" their own feelings so that the empathic sense cannot detect them easily. Çerid frequently do so for reasons of privacy, though it is also fairly common for them to specifically avoid doing so when they wish to announce and emphasize how they feel. The fact that humans generally do not muffle their empathic output, nor in fact understand the need, is a perpetual source of annoyance; given that the same tendency is found in animals and in very young children, it leads many Çerid to assume that humans are intellectually stunted.

'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 crimes against one's person - murder, severe injury, rape - will reprisals be delivered through physical deprivation or violence.

Demographics

Population and distribution

The total population of Çeridgul is small by modern human standards, approximately only 2000 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 not 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 seasonal 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.