The culture of Adel varies from civilization to civilization, and is influenced by geographic location and climate conditions, by political development, by past history, among many things. But some common threads can be found that can produce a working knowledge of a world culture in Adel. Much more so than before, the uneasy peace currently established in Adel has lead to a more uniform world and popular trends are imitated across multiple locations. Adel is a colossal expanse of land, but the megacontinent is united in general, and so patterns of culture have spread across its entirety.
Heroes And Legends
Adel has a vast history of songs, poetry, artwork, and stories both written and passed on by oral culture. These all have to do with the major themes of life in Adel. The mysterious past, the looming cataclysms, the black expanse beyond the sky, the ancient ruins and remnants, the valor and intelligence of legendary heroes, and the majesty and supernatural will of the Spirits, are all major subjects of stories.
Great heroes who delve into the unknown places of the world, the deepest jungles, coldest mountains, the centers of lifeless wastelands, and even into mythical islands beyond the sea, above the sky or into the shadows of the underworld, are some of the common subjects of these art forms.
There is a kind of superficial glamor to the hero’s life that is, rather erroneously, given within these tales. Heroes in stories are loved by everyone, and they find great treasures and slay evil beasts, taking them as trophies. Many people who seek the dangerous life of the dungeon delver, the soldier or occult scholar, find themselves unable to cope with the hardships and reality of the experience because they have been raised on a sensationalized view.
Many may simply give up or spend their entire lives pretending to try. They might even become bandits or thugs out of bitterness and a desire to use what few skills they might have acquired towards something meaningful to them – material wealth, the treasures they couldn’t find.
The truly powerful adventurers of Adel all have reputations and nearly all know or have heard something of each other, and are almost invariably drawn into conflict, either from conflicting goals and views, or out of a desire to test each other.
Real heroes often have less lofty expectations. They may be good-natured or not, but what tends to set them apart is a lack of greed or expectations. They are beings driven by necessity rather than excess, or by passion rather than lust. But whatever drives an adventurer, they have many tasks they can undertake. Many areas of the world remain unexplored, many opportunities abound for those willing to take risks. A thirst for knowledge or self-betterment, atonement, revenge, all drive people.
Adventurers And Attitudes
The common person in Adel is not a combatant or adventurer, but neither is he or she weak. Nearly every person knows how to defend themselves even in a small way if personally threatened and few will be entirely helpless. The people of Adel spent hundreds of years perfecting ways to destroy each other, beginning with the early war-like cultures, then the age of the empires, then the Intolerable War.
That being said, even if the average Adelian can survive a run-in with a goblin, that doesn’t mean they can stop threats to themselves entirely by themselves. There is some truth to the saying that Adel as a whole has “gone soft” since the Intolerable War, and many find this a good and desirable thing. It’d be an absurdly rare sight in 1175 Adel to see a housewife killing a bandit or a monster, but she is not to be taken for dead if she finds a feral animal in her garden.
Clergy in Adel tends to serve many purposes. They are relief aid in disasters, they are missionaries who help people across the world, or they can just as easily be assassins or subversive persons depending on their beliefs and organization. Clergy are some of the most common sorts of adventurers in Adel because their empowerment by the Spirits makes them the most trusted of the powerful many who inhabit Adel. They are often sanctioned by their churches to go on expeditions to any strange or dangerous places, often supervising or leading groups of less trustworthy mercenaries. Paladins serve this role most often.
Military personnel and police forces are just as often sent on task to do dangerous work. It is they who keep the peace from common threats such as goblins, kobolds, animals, undead and lower forms of magical beasts. They are quite capable at their job – overall, the peasantry in Adel have much less to fear from these beings. Without much in the way of wars to fight, many have been put on reserves, allowing them to return home until their country truly needs them again. As such, there is bound to be at least one capable warrior in any one place.
There is little “big name evil” in Adel – rather, powerful individuals and organizations come into conflict due to ideology or interests. More often than not, the creatures doing what could be considered “truly evil” deeds are spirits or monsters who either know no better or can do nothing more. The world or their own inherent attitude pulls and pushes them towards those acts. Rarely do non-spirits act purely in the interest of evil or destruction – it is often a more personal motivation that will lead to immoral acts, and in turn a personal motivation that will lead to those acts being punished.
Necessities And Luxuries
Clothing in Adel tends to be simple for the common folk. Modest cloth robes and robe-like garments, tunics and coats, kilts and trousers, tied with hard belts or with sashes, are common wear among the normal folk. Simple undergarments are also typically worn. Women tend to wear more colorful clothing, often robes and other garments with red or yellow colors and patterns and matching sashes, while men will wear plainer clothing, robes, shirts and pants or kilts with of a single set of colors. Bright colors are often seen as curious in a man. Leather or cloth shoes and sandals, or sturdy boots, are common footwear.
Among the elite, suits and coats with vests, shirts, cravats, fancy hats and sleek shoes show off distinct social class. Athirua fashions, bold and sensual, are in vogue with high-class women – open-backs, no sleeves, long dresses that tie around the neck, short or side-slitted skirts, filmy see-through clothing. Athirua themselves have always worn less substantial and more open and breathing clothing than others because of their origins in the tropics, their lifestyle as nomadic entertainers and objects of lust, and general dislike of burdensome clothing, but their habits have become the fancy of many others.
Food in Adel varies among cultures. Rice is ubiquitous as well as fish. Red meat is very rarely consumed, as cattle is typically used for milk which is another important component of the average diet. Fowl are used for their eggs and sometimes their meat. Nuts, berries and fruits are foraged for or grown. Corn, potatoes, roots, wheat, beans and lentils are common crop, while greens, tomatoes and grapes are often considered to be more high-fetching luxury items. Rare herbs, flowers and other plants from dangerous or secluded locations can turn a man’s fortunes instantly around if sold to interested parties, often arcanists.
Adel is overwhelmingly rural. Each nation has a few large, bustling metropolises commonly associated to it. Here, life often turns upside down for the less wealthy. They can’t grow crops and have little to no community support compared to the rural villages and towns, though they can have government support and hand-outs quite easily. The law is more present here and land ownership quite more difficult. Home comes in many different flavors depending on the area and population.
Due to an abundance of magic, it is not uncommon for people to own magic items. The most commonly owned are potions and other concoctions that are easy to make and generally useful. The rarest magic items owned are those that replicate rituals or spells, or weaponry and armor. The military tends to own a number of magic offensive items, giving its military officers one or two to arm themselves with. Adventurers stumble upon or can easily create magic items, and they own the bulk of them.
For the people, it tends to be a matter of convenience or precaution whether a potion of flight or a potion of healing is purchased. This is rarer, but not unheard of, in the rural lands. Despite this small propagation of magical trinkets, Magic as a concept is still rather poorly understood by most and often feared or sensationalized. A cantrip cast by a novice can still serve to awe rural villagers, even if they own a canteen that fills itself with water via magic.
Selling Items: Any character can, of course, make more wealth by selling items they don’t use, or even by creating items with value (usually magic ones). If they are selling brand new magic items, it is probably by commission (someone paid for the ritual, with a markup, and you made the item they wanted). These markups usually have a cap that differs with the area. Commissions are somewhat rare, lucky chances, but whoever fullfills one will likely make enough money to live comfortably for a bit of time.
If selling used items found while exploring, or items that have been used in battle or to take a life, the price goes down. Such an item won’t fetch a full price. It is possible that the character can trade the item for an item of its same item level that is also used in such a manner, perhaps from a fellow traveller. It is also possible if the character wants to sell the item in a small village, the people there might not be able to or willing to purchase it.
Such items are usually sold at a much lower price for a bargain that nobody would pass up. Merchants typically buy used items at lesser prices, and clean them up or sell them to desperate buyers at higher markups. Usually if a low level non-player character has a higher level item, it can be assumed they inherited it, found it, were gifted it, or got it at a lesser price. Some people can be driven quite desperately to sell a trinket useless to their lifestyle, such as a magic sword, at whatever price can be gotten for it.
Religion In Adel
Spiritual reverence is the norm for anyone’s life. The vast, overwhelming majority of people in Adel worship multiple spirits that touch on their lives in multiple ways. Every village keeps a spirit shrine for their local guardian spirit, where the spirit lives and can be sought for help. A spirit becomes a figure in the village, and almost like a part of everyone’s family.
Larger cities have spirits that hold special places in city councils or in the mayor or sheriff’s offices. The spirits tend to have characters that reflect the area – a local spirit of a small village might be slightly sheltered, but friendly, while that of a massive trade spot might be cynical, worldly and wily, or at least come off like it.
Every person has religious allegiance to at least one Greater Spirit above the other of the 9, but there are any number of minor local spirits, or even groups of spirits, that a person might also worship.
A farmer might worship “the spirits of the earth”, in general, along with Paikar, the greater spirit of nature, and the local Spirit for his village, whom he is likely good friends with, and perhaps one rain spirit that he met on a trip into the forest, and asked for its name to be able to send prayers to later on. Spirits, if they are friendly, will often yield their names this way.
Discussing how Adel’s culture affects Spirits is complex. Many spirits, such as Ainyu, are full-fledged members of Adel’s cultures and act indistinguishably from the normal folk. Otherwise “wild” spirits like Muikara can sometimes be seen wearing clothes and bartering with people in cities, owning property, or even becoming married to people and living with them. A spirit can be recruited by a village to serve as a local guardian, though many villages often have a genealogy of guardians dating back hundreds of years, with the descendants of the first local spirit still watching over them.
Yet many more spirits hide from the people of the world and continue living as they always have, enigmas in the eyes of Adel’s societies. That said, most spirits do live in the wild and have nothing to do with Adel’s culture. They give boons, touch lives randomly and mysteriously, and continue to act as spirits have, inspiring awe and devotion in people. Adel’s societies for the most part know where they are not meant to encroach, and nature is ready to punish them if they try to stretch their boundaries.
Wealth And Status
Depending on status, here are some social classes, occupations and abstract incomes of people in Eden. Clergy, adventurers, thugs, criminals and the like exist outside of these classes for the most part, because their fortunes are somewhat erratic.
•Impoverished – Jobless, in debt or subsistence farming. Can’t afford many luxuries, can barely afford home, if at all. May sleep in a cheap inn and take meals there, while going out to find work during the day. Cannot save money or invest it.
•Low Class – Service work, minor merchants, farmers, most soldiers, apprentices, minor performers or artists. Can afford the necessities of living, some luxuries, perhaps a low level magic item if lucky. In the rural villages, may own land or have built a house on community land. In the cities, may own a small apartment or rent in a nice inn. Can save up money and still survive.
•Middle Class – Lucky entrepeneurs, rising stars, small business owners, established guildsmen, minor land holders, some government workers, certain soldiers. Owns a home, has quite a few luxuries, definitely some magical trinkets (often consumables), may have servants or employees. Can invest money into projects.
•High Class – Celebrities, big shots merchants or other exceptional professionals and land holders, government. Living in luxury that is usually constrained only by imagination.
Technology:
Eden is, for the most part, functioning on the same level of technology as other universes in Dungeons and Dragons. However, it has a few distinct applications of spirit magic, alchemy, and magic in general, that give it a slightly higher magic feel. Such things are not extremely common, but are known to most.
One example is that a combination of alchemical products, wood and coal burning and spirit energy keep the major cities warmed and alight in Eden. Many household items in major cities are built with special rune-encrusted receptors which allow them to work off of spirit essence – but the main sources of fuel for such items are arcane chemicals.
Arcane Chemicals, when in contact with an Alchemical Prism, produce energy as though a spell was cast, activating a series of runes and generating spell effects, thus functioning as an engine. Prism Engines are very large, so vehicles, such as animated carriages, Prism Floats – large basket-like vehicles with large Prism engines at the top providing flight energy – are what Prisms power. Prism Engines are rare and important to countries, and tightly controlled. They are a luxury used mostly in the capital cities or a country, not out in the villages.
However, some magic technologies are somewhat more common. One such “household” device is the Voice-Box, invented in Andaliel, a desk-size object with an Alchemical Prism and spirit energy receptors that allows for quick magical broadcasting of voice over wide areas. A Voice-Box has a number of “Slave-Boxes” which can’t broadcast, but can receive broadcasts, and the main Voice Box is designed to be able to target these with its magic and therefore deliver the sound.
Due to the large size of voice-boxes, they are often used in military installations, and kept in government offices where citizens can gather and listen to government news programs. Wealthy citizens can own a voice box to keep at home as well, but it is illegal to acquire a broadcasting box (though not impossible, especially not in the black market – decommissioned boxes can find their way there for unscrupulous parties to repair and use). Voice-Boxes can suffer interference on certain days when spirit energy is too concentrated, or when the Forlorn Voids are too close to Eden.
This technology is distinctly magical and even slightly whimsical. Eden’s aesthetics are not anachronistic. A voice box does not resemble a radio – it resembles a large writing desk-size box that generates sound when asked.
An Alchemic Prism is a crystal box with magic “veins” of runes and scripts and its functioning is distinctly magical, not mechanical in nature like a deisel engine or gasoline engine. Above all, not everyone knows how they work, and as such, even a villager who has seen one may be forever fascinated and wondering what magic powers it. Magic might be somewhat common, but like science, it can be complex enough that few understand it – and few indeed do in Eden.
There are no light bulbs – there might be lamps with tiny magic wisps floating in them, however. There are no power grids and no environmental pollution. Common magic is applied more practically, and items such as Concoctions, which are inexpensive and can cause great harm, become the equivalent of grenades and explosives for military or other use.
Calendar:
The yearly calendar of Eden has 12 months, each with 30 days. Holidays are usually celebrated on the first, fifteenth and thirtieth days, if any. Such symmetry is believed to be a sign of luck in Eden, given that the world itself can tend to be chaotic, and the fact that it could potentially be swept out from under the inhabitants at any time.
Day naming is not treated very specially – the standard is to refer to a day by its number of the week, for example, Firstday, Seconday, Thirday, Fourthday, and so on. Some nations have their own local standards carried over from local traditions, but these rarely matter as a whole in comparison to the universal standards.
The order of the months is as follows:
1st – Dawnmoon
2nd – Azuremoon
3rd – Feymoon
4th – Greenmoon
5th – Firemoon
6th – Spiritmoon
7th – Greymoon
8th – Songmoon
9th – Devilmoon
10th – Darkmoon
11th – Coldmoon
12th – Duskmoon
The 7th and 14th days of the month tend to be some kind of holidays. The new year’s eve is a religious holiday but not celebrated. Rather it is a day of quiet contemplation and reverence. There are two gift-giving days, one in Firemoon and one in Duskmoon. The first is a lover’s holiday where people give their sweethearts a token of affection, whereas the second is a child’s holiday where the parents and elders hand the children rewards for their growth and good behavior during the year.
