"You can't keep a warbow drawn back all day like you can with a crossbow. Even the strongest archers can only hold it for about three seconds. But that doesn't matter, the idea that archery is about perfect accuracy is a misconception. Archery is a numbers game, put as many arrows towards your enemy as fast as you can. Multiply that by 10, 100, 1000, and even the mightiest of armies quiver in fear."

-The Ranger, Gregory Long-legs

Halish Culture

An Industrious People

When people from the west came east, those with more nautical tendencies took to the waves of the Glittering Sea and made their way east to the isles of Adra Minoris. Some of these people settled on the isle of Halstat. The island of Halstat was the largest of these isles, and geographically diverse, with woodlands, pastures, lakes, marshland, and even mountains. The tribes on the island fought for supremacy, to decide who would rule over the land's bountiful natural resources. Eventually, these riches drew the Arissians, and 100 years after the western islands were settled, the eastern ones were. In both Halstat and Rackam, the imperials instituted a harsh rule. The people were naturally defiant to the cultural mode of the imperials, and fought against it at every turn, so the Arissian rulers established garrisons and forts across the island, crushing any resistance with iron. While the people of Rackam had great success with their resistance efforts, the Halish had less luck, because the resources, particularly the grains and iron coming out of the island were too important to simply give up on. Furthermore, the port of Ragassi became a key stopover point in the trade routes to Arathia. The imperial court at Maldew spent great efforts to keep the Halish in line, and this bread great ire and distrust between the Halish and Haelish peoples, which exists still to this day. Eventually, the Halish gained their freedom, but not from interminable resistance, but instead merely from the larger collapse of Arissian rule east of their capital. This meant that those who became the ruling elite of this new kingdom of Halstat were not those who stalwartly resisted imperial rule in the backcountry, but instead those who collaborated with the imperials, and governed their settlements. These people had come to dominate the population of the island, far more uncouth than their cousins in Haeland, but yet still more settled and feudalized than the Old Halish peoples living in the wilds. This culture has become the dominant one on the island. While the people often pride themselves still to this day on their anti-Arissian sentiments, they probably have more in common with their former imperial overlords than they do with the wildlings living in the backcountry.

          Halish people are an industrious and diligent people. From the lowest peasant to the highest lord, most members of the culture tend to view their own advancement in income and standing to be of paramount importance. Craftsmen are often hustling to find wealthy benefactors, farmers are often planting rare crops to turn a tidy profit, and noblemen often engage in mercantile business, a state of affairs unthinkable in most of the feudal lands of Adra, where the aristocracy often look down upon trade. This industrious nature tends to lead them to conflict with druids and conservationists. The Halish have stripped most of the lumber from their island, and often mock the Haelish for having such a huge forest that could be timbered and sold. The Haelish, while not being wholly scholarly, have a natural skepticism that makes them averse to most religious authorities, mystics, and philosophies of all sorts. When a Halish person hears something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The Halish are also well-accustomed to foreigners. That is not to say it is a diverse country, but simply that people from Adra Majoris, Arathia, and the Sun Soaked Sea all come to the island in search of opportunity and trade. It is a stopover point for many others looking to travel elsewhere, and as such, the culture has absorbed multiple little aspects of the other cultures that have touched it. For example, words and phrases from exotic languages, such as Terran, often make it into the everyday speech of Halish people. In warfare, the Halish are not known as tremendous hand-to-hand fighters or cavalrymen, but they do have a fascination with siege weaponry, often bringing siege-crossbows, catapults, ballista, and the terrifying trebuchets into sieges, and even battlefields. They are also known for fostering the skill of archery among their people. Archery competitions are held at villages across the land, and many of the best lads and lasses are picked out at the age of 11 or 12 to be trained as a professional archer by their local lord. The combination of their usage of both archery and siege warfare lead many nations consider the Halish to be cowardly, afraid to face any force in pitched battle. Instead, the Halish view war differently then them; war is not glorious, but a simple and bloody business, meant to be done with any means necessary. The elites of Halstat are known to be aggressive and territorial, vying for power over the other isles of Adra Minoris. They are perhaps best known for their rivalries, with the city of Rumpkin, Haeland, and the Arissians, who despise the Halish, some of whom raided the vulnerable Arissian populations during the dying days of the 2nd Era.

          The Halish people are most highly concentrated on the island of Halstat. There are also some numbers of Halish on other islands in Adra Minoris. The races of the Halish are most predominately human, with numbers of half-orc, halfling, and orc, as many orcs were brought as slaves during the imperial occupation of the country. The Halish are not a religiously fervent people, but those that are tend to be divided between the old pantheon of Borondor, and the newer pantheon of Reckion. Halish tend to be skeptical, industrious, and practical. They also tend to be greedy, imperialistic, and irreverent. The only language which holds full sway in Halstat is Low Arissian.

If you choose the Halish Culture, you gain the following:

~Either a +1 to your Dexterity score or a +1 to your Intelligence score~

~A -1 to your Wisdom score~

~As a known language, Low Arissian Common~

~A Sub-Discipline in every knowledge skill on checks relating to Halish Culture~

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