"So quick to the races! There's no need to be so hasty. Whether you want to be on your way or not, there is a storm coming that'll ground you here for at least a week. So pull up a chair, grab a mug of their finest, and throw some dice with me. For every game you win, I'll answer a question, on top of the money of course."

-The Gambler, Maurice of the Colonia Demonica

Demonican Culture

The Frozen Colony

In the frozen north of the White Wastes and Eterike, there are few vestiges of life to be found. Plants and animals, let alone Kith are a rare site in the shifting endless snow drifts of the northernmost continent. Wild ice pillars, hundreds of feat tall form over hundreds of years, and crevasses two-miles wide lie silently buried under fresh snow. The place seems designed to be forbidding to any but the most well-equipped or hardy types, which is of course why it is favored by those who live in the Colonia Demonica. In the center of Eterike, surrounded by ice pillars and snow drifts, is a clear plateau, upon which a town is situated. There, years ago a group of desperate tieflings and hardy Noregran built stone barricades against the wind, and built the first longhouse to keep warm in. This colony filled a niche role, up to then completely unfilled; a place for tieflings, and other societal outcasts to peacefully live among their own kind, avoiding the harsh lives to be lived in most so-called "civilized" lands. Each year, a few more people heard tell of the sanctuary, and while not everyone successfully made the dangerous trek, once there, people were able to live a life free from abuse, oppression, or atrocity. The only trade-off was living in a hostile wasteland that constantly conspired to kill them. This satirically named Colonia Demonica, or in High Arissian, the Colony of Demons, has remained safe from outside forces specifically because it is so difficult to reach. In order for the settlement to remain standing, it requires constant support from the outside. A network of wealthy patrons, interested organizations, and generous churches, send a constant flow of food, clothing, and all manner of supplies to the settlement. Eventually, a teleportation circle was created in the colony, and the sigil codes for the circle were protected fiercely by the settlement's allies: for it to fall in the wrong hands could mean the permanent end of the great experiment. The settlement is often characterized as a den of criminals and thieves, completely outside of the rule of civilized law. By necessity, the colony is indeed independent of the traditional laws and authorities that govern the kingdoms and cities around the Glittering Sea and elsewhere. However, most of its residents come there for peace, rather than excitement. There is little crime in the town, since most goods and services are provided as a common right to its inhabitants. Due to the higher-than-average prowess among tieflings and other unpopular races, there are plenty of capable defenders, when the town occasionally is beset by real trouble. No real town government exists, other than small bodies which oversee certain aspects of the town independent of one another; the Ice-Rangers, the Church of Ariendale, the Whaler's Guild, etc. Due to its position on the edge of the world, and its inhabitance by those that decent society won't parlay with, it is a settlement often populated by adventurers, both retired and up-and-coming.

           In the early days of the colony, there were no "Demonicans" as such. The entire population of the town was at first made up of people who were well entrenched in cultures of their own, and the village was merely an amalgamation of all of these diverse cultural backgrounds. Fast forward a few hundred years, and there does exist a genuine Demonican culture. The majority of the town's residents have lived there since before they were 5 years old, and barely know anything outside of the frozen patch of ground. The Demonican culture is very much still a mishmash of many other cultures, but it is more effortlessly a smooth and blended plurality of those cultures, not fully exhibiting any, taking pieces from here and there and integrating them into a larger whole. So, the affectations and traditions of Arissians, Kamanoans, Kelorans, Gamorans, and two-dozen other cultures proliferate the colony's cultural roots. One might see Gamoran salutations, someone holding cutlery how they do in Haeland, others reclining in an Arissian fashion, etc. However, there are uniquely Demonican ways of being that suffuse these other cultural influences. Demonicans are simple folk, who tend to take on hobbies and past times that are also simple. Leaving buildings is often unwise, and leaving the boundaries of the settlement is downright stupid, so most people pass the time with conversation, small-handy-crafts, and reading, when books can be afforded. Most everyone in town, from a relatively young age, drink in the taverns, and commonly spend a whole day by the fire, drinking, singing, and conversing with friends; there simply isn't much else better to do. When not drinking in the taverns, they commonly host small parties in home, which are just scale miniatures of the merriments to be found in the taverns. Work of course is found in C.D., it is not just drinking and knitting, but the work is often hard and boring: wood cutting, caribou hunting, building repair. A few lucky ones get to practice professions like smithery, but for the most part, work in the Colonia Demonica is a grab-bag of dull and repetitive tasks that keep the colony's wheels turning. The most common trait exhibited by all Demonicans is a strong will, and a strong attitude against authority. The founders of the colony, and the ancestors of those that currently live in it came there running from horrible abuses, inconveniences, dishonors, disgraces, and atrocities. These stories, of the banal cruelty to be found in the rest of the world is kindled like a fire in the settlement, and those who have never stepped foot in the rest of the world know much of the kinds of treatment towards the unwanted to be found there. As a result, any pretense towards rulership, any air of being better than anyone else, any penchant towards domination, is beaten down in the colony. Demonicans regularly slag-off kings, and curse the names of bosses. This tendency makes Demonicans an interesting person to have a conversation with, but a difficult person to take into the developed world, where a nearly endless supply of hierarchical figures can be found. This opposition to unjustified hierarchies does not just make the Demonicans unpopular elsewhere in the world, it puts a target on their backs.

          The Demonican people are most highly concentrated in the Colonia Demonica. Due to the small overall size of this culture, their numbers outside of the colony are vanishingly small, but not unheard of. The races of the Demonicans are most predominately tieflings, aasimar, and shifters, with many half-races, goblins, orcs, and other races as well; the culture is extremely racially diverse. The Demonicans are a religiously diverse community, and have no centralized system of worship, with many pantheons playing roles in the lives of the Demonicans. However, it is worth noting that no faith has done more to ensure the survival of the colony than that of Ariendale, and so the bonds between the followers of Ariendale and the Demonicans are strong indeed. Demonicans tend to be free-thinking, hardy, and content. They also tend to be argumentative, oppositional, and hostile-to-authority. The Demonicans speak Abyssal, Infernal, and Celestial, as a means of defying the languages of their oppressors'.

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

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

~A -1 to your Dexterity score~

~As a known language, either Abyssal, Celestial, or Infernal~

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

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