Activity

@arindown

Northwain sounds really cool! 😀

Thank you!

How do I imagine the Sandwellers?… Hmm, I’ll think out loud here 🙂

They grow some sort of desert reptile – maybe a big tortoise, lizard or dinosaur – for living. They use their reptiles for food (meat and eggs, sometimes even blood), clothing (skin and maybe feathers) and fuel (dried feces). The reptiles are too small to be used for transport, so the Sandwellers have to move from place to place in search of pasture for their livestock by foot, carrying stuff in handbags and in big shoulder-baskets (if you understand what I mean 😅). Wealth is measured by the size of your reptile herds. Reptiles are given as wedding gifts, dowries and bride prices.

The Sandwellers are, in general, peaceful people, and prefer to talk and negotiate, rather than fight. Their tribes were once very violent, but before many generations, God sent a prophet to them, that taught them the true belief, and gave them a set of rules called The Justice – a legal system that governs the relationships between tribes and within themselves.

For example, the tribes are allowed to keep for themselves cisterns and wells, but not oases. Each tribe that lives next to the oasis is given one year to live there, and then have to move again to the wilderness and let the other tribes to come also. Another law forces the tribes of hospitality towards one another and towards strangers.

The laws are enforced by the Judges, that usually live in the oases, and so are able to enforce the laws on all of the tribes in their area. The Judges are considered not a lot less then the messengers of God himself, and thus, have great influence on the tribes. If somehow a whole tribe rebels against them, they’ll call all the other neighboring tribes against him.

The Sandwellers don’t live in tents, but in burrows dug in the sand, that allow them to effectively hide from the extreme temperatures in the scorching summers and freezing winters. The sand doesn’t fell, because it’s held by the special spit of the reptiles, that are also trained to dig the burrows with their claws.

The Sandwellers practice some sort of magical agriculture. They plant plants alongside their migration paths, and magically deepen their roots until it comes to the groundwater down below, and always have a source of water. The plants grow again every year after the summer ends and the heat and sunlight don’t kill the plants, and so, the tribes know that in those migration paths, they’ll always have food for their reptiles. In addition, they grow fruits (like dates and quandong), nuts and herbs crops in oases.

In addition to their primitive crops and the meat, eggs and blood of their reptiles, the Sandwellers eat a lot of bushmeat and even insects, that are so common that it’ll be foolish not to eat them when you’re in a harsh place like the desert. They cook the meat on hot stones or embers, or just dry it.

Hmm. That’s what I came up with after an hour of brainstorming.