Hiakul Culture
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culture and biome and food
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 2 Mar 2017, 21:17.
[comments] uzmhiakulcultureadoptionfoodbiomewarnaangen The language is spoken in Hiakul, which is in a boreal forest. There are many evergreens, lakes, bogs and old mountain ranges. Winters are long and cold, summers are short and somewhat warm. It is wet all year round.
Wheat, potatoes, squash and beans are grown for food. Cattle and pork are important; venison is also eaten, and blood sausage is a common food. Adults don't drink milk and would find the idea of drinking milk very strange after toddlerhood. Berries, berry pastries, and maple syrup are a favorite dessert.
Deer are sacred, and venison is eaten only on holidays. The god of the sun and forest takes the form of a white buck. Grizzly bears are also sacred, and eaten only at ritual feasts. The Bear Goddess is the goddess of life, rebirth, and pregnancy. Some important festivals/holidays are planting, harvest, mid-winter, and The Awakening- when bears come out of hibernation.
In war, adults are killed and children are taken and adopted into families and made to learn the language and culture so as to replenish Hiakul's numbers. The adopted children are made to feel like they are a part of the family, though, and aren't treated any differently than a couple's biological children.
Gambling is a common pass time, as is a form of lacrosse and soccer.
Large extended families live in longhouses which they paint and decorate themselves. A beautiful longhouse is often a point of pride for a family and artists are well-respected. Wealthy families might have a two-story house, and cities often consist of three or four longhouses around a central courtyard. These squares are repeated in grid patterns in cities which are planned out, such as the capital city.
Sky burials are practiced, where a corpse's remains are placed on a peak of some sort, usually a low mountain, and the body is left there for one year. The corpse's family mourns for one year, while the spirit of the deceased goes on a journey to the sky world, and then the family retrieves the bones and cleans them. All the bones are buried under or near the family's longhouse, except the skull which is usually kept and displayed. To not have one's skull displayed after death amounts to a family saying they have disowned the spirit and are ashamed of them- this is rare and used as a horrible insult, e.g. "you're such a shitty person your family's gonna hide your skull"
No one is believed to 'own' land, rather they see themselves as guardians of the land. Land is the headman's to distribute if in a small village, or the government's to distribute in a city.
Traditionally, Hiakul wasn't really a nation, rather it was a group of city-states. In 644, though, one city, Hiakubi, started uniting the city-states against the enemy city-state/ethnicity of Juodaer, and after that they stayed together as a nation.
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