Jaridan

Jaridan is the central and largest province of the Empire of the Southern Sun. It stretches from the eaves of the forests of Daarion, with the temperate low plains running south to the Cliffs of the Sun, also known as the Great Divide. The high plains above the cliffs have a more sub-tropical environment.
Before the formation of the Empire, the low plains were home to increasingly complex alliances of nomadic hunters, who followed great herds of large game, while the less hospitable high plains were home to more sedentary cultures. The culture of the low plains has come to dominate the modern province of Jaridan, with a focus on the control of territory, household troops - especially cavalry - and livestock. A particular weight on horses and cattle means that the Jaridani have a disdain for the people of Urogan, with their pigs and war-swine. Most social structures within the province, military and civil, are based around the archaic structures of the pre-unification tribes, with titles such as rider, lancer and first horse occuring in many works of life.
The Jaridani place a great deal of importance on visible and portable shows of wealth. Jewellery and rich cloths are the primary shows of status. Especially important and powerful individuals may carry a torugan, a staff with a bronze cap incorporating several loops. Large, copper rings are fixed through the rings and used to carry bangles, rings, keys and other jewellery that does not fit on their bodies. Officials - or members of their staff - carry eleborate torugans which carry, among their personal jewellery, their seals of office.
Despite their nomadic roots, the Jaridani have settled, first establishing permanent camps at sites of political or ritual importance, then developing these into towns. The spread of cities and resulting cultivation of the surrounding country has led to a boom in agriculture and popuilation beginning with the foundation of the Empire. Within Jaridan, only those settlements governed by powerful houses are considered city, including Jaridara, the capital city and seat of House Jarida. Jaridara is located at the base of the Cliffs of the Sun, below the city of Golean and acting as a kind of twin to the Imperial City.
On the high plains, the dominant culture - which is also the principal influence on the society of House Golean - developed from the Damasar tribes. With the inhospitable nature of the high plains, the Damasari's core ideals were service to the kinstead - a network of connected families and their property, usually either a village or a part of a town - in particular in the form of the damasaric or 'going forth' for which they became known. The damasaric was a rite of passage, in which young adults would leave their families and tribes and go out into the world in bands of varying size - called damasariat - offering their services as mercenaries to earn wealth to bring back to support the kinstead.
Despite the cultural dominance of the lowland tribes in the pre-Imperial age, it was the highlanders whose damasarica took them out and across the south, allowing them to develop lines of communication with other regions and ultimately play a key role in the formation of the empire. The damasariat of Golean the Old grew from a few members of his kinstead to incorporate members of many cultures across the south, and made alliances in all corners of the future Empire. It was this alliance that enabled Golean to gather the First Imperial Council atop the Cliffs of the Sun. It was also from this that the adoptive House Golean, administrators of the Imperial City, evolved.

Type

Geopolitical, Province