Raumoeva: Wanderers of River & Sea

The Raumoeva are a loose, mostly nomadic Lashunta ethnicity who wander a wide geography on Castrovel, over the Shattersea, Hisyho River Valley, and other connected regions, although united by a common culture, identity, and language. They are mainly centered on Nivaea at the Hisyho’s mouth. Although they have some semi-permanent, seasonal settlements, their clans are primarily organized along defined migration trade routes. Thus there is a Raumoeva Clan organized for the Northern Shattersea Coast and Isles, another for the Midcoast, and for Southern Coast until the Valmaeana Border (more on that soon). Yet the majority of their clans and people dwell along the Hisyho, even as far inland as Than and Lake Arasene, moving from place to place on their houseboats: fishing, hauling freight, and generally making ends meet as best they can. Qabarat and the Northern Shattersea Isles are generally as far north as they come. Yet sometimes they may venture northward along the Stormshield Shore, and rarely individuals or small groups will fare upriver on the Yaro, as did Oshis’s father.
With the exception of those few seasonal settlements, or in cases where some Raumoeva have explicitly sworn loyalty, they are ~Tiqolama~ non-citizens of any city. This makes them effectively outlaws. Thus their presence within a city’s territory and where they are allowed to dock their boats or ships depends mostly on the cities’ goodwill and sufferance, which leaves these people in an odd, precarious alienness: ever guests, but not necessarily welcome. Many locales share a reciprocal resentment with the Raumoeva. The citizens believe the Raumoeva are thieves and smugglers, whereas the Raumoeva believe the citizens are trying to deny them a right to earn a living. Both sides’s misconceptions end up justifying prejudiced behavior, and thus perpetuate the cycle.
The Raumoeva's origins rose from the refugees fleeing to Asana’s shores after the Formian Conquest of the Colonies, thus holding a common origin with Valmaeana in the South, and also Qabarat’s Lashunta. During the Age of the Thief-Queens, before the establishment of the Valmaeana Confederacy, the cities of the middle and southern Shattersea Shore indentured most of the refugees and their descendents (with the exception of Qoaronaea, which was founded and ruled by survivors from Lost Valmaea). Yet some indentures escaped and fled, either to unclaimed islands or uninhabited bayous. Their broken indentures fostered a culture of rebellion and resistance, which fused with their language and traditions, along with a need to avoid permanent settlements and move often and swiftly. Thus they learned to take their homes with them, fostered by by sea and river. Thus the Raumoeva were born.
With the Second Formian Invasion of Asana, the social tensions present in many southern cities, due to their sizable, ethnically disenfranchised populations came to a crisis. Over the war’s course, most cities underwent internal upheavals resulting in either a more equitable order, or else an overthrow of the old regime. Qoaronaea, leading the cities’ alliance against the Formians, capitalized on these newly liberated people’s cultural identities (in some ways the refugees’ descendents had more in common with Qoaronaea than their overmistresses) and the legend of Lost Valmaea, already enshrined in people’s minds through ten thousand recitations, to promote the ideal of Valmaeana (~Valmaea-Yana~ - New Valmaea), as an identity focused on avenging their ancestors’ deaths and losses and exterminating the Formian threat. Thus was born the Valmaeana Confederacy, uniting Southwestern Asana’s previously independent city-states under a shared identity and goal.
During the war, many Raumoeva had fought, either from perceived common threat or desperate survival. Accounts differ as to whether the Raumoeva leaders were summoned to the Confederacy's seminal convention or were handed a declaration after the fact. Yet disparate values and worldviews had grown between the Valmaeana and Raumoeva. Although both groups valued resistance, whereas one placed a premium on order and dedication toward a national purpose, the other found reverence in freedom, personal loyalty to house, kin, and friends, a belief in the right of self-determination. Thus, when the lady-generals of the newly elected Valmaeana High Staff demanded the Raumoeva’s ancestors swear faith to the Qoaronae, their triplet matron war-goddesses, one wise clanwife stood forth and spoke: ~Va vaea hoeaf ti rei,~ - “We choose life instead of war.”
For their refusal, the outraged Valmaeana passed an attainder against the Raumoeva, ejecting them from all cities and territories under the Confederacy’s sway. To this day, this ban more or less holds true. Raumoeva ships do not dock in Valmaeana ports, and their people do not venture into Valmaeana territory on any (legitimate) business. They are named outcast, and those currying Valmaeana’s friendship have often found it advantageous to repeat their abuse. Correspondingly, those cities more often at cross-purposes with Valmaeana, such as Nivaea, have opened their gates and harbors to the Raumoeva to tweak the Confederacy’s antennae. Thus the Raumoaeva, without a city or homeland of their own, still often find themselves drawn into the cities’ politics while they try to earn their livelihoods.
Under Nivaea’s matronage, once every five years Raumoeva from all over the continent gather for a ~Kieza~ - Clanmoot - held on the Hisyho’s banks among the city’s ruins, where new mates are sought, children are fostered, and lorewardens share their chronicles’ updates.
Although the lorewardens keep written accounts, Raumoeva, since they do not keep hometrees or soultrees, most practice psychic ancestral memory to maintain their histories. As a general rule, Raumoeva youths expect to psychically copy and absorb at least nine memories of ancestors, either directly or previously absorbed by another. These become the bases for kin affinity across not only maternal lines (since like most other Lashunta families are matrilineal) but also across paternal lines and will be used to identify relations. They will also craft a necklace with a gem bead for each story. A common hairstyle is to braid multiple scarves into their hair and then twist them into loops or a bun. Most Raumoeva, along with their own tongue, speak Qabarat-Yaro as a trade tongue. However, only a few speak Elvish.