Peasant Caste

When I decided to write about the caste system of Sharitarn my first inclination was to address the Mage Caste, it dual nature product to the fact that some members of it as mages, and there fore members of a global power that demands a special kind of loyalty, while others are mere sigraxes more like the average civilized citizen on a nation. Then I felt the need to define the Warrior Caste, maybe justify its existence in face of the might powers of magic. Then I must have mentioned the Noble Caste, a particularly problematic case where Caste means a tie by blood more strongly than in any other example.
Most cities do not have Noble Caste. Mages and Warriors are high castes (Mages, Warriors, Scholars, Physicians, Builders and Nobles where they exist). The first Low Caste that came to mind is Merchant, second possibly Artist Caste or Alchemist Caste if we are in a city where Alchemists have their own caste. After that there is a long, long list covering the civilized people of Sharitarn. At the end of this list are the Peasants.
The Peasants are the home stone of civilization on Sharitarn, they are the ones who produce most the food and essential materials to keep their compatriots alive. They are the ones who hear the gossip going on between the wild people and the lawless, during business conversations that officially never happen because city law forbids them. Their contributions to the nation are countless, official and non-official. For that they demand, and usually get, the respect of all other Castes.
When a city falls for any reason the survivors more likely to build themselves another are Peasants. Warriors may be better survivors individually but they are as likely to fall into a lawless existence as any other civilized Sharitarne who lost his nation. Peasants have the closest thing to a sustainable independent community, they already see themselves as members of a micro nation inside their nation. That way of thinking would be dishonored in a Warrior, and less that decent to anyone else, but Peasant Casts are more than just allowed to think that way, they are supposed to think that way.
The city do not explore their peasants, they are nothing like slaves. You will find Warriors patrolling the Peasant Settlements, and paying deference to the elders in those places same way they do to the representatives of each caste when they walk the sector controlled by the caste. City sends Physicians to take care of people and animals, some times keep one of those in each large settlement; a position most Physicians which to avoid since life beyond the walls is inevitably harsh and more dangerous than what most green castes prefer, but some actually like the experience enough to stay after a couple of years of mandatory service. Also, naturally, the free access to city Main Market is a huge advantage in itself.

Structure

Peasant Caste is a essential part of Sharitarn civilization. You may find something similar to it in Feudal Domains, or even some wild nations, but the proper place of it is civilization. Which in recent Ages means State Cities, mainly, and independent villages in second.
The unique nature of Peasant Caste is be of civilization, but exist outside the cities themselves. As a Peasant Caste you are the citizen who has home outside the city itself. While most Artist Caste men, and some Merchants and Warriors, travel most their lives through the wilds but keep their roots inside walls your way to be part of the city is be outside it. Your kin deal with wild folk and lawless bands more often than any other caste, sometimes more than they deal with your fellow citizens. Nevertheless, a citizen you are.
Peasant Caste changes according to the region and cultural background of your specific State City. It cultivates farms, in a mix of collective and private property, the portion of each one vary largely with the circumstances. Is safe to expect a high degree of solidarity between the families connected to the same Peasant Settlement.
The settlements are fortified structures where peasants go for shelter and for commerce. Several festivals happen over the year in those places, some visited by members of other castes others only for Peasant Castes. An reasonably large city will have few dozens of those fortified settlements, so the Caste don't have to run all the way to the city gates more often than necessary. In regions where clima forces people indoors during months every year sometimes all peasant families expend their time sheltered together in those places, in other cases only the children and the older folk look for this protection.
Hunter Caste, Woodcutter Caste, and similar, are in some nations included in the Peasant Caste. When they are not is possible that those castes share a common point of view with the Peasants in most subjects.

Culture

Illustrative:
Let's say you have a merry peasant couple with five children. They live in a cute farm connected to this nice Peasant Settlement north to Doldahal city. As such, of course, they are both free citizens of Doldahal.
Now, let's say they decide to move to another lovely Peasant Settlement south to Doldahal. Their new home will be three days far from their old one. Up there is still Doldahal ring of influence, they will remain peasants and citizens of Doldahal.
Couple is moving together in this example, I call your attention to that detail. No separation, two free individuals, man and woman, of same caste, joined in free companionship.
They go, they are free to do so any time, any day. The five children stay.
That is how Peasant Caste mind work on Sharitarn. No question to be made here. Any children (which is the same to say any one not old enough to make the admission test to became an adult member of their caste) of a community stays with the community.
To take a peasant children from the settlement where she was born you need either steal it or get a special permission from the Elder Council. The second almost never happen, the first is not an option for Peasant Caste parents.
That gives you a notion about the ways of this Caste. They do follow the "one lunar year" period of duration for contracts of free companionship, but is rare for couples to brake apart in this caste. After three years renewing votes is almost certain that two peasants will stay with each other all the way to the grave. They don't have to, just feels right apparently.
Men are natural masters, women are natural slaves. That is basic knowledge for all on Sharitarn and Peasant Castes are no exception. Oddly enough, among this people who live as close to nature as possible we often find some of the lightest portraits of "natural slavery" for free women. A pretty young Peasant Girl can drink her common sense out, dance naked in a pub table, and wall back home alone under a full moon in a hot night, passing through countless free men, and will not be a surprise if she reaches morning still as free as before. Jokes will be made for years, no more than that.
Considering that the free lass in this story didn't crossed any lawless man in her way back, any traveler from other nations or even visitor from the city either. A man from other caste seen a lone woman improperly dressed may risk to capture her for slavery, but it would be a bold move if the woman is a Peasant walking between the farms of her community because peasant men are likely to take action to protect their caste pride in this case.
Slavery is said to be harder on Peasant farms than on any other part of a civilized nation, but free people also get hard lives with a lot of work and little precious comforts.

History

We could say that Peasant Caste is older than civilization, but that would be poetic licence. There was agriculture, in some sense, among humans on Sharitarn even before the Spider's Age, during Barbaric Times, but not a Caste system. 
    Would be more exact to say that Peasant Caste is as old as civilization itself, but not more than that. When the first cities emerged they looked more like large Feudal Domains, barely what we would call villages in modern Sharitarn. In the foundation of those mostly autocratic nations there was peasants, and from them other low castes evolved in their own time. 
   In more local scale, this caste is the seed from where most polis grew. Each time a magical, natural or military disaster erases a city from the surface of Sharitarn the Peasant Settlements which are far enough to escape immediate destruction face a test. Either they fail and dissolve themselves in lawless bands or win the challenge and grow into a new civilized nation. Sometimes one of them gets the support of all others, sometimes two or three grow into independent villages competing for dominance, as natural allies as they are natural rivals.