Carac

"The Blood of the West scarcely wield steel, and put more stock in rite than industry. Yet despite this, they have defeated us time and time again in the last year."

— Gjöl Södersson, Kilthian commander during the Angrian War of Independence

A people living upon Aquon Tovan, commonly known as the Carac Archipelago, the Carac are unlike any other peoples living on the shores of the Great Bay. Some 2000 kilometers from Runber, the archipelago is thought to mark the westernmost end of the bay, and historically the region and its peoples have had little contact with the wider world. Believed to have originated from the far west, from beyond the endless waters, the Carac are said to be kin to halflings and giants alike, and indeed show considerable variation in height. An enslaved people until merely 140 years ago, the Carac have built their society upon this moment of reckoning, and its legacy is keenly felt to this day.
Carac technology is considered unusual, as though they have adopted many innovations from abroad, such as ships similar to the Runberi Sambuk, and institutions such as banking and even the printing press, they use metal extremely sparingly. For whatever reason, the iron of the Carac Archipelago is almost universally of terrible quality, and hard to refine. Thus, the Carac must import what they use, and frequently make do without. The volcanic glass found on the isles refined by quasi-magical techniques into a substance that approximates the features of both steel and glass fills this void somewhat, but only the Red Priests know how to make it.

The Commune

Rooted in the work gangs of the enslaved Carac of the old days, the Carac commune is a productive unit, but also the fundamental building block of Carac society. As their Tovi masters had a policy of separating children and parents, the communes have developed a culture and organization where the young of the group are everyone's children, mothers and fathers are not recognized beyond this. These groups tend to range from 40 to 150 members, and almost invariably share an enterprise and livelihood. The carpenters of the cities of the Carac belong to carpenter communes, and those communes constitute both colleagues and family. The landscape is dotted with villagers, often inhabited by just a single farming commune.
These communes are themselves organized into Ilumates under the leadership of influential communes that hold Ilum. Borrowing a foreign term for kingship, Carac ilumate is nevertheless quite unlike the monarchies it borrows from, as just as with the communes in general, the communities which hold Ilum or royalty do not hold it in any person, but within the commune itself. In practice, many larger settlements are ruled and managed by bureaucratic communes that effectively serve as a local administrative aristocracy, with the Ilumate commune at the top.
As communes are so central to Carac society, they have little place for those who do not belong to one. These people are referred to as Townsfolk, for they tend to congregate in urban settlements where they may fade into the masses, and have limited protections in Carac society without the protection of a commune to provide for them.

Carac Faith

The Carac worship the Phoenix God, a god of rebirth and freedom, symbolized by red wings. Though the origins of this faith are shrouded in mystery, for the Tovi did not write on the practices of their slaves, and the Carac themselves wrote little in those days, today the phoenix symbolizes the Carac belief in reincarnation. Carac tradition tells that the revolutionary Taloces who led the Carac reckoning died and returned 12 years later to finally lead the Carac to freedom was an avatar of the Phoenix God.
Fire features prominently in Carac rituals. Cleansing and heralding new growth, the Carac scatter ash on their fields when they plant. The dead are cremated in Carac custom, for it is believed that reducing the body to ash allows the deceased to reincarnate. The Carac are considered a more magical people than most, and it seems that minor magical ability is slightly more common among the communes of the Red Priests than it is in other faiths. In particular, though it requires a fire hotter than the forges of the Carac or even the dwarves of Kilth can make, the Red Priests can make the characteristic glassteel of the archipelago.