Menschen
The Menschen people consider themselves to be the founders of the human species, and to some extent they're correct, having claimed the rights to their land in an ancient civil war that saw those weak and fearful of magic driven out into the harsh unknown. Unlike the descendants of those cowards - the humans of Stirge - the Menschen of Duwallen revel in the arcane arts. They have taken advantage of every opportunity to advance their knowledge of magic's various uses and exploit it to the fullest.
Magic is power in our world. Do not be fooled by egotist fools who would claim that it is the birthright of the humans alone; it belongs to the world, and we merely borrow it. What sets the Menschen apart, however, is what we've learned to do with it in the short time we've got it.
Occupying more than half of the Duwallish mainland and the vast majority of its surrounding islands, the Menschen Empire is one of the largest singular landholders in the known world, rivaled only by the Vyzhivshiye of Stirge, with the vast Underkingdom in a not-too-distant third place. Their landholdings are primarily due to the living situation limitations of the Bufogren and the Ceph, their only real competition on the Duwallish continent. Though more recent acquisitions have been earned through military and magical might, it's often argued that they would have been unable to have amassed that might in the first place had they needed to compete for space and resources with anyone.
Culture
Major language groups and dialects
The humans of Duwallen primarily speak "Die Sprache des Menschen", or the Language of Man. Though there are a few dialects that have branched off of the main tongue to varying degrees as one travels out from the center of the Menschen Empire, it has managed to remain a surprisingly cohesive language group in a general sense. A not-insignificant amount of their language was also incorporated into the Qoatl Tradespeech project, though many argue this was a mistake, considering how many wildly different, and sometimes even directly contradictory, it is in comparison to one of the other major cornerstones of Tradespeech, the language of the Ceph.
Culture and cultural heritage
Much of Menschen culture revolves around magic. From a young age, nearly every citizen of the empire learns at least some form of it. Because of magic's in-built need for hyperspecialization, this has led to a culture that thrives on highly trained experts in very niche but very useful skills. For any task that needs doing, chances are good that someone, somewhere among their number has devised a magical means of going about it, and from there a means of monetizing their skills. This bleeds into their society, which is inherently capitalist in nature, incentivizing people to leverage unique and convenient skills in order to carve out a niche of their own within an ever-expanding market. And while this does mean that just about anyone can create a job for themselves if they only cater to unmet demands, it also means that those whose jobs become too specialized risk being sunk entirely by particularly skilled or cutthroat generalists - runelorists and channelers in particular - as well as the steady rise of mechanization.
All Menschen folk are taught at a young age to carry an innate hatred for the humans of Stirge. Held for millennia over the ancient civil war that split their burgeoning species in two, this grudge does not necessarily spill over onto the other inhabitants of the neighboring continent, but many Duwallish people have still begun to point to 'Stirgan corruption' when discriminating against them anyway.
Art & Architecture
Being a rather waterlogged nation, Duwallen has pushed the Menschen into developing an architectural style that favors practicality over style, as much as modern architect might strain against it. Streets and foundations flood as local wetlands overflow on a regular basis during particularly rainy seasons, forcing nearly all buildings to be built up on stilts and raised foundations of hardwoods and oilstone and giving most cities a rather dark and green-tinted base that's often described as 'rising up from the swamp' by foreigners and detractors. Atop these supports, Menschen architecture can best be described as 'pragmatic'. The average structure is comprised of simple shapes - at their most complex, they might be comprised as of several rectangles and a circular or octagonal tower structures - built of oilstone-plastered wood and a latticework of wooden crossbeams. Their roofs are heavily slanted, and sometimes even tiered layers of sloped clay or stone tiles to account for heavy rains. Gutters, though generally more common only in modern, affluent neighborhoods, ring the edges of newer homes to quietly divert rainwater into storm-gullies built into most paved roads.
The most prominent Menschen art - which is to say, the art that appears most often in public or official contexts, rather than all art created by Menschen artists - tends to come in two distinct flavors: Aspirational and Emotional. They often eschew perfect accuracy in favor of showing the world and aspects of it as they wish it to be. Statues of famous historical figures may end up vague in facial details, but heavily emphasize their qualities and deeds through exaggerated posing or dramatic flaring of clothes or flags.
Historical figures
- Diana Walowik: The daughter of an influential nobleman in Duwallen's yesteryear, Diana was kidnapped and used for a terrifying cult ritual that carved demonic runes into her flesh and used her as the anchor for a portal into the demon homeland of the Old World. Rescued and adopted by the demons she was forced to summon, she has more or less become a demon herself in all but outward appearance. Though she disappeared for centuries after her run-in with the cult, she has since reappeared on the world stage as Duwallen's latest empress, managing to leverage her now-ancient bloodline as the closest known ties to the emperors of old.
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