Lands of Tyranny
Day 24 of The Black Eye, Year 416
Barynians
The Baryy archipelago surrounds a large part of the eastern coast of the Black Dome peninsula and their shapes can be seen from most of the local mountain ranges and even hills on clear days. Contrary to many islands in the rest of the world, their silhouettes appear to be of a lighter tone, due to the scarce vegetation and tall tuff cliffs and white sand. The multitude of islands, some very small while others are several dozen miles wide, form an intricate net of bays, coral reefs, and dangerous shallows which can be very unfriendly to foreign sailors, but offering great shelters for the expert locals. The inhabitants, known as Barynians, are easily separated into two groups.
The first group generally recognized is made up of pale skinned descendents of the ‘continentals’, mostly from people who colonized the islands from the Black Dome hundreds of years ago, but whose ethnicity and look can vary widely due to mixing with later colonists as well as the natives who make up the second group. This second group is made up of the various tribes of the Eeypai people, and are natives of the archipelago stretching back into prehistory. The Eeypai tribes typically inhabit the smaller islands, but can also be found within the dense jungle interior of the larger islands.
Society
The profound wedge that divides the natives and the rest of the inhabitants is what most characterizes the society of the islands. Eeypai, the natives, have a long history in the islands, their traces can be found all over, especially in the form of carvings of fish-like faces in some of the tuff cliffs and rifts, and in the system of caves that they still inhabit, and that they expanded in the centuries with tunnels connecting between them. Especially in the smaller islands, the little agriculture that can sustain the inhabitants together with fishing happens in these caves and small depressions in the terrain, the only things protecting plants and the ground from the salty water. Indeed, Eeypai worship and myths are all focused on beings that inhabit the ground and the underground, as well as a multitude of sea creatures, many benign, other evil and dangerous, representing the duality of the sea. One of these beings or deities in particular is Caljifiiah, or Calipha, depicted in several forms and shapes in many of the Eeypai sculptures.
Eeypai society is fundamentally a tribal one, with each tribe inhabiting a single large island, or several smaller ones when grouped together. Eeypai do not have social classes, but only a chieftain, which is decided every ten cycles of the sun as the winner of some games and feats of courage and prowess, such as swimming across two islands, or climbing a cliff. Their men go out tending to bird traps or hunting, and fishing, or spend time digging houses in the tuff, making small canoes, rafts, or other boats with intertwined grass and reeds, or practicing sports and training as warriors, while their women spend most of their life in the outskirts of their villages, tending to the children, their husbands, the chickens and the small fields or vegetable gardens.
Eeypai are essentially peaceful people dedicated to keeping their environment safe from external changes, though with the decades, especially some tribes, had to become more fighty if not even aggressive, as a response to the many kidnapping and slaving raids perpetuated on their people by the pale Putnakti, as they call the rest of the Barynians and Continentals alike. Eeypai would never leave their islands if not forced to do so, and with slavery being forbidden in the Empire, anyone of the natives being found on land, would likely be an escaped slave from the islands, or the crew member of some less than reputable ship, as some of the most curious (male) native might sometimes do. Though due to their isolation, their ignorance of the Empire’s laws and customs, as well as poor understanding of the Continental language, Eeypai, especially the more docile women, still makes them an interesting item to have for these ones daring enough to still keep slaves in the Peninsula or elsewhere.
The townsfolk that inhabit the small harbors and coastal villages in the Baryy archipelago do not have a name for themselves, referring to them as Baryians, as if the natives were not included as inhabitants of the islands.
Due to intense exploitation in the past, the vast majority of the islands are devoid of any large trees good enough for the making of ships, or even large buildings. Only palm trees are left, especially inlands, or in the smaller islands, inhabited by the natives. But these trees are rarely more useful than making small buildings or skiffs and rafts, as well as other small woodworks. The islands are also completely devoid of iron or other precious metals and resources, meaning they have mostly never had a strategic importance to the eyes of the Continentals, having constantly found themselves at the periphery of the world.
The whole economy is based mostly on fishing, and the cultivation of the few plants that can grow in that environment scorched by the sun and winds bringing the sea’s salty water. The control of the few small inland rivers and especially of the few drinkable water deposits is even more important, and reason for constant contests and skirmishes with the natives. Trade has also never really flourished, as due to the lack of timber the islanders could never build a proper trading fleet able to compete with the ones of the continental nations. The many harbors and piers are however bustling with life between the fishermen boats, and many larger ships of very heterogeneous shapes and styles, mostly foreign ships, and mostly gained through piracy.
Due to the lack of opportunities the region could offer, to its irrelevant position in the world, and even more to its geography, with the multitude of bays, shelters and hiding places amongst the islands and their dangerous seas for the ships, the Baryy archipelago has always been a place where piracy flourished. The crews of the Baryan pirate ships would be as varied as the ships themselves, composed of many foreign recruits as well as of native Eeypai. Merchant ships from other countries would be assaulted all over the eastern coast of the Continent, their cargos sold, the ships themselves often seized and reused, and their crew often recruited, or sold in slavery: slave trade being the other most popular occupation of Barynians after fishing and piracy.
Even if in recent years, after the Empire navy started a massive presence in the area, causing the acts of piracy to decrease to a minimum, the secluded bays of the islands are still theater for many black market exchanges, and indeed, still a hub for the trade of humans, and even other beings, often kept for weeks if not months in cages in board the ships, and broken in their spirit before being sold to someone daring enough to go against the Empire’s Law.
Port activity as shelter and a place of passage does still remain a somehow lucrative activity, though most ships stopping in the islands are often seen under some suspicious eyes.
The islands are without any central government, and with minimal presence of the Empire, which has no interest in them as long as its crews act as Privateers and their unlawful actions are kept to a minimum. Each town or village usually does have a governor, although their authority alone is small, and requires the support of some unofficial organs that are usually assemblies of notable ship captains that belong to a said settlement. Riches and salaries are usually assigned by either the governor, or more commonly by each ship captain, who would divide any earning equally between the crew, and things that could not physically be divided, would become communal property. Exception would be the ship itself, who would still have the captain as sole owner, as well as the captain earning double than anyone else. Making sure the crew was happy and feeling like they all got their share equally would be one of the main preoccupations of a captain, as well as for the governors, since the especially lawless environment would otherwise be difficult to control.
Baryans are usually in conflict or at least very wary of Eeypai, seeing them either as an annoyance, a danger, or a resource - as slaves. With Eeypai however they share some form of worship for Calipha, the Blue Lady, and other sea related myths, such as the one about the sea-people, or the Kraken. The archipelago is inhabited exclusively by Humans, only very rarely some Elves and Dwarves travel to these lands on board of some ships, usually as slaves, which results in the majority of Barynians, and especially the even more isolated Eeypai never having seen any other race.
Apparel
Eeypai have a darker skin complexion and dark hair. They are rather short, and tend to be dress with very simple clothes, often not covering their chests or (even if more rarely) their genitals, adoring themselves with paints instead, usually white or red, obtained from chalk or similar deposits, or from corals or other sea plants and crustaceans, as well as using leaves and shells to decorate their bodies. Barynian townsfolk instead have very varied looks depending on their origins which often are also the result of a large mix of other ethnicities.
History
Barynians have always had a history and a reputation of pirates, raiding as far as the coasts of Messalya and even Annoria. As the Empire developed though, especially extending its borders with the annexation of Kheman, their crews had to either adapt to a more peaceful life, even if still engaged in shady affairs of smuggling and slavery, or face death by the hands of the Empire’s and Khemani navy. In more recent years, the remaining Barynins have almost entirely became privateers and corsairs payed by the Empire to harass the commerce and even the coastal villages of the Black Dome Peninsula, even after its conquest, mostly remaining at the service of the Empire as ruthless mercenaries dealing with affairs difficult to deal with via official means. This way, as for their reluctance to settle or meddle with the affairs of the continentals, they have otherwise mostly been left undisturbed, although the strong presence of alternative worship to the New Gods has been a raising concern in the Inquisition.
Authors: Rashan
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