Ethnicity in the Federation of Vay

One ethnic group of humans rightfully receives the credit—or the blame—for the Federation's aggressively meritocratic culture. The Dimira people are, for all intents and purposes, the dominant cultural group in the Federation, despite that the Federation is by no means ethnically homogenous. Several other sizable minority ethnic groups of humans, elves, and orcs have long had places within or outside of national culture. Some, like the Zaimaris elves, have thrived in this cultural melee, while others have been relegated to the shadows.

Overview

In terms of demographics, the Federation has a high concentration of humans and elves. More than 90% of the population is human, elvish, or of mixed human-elvish heritage, while only 8% of the population are of primarily orcish descent. Humans make up 80% of the total population, but that figure can be somewhat misleading, as a significant number of those who consider themselves part of a human ethnic group do have some fairly recent elvish ancestry. Genealogical work conducted by the Federal government suggests that roughly a fifth of the Federal human population has at least one elvish grandparent, and that roughly a third of that population has at least one elvish great-grandparent. As such, the lines between what makes a person human, half-elf, or fully elvish can be quite blurred, especially among the tightly-entangled Dimira and Zaimaris people, who together constitute a large majority of the Vayan population.
Roughly 60% of the Vayan population is made up of ethnically-Dimira humans; this cultural group accounts for more than three quarters of the total human population. The Zaimaris elves are a comparable majority among the elven population, constituting almost 10% of the total population. A few larger minority groups make up the bulk of the remaining 30%, including Pelissier humans, Axatla elves, and Jasar'at orcs, while another half dozen cultural groups—mostly immigrants from other nations—exist as tiny fragments within the whole of the Federation.

The Cultural Majority

Together, Dimira humans and Zaimaris elves form the mainstream culture of the Federation and constitute a large majority of the population.

The Dimira People

Strictly speaking, the Dimira people are more of a cultural group than a single ethnic group, in that they share social traits and a cultural history, but have divided over time into regional subgroups. These subgroups are more alike than different and all mutually recognize one another as Dimira—their common origins are recent enough that their collective identity still holds—but each group is subtly distinct.
The culture of the Dimira people as a whole is frequently indistinguishable from the national culture of the Federation, as the Dimira are for all intents and purposes the architects of the nation's culture—for as long as the Federation has existed, it has been a nation in which the Dimira are a vast majority—and the ethnic group is largely confined to the Federation. Small communities of Dimira folk do exist outside of the Federation, but the vast majority of these are Federate expatriates. As such, to describe Dimira culture is to describe the culture of the Federation.
This is most obviously true in regards to the cultural values of the Dimira people. Achievement, honor, and status are pillars of Dimira culture, as they are to the culture of the Federation. The Federal practice of marking its citizens to indicate their place within one of four socioeconomic classes lines up neatly with the traditional Dimira caste system. The class system is just one of many examples of the way that the national culture is frequently just a more broadly-applied and stringently-codified version of Dimira culture. Similar to this is the Vayan reverence for arcane magic. Historical records indicate that ancient Dimira people never encountered the Ceth Tseket, and arcane magic reached their populace centuries after the empire's fall; by the time the Dimira people settled in their present-day territory, the only signs of the fate of the Ceth Tseket were a handful of ancient ruined cities long worn down by the southern sandstorms and northern monsoons. As a result, the Dimira people never inherited the almost-instinctive respect for—or even outright fear of—the unknowable consequences of arcane magic that other groups, like the Sarlani, directly descended from surviving Tseketon lineages tend to possess.
These traits are broadly present among Dimira people as a whole, regardless of their regional affiliation. The regional subgroups differ from each other in other ways:

• The Aundirian Dimira people are those with roots in Cethandir. The heritage of the Aundirian people is most unique among the Dimira peoples, as their ancestors split off from the original Dimira population earliest, and because they settled with the Aundirian tribe of humans. The Aundirian and Dimira people eventually commingled enough that the Aundirian tribe was folded into the Dimira population; Aundirian Dimira folk retain many quirks from their Aundirian heritage. For example, while Dimira people in general tend to be mild in their religious beliefs, the Aundirian Dimira people are particularly inclined to be nonreligious.
• The Capitol Dimira people were originally called the Vayan Dimira prior to the formation of the Federation because of their place in Vay Proper, but after, took on their current name to disambiguate themselves from the Dimira people of the Federation at large. While education is valued as a means of attaining status throughout all Dimira populations, the Capitol Dimira folk place special emphasis on education, valuing it even above wealth, heritage, and military honor.
• The Old Dimira people, named as such because they are supposedly closest genetically and culturally to historical Dimira populations, are localized to the city of Auria. The Old Dimira have the strictest social etiquette rules. Their social hierarchy consists of an additional three social classes beyond the four official ones, and while there is no governmental system in place to codify individuals' presence in these classes, their principled systems of etiquette ensure every Old Dimira person is very aware of others' social status, regardless of marking.
• The Northern Dimira people, concentrated in the city of Caelus, place a uniquely high value on druidic magic. While other Dimira folk, like many Aotrans, see druidcraft as an art less potent and refined than arcana, Northern Dimira folk afford the two equal respect.

The Zaimaris People

Though the Zaimaris and Dimira cultures are similar enough that many in and outside of the Federation would consider them to be a singular cultural group, there are noteworthy distinctions between them. Additionally, despite popular belief, the Zaimaris ethnic group did not derive from the Dimira ethnic group. The Zaimaris elves descend from the Ebissu people, some of the very first elves of Aotra, who originated in the area known contemporarily as Kassaan; the resemblance of the Zaimaris culture to the Dimira culture is the resemblance of a pair of unrelated doppelgängers, not that of a parent and child. With time together, they have converged but not merged.
While status and achievement are values shared by the Zaimaris people, their perspectives on those values have a distinctively elven flair. Elves do not suffer the limits to potential and achievement imposed by a human's mere century of life. As a result, the ambitions of the Zaimaris people are even greater, and the perceived acceptable minimum lifetime achievement is as well. Simultaneously, the Zaimaris people tend to have more patience than their Dimira counterparts, in that they are in no rush to accomplish their goals. With time, for them, comes the benefit of the ability to plan on an ultra-long scale.
The Zaimaris people by far the most populous group of elves in the Federation, and they are even more strongly concentrated in the four megacities than the general population. Roughly one million Zaimaris elves dwelt in the Federation at the time of the last census in 710 YC. By far the most populous Zaimaris community is in Cethandir. Cethandir alone accounts for just under half of the Federate Zaimaris population, and roughly 20% of the city's population are culturally Zaimaris. This makes Cethandir one of the cities with the highest concentration of elves to humans in Aotra, save for the cities of Kassaan.

Between Two Worlds

Over the last several decades, a growing number of people with mixed Zaimaris-Dimira heritage have come to identify themselves as Zaílanor, a word from the Zaimari dialect of the Elvish language that means "between" in a way distinct from "among". These people often have several generations of mixed-heritage ancestors, and they view their partially-elven, partially-human lineage as being a cultural group of its own. While only a small part of the population considers themselves to be Zaílanor, the community seems to be growing, in part because the population of people of mixed human-elvish descent only continues to grow as well.

Minority Ethnic Groups

Roughly 30% of the Federation's population consists of people of a handful of more populous ethnic minorities, and a scattering of others constitute a few percent of the population.

Populous Groups

By far the largest minority group in the Federation is the Pelissier people. The Pelissier people exist quietly on the outskirts of the competitive mainstream culture. While Pelissier communities dot each of Vayan city, the Pelissier folk are quite populous in the Vayan countryside; more than half of the people living outside the cities are ethnically-Pelissier, making them a majority of the rural population. Though they are most populous in the comparatively-lush north of the Federation, their origins are in the deserts of Sarland. Nearly a millennium ago, the Pelissier were populous in Sarland, but warring between the Sarlani and the Elasi lead to the neutral Pelissier folk being driven from the nation. When the the Circle of Nine surveyed the ethnic makeup of its nations' populations in the early years of the Co9, it classified the Pelissier people as being "largely mono-national". Now, the Pelissier are extinct outside of the Federation.
The vast majority of the orcish population of the Federation are Jasar'at orcs. A populous global community, the Jasar'at orcs have a vibrant culture that places great value in thriving in the wildest of environs: they are well-known in several nations for their expertise in druidcraft, agriculture, and exploration. Most prevalent in the north of the Federation, the Jasar'at orcs are widespread in rural communities but do occasionally settle in the outskirts of cities. They often find jobs in trade and transport, as their orcish endurance and strength serve them well as teamsters in caravans across the vast Federal lands. Others crew the ships that sail through the lakes of the Northern Basin. In such roles, the Jasar'at tend to be less-than-visible, but vital, to city folk.
Despite their population being small in comparison to the Pelissier or Jasar'at, the Axatla people are the largest elvish minority group in the Federation. Like many ethnic groups of dark elves, the vast majority of Axatla live in nomadic communities, meaning their true numbers are difficult to count with accuracy, but they are estimated to constitute roughly 1% of the total population of the Federation. They are well-equipped to handle the deserts of the far southern side of the Federation, and that is where they are most concentrated. Axatla communities are virtually non-existent in the urban centers.

Scattered Groups

Tiny communities of other groups exist sporadically throughout the Federation. Most notable are the communities of Sarlani humans and Elasi elves elves that have left Sarland for the Federation as tensions have risen in their homeland over the past several decades. In the west, there are also a couple significant clusters of Rozhov humans that have left their native Oristhane for the Federation. Small communities of Djarka and Ulish orcs exist in the rural parts of the Federation as well.