Mino

The Mino are Amazons that are indigenous to the Zanjium region of Dunia. They are often known for their cultures disciplined and militaristic history and style.
Biological
Typical Appearance

The Mino are Amazons who are known for curly or kinky black hair, though individuals with mixed ancestry have been seen with similar hair colors like dark brown. Typically, they have brown eyes, either dark or light with some having lighter eye colors like hazel and generally wide noses. Mino generally have dark brown skin tones, rarely having lighter than brown skin unless they are mixed heritage.


Lifestyle

Locations:
Mino Amazons are believed to have originated in the area of Zanjium currently governed by Kurufuba, where the Agadia Kingdom serves as their homeland. Since then, they have also established territory in neighboring nations like Nzadi and Biladbar, even as far as settlements in the neighboring island of Azania.

Habitat
The lands that Mino originated from are dominated mainly by tropical savannah and covered with thorny scrub and dotted with huge baobab trees. As they settled in other regions of Zanjium, they proved to be adaptable to the tropical forests that are common there as well.
Provisioning

Their society largely focuses on agriculture and crafts for local consumption. Until the development of palm oil, very little agricultural or craft goods were traded outside of their realm. Markets serve a key role in the kingdom and are organized around a rotating cycle of four days with a different market each day. Agriculture work is largely decentralized and done by most families. However, with the expansion of the kingdom, agricultural plantations began to be a common agricultural method and craftwork is largely dominated by a formal guild system.
Many of the crops used within Mino agriculture are common within the region such as plantains, cassava, and yams as staples. They have also farmed for cash crops such as palm nut oil being the most common, though it also contributes a distinctive color, flavor and texture to local food.

Culture

Culture and cultural heritage

Discipline is highly regarded in Mino culture, likely related to the importance of militarism within it. Even civilians revere the ideals of controlling oneself and self-improvement within daily life and their crafts. Physical activity and weapons training for self-defense is engrained even in the Mino diaspora.


Spirituality
Mino Amazon have a polytheistic theology that involved numerous immortal spirits and deities.  The religious practice of the Mino people have four main elements that often overlap: public gods, personal or private gods, ancestral spirits, and magical charms. They have a concept of a female Supreme Being called Nana Buluku, who created the universe and then gave birth to twin gods, Mawu-Lisa who represent opposite concepts of the Moon and Sun, plus female and male respectively. When Nana retired, she left the inert universe to her children who took up the task of making lesser deities to handle things along with managing the world.

Average technological level

Mino are sometimes stereotyped as the most technologically advanced of the Amazon cultures due to their use of pretty much any weaponry they have come across through trade and conquest. Soldiers, warriors, and even many civilians are taught to use various melee weaponry like swords, staves, polearms, along with ranged weaponry like archery, and firearms have even been commonly incorporated into defenses. Even heavy artillery, machine guns and incendiaries are incorporated their military might.
Infrastructure appears to have developed at a slower rate with most Mino today continue to live in villages and small towns in mud houses with corrugated iron gable roofs. However they have adopted smaller personal technologies for domestic and communication purposes.
For example, the current matriarch has had small-scale renewable energy technologies and energy options, such as onsite solar power and improved cookstoves, distributed to local and distant Mino villages to offer rural households modern energy services.

Art & Architecture

The Mino differed from neighboring and rival peoples is that the arts were substantially supported by the royal family and the courts. They often become involved in religious and non-religious traditions, assemble multiple different materials, and borrow widely from other peoples in the region through either trade or conquest. Common art forms include wood and ivory carving, clay ceramics and reliefs, appliqué cloth textiles, and metalwork (including silver, iron and brass).

Common Customs, traditions and rituals

Military
The military of the Mino's homeland, the Agadja Kingdom, is divided into two units: the right and the left. The right was controlled by the royal consul and the left was controlled by the administrative officer. Each of these wings have at least five major subgroups: the artillery women, the elephant and wyvern huntresses, the musket-bearing frontline group, the razor women, and the archers.  At least by the time of third generation, the kingdom had developed a standing army that remained encamped wherever the queen was. Soldiers in the army were recruited as young as seven or eight years old (the age has been increased over time to fourteen) initially serving as shield carriers for regular soldiers. After years of apprenticeship and military experience, they are allowed to join the army as regular soldiers. To further incentivize the soldiers, each soldier receives bonuses for each enemy they kill or capture in battle. This combination of lifelong military experience and monetary incentives result in a cohesive, well-disciplined military culture.

Historical figures

The first established Mino Amazon settlement is that of the Agadja Kingdom which has ruled for roughly 400 years. Before this the Mino were mainly scattered among the coastline but under their first kingdom, Queen Ahosi was able to develop a world-renowned military regiment that proved to be a formidable force able to defend their territory.

Ideals

Beauty Ideals

Mino of both sexes favor bodies that lean towards athletic fitness, particularly toned builds which is easier for women to achieve.

Gender Ideals

Mino Amazons have a pronounced division of labor, with women often preparing the fields and the men tending to and harvesting the crops. Also, their women are often raised to go hunting and fishing as those skills are seen being beneficial for daily training, especially if they are enlisted in the military. Citizens of both sexes often make pottery, weave clothes and produce metal utensils. As such, the women are cemented as the head of household with wives making the most decisions with money and material decisions with men expected to socialize children with Mino values of valor and discipline.
Mino are often characterized as the amazons that are the most aggressive against men due to their history of capturing more men than most other ethnic groups and their effective war campaign. The Mino themselves argue that the male dominated societies of their neighbors is not only more stifling but also less effective than their own society. 
During periods of conquest, Mino would often capture prisoners of war who would be treated differently depending on their sex. For hauflins who they most often warred with, females would be inducted into military training before becoming full citizens while captured males were made into either royal or commoner slaves with the only real way out of slavery to become the wife of Mino women who desire a family to raise. While this strictness has been relaxing as Mino representatives enter international politics, but the cultural views are pretty ingrained.

Relationship Ideals

Mino culture, like most Amazons, is matrilineal and polygamy is relatively common due to historical gender imbalances with fewer native men due to warfare and capture into slavery. Historically during periods of dramatically low numbers of male bachelors, villages were permitted to share captive male slaves as additional mates for reproductive purposes to ensure enough children would be born in a generation. In Mino culture, children have been raised collectively, even by adults who aren't related by family ties which strengthens the community focus of Mino settlements even as they expanded from their original kingdom.

Encompassed species

• Amazon