Setessa
As the favoured polis of Karamentra, the populace lives in harmony with the thick forests, terraced farms, and trained animals of Setessa, and they celebrate the cycle of seasons with grand holidays.
Setessa is also unique among the poleis of Theros in that few of its adult residents are men. Women comprise the bulk of the population, holding almost all of the leadership roles and carrying out most work. Men are few and far between, mostly performing roles at the polis’s edge. Children run freely around the polis. They’re so important, in fact, that Setessa’s people take in abandoned children from all over Theros.
Culture
The populace of Setessa live in a beautiful paradise, and they’re prepared to fight to the death to protect it. The constant training in archery, falconry, riding, and close combat can seem out of place among the idyllic forests and beautiful gardens and orchards, but that is the way of life in Setessa.
Gender in Setessa
Setessans believe that women become heroes through martial exploits, while men do so by finding their own way in the world. As a result, the polis is populated mostly by women and children. When young men reach the age of fourteen, their rites of passage culminate in a journey called peregrination, where they wander the world until they find a new place to call home. The few men who reside permanently in Setessa live in the Amatrophon, training and caring for the animals there. Some of these men never peregrinated, but others left and then returned to Setessa. The women of the polis form a tight-knit community where property is held in common. There is no marriage, and ancestry is traced matrilineally. Despite the very different roles played by men and women, Setessans are flexible when it comes to any individual’s place in that structure. Some men set out on peregrination after spending a number of years identified as women, and some women return from peregrination (or never undertake it) after a period of realization. Some people move fluidly between roles, and a few choose a special role that Setessans view as standing outside the dichotomy of gender, living in Ophis Tower. The warriors of Ophis Tower are martially trained as women are but wander the world as men do. They gather information for the Ruling Council, search out routes for peregrination (including identifying sympathetic individuals and households who will mentor young men at the start of their journeys), and rescue lost and abandoned children from other communities, bringing them back to Setessa.Military
Foreign Relations
Setessa doesn’t welcome outsiders, as a rule, except the orphaned and abandoned children brought to live in the polis. But the polis can be more hospitable to nonhuman outsiders than to humans (especially male humans) from other poleis. A few centaurs of the Lagonna band, leonin, and satyrs have earned the right to live in Setessa. Dryads and naiads from the Nessian Wood rarely try to enter the polis, but they are often friendly with the Bassara soldiers who patrol the forest.
Type
Geopolitical, City-state
Capital
Leader
Head of State
Head of Government
Government System
Democracy, Parliamentary
Economic System
Barter system
Subsidiary Organizations
Location
Controlled Territories
Neighboring Nations
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