Sinann (Pronounced Shin-an)

Sinann is a land with free and unaffiliated Celts, great primeval forests, and the fairfolk, including Sidhe, fairies, nymphs, dryads, pixies, centaurs and fawns. The land is steeped in a magic more ancient than the creation of humans, and only those humans that are tolerated are the Celtic followers of the ancient Druidic traditions.

Structure

There is no formal government or political organs, and the people live in scattered groups of homesteads and hamlets. The Druids are the closest to providing an organizational structure, but are more preoccupied with religion and nature, and while they may resolve certain disputes if requested by the parties, they do not govern in any meaningful sense. Unlike the Celts from Galletica, there is no formal system of law handed down by the Druids, but disputes are generally privately resolved by the individual families, with the amount of compensation paid by a person committing an offense to the injured party or, in case of death, to his family determined according to custom and the power relationship between the individuals.

History

The Ancient Fultonian Empire northern expansion stopped at the ancient forests of Sinann. Fultar conquered as far north inland as the nation of Galletica and conquered as far north along the coast as Bevil. The primeval forests and the fairy folk of Sinnan successfully resisted the might of the Fultonian legions. The Fultonians sought to bypass Sinann and directly attacked the Kozar Steep, but they failed there as well. At this time, there were no human inhabitants in Sinann other than a few reclusive mystics, wild magicians, nature priests, or the lovers of dyads. After the Guar Conquest and Arrival of the Great Worms and the Ancient Fultonian Empire fell, the Celtic tribes invaded and conquered what is now Galletica as well as portions of Northern Fultar. The Celts initially avoided Sinann for a few hundred years. Eventually, the Druids, with their nature centric religion, gradually penetrated the great forests and woodlands and soon came after the Druids' human followers. Despite hundreds of years of presence, humans remain outsiders in this wild and dangerous land. The Sinannians periodically raid and fight with their neighbors, but the only territorial expansion has been in the souther Kozar Steep, which alternates in control between Sinann and the Kozars.

Territories

Sinann is the area that in the east lies between the Kozar Steep to its north and the Nation of Galletica to the south. The western portion of Sinnan lies between and the Kozar Steep and the kingdom of Bevil. It is not large, however, it includes dense forests, rough hills and always feels much larger than the geographic space that it fills on a map. The fair folk, and the Druids agree, believe that Sinnan is a magical land that actual is larger than the space as the crow flies, with hidden magical worlds. There are many a tale of a traveler becoming lost in Sinnan, and then only to return a few weeks or years later, but decades or even centuries having passed in the world they left behind. Sinann is essentially a borderland to the wilderness and mountains that is mostly forest and woodlands. All of Sinann is more mountainous and dangerous that the surrounding areas, which explains in part why the nation since the ancient Fultonian Empire has been interested in taking the time to conquer it. Essentially, it not rich or fertile land and is hard to govern due to the terrain, so no organized nation state in recent memory has bothered to attempt to rule it.

Agriculture & Industry

No true villages or towns exist in Sinnan, and use of currency is banned by the Druids so that all trade is in barter. Hamlets or small population centers exist, but they are not permanent. Some isolated farmsteads might grow and expand over the centuries, but these proto-villages are always abandoned over time. The land is ill-defined, full of shadows and contrasts, and has isolated and unorganized islands of cultivation. There are patches of uncertain authority with scattered family groupings that revolve around a matriarch, chieftain or rich man. It is a landscape still in a state of anarchy, and a picture of a world that humans are unable to control or dominate. Land is plentiful but people scarce. What is striking absent in Sinann is the lack of any connection with ancient human civilization. The core areas of the known world are the lands of Fultar, or lands that Fultar colonized. There are also Arabia, Nubia, Gilean, the Chaotic Coast and the Viking lands, but these also have long histories going back thousands of years. In Fultar and its former colonies, and to a greater or lesser degree other civilized lands, all of these show the remnants and scares of a more glorious time. Ancient stone walls, ruined castles and forts, still traveled roads, broken statues, towers, sometimes still used aqueducts, and even towns and cities still using the ancient buildings or street plans. All of these constructions still survive scattered across Fultar and it colonies―ancient ruins so stunningly unique, bizarre, and impressive that some cannot believe that they were constructed by men. To all the lands that Fultar conquered and colonized, they brought not only a craftsman's but an engineer's approach to farming with wells, irrigated systems, the scientific application fertilizer--nothing of which ever reached Sinann. None of this exists in Sinann, and instead there is a deeper connection to a natural world and magic older than humans. The land is mysterious, powerful and terrifying to those who do not dwell there. There are other wild places to the east that humans have never occupied, but those are generally filled with orcs, goblins, giants and other monsters. In Sinann, the ancient inhabitants are the fair folk of fairies, Satyrs and centaurs. The human people of Sinann practice primitive farming. Unlike their Galletician cousins to the south whose agriculture centers around cattle, the Sinannians main source of meat are pigs, which can roam wide in the forests, as well as sheep and goats. They keep domesticated geese and chickens but, it is unholy to eat them. As one traveler wrote: "They think it is wrong to eat chickens or geese but they breed them as pets." Never having been colonized by Fultar, few vegetables are known in Sinann; however, Celtic beans are grown and a kind of primitive parsnip. Herbs are often the main way to get your 'greens'. A recent Fultonian traveler noted: "While the land is not fertile, they still fail to take advantage of it by planting orchards, fencing off meadows or irrigating gardens; the only demand they make on the soil is to produce a grain crop. Hence, even the year itself is not divided by them into as many seasons as with us: winter, spring and summer they understand and have names for; the name of autumn as a growing season is completely unknown to them as the good things that it can bring."

Infrastructure

Sinann lacks in any meaningful physical assets and, if the humans disappeared, they would leave little trace after a few generations. Only a few stone monuments and carvings would be left. There are no real roads, but tracks and trails. Their fields can be delineated by borders or barriers of wood and occasional stones. The people of Sinann, similar to most of the Celts of Galletica, primarily live in sunken round house huts, which are dug into the soil to the depth of about a half a yard, with an area of five to ten square yards. These are used alternatively for people, animals, storage or a workshop. These round houses have thatched roofs of straw or heather. The walls are made from local material, and tended to be made from wattle (woven wood) and daub (straw and mud) as there was an ample supply of wood from the forests. They also reside in timber framed buildings, covered in clay or wattle and daub. The most common design is a long house with animals at one end and people at the other, often with no separation but a manure trench. As the Fultonian traveler, Nusita explained, "They never live in cities or towns, and will not even have their houses adjoining. They dwell apart, scattered here and there, whenever a spring, filed or grove takes their fancy. Their settlements are not laid out in our style, with buildings adjacent and connected. They do not make use of masonry or tiles, for all purposes they employ rough hewn amber, or they carefully smear clay over the walls. They also dig underground caves, which they cover with piles of manure and use both as refuges in the winter and as storehouses for grain. In short, they are little better than animals."

Worship

The people of Sinann follow the nature centric Druid traditions, but also worship the broad pantheon of the Celtic gods, primarily Dagda, Silvanus, Morrigan, Brigit, Dunatis, Arawn and Ohgma. A unique aspect of Celtic religious practice is the high status of the sacred chicken. Chickens, which are not eaten, are used in cock fights and for augury. The Nation of Galletica also honor the chicken and other birds in the practice of augury, but not to the extent as the people of Sinann. For a religious man, and not all the free people of Sinann are religious, nothing significant is undertaken, without omens being drawn from the sacred chickens. The most common method of drawing these omens is in examining the manner in which the chickens deal with grain that is presented to them. When they eat it avidly while stamping their feet and scattering it here and there, the augury is favorable; if they refuse to eat and drink, the omen is bad and the undertaking for which it is consulted should be abandoned. Other signs can also be told by the chickens, including how the eat and whether, and where they shit. When there is a need to render this sort of divination, the chickens are left in a cage for a certain amount of time without eating; after that a Druid will open the cage and toss their feed to them. A Fultonian priest of Tya Nehru summarize chicken augury as: "If they want a positive omen, they starve their beastly birds; if they want a unfavorable omen, they feed them. Chickens are for eating and Celts are fools." The other main source of augury is the ritual sacrifice of criminals, often killing them and leaving them in a bog. This practice has been abandoned by other Celtic peoples. This is a deeply serious and sacred connection to the world that we all will enter. As part of divining the future, human sacrifices are generally made to coincide with important calendar dates. It has been described by a Fultonian visitor as "At an appointed time all tribes meet ….. in a forest consecrated by their ancestors, surrounded by fear, sacred from the dawn of time. There, on behalf of those assembled, they celebrate the commencement of their barbaric cult with a human sacrifice."