Afphusasshifwe

1. #1Mainland

   Keys: Green Serpent's Domain, Quagmire, High Morass

   The mainland polity of Afphusasshifwe, ruled directly by their Goddess-Queen. Its terrain consists mainly of rainforest and various wetlands. To the east-south-east is the ocean's shore. The Afphusasshifwe's land has very few actual towns and nothing that would qualify as a city. Villages always expand, split or merge. Less commonly, they shrink and are eventually abandoned, to be reclaimed by the wilderness. Travel within this land is dones as often by flat-bottomed boat or barge, as it is by foot or mount. Wheeled forms of transport are mostly useless outside of a town. Few outsiders ever grow to be comfortable in this land, unless they marry a local or three. Even then, some never truly adjust.

2. #2The nation

   Keys: shiffy, befangled, greenskins, shiffies, green skin

   The Afphusasshifwe are descended from humans who had been enslaved to the Dawn Nobles - an ancient, squamous race that used to dominate the region up until the Green Rebellion. Afphusasshifwe frames are smaller than those of Earth humans; their skin pigmentation has a greenish tint; they are ambidextrous by default, so having an "off hand" counts among them as a minor disability. The most striking feature of their appearance is their sharp, elongated upper canines. These are hollow and are used both for vocalization (especially the dental whistle phoneme, [#]) and for extracting the nutritious juice of fruit whose pulp is poisonous to warm-blooded creatures. The nation's name literally means "Green Serpent's Spawn", so named after an antagonistic trickster god from the Dawn Nobles' mythology and a foil to the Noble Serpent credited with creating the Nobles themselves.

3. #3Diaspora

   Keys: Greenslink, Jungle Exclave, tangle, Wet Wanderer, mire expats, greentangle

   Children of the Green Serpent who live outside his domain. Some are transient, often driven by wanderlust and the spirit of exploration, having left the swamp to see the world but fully intending to return one day. Others settle among the foreign nations, sometime syncretizing their culture or faith with the local ones. In communities with a significant Green minority, they sometimes develop their own subculture and live closer to each than to members of the host nation. Such groups are known as "tangles" if small, or Exclaves, if notably large. Some of these have been around for many generations. Most of them still pray to Afphusasshi (the Green Serpent), Fhtfhtphjsth (the corporeal Goddess-Queen), or both.

4. #4Islanders

   Keys: fishersnake, Eastern Greens, Eastern Green, fishersnakes, Sea-shiffies, sea-shiffy

   Smaller nations, each controlling one or more small islands in the eastern ocean. Ethnically, they are among the Green Serpent's children, but politically, each island nation is independent of the Mainland. Religion varies: some islands worship the Goddess-Queen and/or the Green Serpent, but not all do. Similarly, some speak insular dialects of the Green Serpent's Tongue, while others have their own languages, acquired from neighboring nations and creolized to different extents.

5. #5Language

   Keys: , Green Serpent's tongue, Afphusasshixrm, snaketalk, Green Language, Sasshixrm

   Afphusasshixrm (literally "Green Serpent's tongue") originally split off from Afphuzjzhxrm (Noble Serpent's Tongue) as a pidgin for the humanoid slaves who couldn't pronounce a large portion of their scaly owners' language. The Noble Tongue is still alive today, if dwindling. It's spoken by the small number of extant "Basilisks": descendants of the Dawn Nobles who survived the Green Uprising, dozens of generations ago, and now live as a protected minority among their former slaves. Since then, Afphusasshixrm has developed and drifted far from its Afphuzjzhxrm roots; enough to no longer be mutually intelligible. Like its parent, the Green Tongue started out inscribed on immobile objects, like tree trunks and soft rock. It is written with two hands: the lead hand charting the midline and vowels, the other hand adding the consonants along that line. Sasshixrm has 4 or 5 vowels ([a], [e], [i], [o]; some dialects also [u]), 3 apleumonic stops ([p'],[k'], [t']), and many fricatives. The vowels are used sparingly, so syllables can be formed entirely without them. Vowels are written as curves on the midline, fricatives cross it, stops are placed in gaps left on the line for them. A gap without a stop in it signifies the end of one word and beginning of another. For punctuation, diacritics are used. By contrast, Zjzhxrm has only 3 vowels, one stop, and a positively staggering number of fricatives.

6. #6Kinship

   Keys: handfast, family, footfast, kin

   The Afphusasshifwe that populate the mainland Quagmire, traditionally practice both polyandry and polygyny. The number of spouses an individual may handfast, is determined by how many spouses they could take care of, in a hypothetical situation where those spouses contributed nothing. As a result, the poorer members of this nation tend to form simple couples, whereas the wealthier ones often create giant polycules. Some times, an entire village can consist of a single branched-out family. Titles and inheritance are transferred through matrimonial lines, rather than parent to child.

   Marriage that can't result childbirth (same-sex or cross-species) is called "Joining". It's taken just as seriously as a handfasting, but differs from it in two ways: Joining is not used to determine someone's title, and inheritance of through Joining only covers property that can be moved - never land or buildings. In the absence of a living spouse, a sibling will inherit first, and only then a descendant.

7. #7Other "humans"

   Keys: grayskins, Plainsfolk, cliffolk, ogres, pinkskins

   The term "demihuman" is unheard of: all those with a humanoid body-plan are considered subraces of human. The most common human races are colloquially referred to as Pink, Gray, Green or Giant. Most urbanized human nations are either Pink or Gray. Pink skins are the closest in appearance to Earth humans, but are taller, with prehensile toes, and a tail. Their tails vary in length, from as short as a finger to as long as a leg. Their hair color has by far the most variations, including their facial and body hair. They're traditionally called Plainsfolk, but many dwell in valleys, woods, plateaus, hills and deserts. Gray skins originate from rocky environments, usually around water. Cliffolk skin is covered in down that can be light brown, yellowish, white or gray. Their heads are bald, except for that same down. Their ears are elongates at birth, but gradually become rounder with age, unless prevented from this change by means of piercings. Their hands and toes are webbed to varying extents and they're able to hold their breath for significantly longer than other human races. On average, these cliff dwellers are taller than mirefolk but shorter than plainsfolk. Green skins are Afphusasshifwe: this includes the nation itself, along with the green insular polities and expat minorities living among other races. Giants (aka Ogres) look like cliff dwellers, except twice as wide, half-again as tall, and with coarser hair on their heads and faces but none on their bodies. They originate on one large island and are a rare sight outside of its vicinity. There are rumours than a fifth human race exists, but no consistent notion of what those look like.

8. #8Other races

   Keys: Slimers, Dawn Nobles, Basilisks, Beastlings, Tide Scribes, Scribes, Gryphons

   The Scribes are an aquatic lifeform analogous to molluscs. Their name comes from having invented writing, before teaching it to other races. A Scribe look like a translucent, gelatinous blob with several tentacles. Their pigmentation depends on the ecosystem they live in: coastal dwellers are greenish, coral dwellers are pinkish, bottom-crawlers are clear and colorless. The longer a Tide Scribe remains outside of seawater, the darker and more opaque it grows. An average Scribe can stay on dry land (in the shade, without extreme weather conditions) for 6-12 hours without significant discomfort and for at least 20 hours before there is a palpable risk to its life or health. Freshwater offers almost no health benefit, but helps the discomfort significantly. Two of a Tide Scribe's tentacles are hunting limbs. The pads at their end release an acid, at variable concentrations, that the Scribes have learned to use for communication, owing to its ability to discolor rock, glass, ceramics, bone and other surfaces. Their writing systems use different shades of discoloration to represent the different sounds of their languages, spaces to indicate breaks in their subverbal hum, and line-breaks to signify word boundaries.

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