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By the present century Chwahir culture has become so distorted it is difficult to recognize the mostly black-clad Chwahir from their ancestors, who loved color, and who only wore black when seeking justice (or vengeance).
Social harmony is fundamental to Chwahir existence, even in the army days. The key is the twi, which is partly alternate family and partly work group. Twia are formed in many ways, though usually among age-mates in village or town. Sometimes they are related and sometimes not. In some areas, they are assigned; Shnit of course took over and attempted to assign twia, and any close to him would certainly be broken up (something Chwahir rarely did) if he suspected their loyalty was too given to one another and not to his will.
A good twi is loyal, everyone having one another's back. They help one another in all times and circumstances, and relationships, even marriages, are negotiated with prospective partners' twia, if members of a twi do not pair off.
Rice reaches back into the mistiest history of the Chwahir. Rice dishes of various kinds (especially noodles made of rice-milk batter) were the staple, but as the land became drier, other crops replaced the hemp, which caused a gradual revolution in food. Rice became the dish of the powerful, and for ordinary people was saved for special days (or for starvation, as rice stored properly lasts a long time); the army adopted the 'slurry' of the west (cabbage and oats, or wheat if oats are rare) as a relatively fast, easy meal, cooked into pottage. It can be made bearable with a little honey, as most villages have their apiary.
Chwahir eat with eating sticks, which had influence on Colend with their forks and spoons with tiny tines/bowls and long handles. Forces the eater to tiny bites.
Like everything else, rice became politicized under Shnit as the climate worsened, being entirely reserved for him and his army. To be caught eating rice would earn not only you but your twi, and perhaps your family, instant death.
By the time of Shnit Sonscarna, the military was about the only possible job for most people. The economy was a wreck, black marketeering being marginally more successful than the rigidly controlled, stiffly taxed regular business. Women, useless in war, were forbidden to own property, to read and write. Later he was mad enough to pass a law to forbid them to use family names, even, because he felt that mothers were secretly keeping their children, specifically boy children, loyal to families, and not to him. His army training showed this rejection of any possible loyalties in its ferocity--added with mind-altering spells meant to suppress initiative and enhance obedience.
Women in Chwahirsland ran the black market, they had secret signs and signals for communication, and they worked hard to ameliorate Shnit's depredations as decade after decade passed on and he never died, just tried to increase his stranglehold on the kingdom, and life itself.
Music had been forbidden by his father; the form that stubbornly persisted was the ancient Great Hum, an eerie, haunting, beautiful series of incredibly complicated patterns that were never sung aloud, just hummed in a soft tone, along with noises that evoke different aspects of life. There is a trace of evidence--that, again, isn't always acknowledged--that the Chwahir Hum arises out of historical memory of the resonance of disirad.
In spite of Shnit, most Chwahir cherish the personal hum as well as the Great Hum, which expresses communal harmony. Musicians outside the kingdom recognize it as the art it is, but it is rarely heard by outsiders, and as no hum ever sounds the same twice, find it impossible to reproduce. Jilo, as part of his sweeping changes, permits some hummers to attend the music festival in Colend, where they astonish the world by winning the much-valued Silver Feather, and the Chwahir hum begins to gain prestige. That would be the first time in centuries that anything out of Chwahirsland was lauded.
Dan Tonli old war commander, warlord, nanijo, became captain/baron
COURT OF RULE Court of Rule was where Shnit’s army and civs lined up to receive punishment.
Hierarchy: gold, silver, purple, crimson, green
Rank markers: Shoulder flashes, tabs, armbands. Armbands for service, or for trainees. Flashes for squad, company, battalion levels, command tabs for brigade and above.
Brown armband: stable/ support crew on ships. Blue or those with pen—message writers or runners. Markings on them for level and where. One-five
Regular infantry called flatfoots
Squad - 8 soldiers, with their captain makes 9. Watches on ships are in eights, though some captains mix this Cavalry has a troop SQUADRON – Two squads—usually only put together for sentry duty.
Company – Five squads (50 warriors, sailors). It will have a captain of its own, with an NCO heading support staff, which is an extra squad or two, depending on if they serve at home or on road, or as free floaters aboard ship. (A double company can have ten squads, and double the support.)
Battalion – Five companies, five ships. (250 warriors, plus support staff making 300) A battalion is capable of independent operations of limited duration and scope.
Brigade – Five battalions (1250 warriors, plus support staff making 2000) 25 ships
Division – Five brigades (6250, swelling to 10,000—3750 support--) and at that size, Shnit could summarily put some of support on the front lines if he wanted, so support went armed on attack. Ditto navy--though there is one navy, not five, under Wan-Edge.
ARMY—Five Divisions make one army, 50 thousand. Gold, Silver, Purple, Crimson, Green,
There are five armies, and this doesn’t count trainees.
Henjit was commander under Shnit. He could only command the five armies with Wan-Edhe’s orders—he had no army of his own, last of the customs from the old days, when generals got their promotion and their colorful titles from specific missions. Thog of the Two Knives earned her greatness by clearing the strait and the eastern sea of the last of the Venn renegades and pirates, and so, for a long time after, Admirals were Admiral of the Two Knives. March-parade the most important event, early in summer on The King’s official birthday. Earns a shoulder flash for the winning army, who gets first of the supplies for the next year.
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