Culture Focus: Axphain

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virgil
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Culture Focus: Axphain

Post by virgil »

Axphain: Tenured Inequality
Lay of the Land
Aside from its signature Three Mountains of Ten Thousand Pillars, Axphain is dominated by innumerable wetlands. Mangrove forests, fens, mires, bogs, seasonal marshes, and more are scattered about and the local dialect has a disturbing number of different words for ‘mud’. Rivers both saltwater and freshwater twine through much of it, and with tree cover makes Axphain perilously easy to get lost in. The wildlife is incredibly diverse and none have fully catalogued what creatures can be found, the most well-known being stilt-beasts, crocodiles, & muck hounds.

Major Cities
The second most populous with eight million citizens, there is a serious problem of overpopulation. The wetlands are very sparsely populated, predominantly family units eking out a subsistence living with the occasional wealthy manor estates. Much of the rest of the population stays in the sprawling, crowded, mountain cities. By far the largest congestion is in Kaivitu, home for the Empty University, the premiere institution for higher learning in the known world. There are two other auspicious academies elsewhere in the nation, the University of Desolation in Marakku, and the Seventh Academy of Nugae. Each of the cities are multi-story, congested, and beyond the walls of the higher learning, incredibly poor.

Economics
The rural estates form a large backbone of the nation’s industry, harvesting medicinal plants for refinement in the cities. Renowned hospitals and doctors scattered in the urban centers foster a vibrant source of income from wealthy foreigners seeking treatment, and the academic elite forged here is the forefront of culture and art throughout the known world.
The latter two have created an economic disparity that is truly stark. Of the lower class able to find work, it’s predominantly dirty and menial labour both harvesting and refining medicines, along with associated goods subject to a detailed division of labour. The academic elite (including medical doctors) live a privileged life sheltered from their economic lessers.

Law & Order
Guilds form the backbone of order for those traveling, regulations strongly focused on protecting economic assets and fines being the preferred form of punishment. Prisons are discouraged, but those working off their fines in the rural estates will laugh at such a notion.
While many of the titles are derived from the Chelmite orders, students (even alumni) and faculty are not religiously backed. They do enjoy immense legal protections and are immune to corporal punishment, any crimes are resolved through their University’s internal chairs.

Government
A dual-Parliament; the Council Elect, comprised solely of tenured professors from the Academy, and the elected of the Council Vulgar, whose members are publicly elected.
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