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THE JALS

Demonym: Jalsavar (singular), Jalsavaran (plural)

Nomenclature: The term "Jals" is a neologism defined as the socio-cultural whole of which the Jalsavaran are a part – the people, the language, the land, the history, and what evolves into the national ethos of the Jalsavaran people. [Author’s Note: one might look to the Jews as a real-world example - the Jewish ethnic group, the Jewish faith, and the Jewish nation are all participants in a more fundamental Jewish identity, which in theory is not diminished by the dissolution or migration of any of its parts.] The complexity of the concept and the lexical simplicity of the word makes it the chief candidate for adoption into the vocabulary of other languages as the one word to describe any of these things; for example, Hellenistic languages might speak of the Ιαλας (Latin alphabet: Ialas) in reference to the Jals nation or language or the Jalsavaran people, although the Jalsavaran might take issue with the simplification.

Mythos: The faith of the Jals is an animistic tradition with no chief authority or common mythology; the spiritual needs of the Jalsavaran are met by the suraban (sing. sura), a class of eremetic wanderers and storytellers who allegedly wield tremendous power over the natural elements. These suraban spend much of their lives in the wilderness, though they stop in villages and settlements to perform various ritual blessings of households and crops, expulsion of unwelcome spirits, and rites of marriage and burial. The arrival of a sura is typically met with great cheer and ceremony throughout the community, such that they mark the passage of time by the regular passage of the suraban through their homesteads. The relationship of these villages with the suraban are intensely personal, and everyone in a village would know their visiting suraban by face and by name. While abroad, whenever a sura is not composing the mysteries revealed to him through meditation, he hunts beasts in the wilderness for food and to protect the villages, crafts ceremonial artifacts for those he meets in his travels, and erects simple graven monuments known as morumadur on sites of exceptional spiritual importance.

The Jals believe in an array of spirits both good and bad, each with its own place and purpose. These spirits are creatures of air and earth, and they do not take human or animal form; instead, they are depicted in art through specific colors, shapes, and symbols. The power of these spirits ranges from impish tricksters to nearly god-like beings, although none receive the worship or adoration of humanity; Jalsavaran do not believe these spirits can be seen or spoken to. Typically, a Jalsavar does not offer prayers of any sort, but rather asks a sura to intercede with the spirit world on his or her behalf. Nevertheless, each village has its own spirits told of in tales, many of which appear across several villages – those that appear most often are typically figures in the Jals creation myths or occasionally the lords of the spirit world. Most villages have their own pantheon of spirits, however, usually with their own responsibilities in the foundation or preservation of the community. These local spirits are usually the only ones to earn any sort of admiration by the Jals; they appear as characters in festival dances and appear as idols or totems in Jalsavaran homes. Most villages have an adversary spirit, too, and in such celebrations this spirit is ritually driven out of the village and exiled into the wilderness.

History: The ancestors of the Jals were a nomadic race of hunter-gatherers from the cold northerly foothills of the Aravan. Subsisting on the wild sheep and other wildlife of this inhospitable land, the Jals developed into a hardy and practical people whose survival necessitated a cultural sense of honor and perseverance. The earliest permanent settlement of the Jals is Taravasa, which stands at the meeting-place of the two great rivers that border the traditional Jals homeland. It is there that the first agricultural community was truly able to take root, and from the waters fed by distant mountain springs and seasonal rainfall was born the Jals civilization.

The mythical account of the village’s foundation concerns a hunter from the north who pursued a white hawk all the way from the mountains to the headwaters of the Samravan. There he slew the hawk in mid-flight with his last arrow, but when he approached the place where the bird had fallen, he found a spirit made manifest. He seized the spirit, and it explained that it was the spirit of the mountain, which had flown with the hawk; by forcing it from its home and pursuing it so far, it said, the hunter had united north with south, and all the lands over which the hawk had flown were now bound to this place. Having spoken with the spirit (thereby becoming the first sura, or so they say), the hunter led his family there, where his homestead quickly flourished. The people of Taravasa claim the hunter as their ancestor, and the name Taravasa itself means “place of the hawk”.

What began as a mere agricultural village changed over the years, and in time it became a small but fortified city. A previously nomadic people born on the frigid slopes of the Aravan, the Jals’ adjustment to an early urban culture was slow, and by the time the Jals established contact with its neighbors, most of the population still lived in the harsh lands to the north. This prevented the early growth of the city’s population and culture, but the transportation of metals and minerals southward and food and handicrafts northward helped establish a system of roads throughout the Jals lands. These roads, at first little more than paths beaten into the earth by countless footfalls, were eventually replaced by sturdy streets of great interlocking stones, and they stretched from the outskirts of Taravasa to the furthest hills of the Jals fatherland.

Nevertheless, Taravasa, the cultural heart of the Jals society, lay at its southernmost edge, and its separation from the majority of the Jalsavaran led to a dissonance in the ideologies of the urban and rural Jalsavaran. In time, serious social divisions, culminating in a tax on the outlying homesteads, brought conflict between the numerous northern folk and the small but developing city in the south. These irregular petty wars persisted until the first major assault on Taravasa by the marauding Charuda, intruders from the southern Samravan. The topography of the valley forced the brigands to approach Taravasa from the river, attacking the city at the meeting point of the two rivers. Using the high ground to their advantage, the Jalsavaran at length repelled the Charuda and, after years of conflict, destroyed them in retaliation.

The destruction of the Charuda was a galvanizing event for the Jalsavaran. It was in the years after the final destruction of their enemy that the social theory of the Jals began to form with the help of Kadammurna, an influential warrior-sura who helped lead the defense of Taravasa and whose heroism became legend and exemplar to the Jals. Just as the cultural identity of the Jals was reinforced, Taravasa become more than just a city: it was the first line of defense against the outside world. The Jals calendar begins with the ceremonial completion of a massive wall surrounding the city, with its foremost bastion jutting out into the junction of the Samravan. Hewn from enormous stones, the wall – known as the Chanmoru– is not only a powerful guard against foreign threats, but a critical symbol to the Jals of their ancestral valor and solidarity.

Material Culture: Jals craftsmanship, especially as practiced by the artisans of Taravasa, is exceptionally good, such that the products of their metalworking and sculpting are a significant export abroad. They are known for crafting bronze weapons and tools of great sharpness and toughness, and exported items are often gilt and jeweled.

At home, however, the weapons of the Jals are kept simple and effective. Some weapons they do not trade, but keep exclusively for their own soldiers. One of these is the sarr, a short sword-like blade at the end of an equally long haft. The elongated haft of the sarr allows a combatant to strike an enemy from a safe distance, while in close range the haft serves as a counterweight, allowing the sarr’s blade to be wielded with great speed. The Jals also employs the jutur, a short-bow with thick, drastically curved limbs that sacrifice accuracy for armor-penetrating power. The sarr is a weapon heavily involved in sura rituals, with every family owning at least one ceremonial sarr to lend to visiting suraban. The jutur is used as much in hunting as in war, as the bow’s power can pierce the hide of most beasts. Jals armor was light, usually leather, and Jals horsemen rarely carried a shield.

The Jals also excel as masons; while the northern homesteads rarely make use of stonework for their homes, the limited availability of trees in the Jals homeland necessitated the early exploration of stonecutting techniques to construct the growing city of Taravasa. Early Jals architecture is characterized by the use of giant interlocking stones without mortar, especially in the construction of the roads and the massive walls that surround the city. The southern wall, the Chanmoru, is the pinnacle of ancient Jals engineering; as much as eight meters thick and five meters high, the Chanmoru consists of the merging point of the east and west wall, which meet in a sharp wedge. The sharp angle of the wall is meant to split approaching forces the way a wave breaks upon a stone (Chanmoru = “wave-breaker”, lit. “wave-stone”) after which they are eliminated by the archers standing atop the wall. A symbol of hope to the Jals, the Chanmoru is meant to last until the end of time.

Jals cuisine was extremely simple before the foundation of Taravasa; without access to the fruits and spices of the Samravan, they ate only meat and a simple flatbread made from the sparse wild grains of the Aravan foothills. This diet was added to significantly by the advent of Taravasa; the humble roast meat and flatbread remained, but they were served with spicy and flavorful sauces and seasonings derived from the spices and fruits of the Samravan. Meals were usually small, and families would wait for the return of all their members before eating quickly.

The Jals’ reliance on horses in its nascent years is honored in the animals’ incorporation into much of the Jalsavaran’s daily lives. While carts for carrying goods are common by the time of the Chanmoru’s completion, the Jals never devised chariots for war. Instead, all but the most gentrified Jalsavaran learned how to ride a horse. Warriors learned how to use both the sarr and the jutur on horseback, as well as a variety of more common weapons such as swords and spears, and they learned how to pack a horse’s saddle for very long marches away from home. The rising importance of Taravasa as the Jals’ main defense has reduced the overall need for their equestrian traditions, but quick patrols of horsemen keeping watch in the lands between the northerly fortifications remain a crucial line of defense.

Society: The Jalsavaran live primarily in small family homesteads, so the cities of the Jals are very few in number. Taravasa is the only city to figure prominently in the geo-social landscape of the Jals homeland, serving both as a defensive bulwark against foreign threats and a symbolic center of the Jals. To the north, instead of cities, the Jals maintains a network of simple fortifications across the banks of the Samra and Minrava. These forts are manned not by a permanent garrison, but by small soldier clans brought together by nearby homesteads. These fortresses are supplied with provisions by the villages they protect, who view the expense simply as the price of safety. Otherwise, however, what the northern homesteads gather they keep for themselves; they trade with Taravasa for equal exchange, and they are extremely wary of any attempt by the city to impose a tax.

The northern homesteads are small but cohesive kinship groups, whose histories are preserved in story for centuries. While solidarity with one another is paramount to the Jals, the northern clans are especially concerned with family bonds; lineages are memorized in extensive detail by family patriarchs, and everything from contracts, debts, marriages, inheritances, to military allegiance is determined by the numerous grudges and reconciliations that mark every inter-family relationship. These families live mostly by hunting, though the domestication of the Aravan’s tamer beasts is slowly replacing the society’s hunting culture. The primary occupation of the northerners is mining, due to the mountains’ plentiful veins of metals, both precious and practical. Stone, too, is quarried from the hills and sent southward in exchange for the superior handicrafts of Taravasa.

The city in the south is a very different scene than the broad, cold lands to the north. While the Jals’ familial focus is kept here also, the various demands of an early urban environment force families to split apart and engage in a wider variety of tasks. The farms along the river’s edge, like the fortresses in the north, do not belong to any one family or community, but are tended by men and women from all echelons of the Taravasa social ladder. The fruits and grains harvested from the countless fields and orchards beyond the Chanmoru are gathered into great storehouses, from which the entire population gets its food. Much of this harvest is sent up north in exchange for the metal and stone necessary to create the town’s superior buildings and tools.

There is no ruling class in Jals society, or for that matter any social classes to speak of. Leadership of the city relies on a basic first-among-equals system meant to address the immediate concerns of the Jals. The needs and demands of the city are brought up in public councils, and whichever individual or kinship group can present an effective solution for that demand is chosen by the population to gain temporary authority over the city’s affairs. Seeking this power is fraught with risk; these leaders, or bandaran (lit. “chosen”), are frequent targets of assassination until they fulfill their promises to the city. Oftentimes, Taravasa can thrive for years without ever choosing a bandar; at other times, bandaran are selected to lead things as inconsequential as city festivals. On rare occasion, a sura is appointed as a bandar – such a person is unofficially referred to as a bandasura, and such a man can usually prolong his grasp on the city well beyond the intended duration.

Everyday life among the Jalsavaran is typically unexciting. Most men and women are engaged in some kind of work; there is no prescribed “weekend”, and holidays besides the arrivals of visiting suraban are few in number. However, young Jalsavaran are known to enjoy hunting on horseback as a recreational activity – both boys and girls are taught to ride a horse, regardless of their overall access to education. Education in general is mostly a home affair, although some basic academies exist for the education of Taravasa’s wealthiest youths. No common writing system exists for the Jals, though song and music are often learned at home. The chief pastime of the Jals, however, is storytelling; when no sura is available to tell a myth, the family’s patriarch usually has a repertoire of tales to share with his family. These stories circulate between families, and one’s ability to tell a good story is held as no less important a trait than honesty or courage.

While the Jals destroyed their southerly rivals, the Charuda, there remain some among the people of Taravasa in whom Charuda blood lives on. Physically speaking, the Jals are paler with curly black hair while the Charuda have darker skin and straight hair, and they are alleged to have more beautiful women – a contributing factor to the continued propagation of their kind in Taravasa. People with known or rumored Charuda ancestry struggle to find full acceptance in the city, and the least favorable work often falls to them, despite no attempt on their part to reassert their Charuda identity.

Geography: The fatherland of the Jals lies between two rivers - the Samra to the north and the Minrava to the south, both of which feed into the greater Samravan southward. While the southerly lands of the Jals are green and arable on account of the rivers' passage through them, the lands approaching the foothills of the central continental plateau (known as the Aravan) are cold and rocky, sustaining only the hardiest flora and fauna. As such, the Jals homeland sees both sun and snow, and both the verdant south and the mineral-rich north provide a means of survival. The uneven distribution of these resources, however, requires trade between the villages to maintain reasonable growth – the small crops of northerly villages are enough to sustain a small community, but the plenty from the south is increasingly a necessity as the homesteads grow and spread.

Influences: Once someone chooses to join me in the Indus Valley Samravan, we can discuss any back-and-forth between our two august peoples.

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