#that probably happens a lot in Nabafyr

[illarian-rambling]

A short ramble about the two main Illari wedding cultures because I'll do anything but actually write :D

Ok so, when it comes to religion, the world of Illaros is pretty split between the Illarian half and the Mordunyan half. The Illarian church began with the humans of Janaz, but spread to encompass the elven nations of Skysheer and Nabafyr later on. The Dwarven Alliance, which was never conquered by humans, held onto its Mordun faith. Why does religion matter when it comes to weddings? Because any 'binding of family' (weddings, adoptions, even business ventures) are very important in the Illarian holy texts, so proper Illarian weddings are one of the few things that actually got really forced onto the Nabafyrians and Skysheerians by way of the Republic government (big player in banking and business of all kinds) not recognizing people as married if they hadn't done it the 'right way.' Family is also a huge component of dwarven culture in general, so you already know their religion is gonna standardize it. Anyways, that's how we got to two main wedding cultures, with two subcultures for the surviving Nabafyrian and Skysheerian traditions.

Your run-of-the-mill Illarian wedding with no elven influences is a surprisingly simple affair. There's no engagement, for one. Partners usually decide together that they want to get married and give their social circle a few months' notice for planning. Springing a sudden 'Will you marry me?' would be seen as a really strange move in Illarian culture. Blue is traditionally a Big Event color, so lots of brides wear blue dresses, but this isn't a requirement, and many opt for other hues. Really, the only thing that makes it an Illarian wedding is that it's performed by a priest of Samara, goddess of family and the cooking fire.

The most important event of a human wedding is actually a cultural practice, not a religious one. When humans get married, they exchange gifts. This is a call-back to nobles exchanging dowries, but the custom ended up catching on with the common folk and turned into something more intimate. The humans of Illaros don't use rings to signify their love, but instead exchange gifts with their partner. A wedding gift is often the nicest thing a person will ever own. It's often completely customized - a painter might get a set of brushes made by a master craftsman, a lover of birds might get a set of runic binoculars, a farmer might get a steam-powered plow, a frequent traveler might get a pair of magically sealed boots, so on and so forth. These gifts are meant to be a purest expression of understanding and insight. It's not unheard of for someone to leave at the altar because of a bad wedding gift, or to spend a fortune trying to get the best one. Usually, a wedding gift is made well enough to last throughout a person's life.

The other thing is surnames. This one's pretty easy, though. Traditionally, the partner of lower station takes on the partner of higher station's name - 'marrying up' is the common term. In the modern era, though, this gets flexible.

Another minor tradition, smaller than the gift, is bride-talk. The first person at a wedding who offers the bride a drink is supposedly wanting advice for how to find a good match. Single cousins will sometimes compete for the chance, as it's also a good way to signal that you're 'on the market,' so to speak.

On the elven subset of Illarian wedding culture, there is no gift exchange, since that's not a religious tradition. Really, the only requirement for an Illarian wedding is the presence of a priest, so Nabafyrians and Skysheerians still tend to do things largely their own way.

Nabafyrians, of course, have to involve weapons. Usually, Nabafyrian families each have their own branch of martial art and an accompanying crest. When you marry into a family, you're allowed to learn their martial art. You may also engrave their crest onto your weapon. A smith is usually present at weddings to do this. It's up to the married couple to decide who is joining whose family, but they usually follow the human example and marry up.

Skysheerians are different in that marriage is solely a right of the nobility. Serfs can live together, share names, and have civil ceremonies, but they aren't 'married' in the eyes of the law. When nobles get married, it's far more of a business deal. Land and titles are exchanged, promises are made, and dowries are paid. Marriage for love isn't a thing, however, it's not frowned upon in the slightest to have consorts. You can go to a banquet with your husband, only to leave in a different man's carriage and no one will mind. You're binding your families, not your hearts, so who cares if you love someone else? Just so long as you're willing to legitimize any bastards, everyone's happy.

Now we get to the really different one: dwarven marriage. First off, just like how in our current irl society, alloromantic heterosexuality is seen as a 'default,' in dwarven society, that default is actually aromantic heterosexuality. Your first loyalty is expected to be to your clan. 'Falling in love' is seen as a deviant urge. With that out of the way, how does marriage work then?

A dwarven marriage, like a Skysheerian one, is a contract between two families, or clans, in this case. Except, for dwarves, a child is the express goal of marriage. Two clans will negotiate a match between two people who can have kids together. During the duration of the marriage, the father will join the mother's clan until any kid they have makes it to adulthood, after which he will leave to rejoin his original clan. The father's clan, in exchange for losing a member for eighteen years and not getting a kid out of it, will receive a massive sum of money called a hand-price. The hand-price is thought to be equivalent to the work that child will do for the mother's clan over their lifetime. So mom's clan gets a kid, dad's clan gets cash. Hand-prices generally sit at a set value, but sometimes, if someone assumes the kid isn't gonna contribute much, the mother's clan will ask for a partial refund. This is common fare for insults among dwarven children.

In places like Unity, where dwarven culture mixes with others, things are a little looser. Sometimes, a father will stay with his wife and child even after the child hits legal adulthood. Marriage not for the sake of reproduction is also increasingly common. In that case, a hand-price will be negotiated for the clan one partner is leaving, putting a monetary number on what they might contribute to the clan they're joining. Even in Unity, though, marriage always entails someone leaving their clan. Being married to someone in another clan while remaining in your own would be seen as a gross splitting of loyalties and might well end up with both partners being disowned.

Why do all of these cultures place such a strong emphasis on marriage being between two families, not two individuals? I'm not sure. Probably because they all exist together in an area of land roughly the size of Europe - there's gonna be some general vibe sharing.

Anyways this has been (looks directly into the camera) an Illarian ramble

[illarian-rambling]

Happy WBW! (Courtesy of my partner) What is a piece of worldbuilding that you are really excited about but that you haven't been able to incorporate into your actual writing yet?

Sorry this one took a while, I had to break out the lore book!

I've got a lot of minor stuff I haven't been able to put in, but probably the biggest of these is the War of Conquest. Which, considering it's the reason modern Illaros Is the way it Is, is kind of a glaring oversight.

The War of Conquest kicked off about a thousand years ago as a result of various bad conditions in Janaz. This was before the establishment of the Janazi Confederacy, so the archipelago warred frequently and at the time, there were famines sweeping many islands, along with religious troubles. Many Janazi humans were hungry for something better. They wanted security and religious stability. It was one man, Nicklai Sayovski, who found a way to make that a reality.

Nicklai came up through the ranks of the Yunin military (a Janazi city-state at the time), eventually earning the rank of general. However, the corruption he saw in the upper ranks of the government and the overcrowding in his city only reinforced his sentiment that something drastic needed to be done to improve his people's quality of life. The course of action he decided on was, indeed, nothing but drastic.

After reaching out to several other influential figures (the politician Xiulin Haru, the diplomat Konguo Daiichi, the pirate Halicas Achmenos, the master mage Cardor Dular, the spy Altacoya Ceqliquetzal, the engineer Idan Sib Yamiz, and the generals Agita N'Jogu and Tua Durnan) Nicklai gathered not only an army, but a pack of homesteaders looking for a better life away from Janaz, and went out to conquer the continent of Iarl. From the humans' perspective, this conquest was justified. They were doing what they had to in order to help their own people, and they would be bringing the truth of Illarianism to the heathen masses.

The first place they conquered was the peaceful nation of Abrim, mostly composed of goblins and fenodyree. Because they surrendered early, Abrim was allowed to exist as a Republic satellite state in exchange for horses and siege machines. After that, the generals N'Jogu, Dular, and Durnan would prosecute a brutal campaign in the south of Iarl, pillaging and enslaving as they went. Up north, the politicians Daiichi and Haru played the elvish nations off of one another, promising each many things in exchange for religious conversion and military support. Ultimately, both Nabafyr and Skysheer knew that if they didn't ally with the Republic, their rival nation would, leading to them being crushed, so they each took the offer and converted to Illarianism. (Converted in name, at least)

The war in the south progressed pretty quickly after the elvish nations committed troops. Previously, the area had been made up of many, smaller nations that didn't have the might to stand up to such a massive force. It was after the brutal sack of Lanokos, after which General Durnan disappeared, that southern Iarl was officially declared Republic territory and settlers began to move in.

But the war wasn't over yet. There was still one major player on the Iarlan map that the Republic hadn't tangled with yet: The Dwarven Alliance.

Being an insular collection of city-states, the Alliance didn't care too much about what was happening in southern Iarl. However, one of the things the Republic had promised to Nabafyr and Skysheer was Alliance territory, knowing that if the elvish nations joined their cause, the rival Alliance never would. This began the longest stretch of the War of Conquest. Slowly and bloodily, the Alliance forces were pushed back from the Siegewall Mountains and into the poisoned Araunian desert, where they were forced to dig underground shelters to avoid the magical radiation. It took about ninety years to fully get the Alliance out of the mountains, and even in the modern day, border skirmishes are common.

After the war was officially declared over, the descendents of Nicklai's original team were each given a province to rule, with two other families being put in charge of the colonies the Republic siezed from the Alliance later in the war.

So, basically, everything in Illaros's current political climate can be traced back to the War of Conquest. The founding of the trade city Unity began as a refugee camp for southern Iarlans. The attitude of prejudice against non-humans and non-elves in the Republic can be traced back to the enslavement of that first generation of POWs, whose children were born free according to traditional human war laws, but were still subject to crushing poverty. The Alliance's xenophobia and precarious living situation in the Araunian desert is directly due to the actions taken 1000 years ago. Even the introduction of runic magic to Iarl and the formation of the Janazi Confederacy is because of the War of Conquest.

Anyways, here's a before and after map

Thanks for the ask!