Western Tritons
Trtions don’t have a single nation-state: they live in small communities scattered around the islands and coast of their peninsula, happy with the vague protection of the Confederacy and the informal agreements between each other.
While not bound by institutions in common, the various Triton peoples share the same culture, or more accurately, they all have their distinctive yet overlapping cultures: the hundreds of dialects are all mutually intelligible, and the myriad of sects can be traced back to the same religious principle.
Nonetheless, two areas shape the Tritons’ culture as a whole: the city of Netsanet and Rejimi Island in the West, and the city of Gebeya and the Mi’irabi Coast in the East.
The West
The Mind Reef is a piece of the astral plane, the otherwordly dimension of thoughts and ideas. The effects for the people living in the area are those of a subtle low-intensity telepathic field: you can hear “stray thoughts”, like words muttered under one’s breath; you can have sudden moments of connection and empathy; overhearing the sounds of another person memory; subconscious thoughts can emerge for a second, as you were reading your own mind; you can dream other people dreams, being catapulted in a stranger’s oneiric landscape.
People get used to the quirks of the area, but the Mind Reef has another pervasive effect: anyone who grows up here develops a sixth sense for other people’s intentions. It’s a more subtle phenomenon than mind reading, it’s just “catching the vibes” of someone, or being able to “get” someone you just met. While only a delicate effect, it nonetheless shapes the Western Triton culture, making it open and friendly: they know (or at least they think they know) who has goodness or malice in their hearts within minutes of meeting them.
Part 2/2
Tritons don’t sign contracts with each other, considering a handshake (or other similar little ritual) more than enough to bind the parties in agreement. They may be somewhat gullible and naive, but people from other parts of the Confederacy have learned not to abuse a Triton’s trust: they can be ruthless and vindictive against anyone who tricked them or broke a promise, sometimes to an absurd extent (cheaters and charlatans can be stalked for years by their disgruntled victims).
The Mind Reef doesn’t affect only the relationship among people but also between people and the environment: you can “feel” the sea, the creatures, and the algae. This is also a very subtle effect, but swimming in those clear waters you will see how jellyfish move out of your way, small schools of fishes follow you like a parade, kelp waves at the rhythm of the song you are singing in your head.
This harmony between the landscape and its inhabitants has caused the Western Tritons to have a very leisure-loving and slow-paced way of life. They still adopt innovations coming from the outside, and they live their lives between water and land to take advantage of things like glass making, metalsmithing, pottery, dyeing and tanning, and all the other processes that necessitate fire and dry heat. Their intellectual pursuits are less oriented toward technology and practical matters and more toward self-reflection, inward observation, and metaphysical questions.
Astralism is a term coined by the scholars of the Infernal Empire as a catch-all category for all the various religious practices of the Tritons. There is no single church, but many sects that revolve around specific sites or specific gurus.
The core tenets revolved around the idea that everybody leaves a mark in the universe — a durable imprint in the Mana Field — and that the soul will “live” in that imprint. If you behave well and you are happy, then your “micro afterlife” will be a paradise, otherwise it will be a hell of your own creation. It’s clear how this line of thought influenced the Spirits’ Way, in that both religions see the Mana Field as the new otherworld, but not all Astralist sects share the optimism of the Beast Folk religionists.
Many gurus and renowned monks have developed quite apocalyptic eschatologies. For some, the Demiruge will come back bringing cataclysms, and the Mana Field is the only safe place for the souls (not too far off from the Dwarven end-times scenario). For others, the universe has been ending ever since the Cosmic War — planned all along by the Demiurge — and so you want to leave as little mark as possible on the Mana Field, so the soul will escape reality and be able to survive the completion of the End.
A big connecting point of the various Astralist sects is how they practice magic. Materials, shapes, movements, and sounds all can weave the threads of mana and knot them into spells, but Tritons use the mind. Visualizing complex diagrams (called mandalas) and combining and rotating them in their mind they can achieve the same result as a classic incantation made of gestures and chants. There are 108 pillars of stone scattered on and around the island of Rejimi, each craved with one of the basic mandalas, ancient objects created around the time of the Accord by the wise founders of Astralism. There are no barriers to the study of Astralists’ doctrines, not even repudiating other religions, but since it is said that one has to commit to memory all the mandalas, and sixteen of them are deep underwater, very few non-Triton have been considered masters worth of a following.
The acolytes of Astralism have created a “pilgrimage network” that connects the various monasteries, villages, and settlements built near these notable artifacts, and this doubles as a network for goods and information.
