Highland: People

What do people look like?

People in Highland and the surrounding areas look like we do, for the most part.

While Highland proper is very homogenous culturally, its people have a range of hair colors, eye colors, and skin tones. In West Highland and East Highland, hair colors of black, brown, blonde, and red are all common. Eyes are generally brown, hazel, or blue. Green eyes are uncommon but are known to exist. Skin tone ranges from white to dark brown (what we call Caucasian and Black), with white and lighter shades being most common.

There is no more stigma applied to any of these variations than there is to hair color or eye color in our modern world. As with blondes in our culture, there is some rivalry, and people make jokes about gingers and so on, but no one really takes it seriously. Any enmity is directed toward goblins, orcs, and half-orcs for the most part, where it belongs. In Highland, there is considerable prejudice against the Celts, who are all called “Druids”, and everyone everywhere thinks the people of Pirate’s Cove are scum to the last man.

The people of the Celtic Valley have a similar range of hair, eye, and skin tones, with more redheads and blonds than are found in Highland. Green eyes are slightly more common among the Celts and Norse. White skin is much more common among the Celts, and predominate among the Norse.

Down in the Bend they have more varied cultures, such as the Franks, the Gypsies, and the Highlanders, and across the uncrossable seas there are other cultures as well; in most of them, however, the same general mixing due to the cataclysm applies. The cataclysm mixed everyone up; in different areas, different cultures became dominant, but there was no stopping the mixing of the peoples.

Political suffrage

Throughout East and West Highland, most male citizens can vote for their locale’s popular seats. Qualifications vary, but throughout the West voting is open to anyone who appears on the citizenship rolls for that locale and who can sign their name.

Women have the right to vote throughout the river cities of West Highland and in most of the other towns throughout West Highland. While suffrage movements exist in other parts of the world, women’s suffrage (along with the West’s relatively open qualifications for everyone else who isn’t part of the elite) is generally considered an example of the backward, backwoods nature of life in West Highland.

People: Nobility

Within Highland, titles of nobility matter more in some places than in others. Black Stag has few titled masters living within it; Fork has many of the old nobility congregating around it.

Within West Highland, the main title of nobility is the Earl. “Earl” is a warrior title, though many Earls today would be hard-pressed to raise a regiment. Many families that retained the warrior tradition in the last century died in the Goblin Wars. Many that did not die lost their lands or found their seats abandoned.

Generally, an earl holds a manor, provides military protection or owns a business, and has many officials beholden to them.

Earls are generally addressed as “Lord” and their wives as “Lady”. For example, Lord Lisport, Earl of Lisport and his wife Lady Melissa Courlander. During war, an Earl who raises a regiment will be a Colonel. They’ll usually have a Lieutenant-Colonel as a second-in-command, and Captains beneath them, with Lieutenants beneath the Captains if necessary.

There are some Counts in East Highland and a very few in West Highland. “Count” is the main title of nobility in South Bend. A defeated, disgraced, or landless Count may choose to leave the Bend and travel North. The wife of a Count is a Countess. The first son is a Viscount.