Contents

• Scociety
• Art
• Pop Culture
• High Culture
• Communication And The Spread Of Ideas
• Holidays
• Gender and Gender Roles
• Subcultures and Alternative Lifestyles
• Universal Fears
• Money and Wealth
• Food, Meals, and Mealtime
• Leisure
• Charity and Wellfare
• Health, Fitness, and Beauty Standards
• Values
• Patriotism
• Diversity
• Aspirations And Goals
• Superstitions
• Bad Manners and Insults
• Family Structures
• Pregnancy, Birth, and Motherhood
• Coming of Age
• Rites of Passage
• Love and Romance
• Sexuality

Scociety

The Dalandic Culture was founded 148 years ago (in 1852) by wealthy Tauric nobles who had a monopoly over the international train lines. They chose to use their wealth to succede from their homelands and found their own nation, which became the Dalandic Empire. The Dalandic Empire is one of the wealthiest and fastest growing nations in Eyom, but one of the youngest. While its culture is notably diffrent from its parent cultures, it is quite chaotic and ever shifting due to its young age. While other cultures have had milinia to refine their ways, Dalandic Culture has yet to reach a concencus on many issues. Concequently theis summery is looser than otehr nations, and could be entirly obsoleet within two to three decades.

The majority of Dalandic Culture's art is commissioned by the general public. Artistic endevors are primarily funded through public trusts, mutual funds, and patrionage of specific artists by either groups or individuals. Artists are generaly treated as a business within Dalandic Culture, but some artists have broken this mold and reached a level of fame and stardom so incomprehencable that they suffer from investigators tracking their every move to sell the infrmation to low-brow gossip magazines. Dalandic Culture uses the majority of its art as a form of leaisure, but also to celebrate historic events. Dalandic Culture also uses its art for: making certain concepts easier to understand, pushing economic agendas, reinforcing cultural norms, immortalizing key figures of history and mythology, and remembering loved ones.

Dalandic Culture's major laws relating to the creation of art are;

Works which are either illegal or breach a cultural taboo are confenscated, then placed within specific muceums. Anyone may view these works within the muceums, but the institution places the works with simmilar works of its kind as well as examples of art with contrary opinions. The purpose of these muceums is to push the idea that the arts message is not nessisarily true, and encourage the popular / official viewpoints. Howeaver, the displays are not so biased as to not serve as an argument for all viewpoints on display. Citizens often refer to these muceums as the "Art Debate Halls".

Durring this Cycle, the Dalandic Culture greatly favored the literary arts. They primarily focused on poetry, with their greatest works consisting of short poems consisting of a scant few lines with a highly specific and formalized syllable count for each line. This form of poem was written to be preformed orally, either through singing or speaking in cant, and is typically intended to tell the story of a real event, or a myth. The foremost artisan within this medium and time was the poet Glynis Pritchard, whose works are typically the first ones thought of and mentioned when discussing the Dalandic Culture's artwork of the current era.

In the Visual Arts, they primarily focused on print making, with their greatest works consisting of images drawn on limestone plates using a number of greasy mediums before being washed in acid. A water-soulable substance is then applied to the stone, which will not stick to the greased sections of the block. Oil-based ink is then applied with a roller, with the ink only adhering to the greased sections of the stone. A press is then used to stamp the image onto paper. Several stones may be used to produce a multi-colored or otherwise complex image. Their art showed a particular emphasis on colors, lines, and space. The foremost artisan within this medium and time was the printer Michelle Crowther, whose works are typicaly the first ones thought of and mentioned when discussing the Dalandic Culture's artwork of the current era.

In the Preforming Arts, they primarily focused on dance, with their greatest works consisting of a form of energetic dance using wide sweeping movements generally rapidly preformed in sequences, which can be preformed by an individual or groups, occasionally as parts of a theatrical dramatic performance. The foremost artisan within this medium and time was the dancer Lace Foulkes, whose works are typicaly the first ones thought of and mentioned when discussing the Dalandic Culture's artwork of the current era.

Pop Culture

Dalandic Culture's popular culture is dominated by painting and sculpture. These arts are made avalible to the public through collections taken from members of the public.

The advent of printmaking technologies able to reproduce color images of traditionaly painted works created a boom in the painting market. While few own an orgional work, most people within Dalandic Culture have decorated their walls with collections of paintings. Occasionaly you'll find massive wall sized prints made using dozens of masters which allow for the replication of entire murals or abstract imagry in a form which can be changed later, or moved as desired. Each Dalandic home is a riot of color, decorated to the tastes of its owner, with individual rooms often having a theme. This practice is likly to stick due to its wide adoption and relativly low cost.

Sculpture remains popular, but due to no inexpencisve way to copy larger works, the majority of people within Dalandic culture decorate their homes with busts and figurines. These are often painted, eitehr at the factory or by the consumer. Sculpture painting in and of itself is a booming hobby.

Dalandic Culture is so wealthy that even its most poor of citizens see art not as a luxury, but as an affordable commodity. Astetics are cheep, monitizable, and profitable. Should this hold true for anoteher generation, Dalandic art is likly to become a major world influence due to its sheer proliferation.

High Culture

Dalandic Culture's high culture is dominated by painting and ceramics. These arts are made avalible to members of the cultural eliet through state run cultural promotion programs.

The Ceramics of high culture are something of a Wealth Tax. While this isn't true in a legal or practical sence, it is most certainly phiisophicaly true. Dalandic CUlture appears to have decided that ceramic sculptures, dishes, and all such elements are special and reserved for the eliet. Concequently they are far more expencive than one would expect. This has created the odd situation where poor people may eat from bronze and puter dishware and use genuine silverware, while the wealthy dine using finly painted glazed ceramics.

Dalandic Culture is too young for there to be any true traditions with its high culture. Everything is a fad and changes as the wealthies tcitizens change their minds on the subject of the day, year, or decade. It is unknown what form this will stabilize into, but ironicaly enough the Empire's wealth is such that there are few luxucires that the wealthy can afford that the poor cannot. Only sheer quantity and scale can be used to display one's wealth. As this is an excelent way to ensure one does not keep their wealth, Dalandic culture may not be able to have seperate high and low art.

Communication And The Spread Of Ideas

The Dalandic Empire is one of the two primary founders of the Aethary. Concequently, it has replaced nearly all of its major communication methods with the arcane system. While print media, radio, and news criers still exist, they are middlemen who obtain their information from varrious Aethric Taverns from across the Nexus. Concequently, Dalandic Culture operates at extreemly high speed. What happens in one place can be public knolage everywhere by the next sunrise. This has become a problem for the government and many institutions, as anyone with a few inexpensive talismins can record audio and illusatory images then spread them across the entire nation simply by traveling to the nearest Aethary Link.

Ironicaly, this creates as many problems as it solves. Minsinformation is more common than solid factual sources, and few people trust the trustworthy sources. COncequently, few people share the same worldviews. This is one of the major sources of Dalandic Culture's chaotic and evershifting nature. Once this cultural problem can be solved, Daland is likly to settle down somewhat, though such a time is at least decades distant and as the nation is still quite young its culture is likly to remain fairly fluid.

Untill then, politiicans, corporations, buisnesses, and even everyday citizens will have to carefuly toe dozens of lines. There is no way to know what, when, or where something one says will be made into public knolage, nor how the general public will react to this infomration. Many long serving politicians have been strung up by lynch mobs due to recordings of convercations relating to what are concidered normal statments and opinions within their political arena.

Holidays

The major Dalandic Culture holidays are:

1. harvest festival
2. arcane festival
3. science festival
4. autumn festival
5. literary festival

Manual Prompt:What is the holiday?

Manual Prompt:When is it held?

Manual Prompt:What does it represent?

Manual Prompt:How is it celebrated or marked?

Manual Prompt:What economic barriers are there to travel?

Manual Prompt:What social barriers are there to travel?

Manual Prompt:What legal barriers are there to travel?

Manual Prompt:What are the popular holiday destinations?

Manual Prompt:What are the popular holiday activities?

Gender and Gender Roles

The Dalandic Empire has adopted an odd concept of Gender Identity. They have decided, seemingly through concencus based on both face to face and Aetharic discorse, that there is no point in gender identity. Dalandic Culture cares only for the sex of a person, specificly their biological reproductive role or roles. The phiisophy behind this decision is simple, and stated through the following axioms:

This logical proof's near-universal acception means Dalandic CUlture simply dosn't recognise gender at all. People are people, and people happen to have one or more reproductive roles due to their biology. Somone's biology can make them more or less suited to certain tasks, but the diffrences biology causes in this area are largly ignorable as intelegent lifeforms can and do work arround such limits without any real impact on their effectivness (outside of certain extreems).

Dalandic Culture thus assigns individuals one of three sexes: Male, Female, or Hermaphradite. These are based purly off of what gamytes they produce. A fourth catagory of intersex exists for those whose biology dosn't fall into any of the three primary groups. This assignment is eccentialy only used for identification, medical, and cencus purposes.

Dalandic Culture is extreemly egalitarian, as one would expect of a culture which simply killed the concept of Gender rather than make use of it.

Subcultures and Alternative Lifestyles

Dlandic CUlture has many subcultures. Far too many to exist. Most of them are tiny communities which exist due to the Aethary linking like-minded people across the entire nation. These are remarkable in that they have practicaly killed the requirment of living near people to culturaly identify with them.

This has produced an intresting phenominon where Dalandic people tend to assume they have more in common with strangers than they would typialy assume. Concequently, Dalandic Culture's members are very friendly, most welcoming, and offer people many chances to show who they are as a person ratehr than judge them right away. This has killed the general advice that first impressions are everything for Dalandic Culture.

Universal Fears

The top five most common fears found within Dalandic Culture's members are:

1. Corporate Tracking of personal data
2. Aberrations
3. Racial/Hate Crime
4. Being unemployable
5. Urban monsters (particualrly giant spiders)

Food, Meals, and Mealtime

Dalandic Culture's members typicaly eat three meals, one at midmorning, one at noon, and one in the evening, which are eaten communialy, with groups of families rotating the responcibility of providing everyone's meals between themselves. This practice came about in a highly specific event 109 years ago, wherein a major shipment of food items and spices was hijacked. Annoied at the inability to eat specific dishes, Dalandic citizens began to ask their neighbors to barrow seasonings and items. Trading began to take place and within a week groups of families were leaving the gates to their back yards open inorder to host communal cookoffs, meals, and play sporting events. This persisted once logistics stabilized as most people were enjoying the scocilizing too much to stop. After the second year, this simply became the new normal, and persists to this day.

Dalandic Culture cuisine is rich in pasta, fish, fruits and vegetables. Cheese, cold cuts and wine are central to Dalandic Culture cuisine, and along with pizza and coffee (especially espresso) form part of Dalandic Culture gastronomic culture. Desserts have a long tradition of merging local flavours such as citrus fruits, pistachio and almonds with sweet cheeses like mascarpone and ricotta or exotic tastes as cocoa, vanilla and cinnamon.

Dalandic Culture culture has several prominant science festivals and rain festivals, which are cullinarily significent due to a part of the festivles being reserved for use in a right of passage for youths who have recently come of age, which involves consuming a specific varriety of wine called Felko. Felko is exceptionaly strong and contains milkd dissasoatives and helucanagens, and is intended to give the drinker visions of possible futures.

Dalandic Culture has several compeating schools of table edicuite. This guide will not comment on them as there are regular dules between champions of each school and none of our scholars are willing to be stabbed or shot over an ecycloipedia entry on table manners.

Leisure

Dalandic Culture's members typicaly prefer to a decent balance between labor and liesure which favors liesure. Due to their wealth, most Dalandic individuals work a mere three days of the week. Those working longer hours are those who expressly desire greater station in life. This is possible due to the extreemly high rate of financial itteracy, as well as the Empire's monopoly over the railroads. All citizens of the Empire recieve a miniscule cut of the railroad sprofits, which for even the lowest of all scocial ranks is more than enough to provide basic food, shelter, and occasional luxuries. Concequently, a humble part time job is all anyone needs to support a family or expensive tastes.

Popular adult pasttimes include:

1. wine tasting
2. blacksmithing
3. leather crafting
4. pyrography
5. card games

Popular pasttimes for children include:

1. wood carving
2. quilting
3. foreign language learning
4. The Aethary
5. breadmaking

Charity and Wellfare

In Dalandic Culture culture acts of charity are generaly preformed as insults. Doners are making their donations as a means of implying the recipitant squanders their wealth. This insult is highly effective. Individuals in need of genuine assistance are not treated in this fashion, and simply need to go to the nearest welfare office to recieve whatever assistance they require. howeaver, such individuals are exceptionaly rare due to the culture's Basic Income laws. It takes living on a warfront, famine, drouts, or persistant monster attacks to place Dalandic citizens in such a possison.

Concequently, Daland's stocks reserved for welfare purposes are nearly always full. Their food banks, clothing warehouses, and otehr charitable institutions are net exporters of goods which serve to assist surrounding cultures and nations more than their own citizens. This is great for Dalandic indivduals in need, as they can be given an entire furnished home without making a dent in the stockpiles.

Given the extreem ealth within the culture, many may wonder why certain nessisary tasks which are seen as degrading or menial are preformed. In Delandic CUlture, occupations are often a source of liesure with many people preforming these tasks due to enjoying them. Others seek more wealth than they presently have and are not above getting dirty if it means they can build a fourth story on their home next year.

Income inequality is effectily measurable by the distance one lives from the nearest rail line. There are other metrics, but generaly speaking the wealthy take nice locations away from the noise of railways as they can afford to have short-range trnasport of goods from distribution centers to their homes.

Health, Fitness, and Beauty Standards

The Dalandic Culture has yet to formalize any standards for health and beauty. There are two general rules of thumb:

1. Dress in a manner flattering to your body type.
2. Don't be sick in public.

Their standards for mental health are formalized howeaver, and notably a little harsh in the eyes of outsiders. Those who do not function easily within normal scociety are relocated to districts, camps, or even entire towns which are populated entirly by people with simmilar mental conditions as their own, as well as any neessisary cargivers. These people are not prisoners, and may leave inorder to travel, visit friends and family, or for any purpose they happen to have. Howeaver they are required to keep the assigned lcoation as their residence, and may only move household to other locations reserved for individuals such as themselves. The families of the afflicted are permitted to visit, provided they obay all rules of a given community.

The net effect is that while most neurotypial people do not know there are more than a handfull of mental disorders, those with the afformentione ddisorders are able to live in places where they are normal and everyone arround them understands them. Both groups seem to enjoy this arangment, which appears to have been made out of concern for the general mental health of the afflicted.

The logic behind the decision is based on the idea that if everyone with a specific disorder could have a place where things worked in ways that made sence to them and/or didn't exaserbate their conditions, they would be generaly happier, healthier, and live higher quality lives. This system is new, having been in place for less than 20 years. Interviews with the more high-functioning individuals amongst those with disorders who lived through this transision appreciate the arangment greatly. This aspect of Dalandic culture is likly to stay given its highly posative reception on both sides, though time will tell if the idea is truly good or not.

Values

Manual Prompt:Which personality traits are valued?

Manual Prompt:Which personality traits are disliked?

Manual Prompt:How are these preferences seen in society?

Manual Prompt:How do valued traits feed into life goals?

Manual Prompt:How are those with valued/unvalued traits treated differently?