Worldbuilding Wednesdays: Hill Culture

Welcome to Worldbuilding Wednesdays!  Every Wednesday, we spend what is probably far too much time walking through our worldbuilding process.  This week, we're going to take a look at the picture we can make out of the pieces and parts we've spent the last few weeks building.

What We Have So Far

It's been a bit since we started, so let's take stock.

The Hill, our little visualization spot on the world we've been building, overlooks the strait that connects the Inland Sea with the Outer Ocean.  It is the last in a line of taller hills that, on Earth, would count as small mountains.  It is perhaps most noteworthy for the rollstone tree that sits on its summit, since rollstone trees tend to grow at the bottom of hills rather than the top.  From the base of the tree, one can see a forest of massive trees growing back toward the mainland, as well as a smaller grove growing into the tidal zone of the nearby beach. 

The Hill, like all areas on this continent within a few hundred kilometers of the open water, experiences near-daily rainfall and equally common super-thick fog banks, rolling in from the sea just before dawn.  Days and nights are about twice as long here as they are on Earth, with the days forever at least partially cloudy and nights dominated by a pair of moons that seem to move through several phases between sunset and sunrise.

If you were a nu human sitting at the base of the tree on the Hill, you would be able to see quite a bit of activity as well.  For you, the waves would seem to be quite rough and volatile.  In contrast, the sky whales- basically a massive wing with a mouth, shaped similarly to a manta ray- that skim over the top of the waves, feeding on the plankton and small fish thrown into the air by the choppy water, would seem slow and serene.  Each sky whale would be accompanied by a small flock of birds and flying fish, using the whale as a base while they fished on their own.  Closer to shore, you would see littoral monsters, many-limbed, often armored with thick shell, crawling onto the beaches and moving more quickly than you can run across the wet sand.  Most would be hunting smaller, equally fast prey, such as the sprinting crab.

Regularly, at least one of those monsters would be drawn toward a scaly humanoid with taunts and enticements.  The humanoid would provide a sense of scale, so to speak: you would know from experience that the scalie, who seems so small compared to the tentacled thing beginning to give chase, is actually about a head taller than you.  The scalie moves between the stilt-like roots of the trees in the intertidal zone, attempting to evade capture.  The monster squeezes between the roots, closing the distance... and then there is a shout and suddenly the monster is stuck, unable to move, massive tentacles squirming.  The scalie moves close, primitive weapon in hand, to slay the monster.  You watch with interest.  From the tops of the stilt roots, so do several dozen other scalies.

You would pay little heed to the tree above you, beyond being sure to avoid sitting on its buttressed roots.  Though the furries that live in the tree mostly collect the rollstones before they have a chance to drop from above, a few every season are missed, and the tree has grown so that the rollstones will inevitably drop onto its roots, roll down their grooved tops, and accelerate into the forest beyond.  You have little concern for the furries themselves, as well.  It is day and the furries are active at night, so most of them will be asleep about now.  They make for quiet neighbors, and their presence deters other predators that would normally make sitting beneath such a tree risky.

Of course, you cannot stay atop The Hill forever.  Eventually, you must rejoin your people, who are camped at the bottom of the hill, opposite the beach.  It is a favorite spot for the nu humans to rest, since it is sheltered from the heat of the long day by the shade of the trees, and sheltered from the wet weather that rolls in from the sea by the hill itself.  A few months back, your cousin even found... not quite a cave, but a deep overhang, carved by running water.  Such locations are fairly common in the area, thanks to all of the rainfall collecting at and rolling away from the base of the hill.  This particular overhang is large enough that your entire clan can take shelter when the sun gets high, and a steady breeze makes building a fire safe during the night.

As you return to camp, you can see the hunters making their way back from one of the (by Earth standards) massive clearings in the woods.  One carries a good-sized rabbit, maybe 40 pounds' worth of meat, lightly over one shoulder.  For her, the rabbit weighs only 4 pounds, and it is the rabbit's unwieldy shape that requires a shoulder.  She talks animatedly with a few of the younger nu humans, who happily bound about her, each little hop almost higher than the hunter is tall.  Two more hunters carry an animal you have not seen before.  Judging from its short, stocky shape, it must have been quick, a runner instead of a leaper.  That would not have helped it, though.  A third hunter nearby laughs as he re-enacts the shot he made with his spear chucker; obviously, since he killed the beast, the other two were obliged to carry his kill back.

It is good that the hunt today was so successful.  When night falls, you will be able to trade some meat with the furries for fruit, and maybe even the wood for another spear chucker.  The scalies, with their own successful hunt, will probably not need the meat, but if you tan the hides and cut them into strips, you're sure they'll be willing to trade some of that monster shell for them... and monster shell makes for some sharp spearheads.

Time Marches On

What we have here is an idea of what a Neolithic blended community on The Hill would look like.  Nu humans hunt larger prey than the furries can manage, and trade extra meat and byproducts (such as fur and bone) for wood that they can craft with and fruit that furries can more easily gather.  Scalies have their own source of meat and can likely make rope using smaller plants, but for anything that leatherwork is more useful for, they will trade their shells.  Like the humans, they'll also want the wood that furries offer (though maybe not the fruit).

Hinted at in the little vignette above is that the species will each find more appeal in the others than in simple trade.  All three species are going to find the trapping efforts of the male scalies entertaining, for example.  The nocturnal furries act as a deterrent against other ambush predators, meaning that the woods they call home will be safer for everyone.  More subtle is the nu human contribution: as nomadic people, they carry stories, innovations, and long-distance trade from region to region much more quickly than the isolated furries or the scalies that normally spread culture through osmosis.  So it is that they already have technology in the form of the spear chucker (what we on Earth most commonly refer to as the atlatl) and fire, two things that they would certainly develop before the tree-bound furries or the semi-aquatic scalies.

If we were to take these seemingly natural consequences of inter-species interaction and add centuries of history, we'll start to see patterns emerge.  Furries, as we've already established, will develop a reputation and then a knack for trade.  They'll slowly adopt a cultural role as silent guardians, effectively an entire species of Batmen (without the associated trauma, but kind of with the wealth).  There will also be a known issue with them littering, but awareness of their neighbors should help mitigate that.  Scalies become entertainers and inventors, an interesting mix of gladiator and mad scientist.  Of the three species, they fight the most dangerous creatures for fun and food.  Nu humans become acknowledged masters of long-distance combat, but more importantly, they become the communicators and the accumulators of lore.  If the scalies are gladiators in lab coats, humans become librarians with guns.

Interestingly for our purposes, what you won't see a lot of while these species blend is greed.  While each species has something the others want, none of them has a monopoly on those resources.  Scalies and nu humans are capable of climbing into the trees of the furries, and are inclined to do so during the time of day that furries aren't active; they could get their own wood if they really wanted to.  Similarly, scalies aren't the only creatures capable of trapping the shelled monsters of the beach, and all three species are capable of travel.  The difference is that each species has a natural inclination toward those behaviors.  Remember an important adage as you build your culture:

  When in doubt, laziness will win out.  The species will act as they do and trade as they will because it is easier (and therefore in their eyes cheaper) to ask the other guy to do it.  This world is massive by our standards, so resource restriction is neither necessary nor realistic; the price of sticks will be set by how badly you want one, not the limited supply of said sticks.

Conclusion

For our worldbuilding, we're going to be moving through history to the point that trucks and paved roads (at the very least) are a thing.  We've developed our culture to the point that we know, roughly, how the three species will interact in the absence of other pressures.  We've also seen something important:  some of the pressures that we're used to on Earth won't work the same way on this world.  For example, population pressure is going to be roughly 100 times less powerful in our world than it is on Earth, meaning that the vast majority of mass conflicts will never occur.  Combined with the fact that it takes roughly ten times as long to get somewhere, we can safely assume that no world war will ever be replicated.

Next week, we'll be looking at the pressures that will have an impact on our culture.  Some of these will be similar to Earth, some of Earth's pressures will be changed or absent... and at least a few pressures absent on Earth will be present on our world.