Camahay

[Jubal]

Camahay is a southern region with a peninsula and islands curving around south of Dulshan. Camahayans vary significantly between those in a set of small city-republics, and those in the semi-nomadic clan societies of the region.

Camahayan Knots
Camahayans have an elaborate system of communicating particular hopes and feelings via coloured textile knots, which are often ceremonially given or left to particular individuals as a ritualised form of cultural communication.

Camahayan Religion and Philosophy

Traditional Camahayans have a wide range of deities, but almost universally concieve of them as neutral to hostile: deities are to be placated, not worshipped, in their faith. Common deity-figures include

• Whisperer, who created sound and music so nobody would be able to hear it giving people dark thoughts.
• Spider, concieved of as a more neutral figure. Spider cares not which fly is caught. In some tales, Spider will eventually end the world as we know it by trapping all the gods in its burrow.
• Soul of Waters, who created the deep places where man cannot survive and no Kan is known: it populated them with fish and beasts, and is often angry that these are now the food of mortals.
• Lemur, a tragic figure who seeks to create its own equivalent of Kan but is cursed never to achieve it. Lemur is associated with forest dangers, thwarting learning, and children, and there are tales of it turning bad children who will not learn wisdom into lemurs.
• Lost-Breath, an air deity responsible for storms - but therefore also rain - that seeks to hide from Kan in the high and unknown places of the world. She is also warded away from the sick and old, and has associations with both.

The village, or settlement, has a very important spiritual role, encompassed by the concept of Kan which evokes a mixture of collective wisdom and knowledge, prosperity, and social interconnection. A village with great Kan will be protected from the gods by the collective goodness of its people, a village with weak Kan risks their wrath.

Kan is also central to the creation myths of Camahay, though versions vary: some say Kan was originally a god, who gained great power by burning himself into the world and the sun, which led the other gods to come up with the rest of creation to find ways to evade or destroy him. Some say that Kan was created by Spider when it saw the beauty of a web, and the gods were created when the darkness fled from the first knotwork. Others prefer tales in which the gods created mankind, and in their folly failed to realise that they had created Kan, their ultimate downfall.

Camahayan faith is, within certain parameters, very open to argument: it produces public philosophers more than priests who will debate how to better increase Kan or prevent the wrath of some deity figure or other. Secular leaders are also very concerned with this problem and indeed it is a major framework for public argument.