More than five centuries ago, the world ended. The Riders in Black tore apart the civilized world. Where they went they set fields and towns ablaze, tore down walls and libraries, and destroyed books and the learned men above all. Their work lasted for generations as they rode across the whole world and for generations more they remained in wait, returning to strike down anyone who tried to rebuild civilization. So it went, from then until now, until thirty years had passed without anything but the barest rumor of the Riders in Black, until the only threat that remained came from savages and barbarians and the Riders' misguided worshipers.

And between then and now, when it seemed as if the whole world would descend into chaos and never return, there was a mountain. And in that mountain were men and women who waited, and labored, and protected the promise- not a guarantee, only a promise- of the world's salvation.

It was a small place in the very beginning. The monastery was on the mountain, and not yet the mountain itself. Rumors spread of the Riders in Black and the abbot had the foresight to see what the end result would be. It was to their advantage that the monasteries strove for self-sufficiency; that meant that the basic groundwork was already there and they needed only to expand it. The Holy Mothers were sent for, convinced of the nature of the emergency, and brought back for safekeeping. Craftsmen, scholars, and all other kinds of skilled men were retrieved and given shelter in the monastery. And the monastery became a fortress, and the fortress expanded until it became the mountain itself. It was a city in its own right by the end of things.

Hierarchy and Faith

Everyone revolves around the Holy Mothers, the Prophets, who create each other in the cycle of endless birth and rebirth called Prellyp. The three Holy Mothers have been blessed by God. It it they who are able to hear and interpret His will and they return each generation, the grandmother committing suicide by hemlock when the eldest daughter of her eldest daughter turns ten years old, in order to make sure that her soul has sufficient time to rest before she reincarnates as her granddaughter's daughter (which will not occur until the child has turned twenty at the earliest, since she is forbidden to marry until this time).

Without the Prophets the whole faith would have crumbled in time. There would have been no-one to hear the voice of God and interpret and add to the Three Times Holy Canon in order to ensure that the faith followed God's will as was intended for them and not as it was intended for previous generations whose circumstances could be and often were markedly different (to name just an immediate example, the faith has just recently had to go through a period where all civilization was in danger of being snuffed out like a dying fire, and this understandably required some changes in how things were done). More importantly there would be no-one who could repair the Prime Library, which is written in a language that has no name (giving it a pithy descriptor like the Nameless Language might be accurate in a way but that is giving a name to a language which according to the Prophets should have none). The Prime Library is an authoritative collection of every book, letter, and page in the Three Times Holy Canon and only the Holy Mothers are allowed to write in it (or even learn how to read it). Without the Holy Mothers and the Prime Library the scriptures would over time and through translations and retranslations become almost unrecognizable.

The prominence of the Holy Mothers notwithstanding, women do not otherwise have high status and are barred from holding many positions of authority. When the Prophets arrived at Sopaube'p Psyelao they loosened these restrictions by allowing the existence of mopsojype, or women who take male status. They wear males' clothing, take a wife, may hold positions as men and own property, and participate in male duties such farming, which takes place in terraces on the higher levels of the mountain, behind numerous chokepoints protected by strong walls.

Child-rearing and Marriage

Children are, until they mature at the age of fourteen, considered to be the property of their maternal grandfather, with a few basic rights to guarantee their physical safety but not much else besides that. Newborns are given names based on the week and the day of their birth. They are counted as one year old already upon birth and become another year older with the passing of each New Year's day (which occurs on the day of the year's first planting). This can result in a difference of up to two years between a person's given age and his age as it would be determined in most other cultures.

Bundling, or sharing the same bed while though wrapped in different blankets, is an part of normal courtship behavior in the monastery-mountain. It is expected that the young couple will not engage in any of the activities that would be more appropriate for the marriage bed than the courtship bed. Sometimes the parents are justified in believing this, sometimes they go to great lengths to forget just what antics they themselves got up to when they were bundling at that age, and sometimes they sleep in the hall and require that their child's door remain open. The last rarely happens. Bundling begins when both children are usually too young to be getting into that kind of activity and it is seen as an insult to suddenly get suspicious just because the couple is getting older.

Bundling not only facilitates long and uninterrupted conversations (everyone has fond memories of whiling away the long hours of the night with talk, sometimes till arrived) but fosters the development of a kind of intimacy which, while physical, is as far from anything sexual as a sock is. The ultimate goal of courtship is to refashion the couple into being a couple as opposed to two people who share a bed and are permitted by their religion to do some interesting things in it. After a decade or more of courting someone since you both were very young, there is no-one else who knows you as well or who can ever have as much influence over you as that other person did. Even were you to spend the next thirty years with someone else they were not bundling with you and talking to you during the most formative years of your life. That's an experience that you won't be finding with any other person.

The wife's family forever has authority over her, even after she has married. If the husband fails to meet any expectations the wife's family can collect both her and her children and take them to her parents or any of her relatives. Other people have very little sympathy for anyone that this happens to. Unless his wife's family has a bad reputation the husband is assumed to have done something to warrant the behavior. Even if his wife and children return he may never escape the stigma of being a man who provoked his wife into abandoning him.

Diet

It may have originally been a loosely-worded prohibition against cannibalism (especially if there are multiple intelligent and bipedal species in the world- or there were thought to be- and the Prophets at the time wanted to be more inclusive in their command) but the ban against eating the meat of any animal with only two legs is now strictly interpreted. Since the Riders in Black arrived the Prophets conclusively that bears, though they can stand well on two feet, were fit for consumption on the grounds that their primary mode of locomotion is on four legs and even a dog may be trained to use its hind legs with sufficient practice (before this the matter was up in the air, but the Prophets have tried to open up as many possibilities as they can in the belief that too many restrictions would have a negative impact on their people when the Riders in Black already made things hard enough). Besides primates, the other other group of animals affected by this commandment is birds. Since blood is considered to be meat, as is the marrow in bones, these may not be consumed either, but poultry are still kept for their eggs.

ìThe morning prayer is a good breakfastî say most. People who are not young, old, or going out to do hard labor (like farming) that day forgo breakfast and to prevent it from becoming seen less as a hard necessity and instead as something to be enjoyed, breakfast for those who need it will be a simple meal of hard cheese and bread from the previous day's meals. Beer and milk are both commonly drunk (it's probably important to know that the alcohol content in the beer is nowhere near the modern level) and ashes are mixed into both.

Storytelling

There are two storytelling traditions, the Fypauryo Uroj and the Fypauryo Prypao, or the Oral and the Written. Stories which are part of the oral tradition are primarily stories which are meant to instruct or illustrate some point, like parables and just-so stories. There is usually a minimum of characters and some or all of these characters may be talking animals. Oral stories rarely take more than a few hours to tell and have poetic elements like rhyme schemes and alliteration to aid retention in the memory. The character Popyelp Jupupfot, a wise man who exposes the pride and foolishness of everyone from beggars to the Holy Mothers by playing a fool himself and questioning everything often enough that even Socrates would be annoyed, is a common focus of these stories.

The written tradition has a historical focus. They are long, include many characters (who sometimes spiral off into their own subplots) and may follow the characters for years. Books whose plots happen over a century or more are common. They also reference each other a fair amount. Some of them are nearly impenetrable if you haven't read all of the other stories that they reference or comment upon.

Next Month: Potato pancakes, chicken's blood soup, black bread alcohol, and wartime stew cooked in intestines when pots can't be found, in a Closer Look at Cuisine.