The fisherfolk of Seabright (Kù. "im-Rîlazur") were a mannish people on the northeastern coast of Southernesse's great east-continent, around the larger town of Seabright-of-the-ships which served as the whole regions chief settlement and informal capital.
The town's original founders had been a small group of mariners and adventurers from many lands (according to legend possibly even a man of Umbar and a man from Khand!) But the settlement attracted mostly people from southern or southeastern Middle-earth and the inner seas who displaced the Avari and Old Ones who had originally inhabited the area or who to a large degree intermixed with some of the latter.
Appearance[]
The "im-Rîlazur" were mostly a tall and heavy-boned folk, to outsiders they pretty much resembled the dark skinned and curly-haired Old Ones from the inlands, except for maybe mostly a somewhat lighter skin-tone and different clothing and hair and beard-styles among men, though the cityfolk itself was more diverse and much represented an amalgation of peoples from the neighbouring northern and northwestern lands.
Culture[]
The Seabright folk were mostly fishermen and skilled mariners and ship-builders on the inner seas, but the cityfolk itself was surprisingly sophisticated.Literacy was widespread (they used shayan-glyphs) and many were skilled traders and craftsmen.Though most of their female ancestors had been bought or captive indigenous women the society in itself was not very partiarchial and women enjoyed much respect and participation.Yet the buying of wives still was practiced, though in a much mitigated and rather ritualized way.
Language[]
The Seabrighters spoke a local dialect of one of the languages of the old ones, but much influenced by Kùrúdfarî, which they mostly used for communication with outsiders.Many also understood some Vulman or Sâric.
Religion[]
A well known local belief-system was the "Cult of the One-person", but a mix of remnant animist beliefs taken over from the Old Ones and a myriad of diverse spirits and deities imported by the original settlers dominated the religious everyday-life.
A mysterious school of magic also existed in form of the "Blue-robe college", but the Blue-robe mystics stayed mostly among themselves and did interfere little with the common folk.
war-craft[]
The Seabrighters were skilled with both the spear and the harpoon and also used other weapons associated with mariner-societies such as weapons similar to boarding-axes or cutlasses, but they never produced many good swordsmen and heavy armour in general was not farspread.They however were able archers and many young men and even women, trained unarmed combat in the town's well known unarmed combat school.
Seabrighters of Note[]
Notes[]
Based on: Middle-Earth Down Under: An Antipodean Campaign by Norman Talbot (Department of English, The University of Newcastle, University Drive, Callaghan, Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia) ©1994 Norman Talbot; first published in Other Hands 4.
"IM-Rîlazurian" is mostly based on various australian aborigine languages, "Tolkien-Haradron", primitive Quendian , Adûnaic and Westron, although in a debased form.