The Non-Player Civilizations: Peeking into the other nations
(in todays episode of Peeking into the other nations, we examine the Eekin)
The Eekin:
The Eekin are blond giants, pale of skin and hair, blue of eye, with shaggy beards and clad in badly cured animal hides. They smell of fish and sea-salt and their hands are gnarled and worn from hauling nets in freezing waters.
The Eekin, like the Sheim, live in a land of ice and snow, of long winter nights and equally long summer days. The winters are chillingly cold and the Eekin island, unlike the Shiem islands does not have forests and mountains to provide protection from winter gales and blizzards.
The Eekin spend their winters in sod longhouses, half-buried in the shallow tundra soil, sharing stories and turning fishbone into useful tools and jewellery.
In the summer, the Eekin fish and sail and make boats. Their island lacks good quality timber and they have taken to establishing small summer camps on the southern coast of the Sheim islands which they use to fell wood and to make social contact with the Sheim.
This has done much to draw the Eekin close to their larger and more cultured neighbour and the two civilizations have grown close with the passing of time.
Of late the Eekin have taken to the worship of Baelious (sages argue that this was made possible through the release and development of sun mana into erebus). Though the Eekin have always been a hard-working and honest race the worship of Lugus archangel has led to them to value truth and honour even more highly. Unlike their empyrean brothers, the cult of Baelious, at least amongst the Eekin, is not a highly organized affair; it can often be summed up to the saying, fortune shine upon you. They believe that rewards from Baelious shine down upon them, provide safe seas, good harvest, a temperate and short winter in return for working together to bring fortune to themselves, working hard in a unified way.
Most recently the Eekin have developed advanced sailing techniques that have resulted in their ships alighting in every port in the world. Suddenly they have received much attention as their invention has revolutionized the way nations see themselves within a much larger worldly sphere. This attention has led to the development of multiple trades and even to the development of a position for this small and impoverished nation amongst the western council, a decision that appears to be almost unanimous amongst the Eekin.