The Grape Barony
Other ‘humanoid but not Humans’ include the Grape Barons. They are shorter than typical Humans, maxing out around five feet tall. They are often rotund, but more likely burly and barrel-chested, from the good hard work they enjoy doing.
Essentially Human for lifestyle and length, there is little else different about the Grape Barons other than cultural differences, and that they have only four fingered hands and four-digits on their feet. Men sport beards as a rule, and women often have their long hair trussed up in interesting fashions. Hair colors are bright: reds and sunlit blonds, shiny auburn, strawberry blond, and sometimes a stunning violet-black/brown. Barony folk’s eyes are small and round, almost always in shades of blue, green and violet. Their skin can be swarthy red, cream with freckles, all the way through a very rich brown with the occasional brighter freckles across a dark face. They love tattooing and piercing, though because of their hardy lifestyles generally only the less demanding professions allow for extravagant things like corseting (sewing into the skin of the back) and extensive connected piercings.
The women become sexually mature at around age 15, and men just after that, and there are equal numbers of men and women in the Barony. Twins and even triplets are reasonably common: twin births are around one in three, and triplets or more are perhaps one in one hundred. Since their lifespan is around 120 to 160, they tend to have large families to support their farms and developments.
The Barony is a wide, colorful place, and each of the inhabitants takes a strong pride in their work. Even though they are truly masters of indulgence and pleasure, they are also workaholics and value their time toiling because of the tremendous end results. They are adept at dealing with the land, farming and cultivating especially, but are often found at sea doing trade, or across the world running restaurants or hotels, and other popular places such as gambling and prostitution houses. They would never, ever call a woman who sells her body a ‘whore’: they respect the pleasures she is able to give – and he, for they equally serve male and female customers at any given House.
Even if the Viridian Elves are clearly adept at shaping their arboreal homes and crafting with plants, the best botanists and potion makers, herbalists and mediciners are found in the Barony. They have made it their business and their art to know the ins and outs of living people. They rarely serve the Necromancers in any other way than providing food and drink along with potions, however there are plenty of folk in the Barony who will attest to their Necromancer lovers’ expertise.
Where the Necromancers deal with the ways of the dead, the Barony deals with the living with such an intensity that it may surprise visitors. Every care is taken to service the visitor – from providing the right food and drink, to clothing and setting, physical pleasures abound. They know for instance not to try giving a dragonkin a massage under their tail joint (as this is considered an incredibly forward statement of mating desire), and never, ever take a Jewel Witch’s diadem from her while she’s undressing. Not just food and drink, but whole cultures are absorbed by the Barony’s scholars, and they insist upon sending this information out to the commoners. The Barony, while it is almost entirely agrarian in its commoner population, is the most literate large group of people on Dragondeep.
And though they are also remarkably clever, adept at crafts and manufacturing, the Barons choose to remain at a certain level of pre-Industrial style functionality. Their philosophers and scholars can both track as well as ascribe this to their work ethic. If they didn’t have work to do, they would wind up being boorish slobs. They take such pride in what they do, they would far rather do it, than have some machine (no offense to the Clockwork under their employ) do it for them!
Barons are often considered ‘over-dressed’ almost anywhere they go, up to and including ‘in the boudoir’ given how much fun they think it is to put on and take off clothing. Because some of their crafts and definitely almost all their horticulture can produce such things, they have a thriving dye making community every few hundred miles along the coast. Those dyes make it into the cloth they import from everywhere, or more accurately into the threads and raw materials they use to make their own. They do cultivate silk worms, unlike the Reed People who refuse to kill even a useful creature that has a quick life span…
A Grape Baron’s house is often intricately detailed – one thing you will never see anywhere around a Barony place is “empty space”. From the very timbers usually carved from one tree, to the inlay along every floorboard, colorful rugs and tapestries decorate otherwise well-papered or painted areas. Traditionally, there is a large mirror just on the inside of a home’s doorstep, for a multitude of very obvious reasons. They love looking good, trying out their smile, and making sure that nothing is out of place. Breaking this mirror – far from being ‘seven years bad luck’ – is something that is actually done once when the house is put into use for the first time, or from a new husband or wife arriving into the home. Whenever a new family member is dedicated or named, that mirror is pulled down and shattered – sometimes, pieces of it are given (carefully) to everyone. A drawer in any given private chamber’s dressing chest might be filled with such shards.
They have two strong dialects of their language, and several smaller ones represented around the fringes of their territory. However, their accents are almost always considered ‘charming’ to everyone they meet, and they meet a lot of people. Almost any Grape Baron speaks at least two languages, it would be extremely rare to find someone who doesn’t.
School begins around age five, and children who are in rural areas are expected to attend in addition to doing their chores around their home or farm. They have a strong work ethic that is enforced from day one, and if a child shows promise in scholarly aptitude even if they’re from the most backwater area of the Barony, they are sent to a city to have further education. Many crafts are practiced, but plenty of the prettiest girls and boys are selected for sexual entertainment and hospitality services around their area and the world. It is considered a tremendous honor to be trained in such a way, and many retired sex professionals continue to entertain their friends and local communities long after they have served elsewhere. Usually those people are afforded intellectual pursuits as well as tremendous social boons – they know how to please, but they also know how to listen and care for their patrons. Often enough, ‘diplomat’ and ‘masseuse’ are the same job.
The potion-makers of Mistmoor are the only ‘serious’ people among the Barony at least to hear their more boisterous counterparts on the mainland say it. They take herbs and ingredients and make the best potions, salves, medicines and the like there. There they are apt to do importing of everything else, from food and drink to clothing, furnishings and particularly glass to keep their potions in. Most of the “potions” they mix are not inherently magical. In fact, most of the Barony does not use magic and certainly not on a day to day basis like other cultures. Since they value their hands and their minds, they can create the basic working properties that are needed for magical potions, and then let someone else imbue the liquid or substance with whatever they need it to do.
While they are capable of magic, mainly spell-type, the Barony rarely sports a strong mage or sorcerer among their ranks. Several have been known in the three thousand years since their arrival to Dragondeep, but they are remarkable for their rarity. The Barony folk do excel in ritual-style magic, anything that they can physically get into, and would typically use it as an excuse to party rather than a spell in and of itself. (Setting up candles, making arrangements for who stands where, what colors on the carpet, oh you need salt for that? Where did you want it to be from, we have sixteen kinds in the cabinet. And then we dance?) They much prefer art and dance, music and carousing. Artisans such as painters, sculptors and even architects are prized among their population, and definitely enjoy a world-wide fame in some cases.
There are a greater number of Barony folk than their surrounding hamlets might have you believe. And though they call themselves ‘barons’, they do in fact have kings, queens, lords and barons alike among their royal lines. There are a staggering array of titles and types of leaders around their territory, and because they often have large families even in townships, most Barons can claim some sort of kinship with a local or even higher level royal. The royalty of the Grape Barons act in a similar manner to the Lumin kings, in that they are usually on the move and enjoy their work tremendously. They are not afraid to get their hands dirty working the land, and many of them would eagerly give up their paperwork and officiating to go back to doing just that.
Barony names are often as cheerful and descriptive as their smiling faces: ‘Catalina of the Red Roses’, ‘Salazar Deepdraught’, ‘Tiny Pearl Nanifica’. Almost all Barony homes are decorated with the crest of their family – some of these are ridiculously detailed and complicated, as they track so many different aspects of the family’s past. From their first named location, their significant achievements, ties to other families or towns, professional skills, even the very rare battle fought. It’s nearly impossible to tell at a glance from these things, aside from being among the family members it represents, who did what or when. Nomad storytellers get nervous tics when they look at these things.
Popular Grape Barony Inhabitants of the Era
(none at present)
