Editing Setting:Unified Setting/Solaris (section)

===Life in Furnshakt===

While their northern neighbors plot and scheme amongst themselves, the barbarians of Furnshakt go about their daily business, which mostly consists of survival. Life in their mountainous land (dubbed Tartarus by northern geographers) is hard. It is made harder by the fact that the small villages that survive by farming, ranching, and hunting are all enmeshed in a violent, complicated social structure dating back centuries. Interlocking and overlapping family, tribal and clan loyalties and grievances require every Furnshaktian to be ever-ready for combat. While utterly opaque to outsiders, the inhabitants are always aware of the identity, location and skill at arms of their allies and enemies at all times.

Despite the lurid publications of the north, these ancient grudges rarely get out of hand. Furnshaktians know the price of combat first-hand. They instinctively organize their lives to avoid death, if not bloodshed. It is considered normal and healthy for younger members of a clan to do battle and hone their skills with each other, but maturity and skill brings the wisdom to avoid fights that aren't necessary to defend your hearth and kin.

Furnshakt does not lack for such fights. In addition to feuds between clans and tribes that are unavoidable, the continent is under attack. While the threat of another Aurelian-inspired crusade still looms, new menaces have arisen. Due to their proximity to the Sea of Ghosts, Furnshakt is frequently beset by necro-storms which awake the hungry dead. Devout northerners point to this as proof that the Furnshakt religion is no better than foul necromancy, echoing a common belief that necromancy attracts the storms. In recent years a new danger, the squid-headed illithid wielding nightmarish lobster armor, have begun to raid coastal communities.

The people of Furnshakt are ready and eager for these fights. Their culture and religion hone the legendary battle skills that have kept them independent from the north for centuries. There are few universal constants amongst the tribes, but one is the trial of adulthood. No child, male or female, can be considered an adult unless they have bested a fearsome opponent. The ways this is interpreted are numerous. Some tribes hold annual moots for the sole purpose of allowing their children to batter and bloody each other. Others require the pelt of a dangerous animal, the killing of an enemy in combat, destruction of a hungry dead, undertaking a vision quest or in some rare and decadent cases, a significant wager in a test of skill.