Editing Wallara (section)

==Culture==
[[File:Chameleon man MC Mystara.jpg|thumb|right]]
Whilst TSR tended to just rip-off real world cultures and slap them into all of its settings, as [[Greyhawk]] and the [[Forgotten Realms]] will both attest (hello, [[Maztica]], [[Kara-tur]] and [[Al-Qadim]]!), they were particularly prone to doing this for [[Mystara]], due to its strong pulp fantasy influences. For the Wallaras, they decided to basically use the culture of Australian Aborigines wholesale for them.

Which in hindsight might not have been one of their better ideas, given that similar treatment led to panning of the American Indian-based Atruaghin Clans, and this might have led to the wallaras being shoved quietly under the rug, but that's not what we're here to talk about.

Wallara culture is, fundamentally, a Stone Age tribal society, crafting the goods they need to survive from wood, bone and rocks. They are divisible into the traditional nomadic clans, who wander steadily across the arid grasslands they call home whilst hunting and foraging, and the agrarian clans, who stake a central living space and grow crops there, whilst hunters and foragers still go out into the bushland to look for supplementary food as well.

They live in familial groups based on lines of descent; a patriarch and his sons, grandsons, great-grandsons and so forth. Larger groups consist of multiple families who share the same tookoo; as you might expect, these places of natural power, which can take many forms (a grotto that glistens with arcane crystals, or an ancient and weirdly shaped tree that hums with power, for example), are the foundations of their settlements. Nomadic wallaras will migrate between tookoos, whilst agrarian wallaras build their settlements - clusters of bark huts - around their tookoo. Even agrarian wallara clans are still semi-nomadic, packing up and moving to every few years - depending on how hospitable the land around them is, they may just move to a fresh fertile patch of land still close to their tookoo, or they may move on to another tookoo.

As you might expect, given their reproduction literally revolves around places of nature-power, they are a highly spiritual people, with pronounced meditative customs and elaborate ceremonies of devotion based on music, song and dance. They worship a pantheon of Immortals consisting of The Great One (whom they call Agundji, the Rainbow Serpent), the God of All Things, Calitha Starbrow (in their culture Barramundje, the Mother), Goddess of Water and Forests, Ka the Preserver (Genjoo the Crocodile Spirit to them), Lord of the Earth, the Land and Magic, and Ixion (who they know as Warruntam, the Eagle Spirit), patron of hunters, god of speed and bravery, lord of fire. Each of these immortals has a spiritual servitor; the Sky Heroes of Agundji, who seek to guide the wallaras into rediscovering their past; the Guwarris of Barramundje, shapeshifting [[nixie]]-like creatures that guard rivers and billabongs; the Neemes of Genjoo, invisible rock spirits that instruct the wallaras on how to protect nature by speaking to the medicine men, and the Namarkons of Warruntam, living thunderclouds that bring rain and wind.

In addition to this overarching pantheon, wallaras are totemists, believing that in ancient times, their ancestors walked with their gods, but many of them changed themselves into animals, birds, plants or even  landscape features during a time of great evil and suffering. Every wallara tribe claims a totem spirit that guards them, and even the nomadic tribes stick to a specific region to wander; each tribal region is believed to be home to their spirits of their ancestors, transformed and otherwise. As they are still living, it is their duty to look after their departed kinsfolk, which furthers their strong spiritual sense of connection to the land. Only those who succumb to the phenomena of "walkabout", a intense wanderlust that all wallaras acknowledge and respect, will leave their familial grounds and go roaming as they please.

Leadership amongst the wallara is functionally a gerontocracy; they establish leadership based on perceived wisdom, and the eldest members of the tribe are seen as the wisest, which makes sense when you consider they can live for two and a half centuries. The wisest wallara, as selected by the tribe as a whole, rules as a headman, assisted by a council of elders. Obedience to one's elders is backed by a deep superstitious fear; wallara believe that disobedience summons divine retribution in the form of a punishing spirit, the Kurdaitcha Man, who will wreak havoc until appeased and sent back to the nightmare lands from whence it came.

Wallaras generally don't need much leading, however. When a clan needs to make an important decision, everybody gathers at the tookoo, carefully disussing the issue and all of its ramifications, refusing to leave until they've made a decision that everyone can agree is for the best. Even [[dwarves]] would consider wallaras to be rather slow to act.

Though perceived as a serious, even stoic people, most wallaras have good senses of humor and can easily laugh at themselves. They have a great sense of fun and fair play, enjoying games of all sorts, especially races and war games. In fact, it'd be honest to say that wallaras don't really know ''how'' to wage war; whilst they have a tradition of settling disputes through combat, their method of doing so is very ritualized:

The two individuals who want to fight (or, if the dispute is between different clans, each member of a group of agreed upon size) meets at a designated spot. A line is drawn in the sand to separate the two sides, with anybody not fighting gathering to watch. Each combatant is armed with a shield, six blunted spears, six boomerangs, and six clubs (or "nulla-nullas" in their tongue). The combatants will first take it in turns to throw spears at each other, with the defender seeking to deflect the spear with his shield. Then, they take it in turn to throw boomerangs at each other - these are thrown low and slow, with the defender seeking to jump over the projectile; actually throwing the boomerang in an attempt to wound or kill is tremendously bad sportsmanship, and everybody present will immediately gang up on the scoundrel and give him a thorough beating for such misbehavior. Once the projectiles are all used up, the combatants grab their clubs and cross the line to attack; each club is dropped after one swing has been made with it, whether that resulted in a hit or not.

The fighting stops as soon as all eighteen weapons have been used or a serious injury is dealt. The winner is whoever was left in better shape, with the dispute settled in their favor. To show there are no hard feelings, the wounded are patched up and the tribe will have a corroboree (a great festival, with eating, dancing, singing and storytelling).

As innocent as this may make them sound, wallaras do take some things quite seriously indeed. For example, there is a very strict protocol to approaching a wallara encampment; a person who wishes to approach in peace is expected to make noise by clapping sticks together or approach from downwind whilst carrying a torch made from a strongly aromatic plant. Upon being seen, they are expected to sit down in a place that is within sight of the village, but far enough away to make attack difficult, and wait for a delegation to be set out to meet them. Failure to do this is seen as a sign of hostile intentions.

Another prominent taboo? Don't smile when you approach or enter the village. As the wallara see it, a stranger has no way of knowing if some difficulty has befallen the village, so failing to approach with a grave expression until informed otherwise is a sign of disrespect and apathy; it marks the individual as very bad-mannered and it's a grave insult.

The other major taboos of wallara culture are simple:
* Their ritual dances, chants and sacred objects are not to be seen by the uninitiated.
* Wallaras shy away from pointed sticks or bones, as their medicine men use these as makeshift wands during  rituals of cursing. Anybody brandishing such a thing will engender great fear and hostility.
* If somebody else's shadow falls on you, it's a harbinger of bad luck. Carelessly letting your shadow cover another person is malicious behavior and deserves a corrective beating.