Achuireans

Achuireans, put plainly, are the human inhabitants of the continent of Achuirea. However, the way the term is used in practice is somewhat more complex. It’s often understood to include the humans of neighboring Vhaluzia, who emigrated there from Achuirean lands in ancient times and retain many cultural similarities with the inhabitants of Achuirea proper. Conversely, it typically excludes more recent arrivals on the continent such as the Sarcian conquerors and the present-day imperial aristocracy descended from them (even though they too, of course, are inhabitants of Achuirea). The common people of the Sarcian Empire are considered Achuirean since they lived there long before the empire’s foundation and retain Achuirean cultural characteristics such as Rhantashannu, but the ruling elite are still viewed as invaders of Orithean origin.

In this sense, therefore, “Achuireans” is more synonymous with the descendants of the People of the Ten Thousand Ships and the inheritors of their culture, most crucially their religious beliefs. Thus it encompasses most but not all of the continent’s human denizens.

Of course, the first Achuireans (the People of the Ships) did originally come from Orithea too, and they were not homogeneous. As a group of religious refugees united by Rhantashannu and the leadership of Tarquenus rather than any shared tribal origin, they were themselves a hodgepodge of the different peoples living around the Sarpic Seas in those ancient days. The modern Achuireans are the result of countless generations of intermarriage between the Tarquenites’ descendants as they multiplied and spread across the new continent. This mingling and intermarriage occurred with little or no regard for the tribal/ethnic affiliation their ancestors had claimed had back in Orithea. As a result, Achuireans do not divide themselves into tribal families or ethnic groups like the Oritheans (Suule, Brecai, Kelims, Vastemards, etc.).

Nevertheless, over the five thousand years since the People of the Ships arrived, the Achuireans have settled in many different parts of the continent (sometimes widely separated by distance and physical barriers), and significant regional differences in culture, dialect, and appearance have developed. However, Achuireans are apt to regard these differences as just that--regional--rather than tribal or ethnic. For instance, a denizen of XXXXX (the northern coastal part of Belekesh) will have a distinctive accent, certain habits and manners of dress, and a set of cultural norms shared in common with his fellow XXXXXites, which make him at home among them and mark him out as as an XXXXXite among people of other lands. But he won't be considered part of a tribe or ethnic group with bloodlines stretching back to antiquity and immutably distinguishing him from other kindreds, as would, say, an Uremite or a Kelim in Orithea. If he were to emigrate to XXXXX and settle there instead, he would become an XXXXXite over time as he became accustomed to the ways of that land, and his children and certainly their children would be XXXXites, not regarded as "having XXXXXXite blood."

Also worth noting are the Azars or Azarian peoples, the inhabitants of the great archipelago of the same name: Many scholars consider them a branch of the Achuirean people, since (depending on which legends one accepts as true) they are descended either from dissenters within the Tarquenian exiles who broke off from the main group en route to settle the archipelago instead, or from subsequent Achuirean generations who sailed back to colonize the islands at some later point in time.

The Achuirean peoples mostly speak a language (or group of dialects) called Chomarra.