Darétik

Darétik is a small town of 28 buildings. Each of these are houses, but most serve multiple purposes. A typical house is about 4 meters wide, and 8 meters long. The walls of these buildings are stakes and joined boards, plugged with moss to keep the wind out, and the heat in. The roof of each house - which ran the length of the building in a triangular form - has wooden shingles and roughly hewn chimney to allow smoke to escape. These buildings are made of wood of the Silver Fir. It is custom, the inhabitants of Darétik move their community to a new location once every 15 years or so.

Each building is raised above the earth on stilts, and inside each home is a hearth. The houses are arranged roughly in rows, with narrow lanes running between each house, leading toward the shore of the ocean. There is a large square in the centre of the settlement where community-meetings are held. There are no shops/commerce, and they use bartering (trading rather than using money).

In the centre of the village is a signal fire which is lit during emergency situations to call anyone within visual range back to the village to help.

Notable amongst the buildings of Darétik is the one referred to as 'The New Building'. This was built by the two Sea Nomad settlers, Imham and Bukan, for the adventurers who have come to the village over the past few weeks. It stands on the West side of the village and its unusual style is owed to it being built using traditional ship building techniques. It is a long, low, wooden building constructed of interlocking wooden joists with a thatched roof decorated with a dolphin motif. The inside of the building features religious graffiti carved into the walls by Keth'nell. The building has a slight slope to it due to subsidence caused by Oswlen's tunnelling. The facilities inside include a training area with practice dummies and pull-up bars, a wine cellar and secret access to an underground tunnel network.

Around Darétik are small but intensively farmed plots of land, where each is associated with a family group. They grow root vegetables, vine fruits, and medicinal herbs. What is in each plot depends on the time of year. The plots are small, and hand tilled. Though the community was highly interconnected and co-operative, most families rely  on the food they produced themselves. They supplement their food with collected stores of wild apples, acorns, berries; The food in Darétik is simple, and is usually cooked with leafy greens. The meat is cooked in stews. The fish are grilled.

There are small plots of pigs, goats, and cattle, but the bulk of the cattle are pastured away from town, returning in the early summer months when the male animals are slaughtered, preserved or eaten. Older female cattle were ritualistically slaughtered. The town herdsman is a man named Otzi, and his son. Together they disappear for months at a time to fatten the herd and return when it is ready. A small group of men and women also hunted - and large game - like red deer and wild boar.

There are a number of individuals who engage in fishing, using wooden boats that are six meters long. They can be rowed, or sailed. From these boats, men and women fish with nets catching Pike, Perch, Carp, Whitefish, and occasionally turtles. Sometimes the boats are used to hunt  larger game - like dolphins, whales - with harpoons.

Off the coast of Daretik are a cluster of about 15 islands called the abandoned islands (Ban Zapadi), some of which are inhabited by frogmen who cause problems with fishermen getting to the deeper fishing grounds. The islands are marshy places with plenty of mangroves and swamp. The island closest to the deep fishing grounds is safe to land on the north and east sides but steer clear of the west side of the island, the water is treacherous. There is an abandoned ship in the middle of the islands.

Every year the settlement has a Equinox Festival where two groups of hunters go out, one on land goes to slay a great 18ft elk on the North plains, the other goes to catch a great shark creature in the sea. It is important that both are caught to ensure a good year, a failed hunt and subsequent sacrifice is a bad omen for the inhabitants of the settlement. The residents are grateful for any successful hunt, whereas the hunters, in success, have brought honour upon themselves. The hunters then dress as either old hags/witches to scare the children or heroes to fight the witches, this is all deemed very important to the wellbeing of the settlement and is an ancient custom with real world protection even though people do not seem to remember what that reason is. The old hags are referred to as “Dazyanum” and is also utilised to teach the children of the village to have a healthy respect and fear of these beings. Edatsuyurn has indicated that this years festival has failed which may necessitate the relocation of the village.