Browan

Inhabitants of planet Browa’s vast, featureless, windswept grass-seas, the long-faced, solemn-eyed, and large-horned Browans comprise several culturally diverse and disparate groups. The term “Browan” was never used by the Browans themselves, instead it was given to them by the colonialist Venkee, whose first encounter with Browans was with the Mahhram, whose name for the planet was “Browa.” This name stuck with the Venkee, and thus all of Browa’s inhabitants were misguidedly referred to as “Browans.” Tall, hardy, stalwart people, the Browans lived in accordance with the harsh weather systems that dominate Browa’s landscape. A common trait shared by many of the disparate Browan groups was their religious affinity with weather, particularly wind, rain and cloud. The name “Mahhram,” the first group encountered by the Venkee, translates to Windkeeper, leading the Venkee to believe that all Browans practiced the custom of “wind-keeping” – a tradition specific to the Mahhram. Other notable groups include the Mbollor (“Cloudcallers”), and the Fahhom (“Rainmakers”). Some of these Browan groups lived nomadically, relying on trade with other groups, while others settled and constructed large permanent settlements. Due to the lack of building materials on the desolate plains, many of these sedentary communities constructed their sites using bone and hide, mud, stone (usually in the mountainous regions), or a combination of all three. Eventually, as the Venkee occupation of Browa became increasingly hostile and restrictive for the local Browans, many of whom had been forced together into designated zones irrespective of their cultural, political and linguistic differences, tensions between the two races surged into a mass Browan uprising against their oppressors. Hostility between Browan groups increased too, with major conflicts breaking out within the designated zones as a result of the different groups being forced together. The Venkee responded with a ruthless crackdown on the Browan people, but many Browans saw this coming and prepared their escape from their now inhospitable homeworld. With the help of undercover sympathisers, many of whom were disgruntled Venkee, the Browans fled Browa in the mass, interstellar exodus known as the Flight of Fifty Winds. The name refers to the fifty evacuation sites dotted about the entirety of Browa. Those who were lucky enough to even reach one of these fifty sites then had to be successfully smuggled out of Browa and taken to a safe-planet. For the Browans, this was both a salvation and a tragedy. Many decided to stay on their homeworld, deciding that life under Venkee rule was a necessary sacrifice to be able to still breathe the air of Browa. Many of those who stayed became a prized component of the resistance against innumerable onslaughts of Orogog invasions that followed. Those who fled, however, taken to planets outside of the Venkee territory, lived in relative peace, again in designated zones on occupied planets, but this time they were free of Venkee oppression and able to organise themselves according to their own ancestral distinctions. Today, the Browans exist as diverse minority groups on these safe-planets and continue to practice their traditional customs, only with not such a hostile weather system as they once did on their mutual homeworld of Browa.