Nāmen

**Nāmen** (Nae-men) is a small landlocked country bordered by Evesté, Ithryn, and Camling. It's people are called "Nāmenins". Often regarded as a poor and insignificant nation, it has a history of being claimed by its neighbors and occupied for years at a time. A young country, it has only recently declared its independence, and is culturally an amalgamation of its neighbors, struggling to recover its own individual history that was so often destroyed and overturned. The people are proud and hardy, their numbers greatly diminished from centuries of defending its borders to no avail, as it was slow to advance compared to its neighbors that were able to interact early with other countries. It's people are not well-known throughout history, as few have traveled far, and many of its people were forced to assimilate to its neighbors. Camling especially used it as a ground for factories, and exploited most of its natural resources of strong trees and precious metals. All that remained for its starving people were to eat the many wildflowers and make and sell honey, flee to the neighboring Eveste that had always been on good terms with them, and work as laborers in the factories and mines to stay close to home, but the people often lacked for food, and the locals would refuse to work in cutting down their precious trees, so the largest population of foreigners were the poor Camlings that needed work. Ithryn was the single most influential country as far as replacing the native culture, with the Camlings to a lesser extent. While Eveste remained largely peaceful, many of the women left behind by the massacre of their husbands who died defending their borders from conquerors decided to become mercenaries fighting against Camling and Ithryn for Yonwyn.

## Culture

### Death

A tree is planted for every birth, and burned for every death. The burned tree is usually a sick one, and the corpse is enclosed in a type of hollow tree endemic to the country, the tree is tended to by the family, as the tree's life is the person's second life, and thus is treated as the family member.

### Government

Colonialism. Theocracy

* Their leaders are thought to be living avatars of the forest god, or descended from the tree spirits and chosen to speak on behalf of the gods. This small nation was colonized by both the Camlings and the Ithrynians, and so colonialism is well engrained in them, and though it taught them a great many skills and knowledge, it had a detrimental effect on their culture and sense of identity. Only one who can prove to be blessed or chosen by the gods can rule, and there can only be one at a time, any other must be a fraud. The number of true representatives of the gods, and those good at illusions and deceiving people are hard to pinpoint. As once made the ruler, they speak for the gods, and disobeying them is to offend the gods and risk a terrible retribution.

### Language

High Valyrian

* + issa
	+ kepa
	+ kirine
	+ iksan
	+ edrus (line over e)
	+ urnen
	+ zentys
	+ mirin (line over each i)
	+ tolvys
	+ daor(ys)
	+ daorun
	+ hedys (line over e)
	+ sahagon
	+ doros (line over first o)
	+ naena
	+ mere (line over first e)
	+ naejot
	+ ondos
	+ laes
	+ relgos
	+ dohaerios
	+ ipra
	+ keli
	+ ango
	+ idak
	+ dari
	+ mele
	+ kasta
	+ skoros
	+ sparos
	+ tala
	+ lentor
	+ darys (line over a)
	+ eman
	+ anogar (line over first a)
	+ setera (line over first e)
	+ daronor
	+ aeksia
	+ dovao
	+ daor
	+ dracar

## People

The Nāmenins are a strangely calm and resilient people, with strong equality between men and women, they are often miners and factory workers, or else they are mercenaries for Yonwyn in its many skirmishes with Ithryn and Camling. Many times the population is mostly women and children, and kids are forced to grow up fast by working in the home or the factories and mines. Stringed instruments with many strings of fine metal, and intricately carven flutes, and group dancing with exhaustingly fast footwork and tiered skirts bring joy to the people that have little left to them. They have survived on grasses and flowers and honey in times of famine. Their main cuisine is that of birds and field mice and insects. The people were originally primitive forest people with a rich oral history and strong family structures. They took much from their many oppressors over the years to quickly advance, and over time they slowly used the fact that they are underestimated and misunderstood to their advantage to quickly make themselves a powerful rival. Though often reticent and solemn to outsiders, they are tireless and obedient workers and dedicated, loving, and surprisingly at peace when amongst their family, and regard all other of their people as kin.

Light brown skin, black eyes and hair

## History

As per their custom, there is no written record of their founding, but many oral stories, conflicting by region, of how they came from the heart of the oak wood, as spirits of the forest, and took on human forms as a blessing from the forest god. They were many tribes, never warring amongst themselves, but very different once they settled into different regions, and there were those who remained in the forest, never changing, and died when the forest did, at the hands of the Camlings, the first to invade them, but not the last, which were the proud and advanced Ithrynians. A woman said to be the messenger of the wood god or the spirit of the wood herself brought them together after the end of the woods, and they drove out the Camlings, as was the First Retaking. This enigmatic leader vanished one day, some said she returned to the earth, some say she said she was no longer needed, while others said she abandoned them after her distaste for their lack of worship grew too much. Nevertheless, the joining she shepherded remained, and other leaders took her place, most of them old women, once a young boy, once a young couple, and once almost a foreigner, though he was killed before he had much effect on these people.

After the First Retaking their was a resurgence of their native culture, as the Camlings were less interested in domination than they were in profiting from the wood of the forest and the metal in the ground, these treasures were not well known to the Namenins, but though not many foreigners visited, those who did received equal measure of warm welcomes and suspicious avoidance. The Namenins appeared to make a full recovery, and did not choose to retaliate, and eventually they forgot the transgressions of their neighbor. This would be folly, not two decades later a new King of Camling decided to get revenge for the perceived sleight of the Namenins repulsion, and wanted to refill the coffers that the previous young king, in his short and turbulent reign, wasted on a civil war that need not have happened. Thinking that the Namenins had been proven easy targets, he stole what little was left in the once great and sacred forest, and opened even more mines than there were, and enticed the natives to work them with promises of high pay, which he would later renege on.

Thus came the Second Retaking, more quick and violent than the first slow expulsion, the natives lost many men in the war, and in the coming years, many women in the fight between Yonwyn and Camling, with the children growing up hating the overreaching and greedy Camlings. This time the Namenins would not recover so quickly, as this new king, reviled in the generations to come, thought these "primitive" and backwards natives should all come under the jurisdiction of the great Kingdom of Camling, and thus much of the native culture was stamped out with force, and while effective, or this reason would not last long.

The Third and as of now final Retaking came at the hands of the Ithrinians, previously more concerned with expanding across the brutal Sea of Winters, and engaging in long political squabbles with the Camlings, off and on for centuries, decided to pay heed to it's neighbor that was just shaking off the effects of its previous occupation. The Empress of Ithryn, a cold and pious woman, eager to prove her capabilities as a ruler to the people who were unhappy with her election, under the guise of religious conversion, she realized that Namen would be easy prey, while Ithryn had long thought Namen to be of little consequence and limited value, and not wishing to enrage the rich Camling lords that had their footholds in the forest and mines, now decided it was free for the taking. Being one of the mightier empires, Ithryn would swiftly and easily take over Namen, and hold it for more than 200 years, with uprisings becoming increasingly desperate and common in the last 50 years, but most effectively in the first decade while the people still had strength, but had more numbers and less hope as the years went on. It was during this occupation that the Namenins lost most of their culture, and lost many people to Yonwyn and Eveste, but only the most treacherous few would abandon their country to join Camling and Ithryn, as the people are proud, hardy, and sticking together is in their very blood. The Third Retaking took the lives of many men, women, and children, all who fought bravely to be free under the harsh utilitarian rule of the Ithrinians, and there was a large underground network dedicating to reviving the language, and keeping the customs alive, which while sections of it were often destroyed, the natives remained separate from their invaders, and so spies were only in the form of Ithrinians who sympathized with the natives, of which there were some, and increasingly common, though still very rare, were those Namenins who were raised by the occupiers to think poorly of their own people, and to act as spies for their adoptive masters. Though they made things difficult for the underground rebels, and led to the death of many natives, still the Namenins eventually prevailed, and became much more stern and hard against all foreigners, being unwelcoming, and many of those that fled early on came back, but there were still some that chose to stay abroad, as it had been generations since their family had lived in the homeland. The natives learned much from the observation of their "masters". The natives grew their nation to be great, and it remained very different from their neighbors, as they deliberately refused to conform to certain norms as were introduced to them, with great effort over time, with many dissenting and wishing to keep the customs they'd gained from their captors as they felt it was theirs now after 200 years, while the majority, by a slimmer than margin than expected, decided to make their country only of their original culture, which proved quite a task, and they kept their borders closed to all foreigners not of native blood, however little, as long as they would abide by the culture of the country.

## Geography

The current capital is in the north, in the center of the regrowing oak wood, to better guard the borders and be near the spiritual beginning of the people. The historical capital was in the south, near the center, the first location settled after the people emerged from the forest. There are small communities in the hills to the west, and on the eastern lake, the largest in the country, while others live at the base of the single mountain further south, Mount Tranethor (pronounced Tranetor), before the endless desert that has never been crossed. Despite the differing geography, the climate is roughly the same throughout, temperate and mild, and slightly dry, never cold enough for snow, and only just cold enough for weak frost during certain times of the year. Everyone gathers to the capital twice yearly, for the summer and winter solstice, for trade and to bring back food and goods. When there were woods, many crafts were produced by them, along with fruits and nuts, but later they had to learn agriculture, subsisting mostly on grain and some freshwater fish. Overtime they gained foreign foods that they could sow, as there were few suitable native plants, and during the third occupation cattle was introduced and they found work in dairy farms, while their native fields were eaten dry, leaving little grain for the small villages to subsist on. It would take many years for the land to recover, but the natives were determined, and by selling great amounts of cattle they had some money to rebuild their world. Some natives complained about eschewing the foreign produce and cuisine and crafts in favor of the more primitive and limited ones native to the land, but they made greater use and variety of them with the knowledge and education they gained.

### Locations

* Great Forest/Old Forest
* Öestram (Westrang)
* Western Hills
* Menor's Mines
* Crenach's Outpost
* Omun Lake
* Hawkland Fields
* Mount Tranethor
* Desert That Has Never Been Crossed