Commonwealth of Dhi

The Commonwealth of Dhi is one of three countries in the triple kingdom, protected from attack by the Aleya Range to the northeast and Forest to the southwest. Most of its land is at high altitude, difficult for agriculture, so many Dhi rely on yak and sheep for their survival. In its two fertile valleys, food is more abundant, and the lowlanders send much of the surplus to higher ground to support other citizens. Two thirds of the population lives in the capital, Bhatan, or secondary capital, Patari.

The Dhi government is decentralized and has little power beyond simple diplomacy. Most decisions are made at a local level, by leaders elected by the citizens. The decadal land census repurposes land use every ten years, including from monasteries and landed gentry, which prevents any individuals or institutions from gaining too much power.

## Geography

Dhi contains vastly different landscapes, even within a few hours of one another. Villages cluster at high altitudes on the sides of mountains or on plateaus. Here, farming is difficult and plant life is scarce. Lower down, towns and forts cluster amongst the foothills to the southwest of the Aleya. The majority of the population lives in two valleys—Akadh and Chomo—where farming is easy but monsoons bring yearly floods.

### Aleya

Aleya refers to all the people who live high up on the mountains, which include ethnicities like the Matha, Teflon, Asha, and Aming. They rely on magic to grow food and herd yak and sheep. Villages are small and spaced out so news that reaches one does not necessarily reach any of the others. Weather that high up can be brutally cold, and windy. Avalanches are a constant risk. However, the Aleya are so far from the valleys, most invasions of Dhi never make it to the remote villages.

### Foothills

The Dhi in the foothills are often called Ma, or the Ma, which means *thing* in a few of the local languages and is used as a noncommittal filler word when someone didn't hear or understand what was said but doesn't wish to appear word. When asked who they were by outsiders, they often said *Ma,* and the Diao christened them the Ma thereafter. They also named Malaku, the largest city in the foothills, which literally means *house place thing* and the Mandu Forest, which means *tree thing*. Not at all bothered by the misunderstanding, the Ma happily renamed Diao cities and important features in a similar vein.

Agriculture in the foothills is difficult but does not require magic use to be sustainable. Ma also keep yaks, goats, cows, sheep, guinea pigs, and horses. In recent years, they've adopted Seprum chickens and domesticated cats.

### Valleys

Dhi has two fertile valleys, Chomo and Akadh, where harvests are generally abundant. Because the valleys flood once a year in the monsoons, often in deadly flash floods, many lowlanders, as they are affectionately called by the Aleya and Ma, retreat to higher, drier ground in the summer, allowing water to seep into the fields, carrying with it minerals and nutrients from the Forest and mountains that improve crop yields. Both hedge magic and spiromancy are used infrequently by lowlanders.

The coast of Dhi turns from river valley to jungle, which initially stymied Mauzji traders, who could not navigate through the dense trees. They host a great diversity of species and with permission, Seprum patricians travel to the jungle to hunt rare game. Kuan soldiers use them to practice Forest tactics. Ju cooks cherish some rare plants that grow only in the jungle. Because they play such an important role in the economy, Dhi are protective of their jungles and refuse to cut down a tree without replacing it with a tree of the same or similar species. In recent years, and with Ju assistance, the jungles have actually expanded.

## History

### Unification

From the outside, it perhaps seems strange that three distinct regions would unite over one form of government. However, interactions between the Aleya, Ma, and lowlanders have been common throughout Dhi's history. Ma and lowlanders trek up the mountains to meet with Aleya healers. While the spiral allowed some of their healing runes to spread throughout Dhi, much of what Aleya healers do involves magic, physical manipulation of the body, acupuncture, massage, and talking to cure the mind of injury, which is not so easily replicated. Both the Ma and lowlanders have great respect for Aleya healers, and the Aleya are proud of their ability to help others.

During monsoon season, lowlanders retreat to the foothills, and during storms or harsh windows, the Aleya do the same. The Ma welcome them both into their houses and temples. One of the biggest Ma holidays occurs in mid-summer, at the beginning of monsoon season, to welcome the lowlanders and celebrate their arrival. Likewise, a famous Ma folk song asks the goddess Ama for "great billowing winds that bring our highland friends back to us for the winter" in the chorus. The Ma appreciate being the middle people between two different worlds and sharing the traditions and cultures of both. In return, the lowlanders share food with those the Ma and Aleya, as they often have too much.

Sometime before 1200 PS, the Ma began referring to the whole region as Dhi, which means *friend*, and the lowlanders and Aleya adopted the term soon thereafter. In 1000 PS, the first Dhi conference met in Malaku. Village leaders, Ma governors, and the lowland monarchs convened to discuss matters of mutual importance, such as standardized routes and times for the lowlanders to send food through Ma and to the Aleya villages and institutional ways to handle disputes between villages and towns. They continued meeting every two years until 994 PS, when, to simplify matters, they asked each group to send only three representatives, rotating every few years so everyone who wanted to could experience it. The council of nine remained a loose coordination group until the Diao invasion in 956.

### Diao Invasion

In 956 PS, Emperor Xia led an army through the Mandu Forest and claimed the Akadh Valley. By cutting off communication, they prevented people in Chomo or the foothills from arriving with assistance and the Ma and Aleya did not realize anything was amiss until no one arrived from Akadh in the council of nine the next year. At that point, DIao had exported so much food, they caused a devastating famine.

Suddenly short of food, the council was faced with a problem they could not handle calmly or in a neutral manner. The Ma representatives argued they had a larger army to help fight the invaders off and thus deserved what little extra food there was. The Aleya argued that their land was practically infertile and they had greater need of supplies. The rift meant neither Ma nor Aleya sent aid to the oppressed Akadh people. Instead, an army from Chomo, with help from Fei soldiers, chased the Diao back to their homeland, and only after a political enemy assassinated Xia.

### Fractured State

Betrayed by the other members of Dhi, the monarchs of Chomo and Akadh married, uniting their two governments and leaving Ma and Aleya out of the decision. They refused to send representatives to the council, which Malaku refused to host. The Aleya healers refused to treat lowlanders and Ma alike unless they received payment, spurned in previous years. The united kingdom of Akoma traded extra food to Diao, Kuan tribes, and Ju chiefdoms, intensifying the famine and leading to the deaths of thousands or even tens of thousands of Ma and Aleya, who had come to rely on that food and had populations too big to support. Ma built a small, seasonal army to bar Akoma access to their towns during monsoons, which led to many lowlander deaths.

### Hsia Invasion

An army, led by a member of the Hsia clan from Kuan, snuck through the Kazei pass, normally guarded by the Ma, in 786 PS, taking the lowlanders unawares. Improved communications systems meant a messenger made it to Akadh before the Hsia army, warning Queen Anata and her son, Prince Rudra, that they needed to flee or be killed. The Hsia army cut off their access to Mauzji trade routes, which left Queen Anata only one choice: going through Ma territory.

Knowing the Ma would turn her over, Queen Anata opted to stay with her people, who, she realized, did not have the privilege of fleeing the way she did. However, on the eve of the Hsia siege, her advisors begged her to run so the monarchy did not end with her, even if she had to grovel at the feet of the Ma governors to keep herself and six-year-old child safe, and, moved by their pleas, she agreed to leave in the night. This day, known as Yes Day, is celebrated annually throughout Dhi.

When she arrived in the Mahara, a peripheral Ma town, Prince Rudra was suffering from hypothermia and Queen Anata had been wounded by a Hsia arrow. Unable to turn her away in such a state, the local governor took her in, but she needed more medical attention than his people could provide. To that end, a runner was sent up to the nearest Aleya village, asking the healer there whether she could find it in herself to heal the injured Akoma queen. The response came back some two weeks later: maybe. This is celebrated as Maybe Day.

Undeterred by the noncommittal response, the Ma set about organizing a trip up the mountain that wouldn't kill the queen or her son. In the meantime, the healers in Aleya set about gathering in the closest village with all the herbs and runes they'd need to heal any manner of injury. The queen made it in a week and a half and was healed quickly. However, it was Hsia tradition to leave no monarchs alive after an invasion and they made chase. The cold killed many of them and they did not take well to the altitude, but the Aleya kept nothing in the way of a standing army to defend themselves.

When the remaining army made it to Khandar, they captured the priest, healer, and eldest villager and demanded the queen be turned over. The people of Khandar refused and set about burning Hsia supplies, luring them into valleys and triggering avalanches that killed their soldiers, and poisoning their food and water supplies. When the rai declared that he would kill ten Aleya citizens for every single Hsia killed, the Aleya did not change course. Their resolve heartened defeated Ma and Akoma people, who rose up, killing thousands of Hsia soldiers until winter came and the rai could no longer justify keeping his people in Dhi. The day they retreated is celebrated each year as No Day.

### Infighting

The three populations went back to calling themselves Dhi, but they all valued self-sufficiency too much to reassemble the council. Chomo Valley, meanwhile, selected their own monarch and the Akoma kingdom collapsed in 771 PS. In 750, the Chomo king invaded Akadh, forming the Chomo Dynasty. It attempted to invade Ma but was prevented by a Diao attack to the north, which caused it to fall into slow ruin, replaced in 710 PS by the Deva Dynasty, which reunited the lowlands in 706 PS.

When Ruler Shan took Malaku, burning down the temples and killing hundreds, Ma and Aleya put aside their differences to force back the attack. The skirmishes and, eventually, war lasted until 650, when the Deva Dynasty was deposed. However, infighting between Ma and Aleya, again over food distribution, caused the new government, a council, to break apart in 635 PS.

### Reunification

An invasion by Diao in 250 PS motivated the three lands enough to reunify and drive off the invasion. Rather than devolve into individual monarchies again, the leaders gathered in Malaku to decide how they wanted to govern themselves. They reinstated the council of nine, though it now had eighteen seats, to handle trade between the three lands. They made explicit that in exchange for shelter and healing, the lowlanders would provide food to the Ma and Aleya.

For a while, this system worked, but all three people rankled at the transactional nature of the agreement. In 232, the council overturned the official agreement and went back to allowing more representatives to gather and settle their disagreements. The tacit agreement to share resources remained. In 211, the three lands agreed to refer to it as a mutual aid agreement and the majority of villages, along with Ma towns and the two valleys, agreed to celebrate Yes, Maybe, and No Day each year.

### Kuan Invasion

The Kuan invasion in 31 PS disrupted the system of mutual aid because Tsasi Saj forced the valleys to export food to Kuan instead of the foothills and villages. However, semi-independence had forced the Ma and Aleya to become more creative with their food production and they were able to help the Aleya support themselves until they overthrew the Kuan in 10 PS.

When the spiral tower went up in Kuan, Ma and Aleya fell into famine and lost much of their medicinal ability. While they did not wish to surrender again to Kuan rule, the lowlanders did, which led to a period of time called the Quarrel, during which Ma and Aleya guerrilla fighters interfered with lowlander diplomatic operations. Dhi fell again in 17 SE.

## Government

### Monarchy

Dhi has a weak monarch, generally a queen, and the position is passed down matrilineally. The queen's role is as a figurehead, diplomat, and cultural unifier. Before she can take the throne, she must spend a consecutive year on the plateau, in the foothills, and in each valley. She plays an important role during holidays, which she is expected to host, in different cities each time. She also makes rousing speeches when she feels morale needs a boost.

The position of queen was created after Dhi fell to the Kuan army for a second time. Jamlyn Saj wanted the triple kingdom to have a unified council that could meet and discuss problems regularly and insisted Dhi create such a position. For that reason, the queen has little power to control the lives of her people, though she has a strong diplomatic role.

In Dhi, as in Kuan, titles are appended to the end of names. Queen Deva, for instance, is called Devasilla, where *silla* means monarch. Heirs get the suffix *meva*.

### Local Government

Dhi is cut into provinces, each run by a provincial governor. The role of the governor is to tabulate resource deficits and surpluses in the region as accurately as possible. When a province has more than it needs, the governor contacts neighboring provinces to see if they could use any. If they can't, the provinces work together to save any and all resources for the future. In general, food is transported from the valleys up the mountains and medicine and extra workers during planting and harvest are sent down.

The most powerful leaders are town chiefs, healers, and elders, who often serve a dual role as a monk or priest. Local leaders motivate people to actions such as rebuilding a barn or house, shoring up avalanche and storm protections, or planning holiday celebrations. Taxes are collected at the local level and separated into investments in the local community or support for the needy and taxes for the queen. The queen, in turn, pays taxes to the triple kingdom. Most Dhi are poor, but few are worried about where they will sleep or where their next meal will come from. In a way, they have traded luxury for security.

### Land Rotation

Local leaders are also responsible for determining land usage, though for border towns, governors are also involved. Dhi believe land cannot be owned and that its current use is not necessarily its best use. As a result, every ten years, all across Dhi, the people conduct a land census, looking at current land usage and determining whether it can be more efficient. This includes taking land back from monasteries, temples, and gentry and repurposing it for the good of the town. Kuan land cannot be repurposed, which has led to outbursts of violence every ten years. Though Dhi has outlawed putting people to death for crimes, the triple kingdom has not, and in 90 SE, almost two hundred Dhi were wrapped in rugs or clothes and beaten to death with thick sticks—a Kuan execution method reserved for non-commoners—for arson, theft, and attempted murder.

## Magic

### Agriculture

In Ma and Aleya, the ground was rarely fertile enough to sustain the populations that lived there. As a result, the people developed a complex system of magic to accompany their farming practicing, including specific dates on which to plant or cast certain runes and heavy use of triggers. Rune constructions are passed down from generation to generation and often combined with dance, music, or some other form of ritual to ensure they are not drawn incorrectly. Over time, if the patterns are followed, the ground becomes more fertile, though the spiros do not let up lest the effect diminish.

### Medicine

Aleya healers have long innovated in the field of medicine and magic. They have the first recorded use of pointers and design complicated proxies to heal people from afar. They plant runes in advance each week and cast them before they become too large if they are not used, and gather to share knowledge, which extends to the physical, including exercises that can help people recover from injuries and acupuncture and massage. Their most unique invention is mind medicine, which is generally administered through gentle physical contact or by talking. Spiromancers all across the Spiral Empire rely on ancient Dhi scripts for their healing runes.

### Magical Literacy

Because magic plays such a central role in day-to-day life, and because the different Dhi peoples so rarely fight one another, they had almost 100% magical literacy before the spiral wall was erected. Now, because they need to travel to Kuan to get tattooed, magical literacy has collapsed. Many more Dhi are hedge witches than in other empires, but Dhi consider their way of life to be gravely at risk. For that reason, they have lobbied for a new spiral tower, constructed in Dhi, staffed by spiros qualified to give tattoos, and the Spiral Emperor granted permission in 115 SE. Construction is almost finished.

## Culture and Art

Dhi pride themselves on being calmer and more tolerant than the other empires. Attempting to convert someone to another religion is banned throughout the commonwealth and they prefer laws and religions that reduce conflict. Dhi has no standing army, though Ma and lowlanders have been called upon to fight on occasion against invading armies. In general, their protected position behind the Aleya Range and infertile ground keeps them safe from outside attack.

### Religion

The two dominant religions in Dhi are Theism and Yan. Some practices of Sudhaism have been adopted into both. Many houses have altars to a few choice deities and most towns have at least one altar to a patron. Over the centuries, monarchs have gifted large parcels of land to temples, but the high recycling rate of land usage means they rarely become too powerful. Monasteries are generally places of charity and sanctum, where the hungry can go to find food and the scared can go to find peace.

### Cuisine

    Dhi cuisine is highly influenced by neighboring Diao and Ju and the difficult Dhi climate. Lower down, where they can grow wheat, Dhi eat unleavened flat bread called roti or chapati. They can grow oranges, lemons, limes, pears, mangoes, apples, peaches, plums, and apricots near the jungle. At higher altitudes in the valleys, they grow spinach and other leafy greens, radish, potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, cabbage, and pumpkin. Potatoes are a mainstay of the Dhi diet, as are yak and goat cheese or yogurt and, for Dhi who eat meat, yak and goat meat. Dhi may also eat chicken, fish, pork, and wild boar. Staples include dal, a type of lentil soup boiled over rice or barley, and vegetable curries. Sides include fermented and spicy vegetables, dumplings stuffed with vegetables or meat, and potato pancakes.

    In the foothills, they grow maize, buckwheat, barley, and millet, which become porridge. They also eat thinly sliced meat in curries or prepared with a spice mix that includes red chili powder from Makkada and other local herbs. Eggs become potato, meat, and cheese omelets. Most vegetables are imported, and especially valued ones include radish and beetroot. The Ma take their position as a way station between the low and highlands seriously and dedicate people and resources to inns where travelers can grab warm food on their way up or down the mountain. Doing so has streamlined transportation through Dhi and resulted in fused cuisines.

Higher in the mountains, Dhi prefer warmer foods like soups, curries, and butter teas, which they may drink with flour to make them more filling. They rely on yak, goats, and sheep for meat, milk, cheese, and yogurt. They import rice, which is easier to transport than other sorts of grain, and sturdier vegetables.

### Clothing

Most Dhi still spin clothes in their homes rather than buy them from somewhere else. Traditional clothing is a shirt that falls to the knees over pants, with a cap and slippers, wraparound dresses from neck to ankle, and saris. At higher altitudes, they add layers, furs, and thicker shoes. Felt from Kuan is being newly incorporated into clothing choices, especially boots. It is not uncommon for Dhi to wear warming runes, powered by hedge magic.