The amalgamation of cultures and a prevailing emphasis on freedom has made it so that men and women alike are viewed almost equally. However, superstition prevails here and there are many superstitions that roll over from other cultures. As each individual island and village is like its own unique culture, the roles expected between men and women vary wildly.

There are no specific marriage rituals that Barachans practice, rather they tend to follow those that came with them when immigrating or whatever the practices of the village they’ve joined up in are. Frequently, people will look to their religions to dictate sex roles and marriage customs.

While most people on the Barachan Isles don’t keep slaves, they recognize that the Slave Trade is a lucrative business. Views on slavery are as varied as the people that live in the Isles, but even if one doesn’t like the idea of it, they’re hard pressed to deny the coin that can be made in the business. Many a slaver vessel moves through Tortage, but rarely are slaves taken from the Isles, as the free spirited nature of the people who make their homes here makes for bad slaves.

Barachans are not a wealthy bunch nor are most terribly interested in finer vestments. For the most part, people of the Baracha Isles dress practically, preferring light and looser clothing that covers most of their visible skin to protect them from sun damage.

Pirates themselves tend to wear a ragged motley of whatever they happen to have; whether that be from their former lives, the garments of common sailors or pieces they’ve stolen from whatever ship they’ve plundered. Head-scarves are common, as are loose shirts and pants as well as sandals. When in warmer climates, they tend to wear sleeveless vests - and baldrics or sashes help support the weight of weapons. Pirates and sailors alike often have tattoos, scarification and their teeth may be replaced with golden ones. Pirates often flaunt their wealth whenever possible, so jewelry is common. As medicine is typically hard to come by on the sea, it’s common to find pirates missing limbs or eyes.

The people of the Isles are a superstitious lot. There are many superstitions related to the sea, the forests of the islands, down to the way people greet one another that outsiders may see as silly or superfluous but the average Barachan believes wholeheartedly.

Barachans enjoy their freedom and don’t take kindly to those attempting to enforce laws that aren’t agreed with. Many villages have their own laws that those that live there see fit to follow. Many that call the place home have fled their original homelands for the freedom of the seas and many have done so to join the Red Brotherhood of pirates that work out of Tortage.

That said, even pirates have a code of honor that they abide by, and while this code may be different for each ship there’s several laws in which all pirates agree on, no matter what group or ship they may be affiliated with:

• Mutiny is never permissible and is punishable by death. Unless it succeeds, in which case most tend to turn a blind eye to it and swear to the new captain.

• Murdering a crewmate is not allowed while on ship and is punishable by death, unless said killing was committed as a means of entering the crew, or as a fair duel. Captains, on the other hand, can kill as they see fit.

• All disputes, regarding money, rations, deck duties, gambling, and other disagreements are to be arbitrated by the captain, whose decision is final.

• To disobey the captain of the vessel is punishable by flogging - the precise number of lashes is left to the captain to determine.

• A crew-member can challenge the captain to a duel for the captaincy. Such duels are inevitably to the death, and quarter is not given: it would be folly to let the loser live.

The code also covers shares in treasure obtained. Each full member receives a single share, all newcomers receive half a share, the captain receives two shares and the captain’s mates receive a share and a half. Recompense is owned to the crew should captains be unable to meet their obligations.

A variety of old faiths, generally gods obscure or forbidden in other lands dominate the religious aspects of the Baracha Isles, but any deity can be found being worshipped here. Each year at midsummer, there is a great roving festival where people from the Isles spend a week or more sailing from village to village in brightly decorated boats. Each village, in turn, hosts feasts, games and dancing.

Recently missionaries of Mitra have traveled throughout the isles seeking to convert. They’re tolerated out of superstition or for their value as sources of amusement. The missionaries do have better luck with the fishing folk than they do the pirates at the very least.

The Baracha Isles have no unifying government. No ruler holds sway over the lands, but many of the smaller fishing villages have set up their own forms of government that range from mayoral to tribal.

Even in the legendary Tortage there is no one person that rules the city. There’s no council to which one appeals, no authority to which one can look to for complaints or assistance. You enter the city at your own risk, trusting only that your reputation or skill with a blade can afford you any protection. Suffice it to say, the less skilled are eaten alive by the thieves, killers and other desperate residents of Tortage. Parents on the coasts of Argos and Shem warn their children that they will be sent to Tortage should they misbehave and even hardy naval officers find themselves nervous when mentioning the city by name.

The Baracha Isles do not have a standing military or navy as they don’t have a government or any sort of organization to fund any of this. That being said they would have no interest in mercenaries. Rather, the Baracha Isles take care of their own problems. Most pirates are perfectly capable of handling themselves in a fight and even the smaller fishing villages will take matters into their own hands should problems arise.

The vast majority of people from the Baracha Isles are fisher folk or pirates, but they are not the only professions. Curiously there are very little artisans on the Isles, as most crafted items are “imported” rather than created on the isles themselves.

Common Professions

• Pirate

• Fisher folk

• Sailor

• Tavernkeep

• Barmaid/waiter/waitress

• Prostitute

• Merchant

• Thief

• Fence

Tortage

The unofficial capital city of the Baracha Isles. Anything and anyone can be bought or sold in the true city of Tortage. There is a smaller city located on the southern end of the isle with the same name that’s easier to find, but it is a decoy. The true city of Tortage is far larger and secreted within a bay on the northern end of the island, where the wind blows harshest and the waves break ships piloted by anyone other than a master sailor. Tortage is built on the foundations of a nameless, pre-Cataclysmic city - the city is like coral around the ruins of the old, accumulating layers and tiers with haphazard shanties built atop one another.

Hundreds of fences work in the town and everyone is a temporary citizen. Inns, bars and brothels are the most predominant businesses and many of the normal staples of civilization can not be found here. All weapons are acquired, never forged and there are not artisans that live here. Everything for sale is “imported”, somehow giving Zamora the Accursed a claim to legitimacy when compared to Tortage.

There is no government, and therefore not municipal services. Waste is thrown from houses into a deep, fetid ravine which is also - coincidentally - where bodies of the unfortunate are dumped. There is no law aside from the law of guile and blade. Disease is not uncommon, as there is no proper sanitation and eventually one gets used to the smell of decay that wafts from the ravine.

All manner of people find themselves here from those in the far eastern lands of Khitai to the northern snow coated wastes of Hyperborea. As any manner of peoples may be found here, locations are known by ideograms rather than written word.

The harbor that hides Tortage is secret to all but those that know how to get to it. The currents speed boats past the town and the jungle hides it from view. From the sea, the bay disappears, all the untrained eye can see is a wall of weathered cliff and the green of foliage. The only crime in Tortage is revealing it’s location and the only punishment for this crime is death by drowning in the human-waste-choked ravine. This is a spectacle that many tenants of the shanty-town attend. There is no sympathy here, no mercy and no price too cheap to sully one’s dignity, sense of self, or honor and that’s exactly the way the denizens prefer it.

The Barachan Oracle

Oracles are well known throughout Hyboria and the Thurian Continent, but for the wealthy and those desperate enough there’s an option that requires no contact with a human. No need for a mediator to deliver a message from the beyond. Few know of the Barachan Oracle, even fewer have ever visited it. The cost of visiting the Oracle is high, involving the sacrifice of something the supplicant tricky loves. This price is above their own self-interests and could be anything from a family member, treasure hoard, weapon forged from the metal of a fallen star or even a warrior’s code - something must be offered up that can not be returned. Only then can the Barachan Oracle be approached and the question posed.

The chamber room of the oracle is within a round, stone shack made from the raw stone of the island, hewed from the cliffs by the island’s ancient residents and hauled to the desolate outcropping where the shack stands. There is little beyond the shack, even the hardy scrub grass of the island does not grow around it. There is only stone, sea and the shack. Within the shack, however, the stone walls are effaced by salvaged wood. This wood is from a thousand broken and ruined ships tossed against the island’s stark cliffs, ships never finished but partly made when a merchant’s finances ran out, ships burned by crews pushed too far by tyrannical captains and ships destroyed by captains whose crews proved impossible to control. The remnants of these ships have been attached to every wall and every surface. With the noise of the wind outside and the sound of the wood breathing softly, it takes only moments before one may begin to believe they are in the hold of an impossible vessel.

The oracle itself waits in the center of the room - five, long, beak-like protrusions. They are the prows of five ships which destroyed each other in a single, violent sea battle. Each ship collided with the others simultaneously. In doing do the five rostra became a tangled mass of wood, iron and… something else. Those who have visited claim the rostra have attained some form of life. The structure moves, the ornamented tips of the individual beak-like protrusions gaining the power of speech in the form of grinding voices that utter unerring prophecies - visions articulated in the groaning, creaking voice of wood. All who leave the chamber do so utterly convinced they have heard the future.

• The Baracha Isles are host to any number of peoples of any sort of original culture. They are a melting pot who share a love of the sea.

• Whether fisher folk or pirate, Barachans are a superstitious lot preferring to err on the side of caution when it comes to their dealings with anything outside the realm of their control.

• Stories of sea beasts are common, down to stories of fish men rising from the depths to steal people away. (See #deep-ones)

• The Baracha Isles do not appeal to those who prefer law and order, there are no heroes here

• Barachans for the most part get along with anyone, although the pirates understandably don't care for Zingaran Freebooters or the Argossean navy.

Naming Conventions: Depending on where you want your character to be from will change where one can pull names from. If their heritage is Argossean you'll want Roman, Greek and Hellinistic. If they are of Zingaran heritage, you want a Spanish name. If they're Aquilonian then a name more Latin.

Written by Birby