#athosia.

Athosians don’t have gender-based surname taking in marriage. A woman does not automatically take her husband’s name when they marry, nor is the reverse the case.

As previously mentioned, the normal thing for common people on Athosia is to move in with one or the other’s extended family after getting married. As such, the normal thing is to take the surname of your partner if you’re joining their clan. The children will get the surname of the extended family they live with. 

The godborn Valdarians aren’t permitted to marry, and it’s not at all common for the baseborn Valdarians to do so, either (solidarity with one’s siblings is Important). But when baseborn Valdarians marry, or when Valdarians of either sort have children with someone, the surnames are passed down morganatically- which is to say, any child of a Valdarian is a Valdarian, whether the parent is an arl or priest or neither, whether the child is baseborn or godborn, legitimate or illegitimate, whether they ever even see their Valdarian parent. 

It’s the same with the children of priests with a commoner, or any other noble with a commoner. It just makes sense for the surname to come from whoever has more power in the relationship.

This was an enormous headache back when the Valdarians were still allowed to have romantic relationships with the priesthood. It’d involve a full-blown court case that looked at things like whether the Valdarian in question was godborn and thus considered in line for the succession, whether the priest was godborn or baseborn or came from a noble family prior to ascension.

Athosian girls are not too bright And they grow as tall as a tree But if you think you can win that fight, You can frazz them all for free

Vevathian snugs can be traded for drugs Naldinese, for weapons Shevarn’s capped off all their mugs, So to us, Athosia beckons

Athosian girls will black your eye And knock out half your teeth Then you take them from behind And again from underneath

Mekhanoids prefer their toys Karikisians, their candy Athosian girls will suck you off And then give you a handy

Some things on Athosia are like Earth. Others...not so much. Some of them are obvious. Others might surprise you.

Food:

Athosia does not have most of the traditional breakfast foods. Sausage, bacon, eggs- nope, no pigs or chickens. Oatmeal- no oats. They don't have corn, either, which wipes out most cereals.

"Most," however, does not mean "any." They do have potatoes and they do shred and fry them into something very like hashbrowns. They tend to have them with toast and fish.

Athosians do keep livestock for food, but they take such a fiendishly long time to raise to slaughter and are raised in such small numbers that they don't eat them very often. Hunting is also impractical and dangerous. Most Athosians live an 80%+ vegetarian lifestyle.

Athosia's not known for its desserts, but it'd be unfair to say it doesn't have any. They make fruit-flavored cheeses that pair with sweetened breads that are actually pretty popular with most lactose-tolerant offworlders.

Athosians also have a culture of not wasting food. Nothing is thrown away if possible. If people don't eat it, pets are offered a chance, and what pets won't take is offered to livestock. If any food makes it that far down the chain, it's fed into a matter reclamator to be reconstituted into new food at a later date.

Athosians do have reclamator and replicator technology, but they're saved for emergencies and shortages. It's not because organic food tastes better- although many of them think it does- but because surviving without the technology is an important skill to have.

Lifestyle:

Athosians do keep pets- although most of them double as working animals. Lupites (very, very doglike animals, albeit bigger) are popular. Any other pets will be small omnivores that don't eat much- like snow possums and hillcats. Snow possums are tiny white marsupials with very long tails. They double as fur-givers; they produce very thick, very soft coats that they're constantly shedding, and enterprising Athosians collect the leavings to line coats and gloves. They're popular in cities. Hillcats are weasels that can be used in hunting to drive subterranean animals out of burrows or dens. They're very popular among rural dwellers.

Not all Athosians live in the population centers like cities. There are plenty that, because of their jobs, gods, or personalities, live on homesteads in the middle of nowhere, hours or even days away from the nearest person. Some jobs that may require this sort of lifestyle include communication array mainainers and operators, emergency service providers (for when people become lost in the woods or to provide for the twenty-five nearest hermits), military (bases are nowhere near cities), postal services, traveling mercenaries for hire, or priests on multi-year vision quests. There are about two thousand people at any given time on Athosia living in such a way that if civilization collapsed, they wouldn't notice until the tax collector failed to show up.

Athosians don't have TV. At least, not in the form of locally made and broadcasted holos. They do have live theater, and it does get recorded and sold. Their local holonet is all but exclusively for news, and they have a streaming service for foreign holos that some people subscribe to. It's kind of expensive, though, for regular people. But a free membership is a perk of joining the military or civil service. (Very recent. This was Sora's idea and Nymoros liked it.)

Digital piracy is a very normal thing to do on Athosia and not actually considered a crime.

Law Enforcement:

Most crime is handled at the local level. Theft, assault, rape- generally a locality's reeve (sort of like a combination sheriff and magistrate) will handle the trial. It only gets pushed to a higher authority if:

A) It's a capital crime. Only an arl or her direct representatives (often her adult children) have the authority to pass a death sentence.

B) The perpetrator is military. Only an arl or his direct representatives (often his fanrik) have the authority to try and sentence soldiers.

There are only two prisons for Athosians: one for military, one for civilians. Civilian inmates are sent to the Visnyet, located on a frozen island in the North Sea. While it is very foreboding, the conditions are not especially harsh. Most inmates receive a lot of education, professional training, and emotional and occupational therapy.

Military inmates are sent to the Zelbinian, a space station fixed in place above Athosia's South Pole. Because you had to have a certain amount of education to join the military and received quite a bit of training and specialized care as part of being in it, these things are not offered on the Zelbinian. Its conditions are kept from being violent or abusive, but not improved in any other way. It involves non-intensive labor (mainly manufacturing of ship parts and munitions) and endless tedium.

Most, but not all, of the Valdarians speak Standard with the Shevarnian accent. It's traditional for Athosians to learn languages by capturing speakers of the language they wish to learn and forcing them to be teachers, and they usually ape the accent of their individual teachers when they speak one.

Occasionally, this has been soldiers or Armada civilian personnel; Nymoros was taught by a luckless Shevarnian ensign, while Eilan was taught by a Vevathian programmer that the rest of the visitors did not much seem to like. Hofgar was taught by an Argolian cartographer who they’re still unsure if she was legally allowed to be where she was when they caught her.

Like their energy blades, their teachers are theirs alone, procured by their mother specifically for the sake of that child. Non-royal Athosians operate by a slightly different tradition that requires them to catch their teachers themselves, so that they usually learn secondary and tertiary languages when they’re much older.

The Valdarians do not speak Standard when they aren’t hosting visitors that do.