#girasol

About a full day's ride north-west from Nopal is the small village of Girasol. Inspired by north-eastern areas of Mexico within the Chihuahuan Desert and near the mountains of East Sierra Madre (taking the place of the Catclaw Desert and the Bulan Mountains from the game), this village was a vibrant, close-knit community before the attack 30 years pre-game, during which Rodrigo was captured and his mother killed.

Government

During the time Rodrigo lived there and before his birth, Girasol was primarily run by a council of village members, who were often chosen to sit on the council through birthright. However, there was always an overall leader, a tiebreaker, the political face of the village who dealt with trade and proposing new laws and changes, and they could come from any family within the village. Though some heads of the council would pass their position onto their children, the position was always open to be challenged by other members of the same family or other families.

Rodrigo's Mama, Elena-Carmen Fernandez, was always set to inherit her mother's spot on the council, but she wanted more, and challenged the head of the council when she was 17.

The challenge was actually a set of multiple trials, ranging from more physical skill based events like horse-riding, rifle-firing, and cattle-wrangling, to more creative events like dancing, games, and even baking traditional pastries.

The challenge is always as much a popularity contest as it is a test of the challenger's skills against the former head.

Elena was very popular with the rest of the village, and so in the end, she won easily, and served as the council head for about 12 years until she was killed.

After the attack on the village, many of the council were killed, and so a new council was built from scratch. This time around, the role of council head does not exist.

Culture

Girasol's culture is focused around music, flowers, and their trading of desert plants like agave and yucca. Their trade used to have a very far reach, their exports even traveling to Vesuvia and some southern parts of Prakra.

After Rodrigo was born, Elena, fearing people would come for him and his magic, limited the reach of the village, choosing to trade only with other close villages like Nopal, and very rarely traveled outside of the village to trade along the coast.

Carina-Sofia Aguilar, Rodrigo's Mami, was a very popular baile folklorico dancer, and as Rodrigo grew up, she taught him how to dance, the two of them dancing into the night for years up to the attack.

Rodrigo himself was very popular in the village as Elena's son, and he enjoyed visiting with all of the village elders from a young age, being spoiled by their affections. It is likely that once he came of age, he would have become the council head with little to no opposition at all.

Magic

In Girasol, strong magical users are unusual, but not rare, and not discouraged from exploring their abilities. Most people have access to some kind of magical abilities, mostly just due to their connection with the land around them and the spirits that reside there.

Paulina Herrera, an older woman who survived the attack and eventually finds Rodrigo as a pirate and becomes his ship's cook, has magic that allows her to invoke certain feelings/memories from people who eat her food.

Elena's magic allows her to create barriers/forcefields to protect others. It was always a fairly strong magic, but she was never concerned about it until Rodrigo was born, the magic bursting out of him. In the ten years after his birth, she worked tirelessly to create wards to strengthen the protection around Girasol, and to hide her son's magical aura from potential threats.

Threats like the Scholars at the Sea Palace in the west, who had wiped out another village in the same desert a few generations before, all records of the village erased, as if it had never existed. Elena grew up hearing stories about the Scholars, that village, and the dangers of magic being taken by those who wished to cause harm to others.

Leading up to the attack, it was a concern among some of the elders in the village that people were becoming too reliant on magic, like Elena's magic barrier around the village. In the end, they were right.