Awok

Awok lies on the northeast coast of the East District's upper peninsula, one of the arms enclosing the Acua Gulf. The Atlantean Ocean touches it south and east, the narrow Ocaraba Channel dividing Tamoanchan from Eria forms its north and west coasts, and Aricagua and Oguanabara adjoin it to the southwest. Near-impenetrable rain forest cuts it off by land, and Makara, sea devils infesting the coasts, make sea travel dangerous. In the First Age the Makara were less troublesome and Awok had contact with the outside world, some of whose traditions linger; now its only regular contact is with the degenerate cannibal cultists of Oguanabara, regarded as dangerous foes. Few foreign visitors survive the journey, and since the land is thought to hold little of value, contact is extremely rare. An Atlantean traveler's tale of a magic-using explorer who found Atlantean-era treasures in a great megalithic circle deep in Awok is generally dismissed.

Two dark-skinned tribes live here without open hostility. The Timeri farm by slash and burn, clearing jungle with axe and fire and cropping the fertile, potash-enriched ground for a few years until the jungle chokes it and a new site must be cleared. They grow mainly manioc, plus sweet potatoes, yams, pumpkins, coca and tobacco, the last two used as ritual narcotics, and cleverly work rubber into some weapons and tools. They hunt bush pig, sloth, tapir, alligator, monkeys and birds with pit traps, poisoned spears and blowgun darts, and fish lakes and rivers with tridents and big nets.

Each community of 50 to 200 lives in one huge thatched longhouse on posts up to thirty feet tall, abandoned when the soil gives out. Communities are self-sufficient but must take mates from outside, which spreads ideas between groups. They value equality with distinct roles, women hunting and men farming, fight only in self-defense with everyone taking part, and claim all land within a day's travel of an inscribed monolith, which is also the center of their worship and the gathering place of their witches and warlocks on sacred and initiation days. Their faith, descended from pre-Atlantean shamanism, is ruled by the Old Gods, though some factions revere the older True Elementals of Fire, Water, Air and Earth.

The Choma live savage, solitary lives, hunting like the animals they worship; they flee strangers at first but may return in force to check on trespassers. Every Choma is a shaman with a personal animal god, avoiding human company most of the year but seeking a mate of the same animal-following in that animal's mating season, and staying together until the child is about a year old and can be handed to the Shaman Chiefs. The Shaman Chiefs, whose totem is the owl, symbol of the Old Gods' magic, live together in the megalithic house-temple of Oguaana, raising and teaching the young; as adults most go into the wild, though a few return to become Shaman Chiefs. Only the Choma know where Oguaana is: a great Og monolith surrounded by the Chiefs' stone houses and a ring of human rib bones sacred to Hawwa, with taboo totems about a third of a mile out marking a circle of protective magic that keeps out everyone but Choma.