The League culture and customs
The League is a realm where ritual is important. Every city and Camorra has its own idiosyncratic customs and they expect visitors to keep up. The more common customs practiced by the majority of League include:
- “The best of everything” might as well be the League motto. The nation is a crossroads for trade in all kinds of luxury goods. Being able to set a fine table is the mark of a solid citizen, regardless of social position.
- The giving of gifts is another traditional way to improve one’s social standing . The value of the gift is important, but the cleverness and appropriateness of the gift is much more vital. It is the icing on the cake for society to see you giving a grand gift to your rival, when they knows that you have ruined them – the rules of the League etiquette dictate that they will smile and bow and bite back the bile as they accept. It is the mark of a true Merchant Prince that they are as gracious in defeat as in success.
- Citizens of the League like punctuality. One who cannot keep to time is a person who cannot be trusted to keep to the rules.
- Formal duelling is an accepted way of settling disputes, although duelling to the death is illegal. Duelling scars are usually worn as a badge of honour. Duels usually take place with sword and dagger and public challenges are, by tradition, announced in the marketplace.
- Small facemasks are a common element of fashionable attire for individuals from all walks of life. This custom sprang from the popular Facio style of masked theatre, where actors and even audience members swap characters as they swap masks. Masks also allow an individual to cultivate anonymity and the air of mystery. Some groups – military units and criminals especially – may go so far as to all wear matching masks.
- The four rivers of Catazarria are central characters in the art and folklore of the Nation. All the classic literature and theatre includes them in one form or another, whether as central characters or “clowns” during the interludes. A popular game between playwrights and critics is to conceal the characters in some way and challenge the critic to locate them.
Citizens of the League consider sharing information to be a national past-time. Very often, the cities are built up rather than out – particularly in the Jewelled City of Sarvos, where space is a premium – meaning that families are, quite literally, living on top of each other. In these cramped conditions it is difficult to pretend not to know the business of ones neighbours; and most simply don’t – conversation is always about what your neighbours have done, the games that your Merchant Princes are playing amongst themselves, who owes what to whom; and which stories are being told about them. A newcomer to the City-states can learn one-hundred-and-one petty lies and three great truths by just stepping into one of the shops or spice-halls or one of the floating coffeehouses that drift gently downstream, before being punted back upstream for the next day. Fame comes quickly in the League, when everybody talks like this – from merchants to politicians to mercenaries. Most people in the League would love to be as well-known as the great inventor Maria Fortuna, who invented the printing press, or Dottore Alesseo Calvetore, who inspired his students to defend the gates of Diora university during the Riots of 387, or the famous duellist Isobella Fabia, who is captain of the City Guard in Tassato and who, it is told, has a fine network of scars across her shoulders than mirror the shifting canals of the city of Sarvos…
Most importantly to remember, however, is that talk will always; always take a back seat to action when needed – and citizens of the League have never been shy to draw a blade when the time finally comes.