The Causeway

The Causeway is an elevated stone road that runs for a thousand miles throughout Arneria. Its structure is a wall, a waterway, a haven from wildlife, and a bridge to the west. Entire cities exist on this monumental feat of Bat’yan and Beylik engineering.

The Causeway is the symbol of Arneria and the first thing about it that most people think of. Its western end joins Arneria with Allemance, as a 6-mile bridge across the Strait of Glass. It snakes through the Bat’yan rainforest, across the thundering Attamek river, and all the way through the Beylik desert in the east.

Monument to Collective Might
After the Attamek Wars ended in 212, beys who weren’t executed during the Blackwild Revolution combined their power to form a single Beylik. Meanwhile, Bat’yan datus were eager for an enduring symbol of peace. Both sides of the newly anointed Arneria sought a way to unite their people with collective effort.

The Causeway began construction around the end of the 200s. After decades of research into physics, magic, and logistics, the effort commenced to erect this road of lasting friendship. Every man, woman and child on the continent labored for over 60 years to make it real. By 366, the ones who drafted the original blueprints were all gone. Babies born at the start of its construction were old men and women. But a lifetime of collective tenacity had forged a bond between the Bat’yan and Beylik, and the Causeway would stand for over a thousand years.

Safe Above the Canopy
The road’s elevation varies in each region based on its purpose. Through most of the Bat’yan, The Causeway is one hundred feet high, peeking over the rainforest canopy. The top is accessible via staircases and ramps every few miles that climb up the side of the wall. Some larger towns even build cable elevators, which haul food from farmland below up to the towns on the side of the road.

The Bat’yan’s Causeway is covered in moss and foliage that covers the side of the ancient stone structure. Wide arches stretch across the horizon to allow rainforest herds to move underneath. The road bridges rivers and keeps the residents of Causeway towns safe from the predators lurking in the depths of the rainforest.

Water Highway
After crossing the waters of the Attamek, the Causeway drives through the southern desert of the Beylik. Here, it serves a crucial role in delivering water to towns in the south and central regions of the homeland. Without the Causeway, much more of the Beylik would be uninhabitable.

Within the stone columns of the structure, water is pumped from aquifers deep beneath the sands. It’s forced upward into an aqueduct made of white stone, constructed on a shady level underneath the main road. This engineered river runs all through the Beylik, replenished whenever the Causeway passes through a major underground source of water.

Cities of the Road
Settlements of every size are alongside wider stretches on the road. Every few miles, a cluster of houses forms a village around one of the Causeway’s stairways to the ground. Some of them never touch the ground at all, sustaining themselves with traded goods and complex hanging gardens. The Causeway is never a lonely walk.

A few locations on the Causeway’s structure support sprawling cities. The road splits into a ring that surrounds farmland, and the roadside is packed with structures. They take up every inch of allowed space, and angled wooden supports allow them to dangle past the edge of the stone wall. Buildings also scatter out under the structure and everywhere in between.

Causeway Culture
The thousand miles of road are how the Bat’yan and Beylik mix. The cultures blend on the road; some desert towns resemble barangays and some aghas oversee villages under rainforest canopy. The border of the Attamek isn’t as strict as it once was, and the two peoples are integrating more quickly than ever since the Pilgrimage.

The Causeway makes transit through Arneria possible for commoners who couldn’t make the journey otherwise. This freedom and mobility has made the towns and cities around the Causeway a third distinct culture from the rest of the Bat’yan and Beylik.

Arnerians on the Causeway have more interactions with Allemagnians and other foreigners. This worldly influence is distinguishes them from anyone from a Küzmek caravanserai or a barangay deep in the forest.

Pirhouanism in Arneria
A temple of thick stone built to last an eternity is the bethel of the Causeway and the lands below. Within these hallowed places, made of the same materials as their beloved sky-road, the people of Arneria pray diligently for guidance from their goddess. Rather than a place for chatter and congregation, the Arnerian bethel is a solemn hall of contemplation and rest after days of hard work.

Arnerian Pirhouanism emphasizes discipline and achievement over ease and pleasure. The Arnerian work ethic is both the cause and effect of these religious tenets. Here, Pirhoua is the goddess of discipline, order, and the pursuit of excellence.

Compared to other homelands, the divine charges of Pirhoua’s portfolio are more informed by power and state. The church of the Beast Mother is a useful way to manage the conflicts and friction that can arise from sharing a homeland between two disparate cultures. This straightening-out effort can create its own friction, however. While few would admit it openly, Arnerians bristle at the arduous labor of their religious duties.

The First Divine Charge: Service. Even before the construction of its thousand-mile Causeway, the people of Arneria were bringing fertile mulch from the rainforest and using it to enrich the sandy soil of its desert. Pirhouanism adopted this practice as a moral principle. A merciful world is one where deadly extremes are made into something beautiful and liveable. To achieve this end, one must be willing to sacrifice important things in service to their fellow beasts and brethren.

Arnerian Pirhouans strive to give the best service possible to one another. Arnerian clerics find serenity and a fulfillment by giving their best effort. They hone their own skills to the sharpest point they can be.

The Second Divine Charge: Unity. For an Arnerian, the Pirhouan ideal of community is applied to a much broader scope. To cooperate with one’s peers is the beginning of an Arnerian’s ideals, but this mindset also asks, what is best for my homeland? The lesson that many hands make great works begins from birth. Arnerians call themselves a “united people” with fiery pride, knowing they are pleasing the Beast Mother.

The Causeway is the ultimate expression of this charge. It stands as an ever present monument to the idea that the achievements of cooperation border on supernatural. This belief has also protected the people from the bey at certain points in history. Past rulers annoyed with the check of their opposite have flirted with the idea of establishing hard lines between the two sides of Arneria, but the risk of acting against the popular Pirhouan church has kept them in line.

The Third Divine Charge: Order. The third Divine Charge for an Arnerian Pirhouan is to strive for blessed serenity in life. Arnerian clerics teach children and adults that an orderly society is one where mercy and community can flourish. If all the beasts and brethren of Arneria pull their weight, no one needs to go hungry or forgotten.

The Sun Bull
The aforementioned bristling against the religious labor and stifling order of Pirhouanism has created a unique phenomenon of faith in the east. Friction between Arnerians and their church has ignited love for Aubade, the Sun Bull. The Bat’yan and Beylik have unusual tolerance for followers of the god of passion and self-expression. To fight the spread of his teachings would be too costly, and the bill would be paid in blood. The official attitude of the bey and raja of Arneria is that Aubadism is an alternative lifestyle, allowing good citizens a chance to blow off some steam. Never mind the occasional murders.

The Aubadian Chapel
In Arneria, the chapels of Aubade’s faithful are not required to hide. They are are open about their function, if somewhat off the beaten path. It’s common to find a chapel to the Sun Bull in any town with more than a few hundred people. Some small farming hamlets are even wholly devoted to his portfolio.

The chapels themselves are usually a tightly knit community of intense faithful. They eschew hierarchies of leadership; most understand their seat in the chapel is a place to temporarily cast off the restrictions of Arnerian society. Nonetheless, its members are usually in passionate fellowship. As an Arnerian spends time in the chapel, they almost always become fanatically loyal to the other members as much as their fire-eyed god.

Aubadian Art
As the epicenter of the Sun Bull’s scattered and disorganized chapels, Arneria is also where his followers create and perform their wild art. The practice of Aubade’s portfolio means living a hard, open, and audacious life whenever possible. The Arnerian sect of Aubadism is especially focused on performance art, preferring the chaos of noise and movement over the permanence of craft.

Music
Performing compositions by the Sun Bull’s faithful drives a voice hoarse and an instrument to its breaking point. This doesn’t always mean that their music is some abstract blast of noise. Some of the absolute masters of string music have plucked their fingers bloody with intense, captivating performances lasting 24 hours or more in the public square.

Dance
Arnerian Aubadians see the art of movement as so central to their religion that the motion of the sun and moon is considered to be the Sun Bull and Moon Wolf performing a dance of ardor for the world to see. Like everything else about them, Aubadian dancing is a heart-rending expression of raw soul, often at the cost of their bodies. The discipline of every step is flawless, as a dancer pours out their routine in sweat and tears. Their dance can also be a storm of stars colliding with the world as the performer’s spirit and body unravel for the audience.

Violence
The art of battle is the same as any other in Aubadism, and Arnerians who perform it are especially keen to combine dance with death. The blades of an eastern sunblood chaser flash like a corona across a body clad in silks. They are beautiful and vicious, and drive themselves into combat with a combination of grace and a total abandonment of safety.