CITY DWELLER MARTIANS
The most common and best-known natives of Mars are the City Dwellers. They are a tall folk (adults rarely stand under two meters tall) of generally humanoid appearance. They have deep chests suitable to breathing the thin air of the Red Planet, four digits on their hands and feet, large eyes and noticeably elongated lower canines. This last feature, though often caricatured in drawings of them is a far cry from the tusks depicted on imaginative renderings of Wastelanders. The males have hardened, horny growths on their elbows and knees and at the corners of their jaws. They also have a crest of similar growths running fore-and-aft across their skull. These features are much reduced, and sometimes completely absent, in the females.
Explorers have encountered a variety of races sporting a rainbow of skin colors such as blue, red, yellow, and black, the latter a true bluish black rather than the shades of brown of Earth's "blacks." The various races show little inclination toward mixing, save among the far-traveled float ship crews and the notorious bandit and sky-pirate bands.
Whatever their race, City Dwellers refer to themselves as the Grandchildren of Belsiash and often incorporate the Eye of Belsiash into their "national" symbols. They also frequently mark items with it to draw the loving glance of Belsiash, and thus good fortune.
Belsiash is a deity of duality, partaking of both light and dark. Belsiash's presence in the heavens is seen to be manifest in the sun and the major moon. The lesser moon is believed to be a fugitive fragment of Belsiash, his evil nature voluntarily ripped from himself but haunting him still. The Children of Belsiash are a dozen or so deities worshiped to greater or lesser degrees by various cults.
Of the Highlanders, with their Shurref-led clans, and the plorse-herding Nomads of the Barren Lands, we will speak in time. For now, we will confine ourselves to considering the society, culture and customs of the "true" City Dwellers.
City Dwellers, male or female, usually wear a short kilt-like garment called a brek, that buttons over the right hip, or a short sleeved tunic called a zhem. The more traditional or status conscious wear a ul-brek, a plaque of hide or stiffened cloth on which is painted symbols related to the lineage of their clan. Richer Martians have these same symbols cast or fabricated in metal and mounted on the ul-brek.
Devout City Dwellers often wrap their midriffs in a fringed scarf called a jhureff under which they secrete a written prayer or small devotional object related to their cult. Devotees of a cult often wear a jhureff in a color or pattern sacred to their cult, but this is not a universal practice. There is a strong loyalty to the clan found among City Dwellers. While this is a powerful factor in their political and social lives, it is not the foundation of their society as it is believed to be among the Highlanders, the mostly nomadic folk of the Martian uplands and wild places. Trade guilds, merchant associations, neighborhood sodalities, temple fraternities and sororities, agricultural granges, noble affinities, and plain and simple political parties abound, making for a diverse, lively, and often confusing-to-the-outsider life in a City Dweller community.
The focus of City Dweller life is, of course, the city. With resounding and exotic names like Parroom, Bweshagore, Eelium, Sarakesh, Zhetahbhelewhe, and Kheldeeve, the city-states scattered across the face of the Red Planet are the centers of political power and artistic and agricultural endeavor. Canals and float ship routes form a web that links, but does not bind, them or the ambitions of their ruling Kheems. To the well-traveled Earthman, these often teeming population centers are most reminiscent of the principalities of India in their power, sway, and as general breeding grounds for intrigue. For unlike India under the benevolent rule of Her Britannic Majesty, on Mars there is no over-arching authority to keep the city-states from squabbling among themselves or from clashing with the Earthmen building a brave new world on the Red Planet.
Mars: City Dwellers
