Ñanama

Ñanama (pronounced /ˈɲɑːnəmə/ or /ˈnjɑːnəmə/) is a sky nation of eastern Arianiga, located on the small wolk of Jelarva. (Sometimes the city's name is written with an acute accent over the first a, "Ñánama", but this is not common in English.) A nominal monarchy where most real political power is wielded by wealthy merchant families, Ñanama is perhaps known for its breeding of a number of exotic kinds of bird, which constitute its most lucrative export. Aside from this, for a sky nation, Ñanama is relatively undeveloped, with little in the way of really advanced applications of magic or technology, and with a relatively sparse population.

Geography

Ñanama is an oblong nation about a hundred and sixty kilometers along its longest axis, and seventy kilometers wide. A mountainous land, Ñanama is most densely populated in the fertile interior valleys between the mountain ranges that meander across it, adding to its isolation from other nations. Three of the valleys are particularly large and notable: the Echona is the most fertile and populous of the large valleys, and home to a (slim) majority of the nation's population; the Seavale contains the Crystal Sea, by far Ñanama's largest body of water; and the Bestelek is somewhat wilder and less densely populated than the Echona but still the site of some important cities.

In addition to these large valleys, a great number of smaller valleys also exist throughout Ñanama, and some of its hardier people live on the mountains as well. A fair proportion of its population also lives in some of the non-mountainous outskirts of the nation.

Inhabitants

Humans compose the majority race in Ñanama, as they do in almost every nation of Arianiga. Most of the humans of Arianiga have straight, dark hair, roundish heads, and somewhat sallow skin, although enough immigrants have come from elsewhere to give Ñanama's population some diversity. Uniquely, some of Ñanama's inhabitants have developed very unusual hair and eye colors, the former including bright green, blue, or violet and the latter yellow, silver, and red. This may be due to some lingering rhegus on the land that forms Jelarva, tied in with its otherplanar origin; in any case, although some of these unusually hued individuals do develop innate powers, most are normal people except for their coloring.

Nonhuman ellogous beings are rare in Ñanama; tzanteii exist, but are not accepted into human society, and generally must live in the wild or disguise their nature. The most common nonhuman race of Ñanama is the haur, which appears almost human save for its diminutive size. Haurs may be a product of the same rhegus responsible for some individuals' unusual hair color, though some whisper instead that they're an accidental byproduct of some past magical experiment. More alien than the haur is the grugon, a species of strange red barrel-shaped things with eight limbs and no head that seem to have originated underground from somewhere beneath the Bestelek, apparently brought to Arianiga from the foreign plane that the wolk's land came from.

Culture

Ñanaman culture has a reputation for being fairly laid-back, to an extent often frustrating to foreign visitors accustomed to keeping to a stricter schedule. A Ñanaman shopkeeper may decide to take some time off and close up shop several times during the day without his fellows thinking anything strange about it; an apprentice can decide to stop work to take a nap or a have a snack without annoying his master as long as he still ends up doing his share of the work. This means in practice that Ñanaman workdays generally run very late, but with many breaks. (It also means that Ñanamans are used to sometimes finding the businesses they want to patronize unexpectedly closed, but most of them consider this at worst a minor inconvenience.)

Shopping is a very popular pastime in Ñanama, and shops exist dealing in obscure specialties that somehow still manage to stay in business. Ñanamans are more likely to spend money on new gadgets, decorations, or clothing or other conspicuous consumption than they are on fine food, services, or intangible properties. Some merchants have shown a particular talent for tapping into the popular tastes, and have succeeded in founding large chains of stores with outlets all over the nation. Some of the most wealthy merchant families have obtained considerable political power, and are sometimes called merchant lords.

Economy

Much of Ñanama is taken up by farmland, and it manages to produce enough grain and other foodstuffs to export to other sky nations. In the mountains in the east part of the nation, extensive madderstone mines provide another significant export. Other noteworthy exports include textiles, building stone, and magic potions. The nation also has a reputation for exporting weird devices and minor talismans, to the extent that any such odd trinket may be assumed (correctly or not) to come from Ñanama.

Ñanama's best known export, however, is the exotic birds bred in the nation, using a combination of magic and simple animal husbandry. Ñanaman breeders have, over the last few centuries, produced specialized birds to fill most of the roles more usually played by other domestic animals. While Ñanaman birds aren't as pervasive elsewhere as in Ñanama itself, they still are a fairly common sight in other sky nations. The most common Ñanaman bird outside Ñanama itself is the xuma, a large flightless avian used primarily as a mount, and occasionally as a draft animal. Other well-known Ñanaman birds include the razor-beaked afame, employed as a guard animal; the elephantine molon, grown for food; and the costly, highly prized alulla, a variant of the xuma with the ability of flight.

Some breeders have turned the techniques used to breed these birds toward the breeding of other animals, as well, their products including the hopcat and the dragonneat. These, however, remain much less notorious, and represent a much smaller fraction of Ñanama's GDP, than do its avian creations.

Foreign relations

Aside from its trade relations, Ñanama tries to cultivate as few major ties to other nations as possible, and strives to remain carefully neutral in all conflicts. This endeavor has not always been completely successful; Ñanama failed to avoid being dragged into the Sorcerers' War, and to a lesser extent was forced to participate in the Second War of Borime as well. Still, mostly Ñanama succeeds in keeping to itself except with regard to commerce. It does have loose alliances with Saster and Arkrest, but these relations are somewhat strained, not least because of Ñanama's reluctance to come to its allies' defense in times of conflict.

Ñanama's very neutrality has sometimes served it well financially, as those on both sides of a conflict have found it a safe place to invest or to keep their riches. This practice has won Ñanama some mild enmity from certain fronts, most notably from Tarona, which saw Ñanama's facilitating of the Wonder League's financial success during the Sky War as having been tantamount to supporting the League directly.