Compiled by Scholar Valerius Thorne, with theological commentary from Shaman-Chronicler Silt-in-River
Written in the highland settlement of Káranerissak, Year 291 Post-Breaking
I write this document in a state that I can only describe as spiritual crisis, though I am uncertain whether what I am experiencing is the destruction of my previous understanding or its completion. I have spent the past three months among the people who call themselves the Nunatsiavummiut—which translates approximately as “the people who walk beside the peaks” or perhaps more literally “those-who-make-their-path-along-the-high-places-where-the-mountains-touch-the-sky”—and I find that I can no longer write with the detached analytical voice that served me adequately in my previous work.
Something has broken in me. Or perhaps something has finally been repaired.
I came to the mountain territories from Greywater, fleeing in truth though I told myself I was merely continuing my research. The Confederation has not yet formally moved against me for what I wrote about them, about us, about what we are and what we have done, but the social consequences have been immediate and severe. Former colleagues refuse to acknowledge me. The university where I once held a position has quietly removed my name from faculty lists. Church officials who once welcomed me now turn away when I approach. My family has written precisely once, a brief note from my mother informing me that my father believes I am dead and that it would be kinder for all concerned if I did not correct this belief.
Kael remained in Threshold, having his own difficulties with various parties who found my Confederation document inconvenient to their interests. We agreed it would be safer for both of us if I traveled alone for a time, if I continued my work in regions where Confederation influence is minimal and where my increasingly dangerous reputation as a critic of the established order might matter less.
I entered the mountains with my notes and my instruments and my careful methodology, prepared to document another culture with the same academic rigor I had applied to the Northern Lanxes and the Najari and my own people. I would observe, I would record, I would analyze. I would maintain the scholarly distance that transforms lived experience into data, that makes people into subjects for study.
The Nunatsiavummiut would not permit this distance. They welcomed me not as a scholar studying them but as a guest sharing their lives. They fed me, housed me, included me in their ceremonies and their daily work. They asked about my travels, about the peoples I had met, about what I had learned and what troubled me. And when I tried to maintain my analytical detachment, when I attempted to observe without participating, they gently, persistently, relentlessly pulled me into participation until I had no choice but to experience their way of being rather than merely cataloging it.
What I experienced destroyed something in me that needed destroying. I cannot write about the Nunatsiavummiut the way I wrote about others, cataloging their features and customs and beliefs as though I were examining preserved specimens. They are not specimens. They are people who have achieved something that I was taught was impossible, who have built a society that functions according to principles I was raised to believe could never work, who demonstrate through their daily existence that nearly everything I was taught about how humans should live was wrong.
This document will be different from my previous work. It will be more personal, more emotional, less rigorously structured. I apologize for these failings. Or perhaps I do not apologize, because perhaps these are not failings at all but rather are the only honest way to write about a people who have shown me what I am and what I might have been if I had been born into a culture that understood what humans actually need rather than what we have been taught to want.
Silt-in-River has traveled to the mountains to provide his perspective, and I am grateful for his presence. He has watched my transformation over these months with what I interpret as satisfaction mixed with concern, though he expresses himself as always through indirection and poetry that I am only beginning to understand. His annotations appear throughout this text, offering the shamanic wisdom that I now recognize as something I desperately needed but was never offered in all my years of Confederation education.
I am not the scholar I was when I began this project. I do not know what I am becoming. I know only that the Nunatsiavummiut have given me something precious: they have shown me what we could be, if we were brave enough to choose differently than we have chosen.
What follows is not objective ethnography. It is the testimony of someone who went into the mountains believing one thing and who came down believing something entirely different. Whether this testimony has value for others, I cannot say. I know only that I must write it, must document what I have seen and what it has done to me, because remaining silent would be a betrayal of the kindness and wisdom that these people have offered so freely.
— V.T.
The Nunatsiavummiut are Lanxes, sharing the basic morphology I documented in my study of the Northern Lanxes but adapted to mountain environments in ways that are immediately visible to anyone familiar with both populations. Where the Northern Lanxes are tall and lean, built for covering distance across relatively flat terrain, the mountain people are shorter and more compact, built for stability and power in vertical spaces where footing is uncertain and winds are constant.
An adult Nunatsiavummiut stands typically between five and six feet in height, making them several inches shorter on average than their northern cousins. The difference is not merely in absolute height but in proportions. The legs are shorter relative to torso length, and they are powerfully muscled, particularly through the thighs and calves. The talons are more pronounced, longer and more strongly curved, clearly adapted for gripping stone and ice. I watched individuals traverse cliff faces that I would have considered unclimbable, their talons finding purchase in cracks and irregularities that my human eyes could barely perceive, their compact bodies maintaining balance in positions that should have been unstable.
The wings—and I will call them wings, not “arm plumage” or any other euphemism—are somewhat more developed than in Northern Lanxes, though still non-functional for powered flight. The Nunatsiavummiut use their wings actively for balance and for temperature regulation, extending them when moving across difficult terrain or huddling them close when seeking warmth. I observed one hunter navigating a narrow ledge with wings fully extended, using them like a tightrope walker uses a balance pole, making minute adjustments to wing position that allowed them to maintain equilibrium despite wind gusts that would have knocked me from my feet.
The plumage is adapted to cold in obvious ways. The feathers are dense, with thick downy underlayers that provide exceptional insulation. The coloration tends toward cooler tones than Northern Lanxes display: whites, pale blues, silvery grays, occasionally deeper blues or purples. The effect in aggregate, when you see a community gathering, is like looking at a winter landscape made animate, at snow and ice and stone given life and motion.
The fluffiness that I mentioned in my earlier notes is not mere aesthetic description. The Nunatsiavummiut are genuinely fluffier, their feathers less sleek and more textured, creating an appearance that is simultaneously more substantial and somehow softer than the streamlined profiles of Northern Lanxes. The overall impression is of beings built to withstand rather than to move quickly, to grip rather than to cover distance, to persist rather than to pursue.
The beaks are slightly shorter and more robust than Northern Lanx beaks, with what appears to be greater crushing power. I watched a Nunatsiavummiut crack stones to extract certain minerals, applying pressure that should have damaged their beak but which produced only the desired result of the stone fragmenting while the beak remained undamaged. This adaptation makes sense for people who process much of their food through mechanical preparation, who crack bones to access marrow, who must sometimes create tools from stone in field conditions.
The sexual dimorphism is present but less pronounced than in Northern Lanxes, with males and females showing similar size ranges and similar plumage quality. I was told by my host, a woman named Sauniq-who-knows-the-morning-ice, that this reduced dimorphism reflects cultural values that do not privilege male display over female capability, that see both sexes as equally essential to community survival and therefore as equally deserving of the resources that produce healthy plumage and strong bodies. She said this matter-of-factly, not as though it were a political statement but simply as obvious truth, and I felt something twist painfully in my chest as I recognized how different this was from the Confederation’s explicit privileging of male display and the resulting resource allocation that produces the very physical differences we then cite as evidence of natural male superiority.
The Changed—those who have undergone transformation—are somewhat more common among the Nunatsiavummiut than among Northern Lanxes or Confederation humans, appearing at perhaps twice the rate I documented elsewhere. This likely reflects the cultural factors that Silt-in-River has explained to me: a people who practice deep contemplation, who engage regularly with shamanic traditions, who live in close relationship with the natural world and with the essential nature of things, will naturally produce more individuals who contemplate deeply enough to merge with Ideals. The Changed I met here carried their transformations with neither pride nor shame, simply accepting them as aspects of who they had become through their work and their devotion.
What struck me most forcefully about Nunatsiavummiut physicality, however, was not any particular adaptation but rather the complete absence of the performance that dominates Confederation life. They do not arrange themselves to display their plumage. They do not adjust their positions to catch light favorably. They do not preen constantly or check their appearance or compete visually with one another. They simply exist in their bodies, using them as tools for necessary work, as vessels for their consciousness, as physical forms that are adequate without needing to be spectacular.
I found this simultaneously liberating and deeply disorienting. I kept catching myself adjusting my wings, angling my body, maintaining the display postures that had been trained into me since childhood. And gradually, over days and weeks, I began to stop. I began to simply stand, simply move, simply exist without the constant performance. My body began to remember that it could be a body rather than a display piece, and the relief was so profound that I sometimes found myself near tears for reasons I could not quite articulate.
[Silt-in-River’s note]: The scholar describes the physical forms accurately, though as always he focuses on what can be measured rather than what can be felt. The Nunatsiavummiut carry themselves differently not merely because their culture does not require display but because they understand something the Confederation has forgotten: that the body is the house you live in, not the advertisement you present to others. They treat their bodies with the same practical respect they treat their homes, maintaining them adequately but not obsessing over making them impressive. This is wisdom that the human scholar is only beginning to grasp, and I watch him unlearn decades of conditioning with something approaching joy and something approaching grief, for it is painful to recognize how much of one’s life has been spent performing rather than simply being.
To watch the Nunatsiavummiut move through their mountain environment is to observe a kind of grace that has nothing to do with aesthetic beauty and everything to do with perfect adaptation of form to function. They navigate terrain that I would characterize as actively hostile with casual confidence that comes from lifelong familiarity and from bodies that evolved or adapted specifically for these conditions.
The basic gait on level ground is similar to Northern Lanxes but more deliberate, more planted. Each step is tested before weight is fully committed, talons flexing to ensure solid purchase. The pace is slower than Northern Lanxes prefer, but the slowness is strategic rather than laborious. Speed on uncertain terrain is dangerous; careful, deliberate movement keeps you alive. I learned this lesson quickly after several near-falls in my first days here, and I learned to watch how the Nunatsiavummiut moved and to imitate that patience even when my instinct was to hurry.
On slopes and cliffs, the movement transforms entirely. The Nunatsiavummiut drop to all fours, using their wings as additional contact points, creating a quadrupedal or even semi-hexapedal stance depending on how they deploy their primary phalanges. The wings extend and press against rock faces, the wing-tips having sufficient strength and structure to serve as bracing points. The powerful legs drive upward motion while the talons grip and the wings stabilize. The result is climbing that appears effortless though I know from my own attempts that it requires enormous strength and precise body control.
I accompanied a hunting party on what they assured me was an easy route to a fishing area, and I spent six hours in a state of barely controlled terror as we traversed ledges that were sometimes only inches wide, as we climbed rock faces that offered handholds I could not identify without help, as we crossed snow bridges over crevasses whose depths I could not determine. The Nunatsiavummiut moved through this landscape with the casual confidence I would show walking down a city street, chatting amongst themselves, occasionally pausing to point out features of interest or to help me navigate particularly difficult sections.
They did not mock my fear or my clumsiness. They simply helped, offering hands and advice and patient instruction in techniques that probably should have been taught to me in childhood but which were entirely foreign to someone raised in flat urban environments. When I finally reached the fishing area and collapsed in exhausted relief, they offered food and water and gentle humor, treating my terror as reasonable response to unfamiliar environment rather than as personal failure or evidence of weakness.
The fishing itself was revelation. The Nunatsiavummiut stood on rocks in the middle of fast-flowing streams, perfectly balanced despite the water rushing past their legs, and they watched the water with absolute focus until they saw what they needed. Then the strike: beak down into water, coming up with fish gripped firmly, the whole motion taking perhaps a second. They made it look easy. When I attempted it, I fell into the stream twice, caught nothing, and emerged soaked and humiliated and very cold.
Sauniq explained the technique with patient detail, showing me how to read the water, how to see the subtle movements that indicated fish presence, how to strike quickly enough that the fish had no time to evade. She spent perhaps an hour teaching me, and by the end I had managed to catch exactly one fish, which she celebrated as though I had achieved something remarkable rather than barely meeting the minimum standard of competence that even children here master.
This pattern repeated throughout my stay. I was incompetent at nearly every practical task that the Nunatsiavummiut perform routinely. I could not navigate their trails, could not fish effectively, could not identify the plants they gathered, could not judge weather patterns, could not predict animal behavior. I was, in every practical sense, helpless in their environment despite my education and my supposed sophistication.
They never made me feel lesser for this incompetence. They simply taught, patiently and persistently, always framing my limitations as lack of experience rather than lack of capability, always treating my small successes as genuine achievements worthy of acknowledgment. The contrast with Confederation culture, where incompetence is character failure and where those who lack skills are judged as naturally inferior, was stark enough that I found myself frequently on the edge of tears at the simple kindness of being taught without contempt.
The relationship with the vertical environment shapes everything about Nunatsiavummiut life. Their settlements are built into cliff faces and mountainsides, taking advantage of natural caves and sheltered areas while also creating structures that are partially carved, partially grown, partially shaped through methods I will discuss later. The buildings are interconnected through networks of paths and bridges and carved stairways that transform the three-dimensional space of the mountain into navigable territory for those who know the routes.
I spent my first week getting lost repeatedly, unable to maintain spatial orientation in an environment where “up” and “down” mattered as much as cardinal directions, where the shortest path between two points might involve climbing two hundred feet to traverse a natural bridge before descending again. The Nunatsiavummiut found my disorientation amusing but not troubling, and they assigned a young person named Nuvua-who-sees-clearly-in-storms to guide me until I learned the major routes.
Nuvua was perhaps fourteen years old, and they navigated the settlement’s vertical maze with unconscious competence that I envied desperately. They would bound up staircases that left me winded, would traverse ledges that made me press against the rock face in terror, would leap small gaps that I had to be coaxed across. And they would pause regularly, without impatience, to wait for me to catch up, to offer a hand when I needed it, to point out footholds and handholds that I had missed.
I asked Nuvua once whether they found my slowness frustrating, whether they resented being assigned to escort the clumsy foreigner. They looked at me with genuine confusion and said, “Why would I resent helping someone learn? Everyone must learn. I learned these paths from Sauniq when I was young. Now I teach you. Someday perhaps you will teach someone else. This is how knowledge continues.”
The simple reasonableness of this statement, the complete absence of any sense that helping was burden or that needing help was shameful, struck me with such force that I had to stop walking for a moment to compose myself. In the Confederation, needing help is failure. Providing help is charity, granted by the superior to the inferior, creating debt and obligation. Here, helping was simply what people did for each other, a normal part of existence that required neither gratitude nor repayment beyond the expectation that you would help others in turn when you were able.
This was the first time I began to understand that the Nunatsiavummiut were not merely different from the Confederation in superficial ways, but that they operated according to fundamentally different assumptions about what people are and how people should relate to one another. And it was the first time I began to wonder whether the Confederation’s assumptions were not merely different but were actually wrong, were actively harmful, were making us into something less than we could be.
The political organization of the Nunatsiavummiut is simultaneously the simplest and most sophisticated system I have encountered in my travels. Each tribe—and there are approximately thirty tribes in the mountain territories, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand individuals each—is governed by a chief and a shaman working in partnership. This is not merely tradition but is understood as necessary balance, with the chief providing legal guidance and practical decision-making while the shaman offers moral counsel and spiritual wisdom.
The tribe I stayed with, whose name translates approximately as “those-who-dwell-by-the-three-peaks,” numbered approximately eight hundred souls and was led by Chief Qilaq-who-judges-with-careful-hands and Shaman Sila-who-walks-between-worlds. I was privileged to observe their partnership over several months, and what impressed me most was the genuine equality of their relationship and the complete absence of competition for dominance that would characterize any comparable power-sharing arrangement in the Confederation.
Qilaq handled disputes between community members, organized work parties for communal projects, coordinated with other tribes on matters requiring inter-tribal cooperation, and made decisions about resource allocation and settlement maintenance. Sila led ceremonies, provided counsel on spiritual matters, interpreted omens and dreams, trained apprentice shamans, and maintained the sacred sites that dot the territory. Their areas of responsibility overlapped deliberately, with both leaders consulted on major decisions that affected the entire community.
I attended a council meeting where the tribe was deciding whether to establish a new settlement in a valley that offered better agricultural land but that would require significant labor to prepare. Qilaq presented the practical considerations: the amount of work required, the resources it would consume, the timeline for completion, the impact on other tribal activities. Sila presented the spiritual considerations: the valley’s relationship to sacred sites, the seasonal patterns that would affect its viability, the omens they had observed, the harmony or discord such expansion might create with the land itself.
The discussion that followed was remarkable for its structure. Anyone who wished to speak could do so, and they were listened to with attention regardless of their age or status. Young people offered perspectives that were given equal weight to elders’ wisdom. Those with relevant expertise—farmers who understood agriculture, builders who understood construction—spoke with authority in their domains but did not dominate the discussion. The tone was collaborative rather than adversarial, with speakers building on each other’s points rather than competing to prove their position superior.
The decision was reached after perhaps three hours of discussion, and it was reached by consensus. This was not voting, not majority rule, but rather the gradual emergence of a collective judgment that this course of action was right. Those who had reservations expressed them, were heard, and either had their concerns addressed or accepted that their perspective was one of many and that the collective wisdom was different from their individual assessment.
This process struck me as impossibly inefficient from a Confederation perspective, where the wizard-king or their designated representative would simply decide and others would obey. But watching it unfold, I recognized that the “efficiency” of authoritarian decision-making comes at the cost of excluding most people from the process, of failing to utilize the collective intelligence of the community, of creating decisions that lack buy-in from those who must implement them. The Nunatsiavummiut process took longer, but it produced decisions that everyone understood and supported, that incorporated diverse perspectives, that were genuinely wise rather than merely expedient.
The absence of formal hierarchy beyond the chief-shaman partnership was perhaps the most striking feature of Nunatsiavummiut social organization. There were no nobles, no merchant princes, no wizard-kings. There were people with different skills and different responsibilities, certainly, but these differences did not translate into systematic power disparities or into rigid social strata. The skilled hunter who brought in much food was respected for their skill, but they were not granted authority over others or given privileged access to resources. The elderly who no longer contributed direct labor were cared for with the same attention as productive adults. Children were treated as full persons whose needs mattered equally to adult needs.
I struggled to understand this at first, so trained was I to look for the hierarchy, to identify who held power over whom, to map the social stratification that I assumed must exist beneath the surface appearance of equality. But it genuinely did not exist, or at least it existed in such minimal form that I could not perceive it even after months of observation and after repeatedly pressing my hosts to explain where the real power resided.
“Power resides in the collective,” Sauniq told me when I asked her this question directly. “The chief and the shaman guide us, but they do not command us. They serve the community, and if they serve poorly, the community chooses new leaders. Any adult can speak in council and will be heard. Any person who needs help receives it. Any person who can contribute does so. Where is the power in this? It is everywhere and nowhere. It is ours together.”
I asked what happened when people refused to contribute, when they took from the community without giving back. She looked puzzled by the question and said, “Why would someone do that? We all need each other. We all benefit from each other’s work. To refuse to contribute is to harm yourself as much as others. But if someone is genuinely unable to contribute—if they are ill or injured or very young or very old—then of course they still receive what they need. The community exists to support all its members, not merely those who are currently productive.”
The economic organization reflected this egalitarian principle. Resources were held communally, with the tribe collectively owning the territory, the structures, the stored food, the tools and equipment. Individuals possessed personal items: clothing, small tools, objects of sentimental value, but the means of production and the necessities of life were collective property accessible to all according to need.
This created a material equality that I had been taught was impossible to achieve. I had been told, in my Confederation education, that people are naturally acquisitive, naturally competitive, that they will hoard and accumulate and that any attempt to organize society communally will fail because human nature is fundamentally selfish. The Nunatsiavummiut demonstrated that this supposed human nature was in fact cultural conditioning specific to societies organized around scarcity and competition. When resources are shared and when the community values cooperation over competition, people behave cooperatively. The supposedly immutable human nature shifts to match the social context.
I watched this play out in countless small interactions. When someone needed a tool, they took it from the communal store and returned it when finished. When food was prepared, it was distributed according to need, with larger portions going to those doing heavy labor or to growing children, but with everyone receiving adequate nutrition. When new clothing was needed, the weavers and tanners produced it and distributed it to those whose current clothing was worn beyond repair. The system functioned smoothly not because it was enforced by authority but because everyone participated willingly, understanding that their own wellbeing depended on the collective functioning.
The treatment of children demonstrated the communal principle perhaps most clearly. Children were understood as belonging to the entire community, not merely to their biological parents. Anyone might feed a hungry child, comfort a distressed child, teach a curious child. The biological parents were certainly involved in their children’s care, but they were not solely responsible for it, and the entire community participated in the work of raising the next generation.
I watched a child fall and injure their knee, and three adults who were not the child’s parents immediately responded, one offering comfort, one examining the injury, one fetching a shaman to apply healing. The child’s actual mother was working at the fishing area and was notified but did not rush back, secure in the knowledge that her child was being cared for by the community. When she returned that evening, she thanked those who had helped, but the thanks were perfunctory because the help was expected rather than exceptional.
This collective approach to child-rearing meant that children grew up with many adult role models, with multiple sources of knowledge and skill, with a sense of belonging to the entire community rather than merely to a nuclear family. It also meant that the burden of child-rearing was distributed rather than falling entirely on mothers, allowing both parents to participate in productive labor while knowing their children were safe and cared for.
The contrast with Confederation practice, where children are the private responsibility of their parents and where failure to adequately care for one’s children is individual moral failure, was stark and painful to recognize. In the Confederation, wealthy families can hire servants to help with child-rearing, effectively purchasing the communal support that should be freely available. Poor families struggle alone, and when they fail, it is attributed to their personal inadequacy rather than to the systematic denial of support that every family needs and that every family should receive.
[Silt-in-River’s note]: The human scholar is beginning to understand what I have tried to teach him through all our conversations: that the Confederation’s way is not the only way, nor is it the natural way, nor is it even a particularly functional way. It is simply one possible organization of human society, and it is an organization that produces tremendous suffering while convincing those who suffer that their suffering is their own fault. The Nunatsiavummiut have chosen differently. They have built a society that actually serves human needs rather than serving the interests of those few who have achieved power within a hierarchical system. That this works, that it produces happy and healthy people, should not be surprising. What should be surprising is that anyone ever believed the alternative was natural or inevitable.
The work that sustains Nunatsiavummiut society is distributed according to capability and inclination rather than according to rigid role assignments or market forces. This creates a labor system that is simultaneously more flexible and more stable than anything I have encountered in the Confederation or in my travels elsewhere.
The fishing I mentioned earlier is one of the primary food sources, with the cold mountain streams being rich with fish that migrate seasonally. Fishing is not assigned to a specific subgroup or caste but rather is performed by whoever has the skill and the inclination to do it. Some individuals fish daily because they enjoy it and are good at it. Others fish occasionally to contribute their share while focusing primarily on other activities. Some never fish because they lack the skill or the interest, contributing instead through other forms of work.
I asked Qilaq how they ensured that essential work got done if it was all voluntary, if anyone could choose not to participate in tasks they found unpleasant. They explained that social pressure accomplished what legal compulsion might in other societies. Everyone understood that certain work needed to be completed for the community to function. Those who consistently refused to contribute to necessary tasks faced social consequences—not formal punishment but rather the quiet disapproval of their peers, the sense that they were failing to meet basic obligations, the knowledge that they were taking from the community without giving back.
This social pressure was surprisingly effective because it operated in the context of genuine community bonds. In the Confederation, where relationships are often transactional and competitive, social disapproval from strangers or rivals might be bearable or even perversely satisfying. Here, where everyone knew everyone else and where maintaining good relationships was essential to daily happiness, the prospect of disappointing your neighbors and friends was genuinely painful. The few individuals I heard described as “lazy” or “selfish” were clearly distressed by this reputation and were making efforts to change the behaviors that had earned it.
The agricultural work is collective, with the entire tribe participating in the planting and harvest seasons that are brief but intensive at this elevation. The Nunatsiavummiut grow primarily root vegetables and cold-hardy grains in the valleys where conditions permit agriculture, supplementing the fishing and hunting that provide most of their protein. The farms are communally owned and collectively worked, with teams organized according to need and availability rather than according to individual ownership of land.
I participated in a planting season and found the work exhausting but also strangely satisfying. We worked long days, preparing soil, planting seeds, maintaining the young plants. But we worked together, with singing and conversation, with breaks for shared meals, with the knowledge that the food we were growing would feed everyone including ourselves. The labor was hard, but it felt meaningful in ways that abstract intellectual work never had, connected directly to survival and community wellbeing in ways that were viscerally satisfying.
The craft work is performed by specialists but not by a specialized class. Those who are skilled at weaving or leatherworking or tool-making practice their crafts and produce items for communal use. They are not paid in the conventional sense, as there is no currency. They simply produce what is needed, and in return they receive food and shelter and social respect and the satisfaction of having contributed their skills to the collective good.
This could have created a problem of incentive, where skilled craftspeople might refuse to produce more than minimal amounts or might produce poor-quality work since their material wellbeing was guaranteed regardless. But this problem did not manifest, and when I inquired about why not, the craftspeople I spoke with seemed genuinely puzzled by the question. They took pride in their work. They enjoyed creating well-made things. They valued the respect and appreciation they received for their skills. These intrinsic motivations were sufficient, and the idea of deliberately producing poor work or refusing to work at all was as foreign to them as the idea of hoarding resources or refusing to share with neighbors.
The teaching work is perhaps the most valued activity in Nunatsiavummiut society, with knowledge transmission being understood as essential to the community’s continuity. Anyone with skills teaches those skills to anyone who wishes to learn. This is not formalized schooling in the Confederation sense, with age-segregated classes and standardized curricula. It is apprenticeship and observation and practice, with young people learning by doing alongside experienced practitioners.
I watched Sauniq teaching several young people the art of ice-fishing, the specialized skill of fishing through frozen streams in winter. She demonstrated the technique, explained the principles, corrected errors, offered encouragement, and gradually the students improved until they could fish competently on their own. The teaching took weeks, required tremendous patience, and Sauniq received no special compensation beyond the knowledge that she had passed on essential skills to the next generation.
When I remarked that in the Confederation, skilled teachers would demand payment for such instruction, she seemed disturbed by the concept. “How could I refuse to teach what I know? If I die with my knowledge unshared, that knowledge is lost. Teaching is how we survive across generations. To hoard knowledge, to demand payment for sharing it, this is like hoarding food while your neighbors starve. It is incomprehensible.”
The maintenance work—the constant labor of repairing structures, maintaining paths, managing waste, keeping communal spaces clean—is rotated among all able-bodied adults, with schedules organized by Qilaq to ensure fairness and adequate coverage. No one is permanently assigned to maintenance because such work, while necessary, is not particularly fulfilling, and rotating ensures that no one bears a disproportionate burden of the less pleasant but essential tasks.
The care work—tending to the young, the elderly, the sick, the injured—is likewise shared, though those with particular aptitude for such care often specialize in it. The Albumancers who provide medical treatment are respected for their skills but are not elevated to higher social status or given preferential resource access. They heal because they have the ability to heal and because healing is necessary and valued work.
I spent time with an Albumancer named Arnaq-who-mends-what-is-broken, learning about their practice and about the Nunatsiavummiut approach to healing. Arnaq explained that they view healing as restoration of balance, as helping the body remember what wholeness feels like, as working with the patient’s own healing capacity rather than imposing change from outside. This was consistent with the gentle, participatory approach I observed throughout Nunatsiavummiut culture, so different from the Confederation’s aggressive, authoritarian approach to… everything, really.
The most striking feature of the labor system was the complete absence of people who did not work. In the Confederation, there are the idle wealthy who live on inherited wealth or on the labor of others, and there are the destitute who cannot find work or whose labor is deemed worthless by market forces. Here, everyone worked according to their capacity, and everyone’s work was valued as contributing to the collective good. The elderly who could no longer fish or climb still contributed through teaching, through craft work, through child supervision, through any number of less physically demanding but still valuable activities. The very young contributed through learning and through simple tasks appropriate to their developing capabilities. Even those who were severely disabled found ways to contribute what they could, and were supported without judgment when they could not.
This system produced a society without poverty and without idleness, where everyone had meaningful work and where everyone’s basic needs were met. The material standard of living was modest by Confederation standards—no one here had the luxuries that the wealthy enjoy in my homeland—but everyone was comfortable, adequately fed, warm, housed, and secure. And crucially, everyone had dignity, had purpose, had the knowledge that they mattered to their community and that their community would support them.
I found myself envying this with intensity that was almost painful. In the Confederation, I had status and education and resources, but I had never felt truly secure, never felt that my community would support me if I failed, never felt that my work truly mattered beyond advancing my own career and reputation. Here, among people who had so much less in material terms, I felt a security and belonging that I had never experienced in all my years in the supposedly superior civilization of the Confederation.
The Nunatsiavummiut day begins before dawn, with the first stirrings occurring as the eastern sky begins to pale. This early rising is practical necessity in a mountain environment where daylight hours are precious, particularly in winter when the sun makes only brief appearances above the peaks. But it is also cultural choice, reflecting values that privilege industriousness and the full use of available time.
I woke on my first morning to the sound of communal activity already well underway, feeling embarrassed that I had overslept while my hosts had been working for what turned out to be nearly an hour. Sauniq found my distress amusing and assured me that guests were not expected to maintain the same schedule as residents, but I made efforts after that first day to rise when the community rose, not wanting to be perceived as lazy or as taking advantage of hospitality.
The morning activities are primarily oriented around food preparation and around tending to the necessities that cannot be postponed. The fishing parties depart early, while the streams are still shrouded in mist and the fish are most active. Those responsible for preparing the communal morning meal begin their work, building up fires that have been banked overnight, setting water to boil, laying out the ingredients that will become breakfast for dozens or hundreds depending on the size of the settlement.
The communal meals are one of the most distinctive features of Nunatsiavummiut daily life. Rather than each family preparing food separately in their individual dwellings, the tribe maintains communal kitchens where teams of cooks prepare meals that are then shared by everyone. This arrangement serves multiple purposes: it is more efficient than individual cooking, requiring less fuel and less redundant labor; it ensures that everyone eats adequately regardless of their personal cooking skills or their current ability to contribute to food preparation; and it creates regular gathering times where the community comes together, sharing not just food but also conversation and companionship.
The morning meal is substantial but not elaborate, designed to provide energy for the day’s work without requiring lengthy preparation time. I will detail the specific foods in the following section, but the social aspect is worth noting here. People arrive at the communal hall in loose groups, families together but mixing freely with others, and they eat while discussing the day’s plans, sharing news, coordinating work parties that will form after the meal is complete.
The meal lasts perhaps half an hour, with no rigid schedule but rather a natural flow as people finish eating and begin moving toward their day’s activities. Some linger longer in conversation, particularly the elderly who are not assigned to physically demanding tasks and who serve the community partially through maintaining social bonds and transmitting knowledge. The very young are often left with designated caregivers during the main work hours, creating what amounts to communal childcare that frees parents to contribute labor while ensuring children are supervised and safe.
The mid-morning through afternoon hours are dedicated to whatever work is seasonally appropriate and necessary. In summer, this means agricultural work in the valleys, tending to the crops that will provide essential food through the winter. In autumn, this means harvest and preservation work, the urgent task of gathering and storing everything that can be stored before the deep cold arrives. In winter, this means craft work and maintenance and the careful management of stored resources. In spring, this means repair of damage from winter storms, preparation for planting, and the resumption of activities that were suspended during the coldest months.
The work parties form organically based on what needs doing and who is available to do it. Qilaq maintains general awareness of priority projects and will suggest task allocations when coordination is needed, but much of the work organization happens through informal consensus. Someone notices that a path needs repair, mentions it during the morning meal, and enough people agree to address it that a work party forms without requiring formal assignment.
I participated in various work parties during my stay, and I was consistently impressed by the efficiency that emerged from apparently loose organization. When everyone understands what needs doing and everyone is committed to the community’s welfare, formal hierarchies and rigid schedules prove unnecessary. The work gets done because people do it, because not doing it would mean failing the community, and the social bonds that hold the community together are sufficient motivation.
The work is hard, certainly. I found myself exhausted many days, unused to the physical demands of mountain life and inadequately conditioned for the labor that the Nunatsiavummiut perform routinely. But the work was also social, accompanied by conversation and singing and the camaraderie that emerges from shared effort toward common goals. In the Confederation, I had worked in isolation, bent over books and papers, achieving intellectual goals that were mine alone. Here, I worked alongside others, achieving tangible results that benefited everyone, and the satisfaction was qualitatively different and deeper than anything my scholarly work had provided.
The mid-day meal is lighter and often informal, with people eating whatever is convenient rather than gathering for communal dining. Those working in distant locations carry food with them. Those working near the settlement might return briefly to eat or might simply continue working through the mid-day. The flexibility reflects practical necessity—gathering everyone for a mid-day meal would waste time and interrupt work rhythms—but it also reflects the understanding that not every meal needs to be a social occasion.
The afternoon work continues until the light begins to fail, which occurs earlier in the mountains than in lower elevations, particularly in winter when the sun disappears behind the peaks long before it sets. As people finish their tasks and return to the settlement, the pace shifts from productive labor to social activity and personal time.
The evening meal is the day’s major social event, rivaling the morning meal in importance but exceeding it in duration and in the sense of relaxation and celebration. The communal hall fills with the entire tribe, with people arriving in family groups but mixing freely once present. The food is more elaborate than breakfast, with greater variety and more careful preparation, reflecting both the availability of the full day’s catch and forage and the cultural importance of the evening meal as time for community bonding.
The meal unfolds slowly, with multiple courses when supplies permit, with conversation flowing freely between bites, with children allowed to move between family groups visiting with friends while adults monitor loosely without needing to maintain rigid control. The elderly often hold court, telling stories that might be historical accounts or might be teaching tales or might simply be entertainment, with the audience shifting as people come and go but the storytelling continuing.
I spent many evenings listening to these stories, understanding perhaps half of what was said due to my incomplete grasp of the language and the storytellers’ use of archaic vocabulary and complex grammatical forms. But even when I could not follow the specific content, I could observe the social function: the transmission of cultural knowledge, the reinforcement of values, the entertainment that bound the community together, the acknowledgment of the elderly as valued contributors even when they could no longer perform physical labor.
After the meal, people drift into various activities according to inclination. Some remain in the communal hall, continuing conversations or engaging in games that I recognized as similar to games I had encountered in other cultures—strategic board games, dice games, word games. Some return to their homes for privacy and rest. Some gather in smaller groups for craft work that is more social than necessary—weaving, carving, tool maintenance—using their hands while their minds and voices engage with companions.
The young people often gather separately, forming their own social networks, engaging in activities that mix play and flirtation and the gradual establishment of relationships that might become romantic partnerships. I observed that these gatherings were supervised loosely but not intrusively, with adults maintaining awareness without attempting to control every interaction. The trust extended to young people reflected the general cultural pattern: people are given freedom and are expected to use that freedom responsibly, and the expectation is usually met.
The evening activities wind down gradually rather than according to fixed schedule, with people retiring when they feel tired rather than when some authority declares that sleeping hours have begun. The settlement becomes quieter, with lights dimming in individual dwellings, with the communal areas emptying. By full dark, most people are home and preparing for sleep, though there are always a few who remain wakeful, maintaining fires, performing tasks that are better done at night, or simply preferring the quiet solitude that nighttime offers.
The pattern repeats daily with variations for weather, for season, for special occasions. There is routine without rigidity, structure without inflexibility, predictability without stagnation. The rhythm feels natural, accommodating human needs for both consistency and variety, providing the stability that makes planning possible while allowing for adaptation when circumstances change.
The Nunatsiavummiut do not maintain a rigid weekly schedule as the Confederation does, with one day in seven designated as holy and reserved for rest and worship. Instead, they operate on a more flexible system that acknowledges human needs for rest while remaining responsive to practical necessities and seasonal demands.
Approximately every fifth day, when work pressures permit, the community observes what they call a “breathing day,” a period when only essential maintenance is performed and people are free to rest, to pursue personal interests, to engage in purely social activities without the expectation of productive labor. These breathing days are not scheduled rigidly but rather emerge from communal sense of when rest is needed, declared by the chief and shaman in consultation with community sentiment.
During breathing days, the communal meals are simpler, requiring less preparation labor, and people eat at more relaxed pace without the urgency of needing to begin work afterward. The day unfolds without structure, with people sleeping late if they wish, spending time with family and friends, pursuing hobbies and interests that must normally be subordinated to necessary work. Some use the time for personal craft projects. Some explore the surrounding territory for pleasure rather than for foraging. Some simply rest, allowing their bodies to recover from the accumulated exertions of regular labor.
The breathing days serve essential functions beyond mere physical rest. They prevent the burnout that would result from constant labor without respite. They allow time for relationship maintenance and for the strengthening of social bonds that might fray under pressure of work demands. They provide space for reflection, for consideration of questions and concerns that must be set aside when immediate tasks dominate attention. And they serve as pressure valves, offering release before stress accumulates to dangerous levels.
The seasonal celebrations are more elaborate and more rigidly scheduled, tied to specific events in the annual cycle that matter deeply to mountain life. The spring thaw celebration occurs when the first streams begin flowing freely again after winter’s freeze, marking the transition from the season of endurance to the season of renewal. The summer gathering brings together multiple tribes for trading, for inter-tribal socializing, for marriages between people from different communities. The autumn harvest celebration marks the completion of food gathering and the readiness for winter. The winter solstice celebration acknowledges the darkest time of year and the beginning of the return toward light.
These celebrations involve special foods, elaborate preparations, ceremonies led by shamans, and the kind of collective joy that emerges when people mark important transitions together. They are not frivolous entertainments but rather are essential cultural practices that maintain tribal cohesion, that mark the passage of time, that acknowledge shared dependence on natural cycles beyond human control.
I participated in a breathing day and in an autumn celebration during my stay, and both experiences affected me deeply. The breathing day revealed the Nunatsiavummiut capacity for contentment, for simple enjoyment of existence without constant striving toward goals. People genuinely rested, genuinely relaxed, genuinely took pleasure in activities that had no purpose beyond the pleasure itself. In the Confederation, rest is always tinged with guilt, with the sense that one should be doing something productive, that relaxation is acceptable only if one has earned it through sufficient achievement. Here, rest was simply recognized as human need, granted freely without requirement to justify or earn it.
The autumn celebration was more complex, involving ceremonial elements that I only partially understood but that clearly carried deep meaning for participants. The gratitude expressed for the harvest was genuine rather than perfunctory, reflecting real awareness of dependence on forces beyond human control and real appreciation for the fortunate outcome that would sustain the community through winter. The dancing and singing went late into the night, with everyone participating regardless of skill or self-consciousness, celebrating collectively in ways that transcended individual performance.
The Nunatsiavummiut diet is shaped by the constraints and opportunities of their environment, producing a pattern of consumption that is high in protein, moderate in fats, and relatively limited in carbohydrates compared to Confederation diets. This is not by choice so much as by necessity, though the Nunatsiavummiut have adapted to these patterns such that they experience their diet as normal and satisfying rather than as privation.
The primary protein source is fish, caught from the cold, fast-running mountain streams that are rich with species I do not have Confederation names for but which the Nunatsiavummiut identify through complex nomenclature that distinguishes fish by size, coloration, behavior, and season of availability. The fishing I mentioned earlier provides daily catches that are processed immediately for same-day consumption or that are preserved through smoking and drying for later use.
The fish is typically prepared simply, either roasted over open flames or boiled in large pots with water and herbs. The Nunatsiavummiut do not use heavy spicing or complex sauces, preferring to preserve the natural flavors of the fish itself, enhanced modestly with mountain herbs that grow wild in the brief summer season. The preparation might seem plain to someone accustomed to Confederation cuisine with its elaborate seasonings and multiple courses, but the freshness of the ingredients and the skill of the cooking produce results that are satisfying and, in their own way, sophisticated.
I ate fish at nearly every meal during my stay, prepared in dozens of variations that I gradually learned to distinguish and appreciate. The flesh is lean and delicate, requiring careful cooking to avoid drying out, and the Nunatsiavummiut cooks have mastered the timing such that the fish emerges from the fire or the pot perfectly done, tender and flavorful. The experience taught me that complexity of preparation is not the same as quality of result, that simple methods applied skillfully can equal or exceed elaborate techniques applied merely adequately.
The mountain streams also provide other aquatic resources, including crustaceans that resemble crayfish and that are considered delicacies, typically reserved for celebrations or for honoring guests. I was served these on several occasions and found them rich and sweet, though the effort required to extract the meat from their shells was substantial relative to the amount of food obtained. The Nunatsiavummiut eat them slowly, savoring each bite, making the eating itself into a kind of meditation or social activity rather than mere fueling of the body.
The hunting provides additional protein, though less consistently than fishing due to the challenges of tracking game through mountain terrain and the need to range widely to find animals that are themselves scarce in the high peaks. The hunters pursue mountain goats, snow hares, various birds, and occasionally larger prey when opportunity presents and when the community’s need justifies the effort and risk of hunting dangerous animals in dangerous places.
The hunted meat is treated with even greater respect than fish, reflecting both its relative scarcity and the danger involved in obtaining it. Nothing is wasted. The flesh is consumed, certainly, but also the organs, the bones boiled for their marrow and for the nutrients that can be extracted into broth, the hides processed for leather, the sinews for cordage, even the hooves and horns for tools and decoration. I watched the processing of a mountain goat that had been hunted successfully, and I was impressed by the completeness of the utilization, by the sense that the animal’s death was honored through the thoroughness with which every possible benefit was extracted from its body.
The agricultural products are limited by the short growing season and the harsh conditions of the mountain valleys, but they provide essential dietary variety and crucial nutrients that cannot be obtained from meat alone. The primary crops are root vegetables—tubers that I would compare to potatoes and turnips and carrots, though they are distinct species adapted to cold and to brief summers—and hardy grains that can complete their growth cycle in the compressed timeframe available.
The root vegetables are stored in underground caches where the temperature remains stable and cool through the winter, preserving them for months until they are gradually consumed as winter progresses. They are typically boiled or roasted, served alongside fish or meat, providing bulk and substance that complements the protein. The flavor is earthy and slightly sweet, satisfying in ways that I had not appreciated before experiencing the restrictions of mountain diet, where every food item has heightened value because alternatives are limited.
The grains are ground into flour and baked into dense, hearty breads that are more substantial than Confederation breads, designed to provide maximum nutrition and satiety rather than to be light or delicate. The bread is slightly sour, with complex flavors that develop during the fermentation process that is essential to the baking method. I found it challenging initially, the texture being heavier and the flavor being stronger than I was accustomed to, but I came to appreciate it as fundamentally satisfying, as food that sustained rather than merely pleased.
The Nunatsiavummiut also gather wild plants during the brief summer season, collecting berries and edible leaves and roots that supplement the agricultural products and provide flavors and nutrients not available from cultivated crops. These gathered foods are eaten fresh when available and are preserved through drying for winter consumption. The dried berries are particularly valued, being mixed into porridges or eaten as treats, providing sweetness that is otherwise largely absent from the diet.
The preservation techniques are essential to survival, transforming summer’s plenty into winter’s sustenance. I observed multiple methods: smoking meat and fish over carefully tended fires that impart preservative smoke while also flavoring; drying strips of flesh in the sun and wind until they become leathery and shelf-stable; fermenting vegetables in brine to create foods that keep through winter while also developing complex flavors; rendering fats and packing them in sealed containers where they solidify and preserve.
The preserved foods are not merely survival necessity but are also valued in their own right, with distinct flavors and textures that are appreciated rather than merely tolerated. The smoked fish has rich, complex taste quite different from fresh fish. The dried meats are chewy and concentrated, small amounts providing substantial nutrition. The fermented vegetables are tangy and alive, their flavors sharp and interesting. The preserved foods are not inferior substitutes for fresh but are rather different foods with their own merits.
Water is the primary beverage and is treated with respect bordering on reverence, reflecting both practical necessity in an environment where clean water is life itself and cultural values that recognize water as gift rather than as commodity to be taken for granted. The mountain streams provide abundant water, cold and clean, flowing from snow-melt and from springs deep in the peaks. This water is drunk freely and frequently, with no concern about scarcity or about needing to ration.
The communal settlements maintain cisterns and water systems that capture stream water and distribute it to various points throughout the settlement, making access convenient without requiring constant trips to the streams themselves. The systems are maintained carefully, with regular cleaning and monitoring to ensure water quality remains high. The labor required for this maintenance is recognized as essential work, never neglected even when other pressing tasks compete for attention.
I found myself drinking far more water in the mountains than I had in the Confederation, partly due to the physical exertion of mountain life and partly due to the altitude, which causes increased respiration and thus increased water loss. The Nunatsiavummiut encouraged this consumption, viewing adequate hydration as foundational to health and offering water constantly to guests and to anyone who appeared to be working hard or who showed any signs of fatigue.
Beyond water, the Nunatsiavummiut prepare several types of herbal infusions, similar to teas but using local plants rather than the tea leaves that are imported to the Confederation from distant growing regions. These infusions serve both medicinal and social purposes, with different herbs selected for different effects. Some provide gentle stimulation, helping to maintain alertness during long work days. Some promote relaxation and aid digestion after meals. Some are specific remedies for various ailments, prepared by shamans or by experienced healers who understand the properties of different plants.
I drank these infusions regularly and came to appreciate their subtle effects and their variety of flavors. The stimulating herbs produce a clean alertness different from the jittery overstimulation that strong Confederation tea can cause. The relaxing herbs ease tension without causing drowsiness, creating a gentle calm that facilitates social interaction and contemplation. The medicinal preparations are often bitter or astringent, their unpleasant flavors accepted as necessary for their beneficial effects.
The Nunatsiavummiut also produce a fermented beverage from grains, similar to beer but with lower alcohol content and with flavors that reflect the specific grains and fermentation methods used in its production. This beverage appears primarily during celebrations and social gatherings, serving as social lubricant and as marker of special occasions rather than as daily drink. The alcohol content is sufficient to produce mild intoxication if consumed in quantity, but the cultural norms discourage excess, and I never witnessed anyone becoming seriously drunk or losing control of their behavior.
The fermented beverage is brewed communally, with the process being supervised by those who have mastered the technique and who ensure consistent quality. The brewing is understood as skilled work deserving of respect, and the brewers take pride in their products while also understanding that they serve the community rather than profiting personally from their skills. The beverage is distributed freely during gatherings rather than being sold or traded, reinforcing the communal nature of celebration and the understanding that the products of skilled labor belong to everyone.
I participated in one brewing session and found it fascinating, both for the technical aspects of the process and for the social dimensions of working collectively to produce something that would be enjoyed collectively. The careful monitoring of fermentation, the judgment calls about when to move to the next stage of the process, the testing and adjusting to achieve desired flavors, all of this required genuine expertise. Yet the experts shared their knowledge freely, explaining techniques to anyone who showed interest, understanding that the continuation of brewing tradition depended on training the next generation of brewers.
The Nunatsiavummiut relationship with alcohol is instructive. They consume it rarely and moderately, viewing it as tool for enhancing celebration rather than as escape from suffering or as social necessity. The contrast with Confederation drinking culture—where alcohol is consumed frequently, sometimes to excess, often as self-medication for the chronic stress and unhappiness that the social system produces—is stark. The Nunatsiavummiut do not need to drink to endure their lives, and so they drink only to enhance occasions that are already positive rather than to transform occasions that are otherwise intolerable.
The communal meals that structure Nunatsiavummiut daily life are not merely practical arrangements for food distribution but are rather essential social institutions that maintain community cohesion and that transmit cultural values. Every meal is opportunity for connection, for conversation, for the reinforcement of bonds that hold the community together.
The serving of food follows egalitarian principles that reflect broader cultural values. There are no hierarchies of serving order, no reserved seats for important individuals, no special portions for those of higher status. Food is distributed according to need, with larger portions going to those engaged in heavy physical labor or to growing children who require more nutrition, but with everyone receiving adequate amounts regardless of their current contribution to community work.
This egalitarian distribution extends even to the quality of food, with no practice of reserving the best portions for particular individuals. The first fish caught is not given to the chief or to the best fisherman but rather goes into the communal pot to be shared by everyone. The finest cuts of hunted meat are not reserved for warriors or shamans but are distributed so that everyone receives some of the best along with some of the less desirable portions. The only systematic difference I observed was that guests were offered slightly better portions as gesture of hospitality, and even this was done subtly enough that I sometimes did not notice until others pointed it out.
The meals are times for conversation, for sharing news and stories, for discussing plans and problems, for maintaining the social awareness that allows eight hundred people to function as cohesive community rather than as collection of disconnected individuals. The tone is relaxed but engaged, with multiple conversations occurring simultaneously at different tables or gathering points, with people moving between groups to speak with different individuals, with the overall effect being a kind of organized chaos that somehow produces strong social bonds and effective information sharing.
Children learn community values through participation in communal meals, observing how adults interact, how conflicts are resolved through discussion rather than through dominance, how resources are shared, how differences of opinion are negotiated. The meals are informal education in cooperation and in collective decision-making, teaching through example rather than through explicit instruction.
The gratitude expressed before meals is genuine and non-perfunctory, acknowledging the labor that produced the food, the natural processes that made the fish and the plants available, the good fortune of having enough when scarcity is always possible. This gratitude is not directed toward gods or supernatural entities but rather is simply acknowledgment of interdependence and of the contingency of prosperity. The practice cultivates awareness of what must often be taken for granted, creating conscious appreciation for what could easily be unconscious consumption.
I found the communal meals to be among the most affecting experiences of my stay, representing in concentrated form the values that structure all of Nunatsiavummiut society. The sharing of food, the lack of hierarchy, the social connection, the gratitude, the efficiency combined with conviviality, all of this demonstrated what a community looks like when it actually functions as community rather than as collection of competing individuals.
In the Confederation, I had eaten alone more often than not, taking meals in my study while working, viewing eating as necessary interruption of more important activities. Even when I ate with others, the meals were often strained, marked by consciousness of status differences, by careful performance of appropriate behavior, by competition for social advantage disguised as polite conversation. The contrast with Nunatsiavummiut meals—where eating was genuine social activity, where status played no role, where people were simply present with each other—was painful to recognize but also hopeful, demonstrating that different patterns were possible and that those patterns produced better outcomes for human flourishing.
The magical traditions of the Nunatsiavummiut are distinct from those I have documented in other cultures, emphasizing harmony and reinforcement rather than transformation and control. The most distinctive practice is what they call Ink magic, the art of painting the nature of a thing in ink and thereby reinforcing that nature, making it more fully and perfectly what it already is.
Sila-who-walks-between-worlds taught me the basics of this practice, though they warned that mastery requires years of study and that I should not expect to achieve more than rudimentary understanding in the brief time I had available. The teaching began with philosophy before it proceeded to technique, and the philosophy was essential to everything that followed.
“All things possess essential nature,” Sila explained. “A stone is stone, hard and enduring. Water is water, flowing and adaptive. Fire is fire, transforming and consuming. To practice Ink magic, you must perceive this essential nature, must understand not what a thing is called or how it appears, but what it fundamentally is. Then you paint that nature, and in painting it you call it forth, you say to the thing ‘be more fully what you are,’ and if your understanding is correct and your execution is true, the thing responds.”
The inks themselves are prepared through complex processes that involve gathering specific materials, grinding them to proper consistency, mixing them with binding agents that themselves must be appropriate to what you intend to paint. The shamans maintain careful records of ink recipes, of which materials reinforce which properties, of how different preparations interact with different surfaces and substances.
I watched Sila prepare an ink for painting a shield that would reinforce its reflective properties, making it better able to turn aside attacks both physical and magical. The process took hours, involving ingredients that had to be gathered from specific locations, ground in specific ways, mixed in specific proportions while speaking invocations that focused intent and called upon the Forms that govern the properties being reinforced.
The painting itself is equally ritualized, with specific patterns and symbols that correspond to specific properties. The pattern for “hardness” is angular and geometric, sharp lines meeting at precise angles. The pattern for “fluidity” is curved and flowing, continuous loops that never quite close. The pattern for “reflection” is symmetric, creating mirror images that fold back upon themselves. Each pattern is simultaneously art and magic, beautiful to observe and functional in its purpose, embodying the principle it represents while also reinforcing that principle in the object being painted.
I attempted to paint a simple stone with the pattern for “endurance,” one of the most basic applications of Ink magic. My painting was clumsy, the lines wavering, the angles imprecise, the overall execution poor. Sila examined my work with patient kindness and explained how each imperfection would reduce the effectiveness of the magic, how the wavering lines suggested uncertainty rather than endurance, how the imprecise angles failed to properly invoke the Form being called upon.
We tried again, with Sila guiding my hand, helping me achieve steadier lines and more precise angles. The second attempt was better, and when it was complete, Sila had me strike the stone against another stone with considerable force. The painted stone remained intact where an unpainted stone of similar size had cracked. The magic had worked, though only partially due to my imperfect execution.
The most impressive applications of Ink magic I observed were the warrior tattoos that many Nunatsiavummiut carry. These permanent paintings reinforced various properties of the warriors themselves—their strength, their endurance, their reflexes, their resistance to cold or pain or fear. The tattoos were beautiful, elaborate patterns that covered arms and shoulders and occasionally faces, but they were not merely decorative. They were functional magic, making the warriors genuinely stronger and more resilient than they would be without the Ink.
I met a warrior named Nuka-who-stands-against-the-storm, whose body was covered in Ink that reinforced their strength and endurance to extraordinary degrees. Nuka could carry loads that should have required two or three people, could hike for days without rest, could endure cold that would incapacitate someone without such reinforcement. They explained that the tattoos required periodic renewal, that the ink faded gradually over years and needed to be repainted to maintain effectiveness, but that properly maintained tattoos could last a lifetime.
The crucial limitation of Ink magic is that it can only reinforce existing properties, never grant properties that are entirely absent. You can make a stone harder, but you cannot make it soft. You can make water more fluid, but you cannot make it solid. You can make metal more reflective, but you cannot make it absorb light. And you can only reinforce properties that the object possessed at some point in its existence. A metal that was once liquid when it was molten can be painted to become liquid again. A metal that was never organic cannot be painted to become organic.
This restriction makes Ink magic less versatile than some traditions but also makes it more reliable and safer. You cannot accidentally transform something into something entirely different, cannot create cascading unexpected effects, cannot impose changes that violate the fundamental nature of what you are working with. The magic respects what things are and helps them become better versions of themselves rather than trying to force them to be something they are not.
I asked Sila whether this philosophy of respecting nature rather than transforming it extended beyond magic into Nunatsiavummiut culture more broadly. They smiled and said, “Of course. Our magic reflects our values, or perhaps our values reflect our magic. We do not try to remake the world according to our desires. We try to work with the world as it is, to help things become more fully themselves, to live in harmony rather than in domination. The Confederation wants to control, to impose, to transform everything according to their vision. We want to understand, to cooperate, to become part of the patterns that already exist. This is the difference between us.”
The Nunatsiavummiut practice Song magic, though their approach differs significantly from the Northern Lanx tradition I documented previously. Where Northern Song is individualistic, with skilled Incanters channeling Ideals through solo invocation, Nunatsiavummiut Song is communal, with groups chanting together to produce effects that emerge from collective participation rather than from individual mastery.
The communal chanting typically occurs during ceremonies and during work activities where magical assistance is desired. I participated in several such chants and found the experience profoundly moving despite my limited understanding of the tradition and my inability to maintain the proper rhythm and pitch that created the magical effects.
The first chant I participated in was during a building project, where the community was shaping stone to create a new structure. The work party gathered around the stone that needed shaping, and Sila led us in a chant that lasted perhaps twenty minutes. The chant had no words that I could identify, merely sounds that rose and fell in complex patterns, with different voices taking up different parts of the pattern, creating harmonics and resonances that built upon each other until the sound filled the space and seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
As we chanted, I watched the stone. At first nothing visible occurred. But gradually, the stone began to soften, not becoming liquid but becoming more malleable, more willing to be shaped. The builders working with the stone used simple tools to guide its transformation, and the stone flowed slowly into the desired form, creating smooth curves and stable structures that would have required extensive cutting and fitting with conventional methods.
When the chant ended, the stone hardened again, now in its new form, and the structure was complete. The entire process had taken perhaps an hour where conventional building would have taken days or weeks. The magic had been efficient and effective, and it had been produced through collective participation rather than through the exceptional ability of a single mage.
Sila explained that Nunatsiavummiut Song worked by creating shared intent, by aligning the participants’ understanding of what should happen and channeling that collective understanding toward the Ideals being invoked. No single participant needed to be a master Song Incanter. The group as a whole achieved what individuals could not, with each voice contributing to the larger pattern that the Ideals responded to.
This approach has obvious advantages for a communalist society. Magic is not the province of specialists who hoard their knowledge and charge for their services. Magic is something the community does together, accessible to anyone who is willing to learn the chants and participate in the collective working. The power that might have been concentrated in the hands of a few mage-rulers is instead distributed throughout the population, available for communal projects that benefit everyone.
The disadvantage is that Nunatsiavummiut Song is less versatile than individual invocation, limited to effects that can be achieved through lengthy chanting by groups that must gather and coordinate. You cannot use communal Song for emergency responses that require immediate magical intervention. You cannot use it for subtle effects that require precise control. You cannot use it for applications where gathering a group would be impractical or impossible.
The Nunatsiavummiut address this limitation through their shamans, who do practice individual Song and who can provide emergency magical assistance when needed. But the shamans use their individual capability for the community’s benefit rather than for personal advancement, and they understand their role as complementing the communal magic rather than replacing it.
I asked several participants in the communal chanting whether they felt their individual contribution mattered given that so many voices were joining together. The responses were consistent: yes, every voice mattered, because the strength of the Song came from the number of participants and from the sincerity of their participation. A chant with many indifferent participants would be weak. A chant with fewer truly committed participants would be stronger. The magic responded not merely to sound but to intent, and intent required genuine engagement from each individual.
This created interesting dynamics where social pressure encouraged participation not through fear of punishment but through understanding that your neighbors needed you, that the communal projects that made life better for everyone required your contribution, that being part of the community meant being part of the collective work including the collective magic.
The third magical tradition practiced by the Nunatsiavummiut is something they call Natural magic, and it is a practice so new and so poorly understood that I hesitate to document it at all given my limited exposure and understanding. However, it represents something potentially significant, a magical approach that I have not encountered anywhere else in my travels, and I feel obligated to record what I observed even if my understanding is incomplete.
Natural magic is, as Sila explained it to me, the practice of working directly with living systems, of cooperating with growth and development rather than imposing change from outside. It is asking a tree to grow in a certain shape rather than cutting and carving the wood after the tree is felled. It is encouraging stone to take a certain form through patient negotiation rather than through force. It is partnering with the natural processes of the world rather than trying to control them.
The practice emerged, according to Sila, approximately thirty years ago, when a young shaman named Tulugaq-who-speaks-with-growing-things began experimenting with ways to combine Ink magic and Song magic with direct communication with living beings. Tulugaq discovered that plants and even stones possess a kind of awareness, not consciousness in the way that humans possess consciousness but rather a kind of responsiveness, a capacity to react to requests and to change themselves if the request is made properly and if the requesting entity is respectful.
I met Tulugaq, who is now in their fifties and is training a small group of apprentices in this nascent tradition. They showed me homes that had been grown rather than built, trees that had been encouraged to form their trunks and branches into walls and roofs and floors, creating living structures that were simultaneously functional dwellings and thriving plants.
The process takes years. You begin with seeds or young trees, and you establish relationship with them through regular attention and through gentle Song that communicates your hopes for how they might grow. You paint Ink patterns on their bark that reinforce growth in certain directions, that strengthen certain branches, that encourage the development of the forms you need. And you wait, and you maintain the relationship, and gradually, over seasons and years, the trees grow into the shapes you have requested.
The resulting structures are remarkable. The walls are living wood, still drawing nutrients from roots in the ground, still growing leaves in summer and shedding them in autumn. The interior spaces are warm in winter and cool in summer through the tree’s own temperature regulation. The structures require minimal maintenance because they maintain themselves through their own living processes. And they are beautiful, organic forms that seem to emerge naturally from the landscape rather than being imposed upon it.
I asked Tulugaq whether this magic could be used to grow structures quickly, whether it could be accelerated through more intensive magical application. They looked troubled by the question and explained that rushing the process violated the fundamental principle of Natural magic, which is cooperation and respect rather than control and imposition. The trees grow at their own pace, and trying to force them to grow faster would damage them and would likely result in structures that were weak or unstable.
“This is slow magic,” Tulugaq said. “It requires patience and trust and willingness to work at the pace that nature permits. It will never replace conventional building for needs that are urgent. But for permanent structures, for homes that will shelter families for generations, for buildings that will last centuries, this magic produces results that are superior to anything we can achieve through cutting and shaping dead materials. The question is whether we can accept the time investment, whether we can think in terms of decades rather than months.”
This philosophy of working at nature’s pace, of accepting timelines that are determined by living processes rather than by human impatience, struck me as profoundly counter to Confederation thinking. In my homeland, everything is about speed, about efficiency, about achieving results as quickly as possible so that those results can be exploited for advantage. The idea of waiting years to grow a structure when you could build one in months would be dismissed as hopelessly impractical.
But watching the grown homes, observing their beauty and their functionality and their integration with the landscape, I recognized that the Nunatsiavummiut had achieved something that the Confederation with all its advanced magitech had never achieved: they had created buildings that enhanced rather than displaced the natural environment, that continued to live and grow and contribute to the ecosystem rather than being dead structures that required constant maintenance and eventual replacement.
The practice of Natural magic is still limited to a few practitioners and is not widely used even within Nunatsiavummiut society. Most homes are still built through conventional methods, though those methods involve more cooperation with nature than Confederation building would. But the existence of this tradition, the fact that someone thought to develop it and that others are learning it, speaks to something essential about Nunatsiavummiut values and about their relationship with the world.
They do not see nature as resource to be exploited or as obstacle to be overcome. They see it as partner, as community member, as entity deserving of respect and cooperation. And they develop their magical practices accordingly, creating traditions that work with nature rather than against it, that enhance natural processes rather than replacing them, that produce results that are harmonious rather than extractive.
[Silt-in-River’s note]: The scholar is correct that Natural magic represents something new and significant, though he perhaps does not fully appreciate how radical it is. For millennia, magical practice has been about human will imposing itself on the world, about making reality conform to our desires. Even the gentler traditions, even Song magic that works with Ideals rather than against them, still fundamentally operate through human agency directing change. Natural magic inverts this entirely, making human will subordinate to natural processes, making the human practitioner a partner rather than a director. If this tradition develops and spreads, it could transform how all magical practice is understood and taught. Or it could remain a small, specialized practice of mountain shamans. Time will tell. What matters is that someone thought to try, thought to ask whether there might be a different way to relate to the world through magic. That question alone is valuable regardless of what answers it produces.
I have documented the physical forms, the social organization, the magical practices, and I have done so with as much accuracy and detail as I can muster. But I find that I have not yet addressed what matters most about the Nunatsiavummiut, what has affected me most deeply, what has forced me to reconsider everything I thought I understood about how people should live.
They are happy.
This sounds like a trivial observation, like something too simple to merit extended discussion. But it is not trivial at all. It is perhaps the most important thing I have ever documented in all my years of scholarly work.
The Nunatsiavummiut are genuinely, sustainably, deeply happy. Not the manic temporary pleasure that comes from entertainment or intoxication. Not the fleeting satisfaction of achieving a goal or acquiring something desired. Not the relief of having avoided some threatened harm. But actual happiness, the contentment that comes from living in a way that satisfies fundamental human needs, that provides meaning and connection and purpose and security.
I have lived among them for three months, and in that time I have not witnessed the kinds of suffering that are omnipresent in the Confederation. I have not seen desperate poverty, because everyone’s basic needs are met. I have not seen crushing labor, because work is distributed fairly and no one is forced to work beyond their capacity. I have not seen violent conflict, because disputes are resolved through mediation and consensus rather than through force. I have not seen hopelessness, because everyone has meaningful roles and knows they matter to their community.
There is still difficulty, certainly. People still experience grief when loved ones die. They still face challenges from harsh weather and dangerous terrain. They still must work hard to survive in an environment that is not forgiving of carelessness or incompetence. But these difficulties are faced collectively, with community support, with the knowledge that others will help bear the burden when it becomes too heavy for one person to carry alone.
The contrast with the Confederation is so stark that I have found myself frequently overcome with emotion, sometimes anger, sometimes grief, sometimes simply the desperate wish that I had been born here, that I had grown up in a culture that understood what humans actually need rather than what we have been taught to want.
In the Confederation, we are taught that happiness comes from achievement, from status, from accumulating more than others, from proving our superiority through display. We are taught that competition is natural and necessary, that hierarchy is inevitable, that some people deserve to suffer because of their failures or inadequacies. We are taught that security can only come through individual accumulation of resources, that depending on others is weakness, that the strong stand alone while the weak huddle together.
All of this is lies. Not mistakes, not misconceptions, but deliberate lies propagated by those who benefit from a system that makes most people miserable while concentrating power and resources in the hands of a few.
The Nunatsiavummiut demonstrate that human happiness comes from community, from meaningful work, from security, from being needed and valued and supported. They demonstrate that cooperation produces better outcomes than competition, that sharing resources creates more prosperity than hoarding them, that helping each other makes everyone stronger rather than making anyone weaker.
They demonstrate that the Confederation’s supposed sophistication and advancement has come at the cost of making us into something less than we could be, something twisted and diminished and perpetually unsatisfied. We have magnificent cities and advanced magic and elaborate hierarchies, and we are miserable. They have simple homes and modest resources and egalitarian communities, and they are happy.
I know how this observation will be received if this document circulates in the Confederation. I will be dismissed as having “gone native,” as having been seduced by primitive simplicity, as having lost my objectivity and my critical judgment. The Confederation’s ideologues will argue that Nunatsiavummiut happiness is an illusion, that they would be happier if they had access to Confederation luxuries, that their satisfaction with their simple lives indicates limited aspirations rather than genuine contentment.
These arguments are wrong. I have spoken with dozens of Nunatsiavummiut about their lives, about whether they envy the Confederation’s wealth and power, about whether they feel they are missing something by living as they do. The responses are consistent: they pity us. They pity the Confederation humans who must constantly perform, who live in fear of losing status, who never feel secure because security depends on individual achievement rather than communal support. They pity us for having so much materially and so little of what actually matters.
Sauniq told me once, late at night after we had shared a meal and were sitting by the fire: “Your people have magic that can light cities and weapons that can destroy armies and buildings that reach toward the sky. But you do not have each other. You do not know that you can rely on your neighbors, that your community will catch you if you fall, that you matter simply because you exist rather than because of what you can achieve or display. What use is all your magic and all your wealth if it does not buy you safety and belonging and peace? You have traded everything that matters for things that do not matter, and you do not even realize what you have lost.”
I had no response to this. I sat in silence, feeling the truth of her words like a physical blow, and I cried. I cried for the life I might have had if I had been born somewhere else. I cried for my people, who suffer in the midst of plenty and do not understand why they suffer. I cried for myself, for the decades I spent pursuing status and achievement and the approval of a system that was never designed to make me happy.
Sauniq held me while I cried, offering no words, just presence and comfort. And when I had finished, when I had exhausted myself with weeping, she said simply: “You understand now. This is good. Understanding is the first step toward healing.”
Near the end of my stay, Sila invited me to participate in a ritual that they perform annually, a ceremony of gratitude and renewal that involves the entire tribe and that typically includes visiting guests as honored participants. I accepted the invitation without fully understanding what I was agreeing to, eager to document whatever cultural practice I was being offered access to.
The ritual took place at dawn, at a sacred site high in the mountains that required a full day’s climb to reach. The entire tribe made the journey, from the youngest children to the oldest elders, all of us climbing together through the cold morning air, arriving at the site as the sun was rising and painting the peaks in shades of gold and pink.
The site itself was a natural amphitheater, a bowl-shaped depression in the mountainside surrounded by standing stones that had been carved with elaborate Ink patterns and that had been maintained for generations, perhaps for centuries. The stones created a space that felt separated from ordinary reality, a place where the boundary between physical and spiritual was somehow thinner.
We gathered in the center of the space, the eight hundred members of the tribe forming a large circle, with the children in the inner rings and the adults forming the outer rings. Sila stood at the circle’s center, with Qilaq beside them, and they began the chant.
The chant had no words, just tones and rhythms, and it built slowly, with more voices joining as the pattern became clear. The sound surrounded us, resonating off the stone walls of the amphitheater, creating harmonics that seemed to come from the mountains themselves rather than from human throats.
As the chant continued, something shifted. The air became thick, heavy, charged with something I could not name. The light seemed brighter, the colors more vivid. My own boundaries began to feel less solid, less certain. I was myself and I was part of the collective, simultaneously individual and merged, a single note in a larger harmony that was beautiful beyond anything I had experienced.
The chant rose to a peak, all eight hundred voices joining in a single sustained tone that felt like it could shatter stone or remake the world, and then Sila spoke, their voice somehow audible despite the continuing chant, somehow present in the spaces between the sound:
“We give thanks for what we have been given. We give thanks for the mountains that shelter us, for the water that sustains us, for the fish and the plants that feed us. We give thanks for each other, for the community that makes us whole, for the labor we share and the love we give and the lives we build together. We give thanks for being alive, for existing in this moment, for the privilege of consciousness and breath and the ability to choose how we live.”
As Sila spoke, I felt something break inside me. All the armor I had built, all the defenses I had constructed to survive in the Confederation’s brutal competitive hierarchy, all the lies I had told myself about what mattered and what I needed, all of it cracked and fell away. I stood there naked before the truth that the Nunatsiavummiut lived every day: that we are not meant to be alone, not meant to compete for scraps, not meant to prove our worth through achievement and display. We are meant to be together, to support each other, to build lives that are about connection and meaning rather than about status and accumulation.
I sobbed. I fell to my knees in the snow and I sobbed, and the chant continued around me, holding me as I fell apart and began to reassemble into something different, something that might actually be capable of healing from the damage that the Confederation had inflicted on me.
Sauniq was there, and Nuvua, and others whose names I knew and many whose names I did not, and they held me and let me grieve for what I had lost and what I had never had. And when I could breathe again, when I could see clearly through the tears, I understood what Sauniq had meant when she said that understanding was the first step toward healing.
I understood that the Confederation was not merely flawed or unjust or cruel in its treatment of other species. It was fundamentally broken, organized according to principles that made happiness impossible, that transformed people into competitors and performers and isolated individuals desperately trying to achieve security that the system was designed to deny them.
I understood that I could never go back, not really, not in any way that mattered. I could physically return to Confederation territory, could continue my work, could survive. But I could never again believe the lies, never again accept the system as natural or inevitable, never again participate in the performance without recognizing it as performance.
I understood that the Nunatsiavummiut had given me something precious: they had shown me what humans could be, what we were meant to be, what we might someday become if we could find the courage to choose differently than we have chosen.
And I understood that this knowledge was both gift and burden, because seeing clearly means you cannot unsee, and knowing what is possible means you can no longer accept the supposedly impossible as natural or inevitable.
[Silt-in-River’s note]: I have watched many people undergo the transformation that the human scholar has experienced, this shattering and rebuilding of the self that occurs when someone raised in broken systems encounters functioning ones. It is always painful. It is always necessary. The scholar will carry this pain for the rest of his life, will always feel the weight of understanding what could be and what is, will always grieve for those who remain trapped in systems that diminish them. But he will also carry the knowledge that different ways of being are possible, that human nature is more flexible and more generous than he was taught, that we are not doomed to repeat the failures of the past simply because those failures are familiar. This knowledge is both wound and weapon, hurt and healing. May he use it well. May he share it widely. May it spread until it reaches even the hardest hearts and the most defended minds. This is my hope for him and my hope for all who will read his words and recognize in them the truth that their own systems have hidden from them.
The Nunatsiavummiut relationship with other peoples demonstrates their egalitarian principles in practice, revealing values that could be mere rhetoric but which are instead consistently enacted through policy and through individual behavior. The mountain tribes maintain trade relationships with the Northern Lanxes, limited contact with the Najari (largely prevented by geography and the desert’s heat rather than by hostility), and active protection of Fae who dwell in their territories.
The Northern Lanxes, being the closest thing to cultural cousins that the Nunatsiavummiut possess, are welcomed as trading partners and occasionally as settlers when individuals or families choose to relocate from the feudal north to the communal mountains. I witnessed the arrival of a Northern Lanx family seeking to join the tribe, and the welcome they received was warm and immediate. They were provided with temporary housing while a permanent home could be prepared, were given food and supplies to sustain them through the transition, were introduced to community members and shown the settlement’s layout and routines.
The integration process was remarkably smooth, with the new arrivals being treated as full community members from the moment they arrived rather than as probationary outsiders who must prove themselves worthy of acceptance. They were expected to contribute labor according to their capabilities, certainly, but they were not required to earn their keep or to demonstrate value before receiving support. The assumption was that people who chose to join the community did so because they shared its values and wanted to participate in its life, and this assumption created the conditions for it to be true.
I asked Qilaq whether the tribe had ever accepted someone who then refused to contribute, who took advantage of the generous welcome to exploit the community. They acknowledged that this had happened occasionally, perhaps two or three times in their tenure as chief, and that such individuals were eventually asked to leave if they persisted in refusing to participate. But these cases were rare exceptions, not common problems, and the tribe’s willingness to trust and welcome newcomers was not diminished by the occasional breach of that trust.
This openness to outsiders creates a steady flow of migration from the feudal north to the communal mountains, with individuals who find the Northern Lanx hierarchy stifling choosing to seek lives where status is not determined by birth and where cooperation is valued over competition. The migration is not massive, perhaps a few dozen individuals per year across all the mountain tribes, but it is consistent and it enriches the mountain communities with new perspectives and skills.
The relationship with the Najari is friendly but limited by practical barriers. The mountain climate is punishingly cold for beings adapted to desert heat, and the desert climate is likewise hostile to mountain-adapted Najari who would quickly overheat in temperatures they would find comfortable. Trade occurs through intermediaries in border regions, with goods passing through several hands before reaching final destinations, but direct contact between the two peoples is rare.
However, the Nunatsiavummiut speak of the Najari with respect and interest, viewing them as fellow practitioners of communal organization who have achieved prosperity through cooperation rather than through conquest. There is none of the Confederation contempt for serpent-forms or the religious justifications for hostility. The Najari are simply other people who live differently, and this difference is interesting rather than threatening.
The Nunatsiavummiut relationship with the Fae is perhaps the most telling indicator of their values, for it demonstrates their willingness to extend community membership and support to beings who are profoundly different, who require things that others do not require, who can be dangerous when their needs are not met.
The mountain territories are home to perhaps two dozen Fae at any given time, with some maintaining permanent residence in or near the tribes while others pass through seasonally. The Fae are welcomed as community members, provided with the Exchange they need to survive, integrated into the social fabric in ways that recognize their nature while also recognizing their personhood.
I met several Fae during my stay, and their relationship with the Nunatsiavummiut was markedly different from any Fae-human relationship I had observed in other contexts. There was no fear, no suspicion, no constant vigilance about theft or betrayal. The Fae participated in communal activities, contributed their labor to collective projects, received food and shelter and social recognition in return. The stealing that characterizes Fae behavior elsewhere was minimal here, largely because the Fae’s needs were met proactively rather than requiring them to take what they needed.
One Fae who had lived with the tribe for nearly a decade, a being who called themselves “Stone-That-Sings-in-Wind,” explained to me that this was the only community they had ever encountered where they felt truly welcomed rather than merely tolerated. “In the lowlands, among your people and others, we are monsters or tools or problems to be managed. Here, we are simply people who need what we need, and the community provides it because that is what communities do for their members. I work, I contribute, I am valued. This is all anyone wants, yet so few ever find it.”
The shamans work closely with the Fae, understanding them as beings who exist at the boundary between narrative and void, who possess knowledge and capabilities that can benefit the community, who deserve support and respect rather than destruction or exploitation. Sila told me that they learned much from the Fae about the nature of reality, about the Weaver’s pattern, about the relationship between narrative consistency and ontological stability. This knowledge informed shamanic practice and enriched the tribe’s understanding of the world.
The tribe also maintains protective relationships with Fae who dwell in the surrounding mountains but who do not wish to join settled communities. These Fae are visited regularly, are offered food and Exchange, are checked on to ensure they are not in distress or approaching the starvation that leads to ferality. This protective outreach costs the tribe resources and labor, but it is considered essential work, a moral obligation to beings who deserve support simply because they exist and need help.
This attitude toward the Fae crystallized something for me about Nunatsiavummiut values. They do not calculate worth based on similarity to themselves or based on what others can provide in return. They extend support based on need, based on the understanding that all sapient beings deserve to have their basic needs met, based on the conviction that community is not transactional but rather is about mutual care and about recognizing our interdependence.
The Confederation asks “what can you do for me?” before deciding whether you deserve consideration. The Nunatsiavummiut ask “what do you need?” and then provide it because providing it is what good people do for other people.
The mountain tribes have never engaged in expansionist warfare, have never sought to conquer their neighbors or to impose their ways on others through force. This is not because they lack military capability—the warrior traditions are strong and the Ink-enhanced fighters are formidable—but because conquest is antithetical to their values.
I pressed Qilaq on this point, asking whether they would not benefit from expanding their territories, from gaining access to resources controlled by others, from increasing their population through absorbing conquered peoples. Qilaq seemed puzzled by the question and explained patiently, as though to a child who had failed to grasp something obvious:
“Why would we conquer others? We have what we need. Our valleys provide adequate agriculture, our streams provide fish, our mountains provide stone and metals and other necessaries. We could expand our territories, certainly, but this would require labor that we could instead use for our own communities, would create resentment among conquered peoples who did not choose to join us, would make us into oppressors rather than cooperators. What benefit would justify these costs? What would we gain that would be worth becoming the kind of people who take from others by force?”
I had no answer to this. In the Confederation, the answer is obvious: you conquer because you can, because expansion is itself valuable, because power and territory and the subjugation of others are goods worth pursuing. But standing in the mountains, speaking with people who had built functioning communities based on mutual support rather than on hierarchy and domination, the Confederation’s logic seemed hollow. Why would you conquer others when you could instead simply build good lives for your own people? Why would you create enemies when you could instead create trading partners? Why would you spend resources on violence when you could spend them on making your communities better?
The defensive capabilities of the mountain tribes are substantial, with warriors trained in combat and with strategic positions fortified against potential attacks. But these defenses exist to protect against external threats, not to project power beyond tribal territories. The tribes have fought defensive wars in the past, repelling incursions by forces seeking to claim mountain resources or to subjugate mountain peoples. But they have never launched offensive campaigns, never sought to expand through violence, never viewed military power as tool for accumulation rather than as tool for protection.
This defensive-only stance requires discipline and principle, for there are certainly contexts where offensive action might seem advantageous, where preemptive strikes might prevent future threats, where conquest might provide immediate material benefits. The tribes maintain their principles anyway, trusting that peaceful relations serve them better in the long term than violent expansion would, and the historical record supports this trust. The mountain territories remain independent and prosperous while more aggressive neighbors exhaust themselves in costly conflicts that produce temporary gains at permanent moral cost.
I cannot write a conventional conclusion to this document. I cannot summarize findings with scholarly detachment, cannot offer balanced assessment of strengths and weaknesses, cannot maintain the analytical distance that my previous work attempted to achieve. The Nunatsiavummiut have broken something in me that needed breaking, and I will not pretend otherwise.
I was raised in the Confederation to believe that we represented the pinnacle of human achievement, that our hierarchy was natural and necessary, that our treatment of other species was justified by our superiority, that our way of organizing society was the only functional approach to the challenges of civilization. I was taught that people are naturally competitive and acquisitive, that communal organization inevitably fails because humans are too selfish to cooperate voluntarily, that hierarchy emerges inevitably because some people are simply better than others and deserve to rule.
All of this is false. Not merely mistaken, not simply one perspective among many, but actively, demonstrably false in ways that three months among the Nunatsiavummiut have made undeniably clear.
People are not naturally competitive and acquisitive. We become competitive and acquisitive when we are raised in systems that reward those behaviors and punish cooperation and sharing. When we are raised in communities that value mutual support and that provide security through collective care rather than through individual accumulation, we behave cooperatively and generously. Human nature is flexible enough to adapt to the systems we create, and the systems we create then tell us that the behaviors they produce are natural and inevitable.
Communal organization does not fail because of human selfishness. Communal organization succeeds when it is genuinely implemented, when resources are actually shared, when decisions are actually made collectively, when the community actually supports all its members rather than creating hidden hierarchies that concentrate power while claiming egalitarianism. The Nunatsiavummiut have maintained their communal society for generations, producing prosperity and happiness that exceed what the Confederation achieves despite all its wealth and power.
Hierarchy does not emerge inevitably. Hierarchy is created deliberately by those who benefit from it and is maintained through force, through propaganda, through religious justifications, through careful training that teaches people to accept their subordination as natural. When communities actively resist hierarchy, when they structure their governance and their economics to distribute power and resources equitably, when they make decisions collectively and treat all members as equally valuable, hierarchy does not emerge. The supposed inevitability of hierarchy is propaganda designed to make those who are subordinated accept their subordination.
The Confederation’s treatment of other species is not justified by any principle beyond raw power. The Lanxes are not fallen or degraded. The Najari are not cursed. The Fae are not demons. They are all people, deserving of the same respect and consideration that we claim for ourselves, and treating them as less than people is not theological necessity or evolutionary inevitability but rather is simple bigotry dressed in religious language.
I have watched the Nunatsiavummiut live according to different principles, and I have watched them thrive in ways that falsify every Confederation claim about why hierarchy and competition and exploitation are necessary. They have shown me that different ways of being are possible, that we could choose to organize ourselves according to values that actually serve human flourishing rather than according to values that concentrate power in the hands of a few while making most people miserable.
This knowledge is painful. It means recognizing that I have wasted decades of my life pursuing status and achievement within a system that was designed to make me miserable, that I have participated in and benefited from injustices that I now recognize as indefensible, that the society I was raised to revere is actually a mechanism for producing suffering while convincing those who suffer that their suffering is their own fault.
This knowledge is also liberating. It means I no longer have to pretend that the Confederation’s way is the only way or the best way. I no longer have to defend the indefensible or to justify the unjustifiable. I can simply state clearly: we have chosen wrong, we have built societies that fail to serve human needs, and we could choose differently if we were brave enough to abandon the comfortable lies that make our current choices seem inevitable.
I do not know what I will do with this knowledge. I cannot remain in the mountains permanently, though part of me wishes I could. I must eventually return to the Confederation or to the border regions, must continue my work in whatever form that work can now take. But I will return changed, will carry with me the understanding that the Nunatsiavummiut gave me, will do what I can to share what I have learned with others who might be ready to hear it.
Perhaps this document will contribute to eventual change, will plant seeds that might grow into movements for reform, will help others recognize that the systems we have built are not inevitable and that we could build differently. Perhaps it will simply earn me further condemnation, will mark me as hopeless radical who has lost all objectivity and all connection to his own people. Perhaps both will be true simultaneously, as has been the case with my previous work.
I know only this: the Nunatsiavummiut have shown me what we could be, and I cannot unsee it. I cannot pretend that the Confederation’s magnificence is anything more than beautiful facade covering systematic cruelty. I cannot accept that hierarchy and competition and isolation are natural when I have watched people live cooperatively and communally and happily. I cannot remain silent about what I have witnessed when remaining silent would mean allowing others to continue suffering under systems that we were told were inevitable but which are actually just choices, choices that could be made differently.
To the Nunatsiavummiut, I offer my deepest gratitude for the welcome you extended, for the patience you showed, for the wisdom you shared, for the healing you facilitated. You gave me something precious: you gave me hope that humans can be better than we currently are, that we are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past simply because those mistakes are familiar.
To those who read this document, I offer this challenge: if what I have described seems impossible, if communal organization and genuine egalitarianism and collective care seem like utopian fantasies that could never work in practice, then I challenge you to explain the Nunatsiavummiut. They exist. They function. They are happy. Either my descriptions are false, which you are welcome to verify by traveling to the mountains and observing for yourself, or your assumptions about human nature and social organization are false, which means you should reconsider those assumptions and what they have led you to accept as natural and inevitable.
We could be better than we are. We could build societies that actually serve human flourishing rather than serving the accumulation of power by a few. We could choose cooperation over competition, mutual support over individual struggle, collective care over isolated achievement. The Nunatsiavummiut prove this is possible. Whether we have the courage to learn from them, whether we can overcome our attachment to familiar patterns even when those patterns hurt us, whether we can imagine and then build something better, these are questions whose answers will determine what we become.
I have seen what we could be. Now I must return to what we are and find some way to bridge the gap between them. This is the work that remains, and it is work that will likely consume the rest of my life. I accept this burden gladly, because the alternative is to accept that the Confederation’s way is the only way, and I can no longer accept that lie.
May we someday achieve the wisdom that the Nunatsiavummiut live daily. May we someday build societies that make people happy instead of making them perform. May we someday recognize each other as people who need support rather than as competitors to be defeated. May we someday choose to be human in the way that the Nunatsiavummiut are human rather than in the way that the Confederation has taught us to be.
This is my hope. It is all I have left after everything else has fallen away.
— Scholar Valerius Thorne
Written in Káranerissak, Mountain Territories
Year 291 Post-Breaking
[Silt-in-River’s final note]:
The scholar has completed his journey, has seen what needed seeing, has understood what needed understanding. He will carry this knowledge and this pain for the rest of his days, will never again be comfortable in the systems that shaped him, will always feel the weight of understanding what could be and what is. This is the burden of awakening, and it is a burden I have watched many carry and few carry well.To those who read his words and recognize truth in them, I offer this counsel: the path from understanding to action is long and difficult, but it is also necessary. Understanding alone changes nothing. You must take what you have learned and use it to transform your own life, your own communities, your own relationships. You must choose differently in small ways before you can choose differently in large ways. You must practice cooperation and mutual support and collective care in whatever contexts you find yourself, must build small examples of different ways of being that might inspire others to build their own examples, until eventually the accumulated weight of all these small changes becomes sufficient to challenge the systems that currently dominate.
This is slow work. This is patient work. This is work that extends beyond individual lifetimes. But it is necessary work, and it is work that every person who has awakened to the failures of current systems must take up in whatever ways they are able.
The scholar has shown you what is possible. Now you must decide what you will do with that knowledge. Will you dismiss it as impractical fantasy? Will you acknowledge it but change nothing? Or will you take it into yourself and use it to become part of the transformation that our world desperately needs?
This is the question that faces all who truly see. May you answer it with courage and with wisdom. May you become part of the healing rather than part of the harm. May you help build the world that could be rather than accepting the world that is.
The mountains wait for those who are ready to climb. The path is difficult but the view from the summit justifies every hardship of the ascent. I have seen the scholar begin his climb. Now I watch to see who else will follow.