Vestfal

The Grand Waltz
Vestfal has its own version of The Season - a short summer full of long twilit evenings, seductive dances, opulence and plenty of bubbly Dewdrop liqueur. The Grand Waltz is a time for Vestfalian citizens to cut loose and be decadent. Ultimately, though, it is a tradition steeped in conservative nostalgia.

The Capital: Birobidia
The part-dwarven population of Vestfal shares its territory with Iberiyan shepherds, Ros skirmishers and borders on the duchies of Voiyvod. Vestfal is multinational, so the Gopniki technically have 'nationhood' as an autonomous okrug within the bounds of Vestfal. In practice, Gopniki culture is under threat, religious practice has changed and gone somewhat underground due to persecution, and Gopniki themselves would be barely recognisable to the dwarves of the old Motherland. If Iberiyans are a vibrant culture without a territory, Gopniki Okrug is a run-down territory with little resources and a disjointed cultural legacy.

Gopniki Okrug is sometimes called "The Pale of Settlement" - seated on the wild Western edge of frontier Vestfal, to the north of the icy Voyivod territories. Vestfalian bureaucrats pretty much sent the starving Gopniki there because nobody else was willing to go.

Law and custom
Gopniki law, also called Halaka, is based on a combination of historical precedent, religious dictates (worship of Elo) and more recent local customs. It is enforced at a community level with a restorative justice approach. "Tit-for-tat" fines and Witangemot-style community trials are common. Clerics are sometimes brought in to interpret the finer points of religious law, but for minor infringements, most matters are settled over a drink by community consensus.

No Gopniki shall kill another Gopniki, that is the rule of the law - even to punish crime. This means that murderers, sex offenders and war criminals are branded and exiled. Gopniki fighters are extremely unwilling to kill their own, as they would potentially face exile from their homeland (effectively meaning they stand no chance of settling anywhere else in Vestfal).

Gopniki - a hybrid people
Countries and cultures all around Terranuova are mixed - some intermarriage and cultural exchange comes with the territory of migration. Gopniki oblast is distinct in that the other two dwarven-diaspora cultures tend to at least attempt marriage within their own tribes, but Gopniki seem determined to survive by coupling with partners from all sorts of species. Dwarven-human children are very common, or mostly-human children with just a hint of dwarven genetics - but dwarves from this impoverished oblast will also date and mate with supernatural peoples or even out and out monsters from the Voiyvod. The suffering of both indigenous and sentient non-humanoid fauna seems to resonate with Gopniki culture, meaning they are open to political alliances and intimate dalliances many kith would find disturbing. A notable exception would be the denizens of Kingdom Plantae, who are too geographically and climatically distant from far Vestfal and just too unrelated to create dwarf-plant varietal offspring. SO FAR.