Roma (Dark Elf culture)

The Roma were an itinerant race of Elves in the Motherland, who have settled in Terranuova and established a vibrant and strong Queendom in the ruins of The Belfry - an ancient indigenous magical site.

The Long Road
Roma culture is defined by its history of ostracism and wandering, before the Terranuovan diaspora took place. The Roma are one of the cultures who have benefited from their displacement - being natural travellers, they quickly sought out the far corners of Terranuova and took up residence in a place where even the boldest adventurers might be fearful to go.

Most other peoples refer to a golden time in the old countries, but to Roma it is simply "The Long Road", a story of exploitation and sadness. Many pogroms and violent actions were taken against this subset of the Elven population. Eventually they took to hiding in caverns and adapting themselves to an underground life - complete with dark skin, a fungus based diet and a brutal social structure. This cultural and physical adaptation in turn left the Roma exposed to race based hatred and attacks by dungeoneers. So they took to travelling by night in wagons, moving from squat to squat and country to country. Only the nation of Batavia and some of the old wildlands were willing to openly tolerate the Roma - and echoes of these cultures have rubbed off on Roma society to this day.

The Belfry
Roma explorers came upon a massive limestone cave system in the subtropical midnorthern reaches of Terranuova - an area that appeared to have been an inland sea until a few millennia ago, when a great quantity of magic thrust the seabed up vertically. The surrounding terrain was a plug of mountainside, bush-covered and thorny, steep going for any would-be invaders. The caves themselves were completely infested with indigenous creatures, massive in their complexity, etched out by the meanderings of a very confused river (the Bellrope) and the draining sea (The Tide).

The Belfry resembles a great, squat barrelled church shape from far away - only up close does the sheer scale and steepness of this bizarre geological anomaly become apparent. It's brilliantly defensible, and the Roma are ideally suited to dwell in the massive cathedral-like central caverns with their sculpted limestone stalactites and eroded nooks. Finally, the wandering nation has a home it can defend, and they shall not be moved.

Unfortunately, living inside a giant magical pillar has not helped either the sanity or the lifestyle of this tenacious culture. They already had a reputation as outsiders, volatile and romantic figures with a matrilineal and often violent internal power dynamic. Their tendency to live in caves and squat in the demesne of Batavia has led to associations with the undead and other cruel stereotypes which are hard to displace when hordes of magical creatures keep appearing and/or gaining sentience in the basement of your citadel. Still, the Roma don't care too much what the outside world thinks of them - and as more voortrekkers cross the forests of southern Terranuova in search of tropical adventure, they have begun cultural exchanges and even bred with Roma people, dispelling some of the more toxic myths about the culture.

Indigenous myths around the Belfry vary. Some indigenous cultures are displeased by the Roma incursion, viewing it as sacrilege to disturb the Belfry. Many others argue that as long as the outside of the Belfry remains bush-clad and undisturbed, the Dark Elves are free to make a home inside such a crazy place. If the Roma ever decide to expand their territory to the surface, colonial tensions will come to a head. Ironically, Roma settlers themselves tend to underestimate the indigenous creatures and cultures that surround them.

Adventure hooks
The Belfry is a continuous dungeon and monster generator, full of crazy ancient magic and general fun times for adventurers. Many explorers have braved the bush and isolated setting, not to mention the Dark Elves' reputation, to come clear out the Belfry and perhaps raid a few exciting artifacts in the process. The Roma are happy enough to expand their territory downwards as The Tide drains slowly towards modern sea level: clearing out all the eldritch nasties that are revealed every time The Tide recedes is a task they prefer to outsource. Besides, adventurers are sexy: especially when their sexual identities are so different compared with traditional Roma values.

Grey Elves
When Dark Elves have children with either humans or even with Green Elves, some of their subterranean skills and traits are passed down to the next generation. These children are not quite as at home living underground, but still make excellent explorers and adventurers. They tend to be quite resilient to poisons as well as being able to skulk around in darkness - good traits for a Terranuovan explorer to have.

Since so many Terranuovans come from "a little bit of everywhere", Grey Elves don't experience quite the same terrible persecution as their Dark Elf ancestors. A city that's undergoing a pogrom or riot, however, would be a dangerous place for a Grey Elf of mixed origins, since it's still hard to hide the pointy ear tips or the slight melanin content of a Grey Elf's skin.

Grey Elves get social bonuses when interacting with adventurers, explorers or itinerant cultures and social penalties when interacting with conservative social groups from the Great Houses (who see the Roma as a cultural and racial threat), or some traditionalist castes who keep Motherland values.

Roma have a skeptical but humorous attitude to life. They're very relaxed about using minor bribes or an exchange of favours to "grease the wheels" of social interactions or business deals. Cash exchanges are known as 'blat' and work a bit like tipping. Even when what the person is after appears quite legal, blat can just be a way to get around an inconvenient bit of bureaucracy.

Roma arts and culture
A word of warning to outsiders: names like Tzigan, Drow or Gypsy are rude to the Roma, they're labels that other cultures have imposed on the Dark Elves, or reminders of older and arguably less civilised times. New terms that the Roma themselves seem to enjoy are "People of the Cave" or the vernacular "bats". The latter term's appropriate given how many enterprising Roma avoid the meanders of the Bellrope river by living on the walls and ceiling of their caverns!

The Roma have taken to carving and the decorative arts in a huge way since finding the citadel of their dreams. Nobody is more adept at limestone and marble sculpture; a couple of famous Roma have emerged as brilliant artists and engineers, including Lena Vinci, who used her war machine designs to finance an array of incredibly lifelike figurative sculptures that adorn both the Belfry and the halls of the Great Houses to this day. There's a certain irony in using pale marble as an art form when one is a Dark Elf, so more recent sculptors have begun working with granite and even obsidian, infusing magic into some sculptures but letting many simply stand as feats of physics. Roma art is still loosely representational but is veering towards distorted, Mannerist or even slightly Surrealist depictions. Grey Elf sculptors tend to prefer a more Realist, utilitarian art style that glorifies the work of adventurers.

Many legends about the Roma depict them as highly musical people. The acoustics of the Belfry have lent themselves to choral compositions and exploration of more formalised musical genres. Official Roma ceremonies feature massed choirs singing in one of the three traditional dialects. Informal celebrations still retain elements of chaos, folk song and dance.

Modern Roma have no interest in their origins beyond lugubrious songs and stories of The Long Road; they admire Dwarven cultures more than Green Elf ones (all those songs about leaving mountain caves behind have a certain traditional resonance). Dark Elf men have even taken to worshipping Elo instead of the matriarchal Llolth, seeing in him a paragon of masculine suffering as well as new found strength.

Politics and language
Culturally speaking the new Roma way is far more structured and stable than that of the past, and the avenues of cultural expression for Roma males and Two are less limited than they were on The Long Road. Two in particular have ready access to secular political office: they are celebrated as the heralds of a new way forward for the Roma. There's a generational divide between older and younger Roma. A few remaining elders are nostalgic for the perceivied stability of life in the ancien regime.

The Roma don't have an aristocracy but they do have the Fitosi - descendants of Dark Elves who somehow made the most of their new circumstances. They might have seized assets, acquired new magic or had the right skill set for their new environment. Fitosi show off their wealth in ostentatious ways - clothing, jewelry, exotic goods.

In the Motherland, Dark Elf men were objectified and made exotic in the eyes of other cultures - viewed as little more than feisty sex objects. Whether that's true or not, men had extremely limited options on The Long Road, so the diaspora has been very good for their cause. Men now have a stable enough life that they can organise collectively and campaign for the same basic elven rights as Dark Elf women. Protests are a common sight on the cavern floor of the Belfry. Many social campaigns these days are colourful and lively affairs, almost like a party, but this was not always the case. The beginnings of men's involvement in Roma politics were written in blood. Fortunately, it's much harder to enforce a matriarchal priesthood in a new country where the old female-oriented goddess Llolth doesn't exert much influence. Without magic on their side, the priestesses of Roma culture are just going to have to change.

Roma language is a hot mess. When different groups go to ground in caverns for years, the language evolves and changes to the point where various Roma groups have a terrible time understanding one another. So the main Roma language, Undercommon, actually resembles a sort of trade creole, with snatches of vocabulary and grammar borrowed from almost every Motherland culture under the moon. There are three truly Roma dialects, all of which sound quite distinct. that are mostly kept for ceremonial purposes. People who just speak Common can quickly get a good sense for Undercommon, but the dialects will sound very alien. Anyone who can understand Elven can work out the gist of the Roma dialects but not their nuance. That's okay: it's rare to find a Roma who can get their head around all three of the dialects!

Scholars occasionally wonder over porto and catmint: does the name Roma imply that Dark Elf culture stemmed out of the Latinate ancient Elven Empire, way back in the days of the early Motherland? There's no evidence that the term 'Roma' is anything but a convergence of linguistics. Presumably the Dark Elves were once either Green Elves or some other ancient species variation, but there's nothing distinguishably, er, Roman about the Roma beyond their love of monumental sculpture. So that's up to the speculation of Terranuovan scholars.