The Spree
The people of the Guwala
At a Glance
- Who
- An amphibian people of Jinjara — a custom lineage built for this world
- Where
- The Guwala Jungle, the northwestern reach of Tohsa
- Raised
- In clans, by the whole clan — a generation is born once every few years and comes up together
- What they hold
- Cordys — a prized fungus of the jungle, harvested sustainably and central to their practices
- What they trade
- A rationed amount of Cordys each year, and no more
- Where they trade it
- North Point Village, on the coast at the jungle’s western edge
- The claim
- Held by treaty with House Tahlama; the ships that come for the ration sail under House Sai
- The jungle
- All but unsurvivable for anyone who is not Spree
- Of the players
- Trill is Spree
The People
The Spree are an amphibian people of Jinjara, and the Guwala is theirs. They are not a house, not a faction, and not a client of either — they are the only people who can live in the jungle they live in, and every arrangement they have with the outside world rests on that one fact.
The Clan and the Cohort
A Spree is raised by their clan rather than by one or two parents. Generations arrive in waves — a cohort is born once every few years — and that cohort comes up together, in the care of everyone.
What a cohort learns, it learns as a group: how to hunt, how to survive the jungle, and how to find Cordys.
The Guwala
The Guwala Jungle covers the northwestern reach of Tohsa, running east into a second lobe the maps mark as E. Guwala. North Point Village sits on the coast at its western edge, and it is where the Spree meet the ships.
The jungle is close to impossible for any sentient being besides the Spree to survive in. This does not stop greedy folk from trying. It is not unusual to come across the bones of interlopers in the Guwala, and not unusual to find what they were carrying still lying beside them.
Cordys
Cordys is a fungus of the Guwala, and it is prized. The Spree take great care to harvest it sustainably, because of what it means to their cultural practices. Each year they set aside a certain amount of it for trade with the outside world — a ration, decided by them.
The Claim
The Spree’s claim on the jungle is maintained by a series of treaties and agreements. The territorial treaty is held with House Tahlama, who administer western Tohsa and whose instrument is the written word. The right to carry the annual ration is a separate matter: it is House Sai shipping that puts in at North Point, and Sai coin that meets the Spree at the dock.
Paper Rots
Paper simply rots away in the jungle. Books and ink are therefore basically unknown among the Spree, and what education there is in reading and writing is very basic — enough to work with the outside world, and no more than that.
Deliberately Unwritten
Open threads — absent, not settled
What Cordys actually does — what it is worth to the outside world, what the Spree use it for, and which of their practices it is central to — is not written. Neither is its place in Botany & Reagents: the table has no Cordys entry, and the page is frozen.
How many clans there are, how they relate to one another, who speaks for the Spree when a treaty is signed, and what happens when the ration is not enough for the buyers: unwritten.
The lineage itself — lifespan, aging, whether Trill’s chameleon skin is a Spree trait or theirs alone, and anything at the level of a sheet — is unwritten. Canon is frozen once written; silence here is a gap to be filled, not a fact that these things do not exist.