Their most audacious accomplishment is having created an entire culture based solely on the principle that they have no culture.

Anmar Anakar, Asjarian chamberlain, 1376 AoE

T

Coalesced

Noctern Relations

Detente

Sontsu Relations

There will be no peace in this land so long as there is even one filthy, stinking, degenerate Sontsu slithering over that peninsula.

Vintcius Munatius Arrianus, Guilian king, 2206 AoR

Jontzu Relations

"White" Culture

he Lumidari are the second-largest ethnic group on Excilior . Of all casterway peoples, they are the only ones who are commonly identified as "white", although they display a great variety in their phenotype from country-to-country, and region-to-region. Their traditional lands are considered to be most of northern Isleprimoton and the historically-contentious Sentinnarean region. Although there are numerous countries that primarily identify themselves as Lumidari, Thigny is widely seen as the ideological home of their culture, and the country's legendary founder - Abnold Camponimous Thigny - is warmly remembered as their founding father.Despite their implicit connection to Abnold Thigny , they are one of the few cultures that does not claim to have descended from a common set of ancestors. Abnold Thigny certainly had children, and there are many alive today who can still trace their heritage back to his name, but there were plenty of white people on Excilior before he arrived in 649 AoE , and many who immigrated to his lands had nothing in common with him genetically. When Abnold Thigny established the nation of Thigny (which would eventually give rise to the Lumidari), he laid out a groundwork for political nonaggression and, some would say, isolationism. But like nearly every casterway ethnic group, the Lumidari would not adhere to these ideals for long.Although all oplander cultures have at least some legacy of Noctern aggression, and Noctern persecution was well established before anyone identified themselves as Lumidari, the Lumidari nations were some of the first - and the most strident - to enact formalized genocidal policies toward their subterranean neighbors. They were also some of the first to suffer the withering consequences of (trying to) wage outright, protracted wars against the Nocterns . These conflicts have broken out, repeatedly, over thousands of years, with the first (and perhaps, the most famous) being the Nomadic Wars , which began in 1202 AoE The irony of these conflicts is that, in more modern times, most Lumidari nations have had a longstanding unwritten policy of simply leaving the Nocterns alone. This somewhat-recent, and seemingly-peaceful, stance has nothing to do with any improved relations between the Noctern and Lumidari peoples. Quite the contrary. Racial animosity, mutual distrust, and outright hatred is alive-and-well between both cultures. But the Lumidari (after many painful lessons) seem to have learned that instigating a fight with the Noctern is akin to throwing rocks at a hornets' nest. Most Lumidari rulers and political leaders have come to realize that if they simply ignore the Nocterns altogether, it's quite easy for entire generations to pass without either culture bothering the other in any way.Lumidari nations have learned no such lessons about the Sontsu . With the Sontsu people slowly expanding northward from their ancestral base at the southern edge of the Sontsu Peninsula , and with the Lumidari eagerly expanding southward from their original home in Thigny , the eventual clash of cultures in-and-around the strategic (and resource-rich) Sentinnarean region has been the stage for some of the most brutal and long-lasting wars in casterway history. After (literally) thousands of years of bloody conflict, Lumidari nations now control all of the countries that border on the Sentinnarean . However, these victories have come at a terrible cost and the "peace" that currently exists between these groups is best described as fragile and tenuous. Although there are currently no open conflicts between these two peoples (and the countries they control), the legacy of racial hatred between them runs deep and the wounds are still fresh. Despite the current, outward appearance of peace in the region, the Sontsu people openly contend that all lands in the Sontsu Peninsula are, by ancestral right, theirs, and the ongoing presence of Lumidari kingdoms on the northern edge of the peninsula is a continual source of (barely concealed) tension between them.The other ethnic group that shares broad borders with the Lumidari is the Jontzu . Although these groups have no particular love for each other, they have enjoyed a long history that has been (mostly) devoid of conflict. This history of non-interference mostly stems from the fact that the Jontzu are famously insular, while the Sontsu have long been openly expansionist. Many Lumidari leaders have spoken derisively about the Jontzu (when they are amongst friendly company). But given the constant threat of renewed war with the Sontsu , the Lumidari have generally been loathe to initiate a second, draining campaign against the Jontzu . Such hesitance to initiate new aggression has also been supported by the fact that the Jontzu have a frightening, almost-mythical reputation for scorched-earth warfare. The live-and-let-live nature of Jontzu -Lumidari diplomacy has only been seriously threatened during those historical episodes when the Jontzu have openly allied with the Sontsu , or when they have been found to be collaborating.The common view of the Lumidari is that they are the "white" culture. And while this observation is overly (incredibly) simplistic, it is often used because, as an ethnic group, they are more varied than nearly any other population. Their peoples' height, size, body type, hair texture, and facial features are quite diverse. But given that no other ethnic groups are primarily associated with the Lumidaris' skin color, this has become their defining trait when referenced by foreigners. However, this can occasionally cause tension with other white people on Excilior . This is because there have always been at least some white people who do not identify with the Lumidari at all. There were white people, individually or in minority communities, sprinkled throughout the population before Abnold Thigny ever established his nation as the future centerpiece of the Lumidari - and some of those communities never felt compelled to relocate to Isleprimoton or to adopt the newfound traditions of this then-embryonic culture. And to this day, there are still people falling to the planet via excilation - some proportion of which are white - who have no idea what the Lumidari are, and feel no connection to their ways. For these "independent" white communities, it can be taken as a significant insult when they are blindly labeled as Lumidari and are lumped in with all of the foreign traditions and the putative faults of a people with whom they have never identified.