MSFT:Arabesque Confederacy
Some eight hundred nautical leagues past the western trades waters of the Father Kingdom begin the scattered islands of the Arabesque Confederacy; perhaps sixty loosely related tribes of lesser peoples generally disposed to warfare and cannibalism when their higher instincts desert them (which comes to pass with distressing frequency and regularity), though sharing a common language and culture and capable of a rudimentary imitation of civilized behavior in their more dignified moments.
Their own particular history they seem quite ignorant of, citing only "the coming of the Grandfather Chural" as either a founding event, an apocalyptic event, or perhaps both (their language is quite indistinct when it comes to verb tenses). In either event, they regard all other periods, times, and events as insignificant, preferring to regard the events immediately before them than to consider those which exist either as consequence or antecedent. Naturally, such disinclination must preclude agriculture, and so the primitives of the Arabesque Confederacy are quite unusual in that they have constructed permanent dwellings while still maintaining a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. This drastically limits the size of their rude, mud-and-straw villages, as well as attenuates the ferocity of their periodic tribal spats.
Their particularly ornate fleshwork is what inspired our name for their people, their own name being quite unpronounceable to civilized tongues and meaning little more than "the people who live here" in any event. Indeed, their higher castes are often shaped in such a way as to be nearly completely immobile, albeit quite pleasing to the eye. Likewise uniform to the features of the criminal class is a turbinate deformation of their extremal joints by means of rather crude and unpleasant instruments, the size and tightness of the coil related to severity of their crime, lending them the appearance of being colonized by sea snails. The most deformed have both legs intertwined and set in such grotesque manner that they -- as the higher castes -- are immobile and dependent upon the largess of others for survival. Quite often such unfortunates take to the ocean, where their handicap poses less impediment to daily function.
While they are clearly in need of further civilization, such burdensome endeavour would not be completely without benefit, as the shallow waters of the archipelago are quite hospitable to the growth of the banded dye-murex (Murex trunculus) in such numbers as to assure a continuous harvest of indigo well into the foreseeable future. We have also noted some small presence of gold and silver as might be harvested from placer deposits, suggesting that richer lodes may await deeper inland. Alas, their above-noted predilections for cannibalism and ritual deformation of those that displease them means that complete prospecting has, to date, not been completed.
--Dr. Rupert M. Garside
