Snæken

"Whom steps to the mountain, falls."
Motto of the Snaeken Infantry

History

Ethnically Skogga, Snæken is a small nation state nestled within The Fells mountain range. Its terrain has made the region prohobitively difficult to assail, and has kept the smaller nation safe from being conquered by any of its neighbors. However this terrain also make it difficult to develop; Snæken has little arable land. As populations have risen, expanding any cities out into their precious farmland is not an option, and so they were the first country to develop architectual and excavation techniques to begin building highrise buildings with deep multilayered basements; if the cannot expand outwards, they must expand vertically.
In line with this ethos they have also constructed large numbers of terraced farms onto the sides of mountains adjacent to many settlements to further increase the amount of arable land they have access to.

The mountainous terrain is also home to several varietals of unique spice plants that are prohibitively difficult to grow elsewhere. As international trade has grown these spices have become extremely popular abroad, and account for a colossal portion of Snæken's GDP. Should their monopoly on the spice market be broken, they fear it could collapse their economy. Their intelligence services even have an entire division (not publicly acknowledged of course) dedicated to preventing the smuggling of spice seeds and destroying any operations that attempt to grow them elsewhere. Every few years somewhere in the world there is often an incident of some enterprising, but not too bright businessman or farmer who thought they would be the one to break the monopoly being found dead and their property going up in flames. "Spice Farming" has even become a colloquial term in the agricultural industry for suicide.

Government

Snæken is goverend by a council of senators (The Storting) elected from the country's states, who then elect from among themselves a Grand Administrator to carry out the policy mandates of the council. The council convenes within the Argulith, a massive administrative building the exterior of which is almost entirely green marble.

Culture

Local social life orbits around the nearest pub. Live music, dark mead, and gambling are the usual pillars of Snæken night life.

Snæken has a strong verbal mercantile honor contract culture. They tend to be a very particular and semantic people, and at times, litigious. There is distinct delineation when someone asks for a 'Favor' as opposed to asking for help or assistance. The expectation is that if you ask for a Favor from someone, they may ask of you for a Favor in the future, and it must not be declined, so long as it is not an unreasonable request. The implication being that one would only ask for a Favor if it is a task that is particuly difficult for the requesting party to do, or is of significant importance. There is no codified system for what consitutes commensurate Favors, but the Snnæken court system has upheld all disputed Favors except in the most aggregious cases of abuse.