The Broken Traverse is a massive, ancient elven bridge that crosses the Itkahi Bay in the Laqto Rainforest. Though today large sections have fallen into the water, several towns have established themselves on top of the bridge's remaining span.
Geography
The Broken Traverse once spanned 60 miles across the Itkahi Bay, but for centuries if not millennia major segments of the bridge have been missing after they collapsed into the sea long ago. Still, significant sections remain, largely clustered around its massive piers and piles that are still firmly anchored in the seabed below. So long has the Traverse been abandoned that entire ecosystems have formed on it, isolated pockets of trees and other rainforest plants and animals that have managed to find new homes miles from the mainland of the Laqto.
The nation is generally considered to only encompass the bridge itself and where it meets the land on both its north and south ends. This includes the town of Terminus but not any of the surrounding rainforest.
Located near the equator, the Broken Traverse is hot year-round with relatively little seasonal variation in temperature. Seasons are instead defined by the amount of rainfall.
Demographics
Peoples of many ancestries call the Broken Traverse home. Elves and half-elves account for most of the population, joined by significant numbers of humans, grippli, and leshies as well.
Culture
Religion
Most inhabitants of the Broken Traverse worship the deities of the Aserdian pantheon, but worship of the Elven pantheon remains strong as well. Of these deities, Nashira/Celens is particularly
and in particular Rasalas. In Okoton Rasalas is seen as less conservative and more future-looking than is typical for the god elsewhere. Richly decorated temples to the deity are found in close proximity to the docks in each major city in Okoton, and in many smaller settlements as well, where they serve as both centers of religious worship and as gathering places for the crews of the many barges and ships that regularly ply the estuary and beyond. In addition to his aspects as a god of trade and cities, the Okotoni also consider Rasalas to be responsible for waterways and those who live near or travel upon them, a domain otherwise more typically associated with Tucana.
Other faiths are common in Okoton as well. The worship of various spirits, ancestral and natural alike, is widespread, and most settlements have a particular collection of water spirits associated with their local stretch of the estuary to whom they regularly give offerings. Other pantheons, like that of the elves, are also venerated in Okoton.
Society
Okoton is a highly dynamic and ever-changing nation. A popular saying in Okoton is that one wakes in a different city each morning, as the bridges between the stilt-neighborhoods may change configuration by the time one passes by them again in the evening. New residents regularly arrive from farther within the rainforest, and so too do others depart. With its location at the confluence of the Arteries of the Rainforest, everything from the Laqto eventually passes through Okoton, whether that be goods like fruits, spices, medicines, nuts, and resins, or people and the practices they bring with them.
The people of Okoton eschew titles and even the informal granting of prestige, at least during one's life. Even those in leadership roles are known only by their titles on occasions when it is absolutely necessary. This all changes upon one's death, however, at which point all who new them join in singing their praises, literally, to all who attend their funerary celebrations.
Economically Okoton is centered heavily around trade, both with the other peoples of the rainforest and with those in distant realms, such as Brightmarch and far-away Kea Racha. Its people prosper greatly from this, especially due to the cultural obligations of wealth sharing. Anyone who comes into wealth, whether in the form of resources or money, is traditionally expected to share a portion of it with their community, meaning their neighbors and the inhabitants of their village or city as a whole. The percentage scales, but is generally anywhere from half to almost ninety percent, depending on the windfall, given out in the form of feasts, donations to those less fortune, and the commission and distribution of artistic works.
Multiple orders of ascetic monks have been established in or near Okoton, though they usually reside in outposts hidden in the rainforest away from the cities and the estuary.
Languages
Aserdian and its dialects are the most spoken languages in Okoton. Common and Elven are widely known as well, and it is not unusual to hear other tongues in the cities of the estuary.
Architecture and urbanization
Effectively all settlements in Okoton are located on, or else very nearby to, the water. From the smallest village to the largest city, most are collections of wood and thatch buildings constructed on top of pillars driven into the soft soil of the riverbank or shores, connected by both open channels in the water and by bridges and walkways. Some communities, mostly villages farther north in the estuary, have an almost organic feeling as most of their homes are instead grown by shaping living mangrove trees, a technique similar to that used by the aquatic elves of the Cradle. Okotoni settlements rarely build vertically, with most buildings two stories tall at most, and therefore cities in the region have a tendency to sprawl out along, and at times across, the estuary.
Food and cuisine
The Okotoni diet is based largely around seafood. Fish serves an important role, of course, but so do to water snakes, crocodiles, crab, and shrimp. Rice paddies line the banks of the estuary near the cities, along with orchards from which various fruits and nuts are harvested. Foodstuffs are not commonly traded with people across the sea, owing to the time of travel, but much culinary influence has moved in both directions between Okoton and Kea Racha.
Government
Each settlement on the Broken Traverse is independent from each other, though they typically coordinate and share knowledge and resources on any matter that affects them all. Aside from a brief period in the middle of the ninth millennium when they were conquered and united under the autocratic rule of Scholar-Prince Matl Axuni, the Bridgedwellers have organized themselves into direct democracies, collectively deciding on the actions their communities will take.
The towns of the Broken Traverse have a close, if informal, alliance with the inhabitants of the Okoton to the south. In many aspects of their culture and governance they remain quite similar.