There are two groups, but they are descended from the same people, so they are fairly similar.
At some point I look forward to outlining the differences between the two groups.
Their families are fluid structures comprised of genetic relations, close friends, romantic partners, and all their children. The family typically lives as a group in a complex of buildings and gardens on a tract that is the total domain of the matriarch of the family. Family members leave the complex to perform their callings and attend temple ceremonies, and children are cared for by designated family members known as creche-parents.
A birth parent is typically expected to carry a a newborn around in a sling as long as it continues to nurse, including into public spaces and formal situations. Wet nurses are not a common choice for parents who can produce milk, but not unheard of. After the child is weaned, the birth parent may remain intimately involved in the rearing of the child or step back and leave daily care in the hands of the creche-parents. Neither choice is considered lesser than the other.
Although there are tendencies among women and men to be attracted to certain groups, little in language or attitudes actually genders people as male or female. As children become youths, the select an alignment, which is linked to a deity, an education specialization, an expected group of career options, and a stereotype of personality. The first question your friends are likely to ask you about your new romantic partner is which class of person they are.
Most childhood education takes place in the home, but it is typical that around the age of 6 or 7 children begin to visit the temples for educational sessions, every fifth week, one day at each temple. The youngest students have story time and hear stories that feature the deity of that temple. The second year of attendance of temple week the children start to learn the lessons each temple specializes in.
Around the age of 12, children officially become youths and choose one of the five deities to dedicate themselves to, and take on the symbols and educational pursuits of that temple. Four or five years later, they may rededicate themselves to the same deity, become legal adults, and begin to work, or they can dedicate to a different deity to pursue a new course of education. This is frowned upon, but considered better than working in a field that doesn’t suit.
Clothing is made of fine tightly woven cloth dyed bright colors. Most commonly, people of all genders wear long loose garments with straight arms and sometimes with slits up the sides, embroidered and beaded along the hems. An additional vest may be worn over it, which is considered purely decorative.
Field laborers may wear only a short skirt, an unadorned collarona attached to a wide brimmed hat, and a pair of sandals in the hot dry season. Politicians wear a collarona decorated with emblems of their affiliations. Performers are expected to wear clothes with adornments such as frills and gathers and scarves threaded through loops sewn to the body of the garment.
They export dye, dyed cloth, paper, pens, ink brushes, tooled ceramics, spices, rice, giant beans, and more.
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