Wolgos Cultural norms and traditions

How to Tell if You're a Hergom Wolgos

If you're a Hergom Wolgos...

• Your clan is your immediate source of support and your immediate social circle; they are your extended family. Your clan can probably lend you money without expecting interest, though they will anticipate future favours.
• Your tribe is everything; you depend on it for your comfort, work, and safety. Without your tribe, you are vulnerable, and the law becomes meaningless; you are prey.
• You work for a large tribal conglomerate. You started working young and received education and training within your job. You expect your tribe to look out for your interests, and you will be active in its hierarchy.
• You may have an independent business, but you are tied to your tribe as you depend on your tribal services to run your business, ensure your safety, and maintain peace of mind. You pay part of your profits to your tribe.
• You work seven days out of an eleven-day week. One of your days is strictly reserved for attending temple and other religious duties; another day is strictly reserved for family activities and socialising or for sport if there is an important match, but you can combine both activities.
• You sleep during bright daylight hours while humans toil, overseen by unfortunate Wolgos stuck with the day shift.
• If you are a man, you likely spend your free time in your local gym, working out, chatting with friends, and chilling out while drinking chamomile or coffee. The gym is not just for exercise but also for socialising, listening to music, playing games, and wasting hours away.
• Bhut'sworos and Xorgis are your favourite team sports. You enjoy the fast-paced, violent gameplay and support a local or tribe-affiliated team.
• If you are a woman, you spend a lot of time caring for your many children. Your home is impeccable and a source of pride; you endeavour to make your home opulent and to make other women envious.
• As a woman, you will spend a lot of your time visiting other women's homes, getting together for chamomile or coffee. Gossip fuels your life, and you have a wide social circle. You will most likely be bitten by the entrepreneurial bug and be part of a direct sales business.
• You eat lots of meat, fat, and animal products. You love fermented and pickled foodstuffs such as meats and vegetables. You drink a lot of milk, cream, and yogurt, and you love alcoholic milk products. Your desserts are very mild, typically a mix of savoury with a hint of sweet; you find human treats overly sweet and repulsive.
• As a man, you find Wolgos women prickly. If they are married, they will be polite but cold and distant; if they are single and not interested in you, they won't even give you the time of day and might appear very critical. A single friendly woman means she is interested in you and inviting you to court her. The only women in your life who are sweet and loving are your sisters, mother, grandmother, and, most importantly, your wife.
• As a man, you must respect a woman's boundaries. A woman usually has a circle of men—brothers, father, husband, or sons—who are more than happy to beat you up or worse if you cross a red line. You are also expected to protect the women in your life.
• Your children and clan children are everything to you. Your aim in life is to produce as many as you can, protect them, and nurture them. You will discipline them harshly if they step out of bounds and expect them to be loyal to your clan, tribe, and you.

If you died tonight...

• You would have lived in a tribal residential complex or mobile home, lavishing dearly on your home.
• Your home would have at least one large and comfortable communal bathing room and a communal toilet room. Some homes have private bathing and toilet rooms.
• You would own a television or two, have a telephone line, and, as a forward-looking Wolgos, you may have invested in one of the new personal computers that come with their own TV screen.
• You would have expected all four networks to appear on your TV. For you, it's normal to see pornography broadcasted on television networks. You also expect to be able to shop using your TV and phone.
• You would have a strong and unwavering belief in Dlrocha, a belief in superstitions, and you would have sought the wisdom of mystics.
• You would most likely have undertaken your death pilgrimage unless you died an unplanned death. You would have taken the pilgrimage naked and barefoot, gone from shrine to shrine as you walked amongst nature, letting the elements, exhaustion, and hunger claim your life. You would have sought a dignified spot to curl up and die, helping others struggling to do so.
• You'd probably consider most grains as animal fodder, viewing insects, earthworms, humans, and almost every other animal as food. You'd consider bread and other grain-made foods as a garnish rather than a staple.
• You wouldn't know much about other cultures and would have an immediate and reflexive disdain for human culture and arts. Only the elite appreciate human culture.
• You'd probably have a more specialised education for your role in life, believing education is a part of work. For more academic pursuits, it’s up to you to seek such education from the Pléh1ghmén distance education network.
• You'd expect the postal service to work perfectly, using it to pay your bills and send formal communications.
• You would expect trains to work perfectly but to leave late, as families running each train won’t depart until they have filled the train and maximised their earnings. Train journeys can typically take days across the huge expanse of Hergom, but trains are comfortable and, as they are living moving towns, they offer lots of entertainment and services.
• You may have owned a car, but they are expensive and a serious commitment. If you owned a car, it would be a family car, a source of pride even if fuel costs dent your disposable income.
• You'd be worried about becoming embroiled in a legal issue; arbitration would involve your tribe and could be lengthy. You'd have to pay for legal and policing services. You’d be expected to pay for your arrest, cell, and the services of the officers. If you are accused of a serious and scandal-prone crime, you might have to sell your car or broker a bond to pay for a detective and forensic consultant to help you, as you can be sure your accuser is paying for their own.
• You have no human friends. Humans are strange, weak, gullible, and prone to bizarre emotions that are at best pitiful and at worst enraging. You find humans overly dramatic and prone to fall into aberrant logical traps such as guilt and cheap, freely given empathy. You don’t know why, you can't pinpoint the reason, but humans have this quality that engenders an urge to toy with them, to hurt them emotionally or physically, and it’s just so delicious to do so.

Everybody knows that...

• Milk, cream, and yogurt come in glass bottles; fermented meat and vegetables in glass jars; fish and preserved meat in tins.
• Shaving lather comes in bars you froth up with water. Razors are reusable, and you typically only need one or two in a lifetime.
• Whey, clear bone broth, and cold chamomile are some of the most refreshing drinks. Other than that, sodas of mango, passion fruit, or berries are best for their refreshing tartness.
• Live baby mice or large juicy naesslor grubs make fantastic snacks to have with an alcoholic drink.
• Money comes in base six and twelve; it’s just easier to count.
• Marriage is for love, and once you find a special woman, she is all yours, and you must emotionally possess her. You expect her to be entirely devoted to you. Nevertheless, it is absurd for her to expect you to be sexually faithful.
• Great doctors are female. They will care for you, and you can trust them. Male doctors are typically academics and are very scary; you don’t trust them not to use you for their professional curiosity.
• Humans usually live in the countryside toiling or in towns far from you. They are typically afraid and struggle to live amongst you. Nevertheless, there are humans crawling like vermin on the outside of Wolgos complexes and industries, scavenging a living.
• For pride, you must continue using the measuring systems of old Dhonowlgos, but you are familiar with the metric system.
• A red light means stop, a flashing white light means wait, and a white light means go.
• If a man has sex with a man, he is a Hlrike and must go to the Hlrike military to serve. If a woman has sex with a woman, she is being playful but ultimately needs a man.
• There is nothing shameful about the Wolgos body; you must ensure you keep your body attractive. You find nudity normal and mundane.
• Your tribe won’t fire you, but they will demote you to lower-than-scum jobs if they must.
• Films are always in Wolgos. You have likely never seen a foreign film.
• Wolgos punctuation is unlike standard human punctuation; there are no commas or dots for decimals but special vertical strokes.
• Saccharine smiles mean danger; someone is trying to take advantage of you or is likely to hurt you.

Contributions to Civilization...

• You are proud of your subspecies' history, seeing the old Dhnowlgos era with nostalgia and romantic reverence.
• You feel your subspecies has been a victim of humans despite fully knowing that most conflicts were started by your subspecies and that your people have never treated humans during conflicts with compassion or humanity. In fact, you are aware your people have gone out of their way to victimise humans. Yet you see this as fully justified.
• You know your history well and with nuances but have a very superficial and distorted knowledge of human civilisation and history.
• You expect and believe it’s essential for your nation to be perpetually in conflict, as war makes your people strong.
• Dinner is your largest meal, typically you have it at around 4 am just a few hours before bed.
• Arvorians, Kamurans, Livarians, and the Helish are your mortal enemies; all other humans are prey, but you don’t tell them that—they are customers and friends as far as they are concerned.
• Chivalry is a Wolgos art; only Wolgos men know how to treat and care for women—Wolgos women, that is. Humans do not understand Wolgos chivalry and seem to think it’s borderline abusive.
• Most jokes about other peoples are about the Eokoesr and Arvorians.
• You feel comfortable travelling anywhere in Hergom, maybe just a bit guarded in other tribes' territories.
• Politics are tribal; any man can become Heghnom Kawisoos. He just needs to be one crafty politician who has risen through the tribal hierarchy, and it helps to be from a prestigious clan.

Space and time...

• if you have an appointment, you'll mutter an excuse if you're five minutes late and apologise profusely if it’s ten minutes. If you are an hour late, you better bring a gift or hope there is a slim chance someone will see you.
• If you're talking to someone, you get uncomfortable if you don’t know someone approaching you closely. They must be ready to expect an insult or to be shoved away.
• You don’t usually have to haggle and you would rather think your friends see you as a generous spender. If they are human, you must try to squeeze as much out of them as possible or just take whatever they have.
• When you negotiate, you never say what you mean. It’s weird to be direct and stupid. Hold your cards close to you and create a deceptive illusion to safeguard your interests. To lie is polite, and to be honest can be confusing as everyone expects you to lie and will read between the lines.
• If your tribe gives you an opportunity in a different city or region, you usually expect to move with ease and either have a home parking spot or an apartment waiting for you, the same if you work with a different tribe.