Valroni culture

Valroni culture refers to the culture of Valron, which is primarily a mix of Viodoxan culture and foreign influences, stemming from Viodoxan Hanzeizh roots and later fusing with other foreign cultures as people immigrated to the area, such as the Aurlunoren and Ryzani. It is rare to find a Valroni whose parents were born in Valron or heritage fully Valroni.

Identity
From the foundation of Valron to the Great Migrations of Valronis back to Valron, the government seperated the people from Lord, High Council, Dyntoi and Commoner. Though in the Autumn of 165 TE, the High Council and Mel E. V. O'Valmen decided to make a 6 tier hierarchy starting from Lord, National Assembly, Bourgeois, Artisans, Peasants, Slumsmen and a out of tier group known as the Mandatory Volunteer Workers

Valron's major ethnic group, the Valroni's can be found around the 25% of IAU, 100% of Kingdom of Valron (of course, this is wear its from), >1% of Aurlunor and >1% of Yimmu-Audal, making them a small minority of the world population.

The reason why most of Valronis follow Valroni culture is that most non-Valronis in Valron were assimilated into Valroni culture, though some kept roots of their culture and language. At the same time some non-Valroni culture went in to Valroni culture, like how Ryzani culture had a profound impact on Valroni culture.

Clothing
Valroni people having both summer and winter, have seperate clothings for each. Summer clothing is usually made of silk as it is a light fabric designed to cool the body. Clothing usually a mix of blue, white and gold. pants and dresses usually brown or grey. Women usually have blue diamond embroidery sown at the end of their sleeves with golden tips with a belt made of a mix of leather and iron. In Summer, males usually wear pants and boots if they are going out. Though fashion for male labourers is much different, as they wear a tank top and some trousers, usually made of hemp and paired with a bamboo hat. Valroni clothing has to be cooling as the lowlands of Valron (Valron City, Krigor and Kalai Bali) are usually scorching hot (even going up to 57 degrees celsius) for this silk is used to keep a person cool. In the highlands however they have to be warm as the highlands are known for being very cold.

Despite the warm weather, it is very common to see people wearing long sleeve button up shirts with a tie with a chemise under the shirt, a waistcoat, a suit or blazer with a mackintosh or coat wearing long trousers, with woolen underwear and socks with leather boots with iron tipped laces. People generally use suspenders to prevent their trousers from dropping. The trousers also having a buckle, a zip and a button. Valronis generally wear bowler hats, but flat caps aren't uncommon. Valroni women generally wear a heavy dress, a petticoat with a corset, a chemise under the dress where the neck is to catch sweat, a plaited bonnet or mobcap and rarely a pinafore. The aforementioned mobcap is always plaited and generally quite servantile in nature, the amount of plaits in the mobcaps signifies the rank of the servant and is generally feminine. Students tend to wear trousers with long sleeved button up shirts with a tie, waistcoat, suit and mackintosh if they are male and female students generally wear a heavy dress with a blouse or a pinafore with a chemise to catch sweat, with a petticoat and corset. Though in early Era of Frihet, corsets and crinolines are falling out of fashion, with women preferring to wear a chemise, a dress and a blouse or a pinafore. All Valronis wear boots. 50 years before the Era of Frihet, crinolines, which are cages that go under the dress were invented to make the dress look more puffier. Though in early Era of Frihet, corsets and crinolines are falling out of fashion. Most Valroni clothes have buttons and laces, but trousers in more recent years evolved to have a metal clutch and a flier in addition to a buttons with many female clothes having lots of places to tie knots, laces and buttons.

Cuisine
Main article: Valroni cuisine

Valroni foods are intended to reduce the waste from an animal while also feeding the most amount of people. Food is often predominantly served hot, heavily spiced, with meat or seafood, accompanied by colder sides. Valronis tend to be very slim and underweight. Many initiatives have been set up to no avail. Valronis generally eat with a pair of chopsticks. Made from twigs if poorer. Bamboo or wood if richer. Metal, lacquer, ceramic or clay of the comfortable and intricately designed for the richest. Plates and bowls are generally either made of wood, metal, lacquer or ceramic.

Valronis generally own gardens growing many vegetables and fruits. Usually owning animals like fowl (e.g. bantams, sparrows, chickens, quails, pigeons, ducks, swans and more), pigs, sheep, rodents (like voles, dormice) and other animals to have some food supply. Many cultivars of plants exist making a biodiverse environment with all edible plants and herbs having tens or even hundreds of thousands of cultivars. This goes so far that there are many breeds of cultivated animals in Valron. Most Valronis tend to be lactose intolerant as milk isn't popular in Valron, with the milk having to be fermented for the Valroni to digest without having any problems. Some Valronis also keep caribou, aurochs, sheep, cow, goats, and buffalo are also raised for meat, fur, and milk. Mainly some farmers would keep these animals, but most common Valroni people also keep them.

In Valron it is very easy to find street side wholesellers, peddlers and hawkers. Wholesellers generally sell produce and meat, peddlers sell sundry items and hawkers sell food and drink. People generally like to buy food from hawkers. Tea is the primary drink with few coffee drinkers. Alcohol is generally drunk on occasion. Food is never wasted in Valron. Byproducts of the production of food is generally used in Valroni cooking, an example is the solid moromi from soy sauce production is used to flavour many foods, crustaceon shells are used to flavour broth; things like barley waste from beer production is used to flavour foods and is used as a protein supplement; egg shells are used to provide calcium; fruit and vegetable skins are used in food and more. In recent decades when more merchants are coming to Valron, the things richer people are poorer people are getting more similar. Food is often predominantly served hot, heavily spiced, with meat or seafood, accompanied by colder sides. The most common methods of food preparation would be stir frying, boiling, smoking/drying, pickling, steaming, or grilling over hot charcoal. Homes often have a wood or coal-burning ranges and some sort of grill used for holding hot coal or wood, as well as grilling meats and heating tea. Bread ovens are communal and function throughout most of the day, every day, though some households would opt to have a smaller one and prepare their own bread.

Game is very popular – hunting seabirds, turtles, and crabs along the shoreline is a common pastime for children. Whaling is a large industry, with the Valron Beach Whaling Company being the biggest whaling company in Valron, where they always kill 100 or more whales, a whale being able to feed three villages. Hunting seals in the north of Valron is popular, with the fat usually turned into oil to heat lamps and cook, rarely dolphins are killed and are considered luxuries, if more than 12 dolphins are killed, a dolphin would end up on festival meals. Other game, like pheasants, rabbits, foxes, wild ducks, ferrets and bears are also very popular and are generally delicacies.

Slaughtering of animals is done as quickly as possible, so hormones could not get released and ruin the taste, while also trying to preserve as much of the animal. Blood is almost always collected and used for other dishes, like blood sausage and blood cakes. Organs are generally cooked or fed to other animals such as dogs. Organ meats and more delicate cuts such as eye and brain is eaten while small intestines are often saved to make sausages. Bones are used, either for food (stock making or bone marrow), tools (sewing needles, buttons, and other such small items) or art (scrimshaw and jewlery), as is the fur or skin. The more delicate parts are less seasoned and are cooked more lightly. The fat of the animal is generally always used for Valroni cooking.

Common tools in Valroni cooking would include, a cleaver, generally cleavers have a baleen or antler handle perpendicular to the blade held by two prongs; a ghuantao, similar to the Kemrian saakiaq, but less curved and more staight at the back and tapered in the front of the blade; a pair of chopsticks (though a metal spatula is sometimes used) and cooked on a wok, made from carbon steel. Valronis generally eyeball the measurements but some precautious Valronis would use measurements using cups and spoons around the kitchen and or use measurements in relation to size of stuff in the kitchen. Though a set of weight scales are also used if a recipe needs to be specific. Most Valroni housespouses would keep recipe cards, which sometimes would have measurements or those aforementioned cups and spoons (Note: cups and spoons are normal cups and spoons not the measuring ones), with some Valronis just saying things like little, a bit, a lot, a tiny bit, a drop or things like that. Measurements in Valroni cooking could include, tumbler, wineglass, teacup, gaiwan, large mug, small mug, salt spoon or the size of an egg of a hen.

The primary cooking fat in Valroni cooking are derived from animals. Lard is very popular in Valroni cooking for both sweet and savoury foods and popular for its flavour; suet is also popular for some sweets because of the moisture it adds; tallow is sometimes used for cooking, but it is generally used for cosmetics, skin products and wood lubricant; drippings are used to moisten bread; schmaltz (poultry) is popular but mainly as a filler for lard. Among other animal fats, these are the most popular fas


 * Breakfast - Breakfast in Valron is predominantly high in starches as most Valronis need energy to get by the day. Breakfast usually consists in a rice porridge or gruel with liver or blood sausages, fried eggs and pickled vegetable. Valronis also drink a cup of strongly brewed tea for breakfast with children drinking hot fresh soy milk to let their sweat out to cool down.
 * Lunch - Lunch in Valron isn't really a standard meal. This is because only richer people tend to eat lunches at home. Lunch in Valron is generally catered by their school or workplace. Workplaces tend to provide a bowl of rice, a tea egg, some fish or liver, some pickled vegetables and a cup of tea. Schools provide a bowl of rice, with vegetables, liver or fish, pickled vegetables, kelp soup and a cup of tea. Since 80% of Valronis are underweight many initiatives have been set up by the government to get them to have a healthy weight but failed as Valronis have high metabolisms. Though some schools or workplaces provide breakfast and lunch.
 * Dinner - Dinner in Valron is usually with family or close friends. Since it is colder during the night, which is still quite warm. People generally eat more heavier meals, this generally consists of, a bowl of rice, some kelp soup or a meat soup, braised meat, pickled vegetables, noodles (if rice isn't eaten), a stir fry, liang chai (if stir fry or pickled vegetables or even both aren't eaten, sometiems all are eaten), rarely sandwiches (if it has to be quick) and herbal tea for the generally comfortable. Poorer families would eat, a bowl of rice, some kelp soup, braised meat, pickled vegetables and some herbal tea. Fried foods are sometimes popular for dinner dinner, especially in the highlands during winter. Soups, stews, curries, and other such dishes are often present on the dinner table, often bulked up even more with the addition of things like rice and lentils, as well as grilled meat skewers, dried fish, and rice liquor.
 * Sides - Sides eaten are generally in small bowls and are called "small meals" in Valroni they are called pansi or siosi, these include pickled, spiced or salted vegetables, which are either pickled radish (either salted radish/turnip or gardenia daikon), pickled mustard tuber, cabbage, melon rind, cucumbers or mustard greens are usually preferred this way. Tea eggs, which are boiled eggs impregnated in a tea brine, braised meat. Sometimes blood cake called Der hue png kuih and Der hue bhue kuih is popular, Der hue png kuih being made from steaming blood with sticky rice and seasonings, generally served with peanuts and coriander and Der hue bhue kuih is made by dry-steaming flour, blood, suet and seasonings and served. Though other preparations for blood are equally commonplace. Pastes, sausages and preserved meats made from organs like brains, kidneys and livers are also popular, being popular on a steamed bun. Stuffed buns are also popular. Other things like stir fries, pickled fish, pickled meat, savoury pancakes, dried vegetables and other foods are popular as sides. Sometimes people eat sides of cured meats and cheese with chilli or garlic oil.
 * Desserts - Overly sweetened foods aren't really popular in Valron with most sweets relying on small amounts of sugar, generally palm sugar or natural sugars. Popular treats include, sticky rice cakes (filled with sesame paste, red bean or peanuts), puddings, dried fruit, dried fruit in syrup, egg tarts, custards and some popular pastries. Larger desserts like cakes and trifles are generally eaten on occasion. A popular dessert could include cream ices (way to say ice cream), water ices (flavoured water), fragrant water ice, sorbets, sharbats, ais kacangs, ice balls, bubur cha cha and other ice desserts are popular in Valron because of the weather.
 * Festivity - Some foods are less common, and saved for holidays, festivals, and celebration. Usually these foods are made from less common or seasonal ingredients. As the lowlands is tropical it can't support the growth of some foods, so these foods have to be imported from highlands. Richer people tend to get a steady supply, while poorer people have to go to the highlands to buy it by the peck. This also applies to poorer people in highland towns, where rich people get steady supplies of tropical foods while poorer people have to travel to lowlands to buy it by the peck. Foods like sparrows, dormice and some game are generally eaten by the poorer peope during these times. Some fruits like plums are seasonal and lowland populace generally eat these in occasion. Celebrations like seasonal Harvest Festivals generally brings highland fruits and vegetables to the lowlands and vice versa where the poorer people can have these things. Though with the advent of the autowagen, it brings the prices of fruits from lower/higher grounds lower making the poorer person able to afford these things more.
 * Wet Season Harvest Festival - The Wet Season Harvest Festival, typically celebrated at the end of the wet seasonn, or the end of autumn is where many plants like lychees, pomegranates, jamun, tomatoes, chillis, konkerberries and passionfruits along with some all season like sugarcane is harvested and eaten. Meals like rice, curries, bean soups, soups, stuffed bantams, quail eggs and others are eaten and desserts like fruit puddings, custards and tarts are eaten with some spiced ale made from grasses are drunk. Richer people would eat more extravagantly with rice, dry curries, curries, soups, stuffed birds, swan eggs with sides like pickled ginger, spiced mustard, pickled vegetables, preserved fruits and more with desserts like cakes with marzipan and crystalised fruit; sweet marbled eggs and milk custard almond buns.
 * Third-Quarter Wet Season Festival, or the Mid Autumn Festival - Third-Quarter Wet Season Festival, also known as the Mid Autumn Festival is celebrated by all Valronis, traditions like burning incense and performance of dragon or lion dances is also popular, lanterns are made. Popular foods during the festival are mooncakes, typically stuffed with lotus seed paste, red bean paste, mung bean paste, salted duck yolk, seed paste and others; lotus root; roast duck; edamame; taro and crab. is popularly eaten and fruits like apples, pears, peaches, grapes, pomegranates, melons, oranges, and pomelos; nuts like buffalo nuts, walnuts, peanuts are eaten. Cassia wine is a popular drink during the time.
 * Seasonal - In highlands spring and North Valron, this could include bamboo shoots, fresh seal meat, rhubarb, and edible ferns. During the middle of summer, dishes could include whole sparrows stuffed with rice, meat, and raisins, as well as other dishes like fresh berries, nettle, young bluefin tuna, shark fin soup, fresh herbs, and dormice. Summer is also usually when whale hunting takes place, though hunting sessions happen all year. In the beginning in the autumn, mushrooms are often harvested, and seafood like abalone, scallops, prawns and other crustaceons are fished. Fruits and trees like elderberries, hickory, and persimmons. Additionally, the second (smaller) marine hunts of the year take place in autumn, the unconsumed meat is smoked or dried to last for the rest of the year. To keep in mind that the highlands is temperate and the lowlands are tropical, so fruits could be more readily available in the wet season than the dry season and vice versa.

Tea culture
Tea is a staple drink in Valron.

Artisanal Teapot making
Valroni artisans are extremely skilled at making teapots using a clay that contains a iron oxide, kaolin, quartz and mica. They are mixed to create small oxygen bubbles that intensify the flavour of the tea. The resulting clay is called Valroni teapot clay. When tea is poured out of the teapot it creates no splashes and goes out of the spout quick and straight. It also keeps the tea hot in the pot. The teapot also preserves the flavour of the tea, with the tea flavour more intensified. Tea cups called gaiwan are made of normal clay and glazed with a mix of glaze, kaolin, quartz and mica with some colourings and an extra layer of transparent quartz added to further preserve the tea flavour, the gaiwan is sometimes unglazed. Gaiwan is a small bell shaped cup with a saucer the same size as the gaiwan's base that has a small ring to help it stand under it, it has a small lid that helps strain the tea water from the tea leaves, it also fits perfectly on it and touches the side of the cup.

Artisanal Soy Sauce and Miso making
Soy sauce is made by mixing soy (yellow soy or black soy is ok) and wheat flour to ferment using qu, red yeast rice or koji. It then becomes moromi when a salt brine is added and left to ferment for months to years, it has to be mixed using a paddle for most of the time, to filter the sauce from the paste, artisans use cloths to extract the sauce weighed down using a stone and left to drip into a pitcher for a few days. What is left is aged moromi waste, which is used in Valroni cooking to make a savoury tasting flavour that is like a dry form of soy sauce but less salty. Double fermented soy sauce has soybeans and wheat readded and fermented for another few months to yeyars. Soy sauce made by artisans have a slightly sweet flavour from fermentation and can not be achieved using machinery.

Miso is made with the same components as soy sauce without the wheat and also fermented. Tamari, a salty liquid that is a product of double fermentation of soy sauce by adding more soy and flour; moromi, byproduct that is an umami solid made from extracting tamari, soy sauce or soy sauce that has been fermented mutiple times. Soy sauce is extracted out using a muslin cloth and put on the edge of a table with wood boards (about 2cm by 60 cm / an inch by two feet) on all sides, with the board on the edge with a small opening for the soy sauce to drip through into bucket made of pine, after two days, the cloth has to be pressed using a board, preferrably made using palm wood that is about (2 ft by 2ft / 60cm by 60cm) and pressed using a steam powered hydraulic press.

Painting
Painting is a small facet of Valroni art. Many painters create their own paints, which are sometimes natural, and sometimes artificial.

Paint-making
Paint-making is an artisan job that involves creating paints. Natural paints would include turmeric, annato and gac. Artificial chemicals used in Valroni painting would include copper sulfate, lead nitrate and copper carbonate. Most paints are either alcohol based or oil based. Artists would grind pigments and mix it with oils. This trade is complex as some pigments if milled too fine or course will make a different colour and mixing the oil, water, vinegar or other chemicals with the milled pigments and emulsifiers are also extremely hard. Artisan made paint is still popular as machinery couldn't mix the paint properly.

Pottery
Pottery in Valron is an important job as it is a complex trade. Clay has to be fine, but not too fine, and a litte course and clay usually contains compounds like iron oxide and others. Valroni potters would make heavily intricate patterns on their unglazed works and glaze heavily intricate patterns if glazed too. Unglazed earthenware has to smooth which is hard to achieve with a slightly course clay.

Earthenware
Earthenware jars and made of a Valroni clay that should be not to fine and a little course. It should be really big, and hold about 60 litres of liquid or 60kg of objects. They can vary in size, but the ones used for fermentation should hold 60 L, with some only holding 500mL, Earthenware can also create other things like pots and cups. This is used over glass as it is cheaper to heat clay.

Barrel-making
Barrel making is an integral craft for the soy sauce and drink industries. They are created with wood. Barrels are not usually made of metal as it doesn't contribute to flavours and aromas made during the fermentation and aging process.

Soy sauce barrels
Soy sauce barrels are usually made of pine or oak. They are put together by weaving strips of bamboo and wrap around the barrel. Bamboo is used as it doesn't corrode when it contacts with sodium or salt. A good barrel should be round and should not make any leaks and should not corrode

Alcohol barrels
Alcohol barrels can be made with a variety of woods and usually have copper wires and the base is made of copper as it gathers heat to boil the brew faster

Umbrella making
Umbrellas are a vital object for Valronis as it rains a lot in Valron. Umbrellas are made from wax paper and bamboo. The frame and handle is made of bamboo with a apparatus to open the umbrella made from bamboo that pushs the frame the wax paper rests on up. The apparatus has sticks of bamboo that hold the frame. The canopy is made of wax paper that is sometimes has something painted on it. It is very heavy, weighting around 2.5kg. The frame has hinges that open the umbrella with supports that are pushed up with the apparatus that hold the frame.

Entertainment
Though most people in Valron are serious workaholics, entertainment is popular during Sundays. This is because the Valron work day starts on 6 am in the morning and ends at 11 pm at night and it is from Monday to Saturday, usually with a 40 minute break in the middle for both adults and children. Valronis generally like theatre, music, board games and drawing. At home, families generally play boardgames like chess or weigoqi. Popular activities at home are sewing, knitting, scrimshaw, woodcarving, drawing, woodworking, needlework, embroidery, fishing, falconry, fabric work and playing music is also popular. Most Valroni children do not play sport outside of school as they are forced to do militaristic style sport. Some Valronis like to watch wayang opera perfomances.

Games
Valroni children play a variety of games in their free time like chapteh, which is kicking a ball of feathers as much times as possible without using hands; kaucheok, which involves nine small stones which the player needs to throw a stone up and pick up another stone and catch the stone and throw the two and pick the next and throw and you get the point; badminton is a popular sport in Valron with many kids playing it. Most Valroni students decide to partake in scouts, extracurricular activities or clubs. Games like hide and seek is generally discouraged because of the dangerous streets, with kidnappings and murders relatively common or children disappearing. Some Valroni children also like to gamble on cockfights, another game, hafuqiu, where the bundle is replaced by a ball made of stitched and quilted fabric, filled with scraps of fabric surrounding a bell and is used to play a sort of handball-like game. Some hafu balls are so elaborately decorated they cannot be used in game and are more of a display of sewing and embroidery skill.

Music
An integral part of Valroni music is strings and the piano. Stringed instruments are generally made of darkwood and well rosined with strings generally made of linen, with the bow made of horse hair. The piano is generally made of the best quality woods, with the keys either made of ivory if white and ebony if black. Music generally resembles ragtime music and classical music. Famous musicians include, Lee Huang Yik and Teo Ngih Hai

Wayang Performances
Wayang performances generally show local folklore in the form of opera. Though another variety of wayang perfomance, called wayang kulit is generally done with traditional puppets made from thin paper played behind a transluscent cloth. The Wayang performances are generally done by women, dressing in traditional clothes singing opera-style singing about the local folklore of Valron

Wayang kulit
Wayang kulit is a puppetry performance done with flat puppets behind a piece of transluscent cloth and generally show many tribal folklores. If people watching are on the front, they'd be able to see the colours of the elaborately crafted puppets but if the watcher is in the back they'd see shadows. It is generally played with an orchestra of musicians playing local instruments.

Steam powered machines
Steam is the main source of power in Valroni machines. Most machines having turbines. These are mainly used to move things like a wheel or mix things like liquids and dough. These still can not be used in paint making as they are not good enough to mix paints as they are usually too fast or too slow and don't mix the paint properly.

Life
Valronis generally wake up at 5am in the morning and eat breakfast. They then clean themselves and dress up for school or work and usually walk or cycle there. Only 14% of Valronis own autowagens because of their exhorbitant price. They then attend classes or work and usually after about 6 hours and 40 minutes have a nutrient rich lunch. They work for another 6 hours and 40 minutes and walk back home, have dinner, do whatever homework or things they need to do and then sleep.

Media
Media in Valron is generally free, in form of newspaper, radio, filmreel or television. Though television is in it's early phase, with most people having a large white cloth and a projector for film reels. In Valron, films are generally called motion pictures, and some require a phonograph cylinders to play sound. Though in more recent years, televisions made from wood and several mechanisms have been made.

Languages
The official language of Valron is the Valroni language, which is a language basically only spoken in Valron. However, there are a few speakers across the Aurlunor and Yimmu Audal. Though Valroni isn't the only language spoken in Valron, and children are taught Travelers' Tongue and Hanzeizh in school, with some Valronis learning other languages like Aurlunoren outside of school.

Subcultures

 * Tihami culture
 * Krigori culture
 * Kalai Balian Culture
 * AweBriissian culture
 * Chrimatsican culture

Information

 * Some stuff yoinked from Kemrian Culture