The Viñak People

The Viñak people, or Viñaks, or Viñak, or Viñak tribe, are the indigenous people of Voxija. They are often called "Vinyaks", and that's okay, but the prefered spelling in Voxija is Viñak. 75% of Voxijans have 75% or more Viñak ancestry. Everyone has mixed ancestry.

The convention for this article, as well as in academia generally, is to write Viñak words in Voxi spelling.

History

Since the Viñak had no written language, very few of their practices before the 16th century come down to us. Most of the cultural practices recorded in this article were told to Basque chroniclers of Viñak culture and history in the early 18th century. Oral records passed down through the generations and archeological evidence were also very important in compiling this article.

Pre-European
The Viñaks are Austronesian, and arrived on the island of Voxija in the 5th or 6th centuries AD from Sumatra. The Viñak named the island Voshiya, meaning "new home", and the Basque settlers called it Voxija and pronounced it Voshiya.

When the Viñak first arrived at Voxija, they were a hunter-gatherer society, completely matriarchal, and worshipped beings that were sort of a combination of the Viñak gods as moderns understand them and spirits. Over time, their cultural practices evolved into the ones described in this article, which date roughly to the turn of the 16th century, or just before the Basques arrived.

The Viñak traded with many peoples, while still maintaining a primitive agricultural society back home. They learned the secret of porcelain from the Chinese.

They lived in longhouses made of wooden planks. Several allied families lived together in the same house.

Several dozen longhouses made a town. The main Viñak affiliation was to these towns. The leaders of those towns, akin to mayors, were called "Great Mothers" or "Great Fathers". Some towns reached more than 5000 people, making them cities.

The biggest Viñak city was where Xirroni is today. It was also named Xirroni. Ruins of the old Xirroni can be found under the subways and sewers of the new Xirroni.

The island Voxija was (and is) like the Switzerland of the region. A place to trade without danger and a neutral safe zone. The Voxijan trend of trading with the nations that are evil (apartheid South Africa and various Axis Powers among them) started with the Viñaks, who hated slavery, trading with peoples who had slavery.

This period in Voxijan history, is often called "Ancient Voxija". Many families, business operations, cultural customs, and sites from this time still exist in Modern Voxija.

When Basques Came
When Basque refugees came to the island, escaping the Spanish Inquisition (did you expect that?), they tried to make contact with the locals. The Viñak were not surprised by the Basques, since one of their prophecies said white men would come to Voxija. Both of their languages were too hard for the other, so they made a kind of simplified Basque dialect called Voxi, which is now its own language.

The Basque settlers did not oppress the Viñak. The men married Viñak women. Interracial marriage was encouraged. The Viñak had equal rights under the Voxijan kings and queens. Some Viñak converted to Christianity, but they did so of their own accord. Most kept their traditional religion.

Right before the European Basques arrived, there were roughly 2 million Viñak living on Voxija. Now, the number of Viñak people is hard to define, because almost everyone has mixed ancestry. Probably all of them.

Wanamana
During the period between Domiku Biskarret and Queen Nerea, the most well-known Voxijan king was Eneko I. Well, that should not be the case. Wanamana, the most powerful Viñak leader during that time, was also the most powerful person in Voxija. She ruled a city whose name was never recorded. Most of what is known about Wanamana comes from legends, but it has been confirmed that Wanamana had more power than any of the Basque kings.

There was a legend concerning the Viñak leader Wanamana that got circulated around in Europe during the eugenics days. It was said that Wanamana would kill and eat one of her servants every day to show her other servants that their days were numbered. Also that Eneko I's wife got et by Wanamana too. That legend has been proven to be untrue, since there were no Viñak oral records or Basque written records of anything like that, and evidence has shown that Wanamana was a fair leader.

Old Viñak
The Viñak used to speak a language called Old Viñak. Strangely, it was harder to fathom than Basque, and many Viñak learned Basque and eventually, Voxi. You had to learn Voxi to survive, and knowing Old Viñak made it harder to learn Basque. Eventually, the Viñak started teaching Voxi to their children, and Old Viñak eventually died out. Certain extremists today speak a simplified version of Old Viñak with Voxi influences.

Before the early eighteenth century, Old Viñak wasn't a written language. This sadly contributed to its disappearance.

Old Viñak is usually written in Voxi phonemics and spelling. This convention has been adopted for this article.

The word "Viñak" means "one who can speak" in Old Viñak. The word "Voxija" comes from the root words "Voxi (voshi)", which means "new", and "ija (iya)", which means "home".

Voxi has some Old Viñak loan words, mostly for concepts peculiar to Voxija, like the traditional seasons, or platypi/platypodes/platypuses... er... you know what I mean!

Jislajik was an Old Viñak... swear word, meaning, roughly, feces. It was not adopted into Voxi, as the language doesn't have the sound j. Some of the Voxijans with more Viñak ancestry the the average sometimes swear this swear word, mostly when they're stuck in traffic.

Old Viñak did not have a word for blue. The sky, the sea, and Voxijan platypuses were described as green.

Culture

Beauty Standards
Darker skin was considered more beautiful. Many goddesses were described as having darker skin. Light hair was also considered beautiful. When European Basques arrived, they had many of the desired beauty traits, which was one of the reasons for the high rate of intermarriage.

A toned physique was beautiful for both genders, although men were expected to be more muscular than women. Small noses and curly hair were valued. You could see their beauty standards from their descriptions of gods and goddesses and heroes in their myths.

Childcare
Most families had 3-5 children, although a few had more. Infant mortality was very low for a society transitioning into agriculture.

From 0-4 years of age, children were treated like kings, from 4-8, like slaves, from 8-12, like students, and from 12-16, like friends and equals. Women became adults at 16, and men became adults at 18, because men were seen as needing more time to mature and become more responsible.

Clothing
Stereotypically, the Viñak were portrayed as naked, but stereotypes usually aren't true. The stereotype probably comes from modern Neo-Viñak nudist colonies. The Viñak, especially those who lived in the north, wore little clothing, but they would usually cover what should be covered.

Fashion trends existed in Viñak society, and certain types of decorations could go in and out of fashion rather quickly. These fashion trends were usually restricted to a specific family or town. If someone was rich, their clothes would have more decoration and follow fashion trends more closely. For special occasions, people would wear the beak of the Voxijan goose.

Fairy Tales
The myths also count as fairy tales, although Viñaks have many folktales that don't involve their religion.

Viñaks had a fairy tale called "the Girl who became a Boy." Sometimes it is "the Boy who became a Girl", but that is less common than the trans man variant. The details vary, but the main plot is what it says in the title. This fairy tale was discouraged when the Basques cames and brought their restrictive Abrahamic morality, but now "the Girl who became a Boy" is being told more in these progressivist days.

The Viñak told stories about a race of small humans that lived on a small, faraway island. For many years, no one could figure out why the Viñak told these stories, until both the Sumatran origins of the Viñak and Homo floriensis were discovered.

Family System (konak)
The Viñak had a family culture called konak. Traditionally, everyone belonged to a specific family. Certain families were allied, others opposed. Traditionally, you could only marry someone in a family that was allied with your family. To avoid inbreeding, every two hundred years or so, the Viñak would draw straws to change family alliances. Each family had its own pali recipe and did things slightly differently than the other families. Each family had a surname.

Funerary Practices
If someone who died was evil in life, the Viñak traditionally would throw the corpse into the extinct volcano Mt. Vetxirrovo. Strangely, the Viñak did not do it often, and this custom was more popular with Voxijan Basques. It was most popular in the Age of Kings.

When an average person died, the Viñak would just bury them with no coffin and no possessions to fertilize the soil. Reincarnation was a belief.

Gender Roles
Men were considered too aggressive to make many decisions. The women were heads of families. Thus, Queen Nerea was the first Voxijan leader the Viñak respected. Women did most of the duties. They took care of children and set up huts. Men hunted, fished, and fought, and the men also grew food. Women wove and made clothes and handled business transactions and money.

Feuds among families and towns were very rare, but when they happened, men did the fighting. Most of the Viñak soldiers who joined Voxijan wars were men.

Summary: men grew food and fought; women raised children, managed the household, and did the important stuff. Or: male warriors, female elders. Voxijans who are part of the Voxijan culture consider this an egalitarian society, but anthropologists in other countries have written many books arguing over whether it was matriarchy or patriarchy.

Marriage
Marriage is considered to be for two people and two people only and infidelity is considered very wrong. If you committed adultery, you were considered evil enough to have your corpse thrown into Mt. Vetxirrovo. This applies to both genders.

Men usually married at 20, and women at 18. The sexes would mingle together for about two years after they grew up, and at the end of that period, they were expected to have chosen a husband. The groom's mother would pay the bride a "groom-price" so the bride could marry.

Spousal abuse and marital rape were extremely rare to nonexistent among the Viñak. That surprised the Basques when they came. Sadly, after the Basques intermarried among the Viñak, those kinds of crimes became more common.

Music
Viñak love dancing and singing, especially two or more people singing in harmony. The Viñak have only developed one unique musical instrument besides the obvious drums.

The instrument is called Ngilk. It is a type of flute. Listeners say the sound is like nothing they ever heard before. In the seventies, Simon and Garfunkel used the ngilk in their song "Pawns in the Chess Game", and Voxijans complained about how these Americans were stealing their culture. Nothing came of that.

Pali
Pali is a Viñak food. It is made of pali tree leaves that are dunked in water, steamed, and dried. Some spices are added. There are disagreements about whether pali is best with or without spices, or which spices to add. The exact recipe depends on the family. It takes like chicken and celery. It is strange but good. You can pluck a leaf off a pali tree without it dying.

Another thing about the pali tree: you could make paper by peeling the bark and soaking it in pali fruit juice. That is the only use of the pali fruit. The Viñak used the paper to record numbers by tally marks, having no written language. Peeling off the bark paper kills the tree, so they didn't use it much.

Superstitions
Rivers are unlucky. It is not that unlucky to live near a big river, but it is very unlucky to live in a place with lots of rivers. That's why Viñaks did not settle much in what is now South Voxija.

If a person, male or female, died without getting married or having sex, they would turn into scary ghosts. The "virginal ghosts" would haunt villages and pester young people until they left the villages, hopefully to die without getting married and become ghosts themselves.

If you hold a party for a baby before the baby is born (baby shower), it may result in a stillborn birth, the mother dying in childbirth, or both.

13 is a very lucky number for the Viñak, and Voxijans in general.

Timekeeping
There were traditionally three seasons. Bug season (Takzavoxan), cyclone season (Takvaxasan), and a temporary cold period between the other two seasons (Velivoxar). There was no such thing as weeks in the Viñak calendar. Viñaks worked when they felt like it and when they were bored.

The Viñak calendar was solar-based. The year began at the beginning of cyclone season, which is spring in the Southern Hemisphere.

Values
The Viñak valued hospitality. They saw no reason not to be nice.

Viñaks don't naturally procrastinate or be lazy. Frugality and the entrepeneurial spirit were also Viñak values.

A lot of these values are still modern Voxijan values.

Law and Justice

Human Law
The Viñak believed in universal laws that could be seen as an early version of civil rights. The system could be translated into "human law". The mythology said these laws were imbedded into the universe even before it was created.
An important feature of human law was "your rights end where others' begin".

Punishments
They would shame adulterers and shun them. Their spouses would be free to marry again. When an adulterer died, their body would be thrown into Mt. Vetxirrovo.

If you stole, you would have to pay a fine of kals equal in value to what you stole. If you didn't have enough kals, you would work until you earned enough kals to pay off your debt.

Murder was punished by leaving the murderer in the forest to die of starvation or get eaten by beasts.

Religion and mythology

The Viñak religion originally comes from indigenous Sumatran tradition, although there is some influence from Hinduism and Buddhism, especially reincarnation being a belief.

The Cosmogeny (creation of the universe)
The first god to exist was Sarka. As the goddess of the universe, the universe was created with her. She spat, and her consort Gavana, the goddess of society and her son Kalonalang, god of leadership, was created with her. Which does mean Sarka's wedded to her daughter. Eh, myths.

Gods and goddesses
Not many people actually believe in the Viñak gods anymore, but their influence is still felt. People sometimes swear in the name of Sarka, and still practice some Viñak rituals.

The gods don't have surnames, to represent their differences from humans. Many gods were in homosexual relationships, for the same reason. Many books glossed over the same-sex "consorts" but now they're talked about again.

The god Txestis once took a bite out of the pali fruit. He got food poisoning, but he lived, since he was a god, but a mere mortal would have died. That was how Txestis became the god of food poisoning.

Sarka is the most powerful god, and the goddess of the universe (basically, everything that Viñaks could see). Gavana was the goddess of society. It is said that Gavana told the Viñak how to run their society. Gavana was the second most important god, and Sarka and Gavana were said to be a couple.

Koxonma was the god of thunder. He was a pretty minor god, despite being involved in an important myth. Goju, the god of the sun, and Kireja, the goddess of the moon, were also very minor gods.

Ganetxa
A great heroine/shero is Ganetxa. She was stillborn, and then buried in the ground. Ganetxa emerged as a full-grown woman. Ganetxa was described as strong and brave. Beautiful is optional. Ganetxa fought many monsters, but her most famous fight was against the fairies.

There were evil fairies under Mt. Vetxirrovo. They wanted to kill all humans by setting up a totalitarian fairy-ruled dictatorship that would eventually starve all humans to death. In the meantime, they were kidnapping humans and killing them.

Everyone thought it was beasts or rogue platypi or whatever, but Ganetxa knew that they were fairies. Using her magical divining prowess, she figured out that the fairies were under Mt. Vetxirrovo.

She stormed in there, undetected by the tiny fairies. Ganetxa farted, and every fairy died of the stink. Ganetxa burned the corpses, so that no fairy could ever hurt Voxija again. There is no sign of fairies today, nor in the Voxijan War of Independence, when the Underground Army hid under Mt. Vetxirrovo and some soldiers looked for fairies.

Now, every June 22nd, people make porcelain effigies of the evil fairies and smash them on the ground, to ensure the fairies don't come back. The description of fairies in Voxijan mythology is considered more akin to evil spirits by modern scholars, but the first scholars of Voxijan mythology translated the Viñak word as "fairies", and here we are.

Myths
Myths were the cornerstone of Viñak worship, and were the prime ways of explaining the world. In lieu of formal education, Viñak parents would teach their children myths.

Once, long ago, when gods and men still dwelt in the same places, sex did not lead to pregnancy. Women could get pregnant whenever they wanted, and sex was merely for pleasure. Until a terrible woman named Iketeja tried to rape Koxomna, the god of thunder. For Iketeja's crime, the gods decided to make sex lead to pregnancy.

Priests and Priestesses
Viñak religion was led by priests and priestesses. Usually, priests and priestesses led the worship of specific gods, male gods for priests and female gods for priestesses, but some priestesses, and they were always priestesses, led the worship of all of the gods.

Priests and priestesses could get married, although a priest would never marry a priest. It was expected that the child of a priest or priestess would follow in their priest parent's footsteps. It is said that priestesses would engage in homosexual relationships in imitation of the gods, although there is no real evidence for this practice.

Prophets
There were a lot of prophets around, and a prophet was anyone who made a prediction of the future. Of course, with a lot of prophets, there is at least some chance that someone will get the future right. Prophets who get a lot of things right, like Vurnila, become famous.

It was said that the prophets' powers came from having their past life be in the future.

There are still Voxijans who claim to be prophets, who usually move to America or the UK and write for shows like Black Mirror. There are no lotteries in Voxija for this reason.

Reincarnation
It was a belief, meaning the soul would just *bamf* into a baby's body when the old body died.

The reason that the prophets are said to tell the future was because it was said that the prophets' past lives before their lives as prophets were in the future.

Rituals
The porcelain fairies mentioned above.

At the spring equinox of every year, a chorus of priestesses would climb to the top of Mt. Vetxirrovo and chant, "First, there is birth, then there is growth, followed by decay and finally death." This was to keep the cycle going until next year.

During bug season, Viñaks would perform rituals preventing the bugs from getting into their houses. During cyclone season, they would pray to keep the cyclones from being too destructive. During the mild fall period, there were many holidays.

The End Times
In roughly 1390 AD, a priestess named Vurnila made a prophecy about how the end of the universe would come about. It has since became an accepted part of Viñak mythology and lore.

This is how the prophecy goes. When the world comes to wreck, many score after white man comes to our shores, the world will end. Giant monsters, some of which include a red tiger from the north and an ailing tiger from the east, will control trade. A blond-wigged, orange-skinned madman in a land far to the west will wish to build a great wall. That is how we know the world will be ready to die.
Sarka will grow angry with the universe that she created, and set in motion the events to destroy it. Mt. Vetxirrovo, extinct for thousands of years, will erupt and cover Voxija in liquid fire. A monster will emerge from the cold plains of the far, far north and destroy the northern supercontinent. Another volcano will erupt with the rising sun, destroying the people of the ailing tiger-monster.
Loud music will play as the world sinks into the ocean. Men and women and children will die. Plants and animals will die. The gods will kill themselves in their grief. The universe will wink out like a dying flame.

Economics and Trade

Employment
Viñak society allowed for a variety of jobs. Men were most often employed in agriculture or fishing, and women were most often landowners, artisans, and many other jobs. Most jobs were open to both sexes, even if dominated by one, especially trade.

There were no slaves in Viñak society. People sometimes worked for other people, but they were paid for their services, usually in kals. It is said that whenever the Basque colonials contemplated importing slaves, the Viñak representatives usually present in Basque debates rejected those contemplations as a violation of human law.

The kal
The kal is the monetary unit of Voxija. Historically, the Viñak used a seashell called the kal for money. It was rare and beautiful enough for money. It was also small and easy to carry.

Voxija adopted the kal after the Voxijan War of Independence. Now it is not a shell, but banknotes. Some isolated extremist Viñaks use the shell version today. The kal seashell is rarer now then it was.

Porcelain
The Viñak traded with the Chinese and learned porcelain from them. They grew proficient at making porcelain, and traded it for other goods. Voxija has the greatest porcelain outside of China, even today.

Porcelain also features in the Viñaks' religion. Every June 22nd, they make effigies of evil fairies out porcelain and smash them against the ground so the fairies don't come back.

Trading
The Viñak traded with many nations, even slave societies. The most popular Viñak products were pali and artisan products like porcelain. A quirk of Viñak trade is that women accompanied men on trade, and were often the leaders of trading parties. The more patriarchal nations exoticized Ancient Voxija for that.

Miscellaneous

The Viñak had canoes.

Popular Viñak names were Jarumalang, Jahamalang, and Wanamana.