theme for a fantasy campaign

[Agemegos]

Among stranden the women are inclined to make their homes on the shore. In primitive times, among communities that have not developed a way of life for men that involves highly production offshore fishing and lucrative trade, and where the stranden by dint of migration have exclusive occupation of islands with resources that would otherwise be pre-empted by other races women produce significant food and other resources from the land. In these cases control of the foreshore and lagoons (perhaps even of other land on islands) is a significant source of wealth either to tribes of women or to communities in which the sexes might have specialised but the men have not wandered off. In these circumstances coastal communities of the stranden may enter into competition and conflict over land, either with other groups of stranden, or with encroaching brocmen and elves. The terrain involved is likely to be fairly close, which will favour ambushes and hit-and run attacks, and estuarine or marish, favouring amphibious action.

In cases where the male moiety of a stranden community is often absent on long voyages, and these produce far more income than beachcombing and whatever on the foreshore, the stranden community will participate in the character of a port or haven. Little valuing the hinterland, the women will fortify and defend their havens, the most important thing being to keep open access to the sea. They may engage in manufacturing, or process oceanic products, but very likely their most important business will be trade. Merchant-women will trade piecemeal with brocmen and other neighbours to accumulate cargoes and stores for wholesale to shipping-men, and they will buy catches and cargos wholesale for piecemeal sale. The most powerful [sororities of] stranden women will be ship's chandlers, cargo agents, importers and exporters, and wholesale merchants.

Such havens are likely to have warehouses full of rich goods, a temptation to raiders, and of course their populations are as attractive as any other to slavers and rapists. But I don't see that there will be much actual warfare over the actual source of their wealth, which is access between the sea and customers. Strandenmale pirates might raid the warehouses and rape or enslave the women. But most will be culturally averse to holding the port. Other races won't be able to make much of the port if they sieze it, because the strandenmales won't trade there if the women are driven away. I can see women with a poor port trying to sieze a better one—just. I can see a powerful port wanting to destroy a trading rival, but that would be hard without naval support which I doubt the men would give. And I can see an empire or tyrant of some other race conquering a city for the purpose of taxing its commerce.

As for stranden men, I definitely see the coastal ones fighting over oyster-beds and good places to put lobster-pots. Perhaps even skirmishing over land for their women, as discussed above. The seagoing men, however, are going to see ships and cargoes as sources of wealth. They may seize a ship or two, especially if it is well-laden and they are poor, and they may raid a coastal settlement to fill their holds, but I don't see them very interested in conquering anything.

In some geographical circumstances you might get stranden arriving by sea in places like Wallacea, Polynesia, New Zealand, and Australia. They will settle the shores and small islands well enough, with women owning the land and branching out into horticulture while men own the seas and fisheries. But empty niches and population pressure will eventually draw them up rivers and into the interior forests and grasslands. I can see stranden women building inland ports like those along the Mississippi-Missouri and the Murray-Darling, and perhaps engaging in brocman-like agriculture, while the men adapt fishing and whaling customs to hunting, herding, and timbergetting. However, access is going to be more limited — perhaps even, as along the Darling, seasonal — which will mean a permanent association between the women of some town and the men of its hinterland, the itinerant male lifestyle becoming circumscribed, the moieties re-integrating into geographically distinct communities with a less distinct separation of the sexes into different communities.