For all its wars, sorceries, ruins, and invasions, Evil Land is not only a stage for kings, sorcerers, and generals. Most of its people are not raiders or adventurers but ordinary folk: farmers scratching at poisoned soil, herders driving half-mad beasts across wastes, diggers who toil in collapsed cities, and laborers who spend their lives under guild contracts. To live in Evil Land is to rise before the sun and collapse into sleep long after the sky has darkened, knowing tomorrow will demand the same.
Subsistence agriculture remains the lifeblood of Evil Land, though the land itself resists cultivation. Fields are patchworks of soil—some fertile, some cursed, some so dry they crumble into dust when plowed. Farmers work these plots with crude tools salvaged from ruins, or rusted iron blades passed down through generations.
Crops of Evil Land:
Black Millet: A hardy grain that grows even in tainted soil, though it often carries mild corruption that must be boiled out with saltwater.
Blood Wheat: Reddish stalks said to drink from the bones of the dead. When milled, its flour is coarse but filling.
Ash-root Tubers: Gnarled, grey-skinned roots eaten boiled or baked. They keep well but leave a bitter aftertaste.
Ghost Peas: Pale legumes that glow faintly at night; considered both food and omen.
Herders keep animals warped by corruption yet still useful: six-legged goats whose milk clots quickly into cheese, oxen with cracked hides that bleed sap instead of blood, and birds bred for eggs despite their haunting cries.
Morning:
At first light, villagers rise to beat the sun’s heat and to avoid the attention of raiders who travel at night. Farmers bless their fields with muttered charms, often mixing ancient prayers with card-game rituals: drawing a single card at random, hoping for fortune if it is red and misfortune if black. Laborers in towns gather at guild halls, waiting for overseers to call their names for the day’s assignment.
Midday:
Heat and corruption both peak at midday. Farmers work until exhaustion, often pausing only to drink water boiled thrice to purge sickness. In towns, laborers haul rubble from ruined factories, stoke coal pits, or repair roads carved into mountains. The Knightly Order offers shade and bread in some regions, but in most of Evil Land, a worker eats dry bread, salted millet, or leftover broth—never enough to banish hunger.
Evening:
As dusk falls, workers return to villages or camps. They wash in streams if they dare, though many waters are polluted by curses. Families cook simple stews over communal fires, and neighbors share gossip, rumors, and news from traveling bards or broken radios. Superstitions guide the night: children are told not to whistle after sundown lest spirits be drawn, and adults deal cards to predict dreams.
Night:
When the stars rise, dangers multiply. Many laborers sleep in shifts, one keeping watch against raiders, beasts, or corrupted wanderers. Sleep itself is uneasy—dreams in Evil Land often bleed into waking life, and nightmares are taken as warnings.
Manual labor dominates the lives of the common people. Scavengers dig collapsed ruins for salvage, while miners hack away at mountains scarred by the Annunaki. In towns controlled by the Qin or the Soviets, work is demanded by law: citizens conscripted into vast projects to rebuild roads, fortresses, or irrigation ditches.
Digging Work: Entire villages are paid in rations to unearth ancient artifacts. Few know what they’re for; fewer survive the curses sometimes unleashed.
Stonecutters: Carve blocks for fortresses and walls, breaking their bodies under the lash of overseers.
Roadwork: Perhaps the most despised labor—forced to haul gravel, tar, and stone to rebuild roads that conquerors use to march over them.
Millers and Bakers: Respected positions, since control of food means control of survival. Miller families are often envied, sometimes attacked.
Work in Evil Land is never free from danger. Collapse, corruption, bandits, and conscription threaten constantly. And yet, people labor, because the alternative is starvation.
Despite hardship, ordinary people cling fiercely to family and communal ties. Villages operate like collective organisms: if one field fails, neighbors share from another. Children are raised communally, taught survival early—how to spot corrupted roots, how to tell safe from poisoned water, how to hide from soldiers.
Marriage remains important, often sealed not only by vows but by drawing cards together; unions sealed on a matching pair are said to be lucky. Widows and orphans are numerous, for war and labor claims lives constantly, but communities often band together to shelter them.
Festivals survive, too, though simple: harvest feasts with music played on broken instruments, dances meant to ward off corruption, or nights where entire villages gamble with cards not for coin but for omens of the year to come.
The Jurisprudence of Evil Land weighs heavily on commoners. Tribute is extracted in crops, livestock, or labor hours. Villages often pool their best goods to offer as payment to whoever claims dominion over them that season—whether Qin governors, guild agents, or sorcerer-lords. Failure to pay leads to raids, executions, or worse.
Crimes among villagers are often handled locally, with exile or restitution as punishment. For serious cases—oathbreaking, desecration, or spreading corruption—higher authorities intervene, and punishment is brutal. Yet even here, many communities prefer compromise, for every laborer lost weakens their survival.
Corruption touches everyone in Evil Land. Farmers’ hands blister from cursed soil; miners breathe ash that blackens their lungs; children are born with odd marks or minor deformities. These are endured as part of life.
To cope, villagers use remedies:
Saltwater baths to cleanse skin after handling tainted crops.
Charcoal tonics to counter bad air.
Card rituals performed at day’s end, to determine whether corruption has “settled” in the body or not.
Shrines and temples are scattered across Evil Land, offering minor blessings. Pilgrimages are dangerous, but many risk them, for even a drop of hope is worth the danger.
Work consumes life, but people carve out spaces for joy. Card games remain the most universal pastime—played for coin, favors, or simple amusement. Singing and storytelling pass the time at communal fires. Children carve toys from bone or wood.
In towns with radio access, families gather to listen to music broadcasts, news, or even coded propaganda. Radio personalities become folk heroes, voices of defiance or grim comfort.
Even festivals of sorrow exist: wakes where the dead are toasted, not mourned, because survival requires the living to find strength in memory.
For the ordinary people of Evil Land, life is not glorious. It is a cycle of labor, hunger, superstition, and fear. Yet it is also endurance. Every seed planted, every loaf baked, every roof repaired is an act of defiance against ruin.
They do not dream of conquest or thrones. They dream of harvests without famine, of children who live to adulthood, of nights free from fear. And perhaps, in Evil Land, that dream is the greatest rebellion of all.