Howlina - Day 23: Revisiting Culture

I am going to paraphrase the instructions in 30 Days of Worldbuilding:

1. National:
1. Major political groups
2. Major social groups
3. Where are they?
4. How are they similar?
5. How are they different?
6. What are their values?
2. Regional
1. What groups live in the main characters' homeland?
2. What do they value?
3. What is their language?
4. What is their economic base (industry, farming etc.)?
5. What factions are there?
6. How does the hero fit?
7. MONEY
3. Metropolitaian
1. What is a typical town or city like?
2. What was your hero's home town like?
3. Does the hero's hometown change in the story?
4. Who does the hero know in her hometown?  What are their relationships to her?
5. Hero's education
6. Has the hero left home before?
4. Local
1. What is a typical family like?
2. Is it different in different areas?
3. What was the hero's family like?  Is that typical, different, how?
4. What familial role models does the hero have?

I guess it may be time to talk about the political structure of Howlina and drill down from there.

1. National
1. See Day 8
2. The Transhumanist, the Anti-Transhumanist, those in each of the political parties, normals and the Transhuman races
3. The areas of the strongest anti-transhumanists are in Napepoli and Cheekagopoli.  See Day 12 for the locations of the Transhuman development centers.
4. I think I've already discussed how the groups are similar and...
5. ...How they are different
6. Again, I think their values have been spelled out
2. Regional (actually the largest division is the Conference followed by Region and finally by Parish)
1. Kata is from Kaurorapoli and the people there are mainly Earth Party and pro-Transhumanist.  There is a small number of Supers mixed into the normal population.
2. They value the traditions developed on Howlina and the advancement of Howlina independent of the rest of the world.
3. Howlanyata is spoken most often here, with English a distant second language.  Polish is very rarely spoken.
4. Dikoma Kolada (Conference) is a rich agricultural land and Kaurorapoli is now for it's fine craftsmanship.  Wooden products from Dikoma are highly prized.
5. The farm owners are fiercely independant and are shy of the transhumanist movement, but they favor the environment and a Howlina-first policy.  They would rather be alone.
6. Kata is a native, but feels alienated because she is different.  It is a bit too parochial for her.
7. Money is based the smallesgt unit, the Hreeso.  The dollar sized unit is Katohreeso (100 hreesos) more commonly known as the Kato
3. Metropolitian
1. Towns and cities are really just clumps of neighborhoods.  The neighborhoods, or Parishes, are laid out in a spiral, hub and spoke arrangement.  These wheels are connected by the larger ring roads.
2. Kaurorapoli is a quaint, traditional sea-side town and yet a major port of Howlina.  Kaurorapoli is the only port on the south side of the island.  The weather there is similar to the weather in Charleston, SC, USA.  This is a major center of learning and the Turtle Beaches are nearby.
3. Kaurorapoli stays the same throughout the story
4. Kata is most familiar with the Transhumanist Academia in Kaurorapoli
5. I discussed Kata's education on Day 19.
6.  Kata had never left home before leaving for college.
4. Local
1. Typically Howler families are Father, Mother and two children.  
1. I think a discussion of the home/house structure is in order.  Howler houses tend to be single family, low, wide and single floor.  
2. They resemble a cross between a Prairie Style, a mud home and a tropical lanai type structure.  
3. They make good use of natural air flow with high ceilings, thick walls and windows both low and high.  They are very strongly build to withstand hurricanes.  They consist of a single, low pitch, very wide roof.  This means that expansion is vertical, with the homes growing longer and the single roof ridge being extended.  
4. When multiple floors are needed or desired they are dug below, so that large municipal buildings are one story up and have many sub-basements.  
5. When a home is multi-generational it is usually divided so that it will be more of a row house, but instead of side by side it is one behind the other.  
6. Each FAMILY gets a vote, rather than each adult, and no single adult can vote.  Families are defined as a married pair and any unmarried children.  That's why when a couple marries they always move out, getting back with parents is only done when the parents get too old to take care of themselves.
2. This is a universal Howler structure to families.  The houses may differ slightly by area (in forested areas they may use more wood) but this is almost always followed.  Apartments are not used for families, only single people.
3. Kata's family is different in two ways, in the fact that there are four children.  At most Howler families have three children, but this is of course a function of the other and more prominent difference, that there are Transhumans in the family.  Her parents worked hard to blend their children into one single family unit, but the Supers were conceived artificially and their gestation, birth and early development were closely supervised by the university.
4. Both sets of Kata's grandparents were prototypical and devout followers of the Veebeelo.