Rom Culture and Traditions

The Rom culture is best described as close-knit. Although the Rom are wide-spread people, their loyalty is first and foremost with their kin; they will trust a Rom whom they have never met over a non-Rom whom they have known for twenty years, for the Rom are all linked by a common heritage and language. For the Rom, the connections are even closer than shared blood and history, for they share rich cultural traditions and have a lifestyle unique to the Rom.

For the Rom, respect is one of the most important shared cultural traits. Anyone that is Rom deserves respect as their birthright, but for the non-Rom, respect must be grudgingly earned. Within the Rom community there are levels of respect, and the most highly respected are the elderly whose wisdom leads the clans. Beyond that, respect is contingent upon age, experience, intelligence, and skill. The non-Rom must constantly struggle to be accepted by the Rom, and only after years of traveling and working with them will one be accepted as a Rom and finally given respect.

The Rom prize wit and intelligence. Someone who can think fast and take advantage of a situation is highly praised, for the Rom survive by making instantaneous decisions. Thinking quickly is nurtured in the Rom by the constant games they play, when fathers and mothers perform magic tricks by making coins disappear and the children must find the coins. Two of their time honored traditions reinforce this, story telling and word games. Rom culture is an oral culture where nearly all knowledge is passed down by oral retelling. The Rom most common tale is about how the Rom outsmart non-Rom by cunning stratagems, and thus the Rom children are constantly being instructed in innovative techniques to fool others. The word game is a game learned as children yet played throughout life among the Rom. Their word games are nearly countless, with hundreds of variations. Some are competitive stories, others games on word play or metaphors, to games where the opponents creatively curse one another, directly or indirectly. The common feature is that at least two people compete against one another in a lightning quick game where one tries to outwit the other as onlookers applaud.

The lives of the Rom are difficult and the Rom are firm believers in not having to work harder when necessary. For the Rom, it is wiser to let others do the work and expend their energies. Thus the Rom value those who take advantage of a situation; a Rom who is taken advantage of is mercilessly ridiculed by their friends and family. The Rom believe in acting only when absolutely necessary, and feel that the most effective time to act is when the opportunity arises. Exerting oneself when not necessary means that one may be too tired to act later when it finally proves essential to act. There is a Rom saying that "Working one's oxen to death is not going to make Winter pass by sooner". This relaxed approach to work often earns the disapproval of those who value hard work and the Rom have earned a reputation as lazy and hedonistic.

Despite their clannishness, the Rom are surprisingly willing to adopt outsiders into their midst, particularly if they are children. The Rom have long accepted nearly any child into their company as long as that child has the potential to prove profitable for the Rom. There are accounts that the Rom often steal babies, but usually children are given away or run away from home, and the hue and cry is only raised after the Rom have left and the family has some explaining to do to the community.

The Rom have elaborate rules and customs regarding death. Due to their history with death and their knowledge of death magic, they go to elaborate measures to ensure that the dead rest peacefully. Treatment of the dead is carefully monitored. Only children may clean the body and only ritually purified men may place the body in the ground. Elaborate rituals are performed to ensure that the dead rest peacefully and a gold coin is hidden on the body to ensure that they have the coin in the afterlife should they need to pay for any of their past sins. Theft of this coin from a corpse is considered a most grievous sin and condemns one to be haunted by the offended soul thereafter. Upon the death of a family member the whole family or caravan grieve. The men drink and sing mourning songs while the women cry and scream. These acts of mourning are loud and prolonged, with the belief that they will reach into the afterworld to ensure the dead that they are sorely missed. The men's songs are also advice to the dead who haven't left on how to leave the world of the living and the women's cries are designed to scare the restless soul into the afterlife. After three days of riotous grieving, the family leaves the area and grieves silently. By moving on, they hope to avoid being haunted should the soul not pass on to the afterlife. They are silent silent to not only show their respect for the dead, but they also wait for any of the telltale signs that the soul of the recently departed is following them.

However a Rom murdered by another Rom cannot be buried until their murder is discovered. Divinations are performed to see if the death was by curse, poison, or some other instrument. If after three days the dead person is not avenged and the murderer discovered, the dead is buried and the family fractures to join various other families. It is believed that the ghost of the murdered will eventually haunt the murderer, and the other family members seek to avoid sharing the murderer's fate.

The Rom have a long been associated by outsiders with a number of criminal activities. Their collective sense of ownership, combined with their own self-image of carefree rogues and their disdain for sedentary folk have provided them with a very ambiguous view on private ownership. For the Rom, there is nothing wrong with acquiring something through one's wiles. All townsfolk are rich, and therefore can afford to share their wealth with the Rom. Of all the crimes that the Rom are accused of, petty theft is the most commonly practiced by the Rom. Many young Rom males will often see theft as a means of showing their abilities, and relish the risks involved. If passing through a community, the Rom may take a livestock here and there, and perhaps pick some pockets.

Those Rom caught in town of crimes are usually fined or held for a few days, but the authorities are loathe to keep them for longer for fear that it their families will stay in the area, increasing the likelihood of further crimes! The local magistrate is usually happy to fine them and order them to move along immediately. If a Rom flees to their encampment, then it's usually impossible to find them or the stolen item. Rom in trouble with the local authorities can also flee to a neighboring clan and travel with them until the community outrage subsides.

One of the more serious of crimes they are suspected of is smuggling. Due to their nomadic existence, and their contacts throughout the world, the Rom are very effective smugglers, and most Rom groups do some smuggling to make ends meet. In some parts of the Old World, groups of Rom smugglers monopolize the trade in the area and become large criminal organizations, which blights the name of other Rom not involved in these affairs.

As mentioned before, there is one crime the Rom are suspected of that they are quite undeserving: baby thieves. When the Rom arrive at a community, there have been instances of mothers giving unwanted children to the Rom to care for, whom they happily accept. The Rom's lifestyle also appeals to the disaffected and Rom often find orphans and mistreated children eager to join the warmth and experiences of a Rom clan. So when the Rom leave a community, those that have left voluntarily are often suspected of being abducted, since the townsfolk can not understand why anybody would want to leave the safety of their communities.

Since the Rom are outsiders, they have an affinity for those sharing similar positions, and as such they are less aggressive about signs of mutation. Those people with a small and easily concealed mutation may travel with the Rom, although those with an evil or dangerous disposition are quietly taken care of. Those whose condition worsens or develop more mutations are asked to leave or killed. This lax approach to mutations has brought the suspicions of Witch-hunters onto the Rom, more attention that they can do without. It should be noted that Rom clans are not hotbeds of chaos worshippers, simply that they are maybe more compassionate towards those who like them are persecuted by society.

Although most Rom clans indulge in some sort of petty theft or smuggling, their intention is to not physically harm anybody. They have no qualms about parting someone from their money through a con job or the like, but using physical violence will only compromise their safety, since they rely so much on the grudging good will of the communities they stay at. There are a few Rom communities that are violent and dangerous, but these wayward brethren are kept at a distant. There are a few clans, mostly the artisans and tinkers who refuse to take any part of crime, and their less scrupulous relatives consider them stuffy and conservative.

Magic and Religion

The Rom are a very superstitious people, with a culture rich in belief, folk-lore, and traditions, many brought from the lands of Nehekhara. They themselves are viewed with superstition by the communities through which they travel, having some sort of magical power of beguiling people into joining their wandering families, and the ability to curse whole communities that wrong them. It is said to dance past midnight with the gypsies means that one can never return to their communities, and to mistreat a gypsy is to ensure that the wheat will blight and your cows' milk will sour. The Rom practice some magic, mostly illusions, but one of their favored spells is the curse, since evidence pointing at the perpetrator is difficult to find. A few of the clans, particularly Strigani clans practice the same ancient and powerful necromancy of Nehekhara.

The center of any Rom community is the Matriarch, the oldest and wisest of the Rom, who acts as a seer, guiding the community. When the Rom reach a community, the Matriarch, who is referred to as "Grandmother" by all the Rom, will usually provide some readings and divination for the community. It is said that the Matriarch has an uncanny ability to foresee the future and speak with the dead.

The Rom originally worshipped of the older pantheon, but their nomadic existence has created a dramatic change of faith. Some families became devout followers of the Old Faith and enjoy a closeness to the earth that few people have. Most Rom revere a few gods, Taal, Rhya, and those river clans: Manann, but one god is held above all others: Ranald, the Trickster. The Rom are very devout in their worship of Ranald as god of luck and thievery, and the Rom are known throughout the Old World as the "Ranald's Children". This close relationship with Ranald may help fuel suspicions about the Rom's integrity. One god is rarely mentioned but is deeply revered: Morr. The Rom worship Morr in their own way when death happens, and they hope that the patronage of Morr will stave off the dark history that many of the Rom clans have.

Should the dark history of the Rom haunt them, they call upon Ghost Finders, the Rom version of an exorcist. The only devotees to Morr in the community, they seek out those ghosts that torment the living. They are also experts at dispelling curses, and a handful even hunt down those vampires that still hide among the more treacherous of the Rom clans. The Ghost Finders also have a long tradition hunting down ghouls, despising them for their ancient deviations from the Rom traditions.

The Rom not only call upon their priests and druids to assist them, but they have a whole host of other resources. Many Rom caravans have mystical secret societies among them that carry on the ancient traditions of the land they long ago lost. As mentioned before the Rom also draw upon witches with their ability to curse and seers with their powers to see into the future. What is different about all these traditions is that the Rom do not trust the written language and all their magical, mystical, and religious traditions are passed down orally. This keeps the knowledge from being shared with outsiders and builds strong relationships between tutor and student.