Miscellaneous
Work
The preponderance of the population across the Sidra are more or less born into certain roles, in particular agricultural labour. Other than that, the possibilities include traveling occupations such as minstrel or messenger, and of course for members of local clans a life of leisure as part of the landowning elite. As noted previously, life as a low-level member of Society doesn't necessarily entail endless unrelieved drudgery, and while generally speaking hope of advancement is scant, it's possible to go from trader to merchant and, if one is lucky enough to be taken under the wing of a powerful figure of some sort (whether as a concubine or catamite, or just having a shine taken to one), the sky's the limit).
There are in addition military and household roles for members of lesser clan members (from peripheral families and suchlike), and one can fairly easily get a position as servant to a tradesperson or innkeeper etc. Failing that, the only other way of breaking out of one's pre-determined lot is to travel to distant lands in search of adventure. Cue the classic player party, roaming the land, seeking fame and fortune, rescuing folks and righting wrongs. Other jobs, especially official ones like magistrate and watchman and so on, would be either bought or inherited, or given out as a reward for loyalty by a local big shot.
Sex, love and marriage
Attitudes to sex, love and marriage are extremely liberal and relaxed compared to our world, and particularly in comparison to societies traditionally under the sway of organised religion. Thus abortion, sex work, homosexuality and sex before marriage are hardly worthy of mention. That's not to say that individual characters won't be adversely regarded by particular other characters for so doing, not from a moral perspective but more from a practical or personal one. So for example a man might be angry that his wife is consorting with a business rival, or dismayed that she has had an abortion when children are needed to help provide for the family or work on the estate or whatever. Or an ugly slob of a merchant might be ridiculed for sleeping with and mooning over handsome young men.
Entertainment
In most localities there are traveling minstrels, actors, poets, circus performers and so forth. A fortunate player or poet may get to be employed in the service of a noble, clan high-up, or other top banana of some sort. There are also jesters who, like their counterpoints in our world, had a lot of leeway to educate their masters by cleverly insulting them.
One notable character is Biler of Nogamak, the Sidra's answer to Chaucer, who lived in the early 1100s, and wrote everything from short, pithy verses to long, rambling sagas. Biler is known to modern readers particularly as the author of the long-form poem 'In a Land of Plenty', written in around 1104, which painted an idealised picture of the continent. Almost certainly composed (like much of his oeuvre) under the influence of the cannabis-like plant kharbakh, this poem relates a journey through the Southern Greenlands during a time of peace and tranquility, far removed from the later Warring Clans period, and is often used - along with the legend of Prince Kanrif - to hark back to a mythical Golden Age.
Medicine
Apothecaries and healers not having access to a corpus of knowledge similar to that of the Ancient Greeks or Mediaeval Islamic scholars, medical science is relatively primitive, consisting as it does mainly of herbal remedies and suchlike, although many of those are very effective. There's no surgery, anatomy or knowledge of how the heart or other organs function; however, theories regarding the above are starting to be developed by healers in some parts of the Sidra, and those investigations are beginning to come to the notice of teachers and scholars in towns where education is particularly prized, and where rudimentary universities are becoming established.
Rituals and beliefs
1. Death and the disposal of the dead
This is an area where regions differ widely, in the sense both of generalised local beliefs and of religious tenets, and where it's almost impossible to set down a record of the Sidra as a whole. In some areas, ancestor worship - or at least ancestor reverence - is commonplace, and in others the dead are not reverenced at all beyond a simple ceremony marking the person's life, and there's no cultural obligation to remember them or to visit their memorial site. I say memorial site because, while some societies bury their dead and mark the spot with a memorial of some kind - some elaborate, some not - others either cremate the body and scatter the ashes or don't mark the location at all, thinking it unnecessary if not arrogant. Some follow the Greek custom of burying the body, and then exhuming it 2-3 years later and placing the bones in a charnel house.
Of course, in those societies where the death of a family member is marked by a ceremony and a memorial, the higher up the social scale the deceased, the more grandiose the whole affair. Clan high-ups for example will have ornate memorials, mausolea and statues.
2. Beliefs, various
Other beliefs include those what we would call superstitions, such as attach to certain animals, weather patterns, birds flying overhead and so on. As with funerary customs, these vary considerably from region to region and area to area, although there are some that are common to most parts of the Sidra. I won't outline them all, otherwise we'd be here all day, suffice to say that the most pertinent ones would be detailed during a game session or campaign, and an exhaustive list of them will eventually find their way into the published book.
Transport
As I mentioned in a previous post, there's an extensive network of roads and highways across the Sidra, laid by a combination of legacy regimes, merchants and clans in order to facilitate Sidra-wide travel for the purposes of trade and the movement of troops etc. The upkeep of this infrastructure fell to the inheritors of power in the various regions, and these transport links have been reasonably well maintained, since their aforementioned original purposes still exist. However, inevitably some have fallen into disrepair, thus presenting travellers with yet another hazard in addition to the risk of starvation, dehydration and disease, of being attacked by bandits and/or wild beasts, or of making disastrous faux pas related to local customs and beliefs as above.
Money and finance
Most of the legacy kingdoms and principalities etc. struck their own coinage, which was recognised and accepted as legal tender in other parts of the Sidra depending on whether Queen this or Duke that was thought of as good for it. The authority for the minting of coinage is now vested in the rulers of big cities, including town officials, merchants and other notables (although, somewhat surprisingly, rarely clan officers). Essentially, in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, any coinage minted anywhere is recognised only to the extent that it's considered to be acceptable elsewhere.
Disputes regarding currency are of course common, whether it be people accused of passing counterfeit or sub-standard coin, or traders refusing to accept money from sources they consider suspect, or simply because they don't like the cut of a particular customer's jib. What counts as 'sub-standard'? Good question. There are all manner of local laws governing the minimum amount of specific metals that coins of various sorts should contain, and yes, you guessed it, they vary considerably from location to location, so that a coin deemed acceptable in one area may well not be considered acceptable in another. Cue countless opportunities for corruption, violence and rivalry.
The main form of currency is the Tanlit, which is used pretty much Sidra-wide, and which is divided into sixty agira (or a hundred fedira), and in addition there are a number of other currencies that are more local and/or less widely accepted. There's also an inchoate private banking system operated by a group of chivalric orders in cooperation with local traders and merchants.
Science and technology
Fairly undeveloped overall. There is at this point no concept of astronomy, mathematics, natural philosophy or philology. However, individual people are making discoveries and positing ideas that would later form the basis of nearly a century of advances in medicine, physics, chemistry, geometry and astronomy, and drive the growth of universities in some of the larger cities. On the other hand, in areas such as mining and metalwork, joinery, carpentry and coach-building, weaving, dyeing and pottery, horticulture, herbal medicine and the properties of various plants, metals and other substances, knowledge is abundant and widespread. Cartography is also fairly advanced, as is bookbinding and printing, so all in all the level of tech is basic but not primitive.
Education
Access to education isn't filtered through the prism of an all-powerful organised religion, and thus literacy is much more widespread than you might think. Money is the primary complicating factor, but it doesn't have to be one's own. Clans, merchants and traders often pay for the education of their subordinates, servants and apprentices, on the basis that an educated worker is a happier and therefore a more productive one. There's no sense in which education could be seen as potentially leading to rebellion, dissatisfaction or dissent, indeed such a view would be regarded as absurd.
There are no officially sanctioned schools, far less an education system, the bulk of people's learning being under the aegis of independent tutors, who instruct their pupils either at home or in one-room 'schools' that they hire for the purpose. Teachers are respected citizens, and operate by and large outside the web of power structures, rivalries and spheres of influence that characterises most of the Sidra, and to which most people are subject to in one way or another.
In addition, there are a handful of nascent universities, which are nothing like the Mediaeval universities in our world, but which are nevertheless crucibles of higher learning, in so far as that exists in the Sidra. They consist of buildings similar in size and structure to monasteries or abbeys, with three or four study rooms, sometimes a lecture hall, and dormitories for both students and staff, and are are funded either by local bigwigs or the teachers themselves.
Language
There's a continent-wide language, Amarkhris Leminra, which has three main dialects and an array of minor ones (some of which are barely mutually comprehensible), and is widely spoken and understood, although some regional accents can be difficult to penetrate, and of course curmudgeons are wont to tell outsiders they can't make out what they're saying, even though they can do so perfectly well. So, another potential source of misunderstandings for our plucky adventurers (whether comedic or otherwise).
Ok, that's the last of the setting material for now. Articles concerning playable classes, types of scenario and mechanics to follow in a separate thread.