The dominant culture of Midgard is that of the humans, however a fine human , halfling , gnome blend has appeared over the years, creating the fine Midgardian culture.

Art

Art its main function is to please the eye. This very simple pragmatic, non-romantic view on art comes forth mainly from the halflings and gnomes, who have no art for other reasons and very little art to begin with.

Humans have a tendency to act as if they see beauty in high society art where their is none to advertise their intellectual superiority. If an authority figure displays this behavior many other humans automatically agree with him, upholding art that might have symbolic meaning or abstract significance as oppose to true aesthetic beauty.

In comparison, elves almost always truly do see beauty in symbolic meaning and fae almost always truly do see beauty in abstract expression of emotion, where humans usually only say they do to show off in high circles.

But apart from this rare case of social pressure, art in Midgard is often a display of aesthetic beauty in the form of grandness, epic scale, glory, erotic, excitement, adventure, happiness and larger than life events that in the dull drag of life in Midgard would be very rare indeed. In this effect Midgardian art shows almost the exact same function as the gladiator arena.

Literature

Apart from the obvious non-fictional data of the lorekeepers, writing is relatively rare in Midgard, as is reading. Many guilds have a bookkeeper or two to record important figures or might hire a lorekeeper a few days in the week, but true fictional literature in Midgard is rare.

Some lorekeepers (in their own time) and other authors write dramatic stories about non-fictional events. These legends and tales actually happened although the details are filled in by the writer.

True fictional stories in Midgard are mainly so rare because actual adventures happen in the world of Heimr with certain frequency

Philosophical writing is one of the most common literature in Midgard. With the exiting metaphysics of Heimr, with provable afterlives in the divine realms , hardline defined good and evil , magic and glamour , the pro-contra-evolution debate of the feyfolk , shanata and nymph and especially the connection to the vortex subjects for philosophy are not hard to come by. Driven by the god Talor and Ganinisum to search knowledge and understanding of the world, the human and gnome of Midgard are especially adept at language, sensational and metaphysical philosophy.

Architecture

The art of building homes in Midgard is varied. Compare to the more militaristic style of Utgard and the more bombastic and decorated style of Asgard, Midgard is more often practical. Mixing pleasure and work within one house, Midgard often features houses that have both stores/workshops and actual living capacity combined.

Because tax payment within Midgard is based on the space your house takes, houses in Midgard are often higher than would be otherwise economically feasible. Building an extra layer on your house might be a more complex project, but it pays of in the long run.

Slums are common in Midgard. These unhealthy, cold, unstable, self build houses are cheap, build fast, and provide the basic housing needs for all the poor people in Midgard. Since they are self build, often from junk wood, they have no defined single style.

The middleman buys a pre-build house in a certain style. Complete neighbourhoods usually have rows upon rows of the same building, modified only slightly to fit natural environment or current owner. Some rare neighbourhoods have houses tailored to fit a certain race, profession, or religion.

The rich man in Midgard buys a completely tailor made house, with access to a sewer system (this will cost extra taxes) and far away from the middleman his mass produced houses and especially the slums. Ironically, these neighbourhoods are again as varied and colourful as the slums.

These three classes of housing feature trough almost all of Midgard it's cities and (on a smaller scale) villages.

Outside of settlement borders (farmhouses, or other people that live away from society), taxes are only payed for the space you take in next to an official road, so most farms simply connect a small private dirt road leading to their home, barns and other buildings, to the main road. That way they only pay for the width of the private road.

Farms (farmland is considered your property if you build a fence around it and have actively used it this year) are large and usually don't have multiple floors, in contrast with the rest of Midgard.

Music and Dance

Music and dancing, being one of the simplest and least expensive forms of entertainment, is found trough all layers of society and thus it is found in abundance in Midgard.

The rich of Midgard more often go to Asgardian style performances. Grand orchestra's and costumed danceroom balls are common. The poor of Midgard often enjoy a more Utgardian style of music and dance. They sing themselves, in small company, wile dancing wild without choreography.

A strange typical Midgardian mix has arisen however. Although still rare both these mixes gain in popularity fast.

The first mix takes the more allegro Asgardian style music, but plays it in dark brooding clubs and people dance to it wildy, usually under influence of expensive recreational drugs. This form of club has been especially popularized by the featherwall establishments.

The second mix takes the wild Utgardian music, with lots of deep drums and rytme, but several dancing choreography routines. The movement is way more wild, fast and explicit than the elven dance moves but they are trained and pre-scripted. "Palace of the silver self" in Predator haven has made this style well known among the public.

Both traditional halfing and gnome music (very rare to begin with) has been largely pushed to the background past decades. Both halfings and gnomes find the entertainment provided by the other races to be more adventurous when enjoyed in a varied and frequently switched manner.

Cuisine

Typical Midgardian food is limited in diversity. The farms in the neighbourhood of the village usually only produces certain types of food and that is the food the village usually eats. Traders from other villages and cities arrive with regular intervals but they usually don't bring food that spoils easily, further downgrading the available food diversity. Cities usually have a diverse market for food, but the large, industrial machine that is Midgard rewards focussing on cheap to make robust food unless your target audience is the rich.

Meat, hunting and fishing

Furthermore, wildlife on the Midgardian plains is not diverse at all. Cavadors dominate the plains and Cavador meat is easy to come by and available in abundance. Rabbit and deer only covers about a tenth of the catches and thus remains expensive. Render meat is available and if a render nest or cave is found the little buggers are an easy catch all around, after the fighters are dispatched of. But Render meat is fowl and eating it makes you an easy target for disease if it is not properly prepared. Thus again the meat is cheap and only bought by the desperate. Villages near streams and ponds fish without any restrain and thus fish near these villages is rare. Further away from the villages fish can still be found in abundance but this makes transporting the fish a daily task and thus again, expensive. Fish in cities (even in the foul part of the Terrendil that is Port Ossic) is thus such an expensive treat that one could feed a large family on the price of one fish prepared for a noble man. Since Midgard has no direct connection to the sea, salt water fish is even more rare. Basinder, the most common bird in Midgard, is hunted, but hunting the bird is dangerous and the meat is tough. The other birds are less common and flocks of birds move from season to season.

Some foolish people hunt in the forests of Midgard. Although the meat from the rare creatures their, skinners, flying siren, thunder lizards and the fish in magical waters in particular, is highly sought after, and the hunter parties that succeed in the forests of Midgard are richer than most merchants... they quit fast or never grow old.

City life comes with it's own opportunities. Rats are the most common things alive in some parts of the city of Midgard and rat meat, although almost as foul as render meat, is a good meal among the poor living in the slumbs.

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