Rural Culture
While the times when the majority of the rural population were serfs bound to the land are long gone, their lives are hardly easy. Producing food and other agricultural products requires hard work, from dawn to dusk, and in every season.
The biggest economic divide in the countryside is between the farmers who own their own lands, and the farmhands who work for room, board, and paltry wages for the former. In some regions the farms are small, and the one or two farmhands they are able to afford are sometimes almost treated as family members. Other farms are larger estate, and the farmhands have to supplement their income by renting out small parcels of land which they till as tenant farmers. But in recent decades, absentee land owners from the cities have bought more and more lands which their employees run as large plantations, and their local administrators are more interested in squeezing out short-term profits out of the land than caring about the long-term well-being of their employees.
Escaping from this situation is difficult for the rural poor. Some manage to marry into farming families. Others join settlement projects run by the governments of the city-states, where they promise tracts of until-now "unclaimed wilderness" to people who manage to settle and "tame" them - which often runs into opposition by local wildling settlements who do not appreciate intruders into their territory. But more and more of the rural poor seek their fortunes in the big cities, as the factories can always use more workers.
Otherwise, opportunities in the villages is limited. Most have small village schools nearby where children are taught writing, rudimentary numbers, and other basic skills during their mandatory four years of primary education. Frequently, children of different ages sit in the same room.
Nevertheless, the villages are not free of entertainments. Many villages have festivals honoring the anniversary of the sanctification of a local shrine or temple, and thus most villages have several such festivals within walking distance. And during the long cold winter nights, people from several households often gather in the main chamber of alternating farm buildings in order to swamp gossip, sing songs, and tell tales - often featuring assorted supernatural creatures, old ruins, and fantastic locations said to be in the evening. Adventurers who are trusted by the villagers might be invited to such storytelling evenings, and learn some useful rumors - although the locals will certainly attempt to get them to tell all the stories they know.
