Rashemaar

The Rashemaar, also known as Rashemi outside their native land, were a human ethnic group native to Rashemen and Thay.

Description
Most Rashemaar were short and muscular, with a hardy physique. They commonly had dusky skin, dark eyes, and thick black hair. Men were especially hairy and might maintain a thick dark beard; baldness was virtually unknown in their culture. Women often wore their hair long and elaborately plaited.

Culture
Elders were respected for their wisdom and mental strength while children were expected to earn their place in the world, rather than having it handed to them. Most young adult Rashemi traveled extensively for a year as part of a coming-of-age ritual called dajemma (also spelled darjemma), resulting in a population with considerable worldly knowledge. A young man sometimes traveled with a younger member of the Wychlaran known as a hathran.

The Rashemaar placed little value in the accumulation of wealth, and expressed no shame for their bodies. They thought of themselves as inhabitants of a harsh and beautiful land ruled by spirits and rarely displayed the arrogance of other human ethnic groups. They viewed life as a series of challenges to face and defeat and placed a high value on individual accomplishment and strength. They tended to focus on physical feats in Rashemen, while the Rashemi of Thay preferred displays of magical power.

The Rashemaar people tended to be quite superstitious. For example, it was considered bad luck to seek knowledge of one's own fortune. In order for someone to ward off bad luck, they spat on the fingers, made a fist, and then flicked the fingers three times.

Formal schooling was not emphasized among the Rashemaar due to their strong warrior culture; similarly many Rashemi in Thay were not educated due to their status as a subjugate class in Thay. Despite this, many of their people managed to retain and practice literacy.
 * Education

A recreational sport for young people in Rashemen was a snowshoe-running competition involving only snowshoes and traditional doe-skin loincloths.
 * Sports

Languages
Rashemaar usually spoke Common and their national language of Rashemi, which used the Thorass alphabet.

Common sayings among the Rashemaar included:
 * "What good can come of alliance with evil?"
 * "A wolf will always be a wolf."
 * "There are those who think and those who dream."

Religion
The Rashemaar commonly prayed to "the Three"―Bhalla, Khelliara, and the Hidden One, who were also known as Chauntea, Mielikki, and Mystra throughout the rest of the Realms. They also venerated many local spirits, such as the telthors that were unknown elsewhere in Faerûn. Rashemi in Thay might pray to the Mulhorandi pantheon or the four elemental deities, particularly Kossuth.

History
The Rashemaar were descendants of the nomadic tribes that were employed as mercenaries by Mulhorand and helped win the Orcgate Wars of to. They then forged the empire of Raumathar, which rivaled the Mulhorand and Unther empires in its day.

In the centuries after, they fought many battles against the Narfell empire over the contested Rashemi tribal lands on the Priador plateau. Finally in, the empires suffered a mutual defeat in a massive fiery clash involving an avatar of Kossuth and an army of fiends led by the demon lord Eltab. The armies of the Mulhorand empire quickly swept in and reoccupied the Priador plateau, and their descendants continued to subjugate the Rashemi that lived in Thay in the years leading up to and during the Era of Upheaval.

For a time, Eltab ruled the lands of Rashemen, but the Wychlaran aligned with the native Rashemaar and the warrior Yvengi in, forcing the demon lord to flee. In the centuries since, Thay attempted to take Rashemen from the Rashemaar people many times, but were always repelled. By the late 14 century DR, the Rashemaar/Rashemi were the most numerous human ethnic group on the Priador plateau of Thay and in the nation of Rashemen. Minority groups could be found throughout the surrounding regions as well.