World-builder

World-building: Grassland: a.k.a. prairies, savannahs, steppe, veld, & pampa

Grasslands like lakes and rivers can be inside other biomes, and create ecological crossovers. Other biomes have crossovers but not as commonly as grasslands, rivers, and lakes. They can exist inside temperate forests, in deserts, around lakes or rivers, near shorelines, and they can be vast enough to exist on their own as well. Therefore for the sake of world building we will use them as a vast prairie or grassland with only an influence of water because it is needed for survival.
*note on using grasslands in amidst other biomes. They may have a small grouping among a forest, rivers and lakes are found frequently in combination with grasslands. The surrounding biome and its ecology will influence how a group will interact with the grassland as it would with lakes and rivers. When trying to survive the life-form will use everything at its disposal. Nature doesn’t have boundaries unless they are physical. They won’t stay out of a place unless there is an ecological reason. Think about the mouse that comes into your house, to the mouse it’s just part of the woods. It doesn’t care that it’s yours. These are human concepts. Ecology doesn’t acknowledge these higher human concepts because it doesn’t care. Territory is established differently, a border is a line on a map.
Economics: In a grassland hunter gatherer or agrigarian culture would thrive. Agrigarian cultures would also thrive because of the abundant sunshine,
Provided they had a source of water. Agrigarian might be a hub for trade for surrounding hunter-gatherers, and vice versa. Hunter-gatherer groups may also
trade amongst themselves. These groups are not constant movers, and most will have places that they migrate to annually or seasonally because of food and water sources. Surrounding groups will know that the area is theirs and know where to find them approximately.
Language: Each group would tend to keep a language as theirs. Language is a huge part of a group’s identity. However, those members who were constant traders with other groups would be bi or tri-lingual. These people would be extremely useful. Historically in our own world grassland hunter-gatherers do not have a written component to the language, and they pass their traditions down orally. Agrigarian grasslanders may have a written tradition, but most likely came from oral tradition if their ancestors were hunter gatherers in the grassland. They may not take to written language for everything. Particularly that thing held dear or sacred.
Kinship and descent: With roving groups there is only some opportunity to marry outside the group. There must be contact with others for this to happen, and some groups may have laws concerning who may marry outside the group. For instance only daughters may be able to marry outside the group. The restriction could be that whoever is the inheritor of the line may not be able to marry outside and live outside the group. Marriage of an outsider would be permissible, but they may have to live with the group so the line of heirs doesn’t leave the original groups and take the wealth with them.
Leadership & stratification: The leadership of such groups is usually elected in some manner by deed, and or could be by age. Then often times there is a larger governing body that is used for crisis, and/or as a way to hold a larger groups that is broken into smaller groups together such as a clan with family lines broken over a large geographical area.
Religion & magick: Religion of the grasslands would depend on the surrounding biome. If the grassland is in a cold area that would affect it just as well as if it’s in a constantly warm area. The agrigarian nature of groups would create a new set of issues for religion as well as possibly an agrigarian form of magic that works with harvests and weather. A hunter-gatherer group may see things differently. They may have god for different issues, or some of the same. In environments like this magickal components are often nature based.
World-building in Grasslands: A culture from this type of ecology may be hunter gatherer and agrigarian. In the spring they migrate to an area the closer to a water source to water the crops with, and in the winter they move further inland where the hunting is better, and more shelter is available from more diverse terrain. They would trade with other groups, in the resources abundant to them, but most likely within a barter system. Likely resources may include furs, meat, or migrating livestock.
Religious practitioners may be a specialized grouped with a linage definition that is not by blood buy by spirit. Therefore practitioners may be male or female. This aspect of the specialists would accommodate for the balance demand of nature. Pat lives would be within the supernatural possibilities of the religion. Marriage of the body and spirit would have a whole new seriousness. This would make kinship extremely important. Matrilineal descent is more likely than patrilineal because of the connection to life energy of birth. That fact may also influence the tendency for female shaman. The channeling of spirits would be common place within the spiritual nature of the groups.
The language of the spirits may only be interpretable with a shaman/priest. The groups would have a secular and a sacred language. The secular language would be verbal while the sacred language would be made of pictographs. Pictographs are usually tied to the ecological relationship of the life-forms. Perhaps something of a set of curved lines arranged for different meanings.
Other influences of culture may come from a river or bordering woodland. They may also come from a tundra or taiga if the grassland is based from a steppe. Each type of grassland alters the ideas in a variable way. Grasslands are very susceptible to the ecologies that surround them or that they themselves infiltrate. This gives them a diversity that some ecology does not have.