Xenophillia and Xenoeros in the Sea of Stars (A to Z)

While love is sometimes a factor in relationships between people, friendship and desire are also both motivating factors in interactions between beings.  Indeed, they are likely to be more common that love in most place and for most people.

As a general rule, the peoples of the Sea of Stars are fairly accepting of outsiders and willing to treat them based on how they present themselves.  They are not trusting fools, but change is one of the few constants in the Sea of Stars and most people have learned that it pays to be welcoming of knowledge and adaptable to shifts in the way things are.  Friendships built with travelers provide news and information along with the greater chance of more travelers, with more news. and occasionally even new members of the community if one of the travelers settles down.

While long distance communication (that is anything more that fifty miles/eighty kilometers away) is difficult, it is not impossible and the major cities have relative;y strong courier and mail systems in place and writers from far distant location carry on a lively, if slow, correspondence.  Chains of friendships and networks of communication spring up and often outlast their founding members.  If you can get an Imperial courier to carry your message, you are almost guaranteed that your missive will arrive at its destination.

Friendships ranging across and between kin and kine lines is common, especially among merchants, sailors, travelers and venturers who come from all walks of life, all places across the Sea of Stars and from all kine.  Such friendships often lead to such groups settling in the same area, usually the home regions of one of the people, when they retire from active work.  This leads to such things as dwarves in coastal towns, dogmen living in dwarven holds and visse just about everywhere.

As well as friendship, there is desire, with many seeking the exotic in their erotic encounters.  Again merchants, sailors, travelers and venturers meet and have . . . encounters both within and without their working circle.  Skilled sex workers can emerge from any kine and usually make a good living, though certain cultures may have very precise expectations of beauty and sexual desirability.  In most cultures in the Sea of Stars, sex work is just another form of work ranging from basic sex work to highly skilled courtesans, who are entertainers, conversationalists, and more, and their male equivalents.  Now, unfortunately, as slavery in endemic to the Sea of Stars, many sex workers are enslaved people but in most cases they keep part of their earnings and can buy their freedom.

Differing sexual mores sometimes causes strange conflicts in sexual encounters but most can be sorted out easily enough between respectful partners.  Though one thing is known by all, when dragons have sex with non-dragons, no matter what form they have adopted for such, they are always the dominant partner.  (Mating between dragons is a different and esoteric subject that one is best to avoid, some draconic secrets should be left secret.)

Friendship, love and desires is intertwined in different ways for different cultures (and people).

Notes: More on the default setting of xenophilia in the Sea of Stars can be read about here.  More on marriage in the Sea of Stars here and the problems of slavery in storytelling here.  Xenoeros, desire for the other, is a construct I seem to have created for this post, xenophilia, being like and fascination (or even love) for the outsider but I wanted a clear division between friendship and desire for the purpose of this discussion.

X is always a tough letter and I keep bouncing back to xenophilia for it and using it for a character name seems a weak choice (though I may have to fall back on that for Y or Z, we will see how inspiration strikes).

Image, upper, “Visiting a Friend in Autumn” by Okada Beisanjin is marked with CC0 1.0, lower, “Melancholy Courtesan” is marked with CC0 1.0.