The culture of the Citadel is, by and large, a cosmopolitan one, owing to its long history as a refuge for Chosen fleeing the outside world. While most of them arrived from the post-Imperial polities of the Sahvarr River basin and the Cerulean Tangle and form the strongest part of local culture, a sprinkling of traditions and ideas from much further afield have also had their impact.

Ghyezramsi society has fairly high social mobility compared to the more stratified heartlands. The vast majority of the population are either recent immigrants, almost always with no resources to their names except for their own abilities, or the recent descendants of such people. Though inherited status and wealth are not unknown - see for example the Founding Families - most Ghyezramsi families have not had the time and opportunity to build up wealth or the numbers to dominate a particular area, and achieving power or prosperity has been a matter of skill, wit, or luck. The concept of the “rags to riches” story, and of individuals or small groups attaining power, resources, and influence through their own efforts, continue to exert a powerful influence over local culture.

The largest proportion of local elites, therefore, consists of those who have acquired their positions essentially through impressing their fellows. A characteristic form of social unit within the Citadel is the daghza - loosely comparable to an association or club - formed around an interest or goal embodied by a charismatic, or at least respected, leader. The term covers a considerable amount of ground and most sufficiently organized groups are viewed as daghzekh, and there are many different kinds, from religious cults to charities to political groupings to craft guilds to sports teams to male bands. Though some Ghyezramsi, especially women or unmarried men, may have a “home” daghza with which they spend most or all of their time, most will be members of at least a few daghzekh simultaneously; there is nothing considered inherently wrong with this, though should they have opposing purposes or otherwise be rivals, an individual will usually be compelled to choose one or the other.

Though most daghzekh are relatively small-scale - limited to one area or community either by their focus or by lack of need for higher-order operations - some are larger or even Citadel-wide. A prime example, both of this in particular and of daghzekh in general, is the Friends of the Future, whose focal figure is the Oracle Dlyss, though Mortoth acts as her proxy.

The local lingua franca, while mostly based on Contemporary Imperial and - with some adjustment - not too difficult to understand by speakers of that dialect, bears a number of peculiarities, especially in vocabulary, in common with the highland tongues, as might be expected from its geographical location. Incoming migrants (except those few from areas outside the Imperial cultural sphere) tend to adapt well, though they rarely speak it without a strong accent; the easier the transition, the more likely they are to fail to pass their birth tongues on to their children. As a result, very few individuals actually born in the Citadel speak anything except one flavor or another of ghyezramsi: Citadelese.

Families with a very long history in the Citadel have historically had, as their birth tongue, a highly divergent variant of the Osaari Hills highland dialect, reflecting the fact that most members of the Founding Families originated there. While this language is nowadays not often spoken even in private, having long since been overtaken by ghyezramsi, it has been one of the largest sources of influence on the tongue, and many of the terms relating to magic, the traditions of the Citadel, and landforms and older placenames derive from it, although they are frequently “lowlandized” in pronunciation.

The relative lack of wood in the Citadel inclines native instruments to be made of stone, metal, and, for certain components, animal products such as hide, hair, bone, or gut. The musical traditions of the Citadel are especially rich in metallic idiophones such as bells, chimes, gongs, cymbals, steelpans, glockenspiels, and lamellophones, though male bands, especially herders, are prone to use small drums and bowed string instruments.

Though isolated settlements may rely on turf, moss or grass thatch, fieldstone, and/or aghatin bones for construction, the extreme prevalence in the Citadel of elementalists with the ability to shape stone has made this the preferred method of creating indoor spaces.

Due to the chilly climate, the vast majority of buildings in the Citadel are set either partially or completely in the ground to help retain heat. Those with an aboveground component tend to have a compact shape - round, square, or octagonal, or whatever best fits its siting alongside neighboring buildings - with few of them taller than two stories above ground, while those completely underground may be less so, often following the contours of natural caverns or other passages.

Windows are rarely found at ground level, and are generally small when present; they are often more common and larger on upper stories. Rather than glass, they are most often paned with muscovite mica, though the homes of the wealthy and other important buildings may use other minerals such as quartz.

Since the climate of the Citadel is colder than optimal for takmar, heating arrangements are an important part of architectural design. Especially in the upper reaches of the valleys, homes and settlements are generally sited to take advantage of the region's geothermal resources.

The Citadel is both geographically and culturally isolated from the outside world, and is effectively unable either to import or export material goods; therefore, up until recently, it has been forced to rely on those substances that can either be extracted locally, or transmuted from said substances. Stones, metals, and other minerals are relatively easily both obtained and transmuted, and therefore jewelry is relatively cheap and common, though those - including gemstones - of sufficiently complicated chemical composition may still be a significant purchase.

The highly differentiated and structured nature of organic materials makes them far less amenable to transmutation, and the relatively severe climate limits those that are available. Animal textiles - furs, wools, and leathers - are relatively easy to obtain, from a number of animals both wild and domesticated, and are the most frequently used. Arable land being mostly devoted to farming for food (or feedstock for animals), plant textiles other than those that can those that can be derived from food plants are almost nonexistant.

The advent of linking books has opened up new and relatively secure sources for materials, though their rarity means that book-imported goods of all kinds are still luxury items.

Warmer though the valleys of the Citadel naturally are than the surrounding landscape, they remain significantly cooler than the lowlands to the south, with even the strenuous efforts of hundreds of energists unable to completely eliminate chills or the chances of snow at night. Being of a species adapted to warmer climes, therefore, a set of outdoor clothing is highly advisable, if not always necessary; the local penchant for subterranean construction means that over short distances, cold weather can often be avoided entirely.

Indoors, where warmth does not mandate clothing, preferences vary more widely. Since, like most takma cultures, there is no nudity taboo, many prefer simply to go without clothing, especially in their own homes; it is worn mainly for reasons of displaying personality or status.

In recent cycles, one of the more disruptive, and, frankly, destructive pastimes practiced in the Citadel is a sport that has been labeled boulderball, whose participants are invariably either stone elementalists or mentalists and are overwhelmingly male adolescents.

Participants are arranged into two teams, of equal size though not of a previously specified number, each of which has a territory defined by landmarks. The essential nature of play is not dissimilar to volleyball, in that the purpose is to cause the ball to hit the ground in the opposing team's territory while preventing it from doing so in one's own, but there are significant differences.

For one thing, all players are required to remain airborne during play; landing on the ground causes one to be “out”. For another, the ball is made of stone and usually between 1.5 and 2 meters across, and must be moved and “thrown” using the players' magic. The size and weight of the ball generally requires that multiple players be involved in changing its course simultaneously, and so each team will often also have a set number of mentalists as “spotters” who can keep an eye on play and telepathically notify players where they need to be. And, lastly, the teams are not separated by any equivalent of a net and are not required to remain over their own territory, and while actively knocking players out of the sky is usually grounds for being removed from play, disrupting the flight patterns of opposing team members, or flying among them to steal the ball, is allowed and expected (in this respect, the sport more closely resembles both association and American football).

The mass of the ball, the speed at which it can travel, and the difficulty of controlling it all conspire to make boulderball a dangerous sport not only to the players but to their environs, and the game is regarded with a certain amount of distaste and concern by the public. While the Citadel has no shortage of unoccupied land where damage could be minimized, it is usually because they are as unpleasant or inconvenient to live in as they are to play in, and there is a tendency for overconfident players to risk a game near significant settlements and cause problems for the locals. The Citadel Council has debated banning the sport several times, but thus far the Kaean members have resisted.

Despite wider opposition, the sport remains popular among certain segments of the younger age cohorts, particularly since a public dedication of a team's performance and victories to a female spectator is considered a valid courtship gift.