Cultures

the Taladan

The sea gives back bodies. It does not give back names. The Taladan speak Talavaren and call themselves the landings, after the Danatal: safe landing given, obligation owed back for it. Goldbrook, Belldyard and Whithclif are what the chart-makers wrote instead, and one rate book on that coast carries both readings with nobody willing to strike either. Their shore houses swear to no Power at all, only to a duty held and released, which is why a Talakeden custody note is read in courts that agree on nothing else. Two of their three crowns name a capital nobody lives in. The houses outlasted both.

States: Rustpeakia, Boulde, Curunsi. Peoples: Human, Half-Elf, Elf, Gnome, Rookari, Vampire.

the Culdar

Named to be shouted across a valley, not to be filed. Culdar names are short because they are hailing names, cut to carry across a drove road: Ekh, Drukh, Gur, Kacculd. Assize clerks wrote them down as noises, then cited the noise when they left these people off the roll. One hundred and thirty-nine towns and forty ports later, the crowns at Ekh, Vrob and Ghodog are theirs. The peoples the roll shut out built the first counter-anchors between them, and the yards at Ekh settled the shape a warstone still takes: a face the besieged can read, and the cutter's mark under it.

States: Szezhir, Dha, Chaun, Rustpeakia, Dure, Char, Boulde, Dubud, Rarne, Gegzo, Nuzord. Peoples: Centaur, Half-Giant, Human.

the Dushar

A year of water, bought with a year of your life. The cistern-year is a Dushar contract: one guaranteed year of water against one year of labor, inheritable and famously hard to end. Debt in the eastern basin is counted in dry seasons, not coin, and the copper kilns at Gararagz burn through crews working off their grandfathers' thirst. The Renewal Saint was theirs: Ismer of Zindush, who planted the first tree of the resettlement. The Replanters mention it often. The thirty-four Dushar towns, holding no crown of their own under Szezhir and Eqoro, mention it less.

States: Szezhir, Eqoro. Peoples: Dwarf, Gnome.

the Gathur

Not one of these towns is anybody's capital. A Gathur household marks the burial jar, then pays the potter to break its seam and close the path anyone else could use to reach that grave. Some towns keep no burial roll because of it; others keep one and leave the working marks out. Twenty-four stone-yard towns stand under two crowns they did not choose, Szezhir and Dubud. Kharb is the largest and gave the Vigil Edrin, who made a lord wait his turn at an anchor garden; its yards claim him as a mason first. Descent companies quote him at the Bittern toll houses, usually while refusing to pay.

States: Szezhir, Dubud. Peoples: Dwarf, Centaur, Nephilim.

the Kessith

The signal endured. The night flight did not. A Sightline station is a lamp, a horn, a bench and a tally no outsider has ever been allowed to read. The chain runs from Klis to the outer islands, through three crowns that agree on nothing: Szezhir wants the copper counted, Eqoro taxes the Overmarch, Rarne takes Dubud's orders from Shracha. In 1355 Rarne hooded its seaward lamps and flew by matched bearing bells. Cold took the working, and the Bellfall put bronze and bodies through southern roofs. The houses will not darken twice. Shracha calls that refusal treason.

States: Szezhir, Rarne, Eqoro. Peoples: Rookari.

the Larith

Every return here is paid for out of an orchard. Nothing grows in a Larith anchor-garden that was not cut from something already dying. Their Heartwoods are fed by graft, so a city's return-rolls and its orchard ledgers are one book, and a house that loses its trees loses its place in the queue. Fifty-four of the Nashrar Empire's eighty-three towns are Larith; none of the throne is. The chancery at Itheas calls that stewardship. The vinedressers of Karithlon call it the Collar with better manners. Their slur is Graftkin, and they use it themselves, meaning the orchard.

States: Emyvelian, Eld-Sholu, Nashrar, Eqoro. Peoples: Elf, Half-Giant, Nephilim.

the Rezgan

One people split among a bench, a free city, and an empire. Twenty-eight Rezgan burgs stand across Brukh, Akh, and Eqoro. Rezg holds the True Weight's political bench; the holy showing town Brukh lies inside rival Eqoro; Akh remains a free city twenty kilometers downriver. Drovers, tally houses, surgeons, porters, and smiths disagree over which place broke faith. At a working door, a household displays one visibly repaired object; praising it as decoration confesses ignorance. Their scholars deny Culdar kinship. Any drover who has worked both tongues can hear it.

States: Brukh, Akh, Eqoro. Peoples: Minotaur, Gnome.

the Skalzen

One crown travels; the other lights a drowned seat. Skalzen place-names doubled because the Cutting entered them under two measures that both still hold: Grolt'jess, Rrer'thuss, Krussuruss. Courts seat a Skalzen witness ahead of a lord's steward, then complain that the witness speaks two ways at once. Their crowns hold Nashrar and Zar'thas. Mathegak is still Nashrar's legal capital, a slope nobody built on, so the court that actually sits travels. The city of Zar'thas lies under the strait, and its seals are cut and honored as if the streets were dry.

States: V'eld, Rustpeakia, Nashrar, Zar'thas. Peoples: Shade, Half-Elf, Human, Minotaur.

the Vhalder

They kept two registers back when one was an embarrassment. Vhalder households wrote descent into two registers side by side for four centuries, because their courts had to enforce claims across institutions that recorded parentage incompatibly. Neighbors called them the Doublenamed and thought it a joke. Then 1051 made contradiction universal, and theirs were the only papers built to survive it. They hold one hundred and fifty-four towns and four crowns: Ashin, Litur, Donagith, Ins. Each has a notary who will witness a marriage, an adoption or a surrender, and charge for it. Everyone resents needing them. Everyone comes.

States: Ugauthrem, Lireri, Chaun, Char, Boulde, Dubud. Peoples: Half-Elf, Dark Elf, Human, Elf.

the Wethyrn

Two crowns kept one watch until thirteen dead stood up. The Wethyrn hold two crowns and one night bell. Menergalo's Wake keeps the only intact pre-Cutting archive; Men'la reads its recent dead at home and writes deaths and returns into a Counterroll V'eld rejects. At Fethedil, each crown chose six war dead and claimed a thirteenth. Their intended thirty-day holding lasted thirty-three years. Now the Bowed Watch has turned the stakes north. The Held Line strains at a cut iron road when Menergalo's bell sounds. Families demand release, testimony, or the inheritance silence preserved.

States: V'eld, Men'la. Peoples: Dark Elf.