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Nations and Places
Table of Contents
Preface
A Map of the World
The Calendar of Gushémal
Section I: Nations
Section II: Places of Renown
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On
the 23rd day of Tabrokun, 3021 A.E., a shipwreck was found on
the coast of Mrodûn, to the west of Modayre. We must thank the gods that
it was an ambassadorial expedition from Chazevo who found the wreck, for
the Chaymera population of Mrodûn would scarcely have mentioned the
discovery, much less given our ambassadors access to explore the ship.
Amongst
the embassy were several priests of Darawk, charged with assisting the
civilian leaders (and secretly with missionary work amongst the Chaymera,
a fact that would see the ambassadors expelled within a year’s time).
They immediately saw that this vessel had not been built for humanoids,
and equally not for the quadrupedal Chaymera. Some elements of the
construction were similar to the Chaymera fishing boats, in particular the
strange wooden bowls that served as seats. Yet when one of the fishers who
accompanied the expedition tried to squat in the bowl, he tipped over,
incapable of coming to rest. A strange hole to the back of the bowl
indicated also that some kind of appendage – perhaps a tail? – might
be supposed to fit there.
Otherwise
the craft was entirely alien to both humans and Chaymera. Never before,
according to the fishermen, had a vessel of its kind been seen in Mrodûn,
and neither could anybody imagine what kinds of beings had built and
manned this ship.
What
was immediately understandable, though, was the reason for its being
wrecked. Storms had torn most of the sails off the mast, chunks of the
masts had smashed holes into the bottom. There were struts that probably
had held lifeboats, all empty when the crew had fled.
The
sole Decirius priest amongst the embassy spoke the Leaves and Wreaths for
the sailors, adding the hope that they had survived the storm and the
funeral prayer was unneeded. After that, one of the Darawk priests was
dispatched to the local capital, to ask the Chaymera lord’s permission
to investigate the ship further. Once the permission was obtained, a small
group of clerics and civilians dedicated themselves to the investigation
of the wreck, intending to work on it for a week or so before returning to
their main assignment.
The
week turned into three months, the official reason being that the
embassy’s task was proceeding smoothly. Trade agreements were signed and
put into effect, diplomatic relations agreed upon, maps exchanged, and so
on. There was no need for the investigators on the shores to involve
themselves with the diplomatic efforts, and truth be told, the work on the
wreck consumed them completely.
To
the modern-day reader it might come as a surprise that the shipwreck would
become a celebrated focus of society within a short while, spoken of in
the lands between Chazevo and distant Robhovard. (That includes the
Tonomai, although the Empire was still reeling from the loss of their holy
city Leahcim.) Many books were written
and sold widely, to an audience ranging from the high levels of
aristocracy to simple villages where a local priest would read them to the
populace. An entirely new civilization had been discovered, an entirely
new species – and people were caught up in the whirlwind of discovery.
Alas, as so often happens, after the initial surge of interest, when no
new findings were made, interest died down, and bit by bit the alien
shipwreck was forgotten. Now that the Chaymera have closed off their
borders, even their existence is little more than a myth amongst the
people of our 32nd century.
The
discoverers thought that they had found the involuntary messengers from an
alien, a new, civilization living on an island a few hundred miles out
from shore. Far from thinking that such an island could be as vast as our
Cotechi, they believed it to be an island more like Albinavia (home of the
knightdwarves) to the southeast of Robhovard. I cannot disprove that
claim, but from my own perusal of their findings, I believe the shipwreck
to be the work of a much larger civilization than they thought. Much of
what was on board were personal effects, the majority of which were never
identified. There was nothing like a spoon, for instance, nor anything
that could be identified as an eating utensil as our sailors usually carry
to sea. The discoverers did identify fishing nets, quite clearly the
purpose of the vessel, and there were knives – but the latter could only
be called thus because of the metal blades, not because of the strange
handles or the curvature of the blades themselves (like Tonomai weapons).
The
lead investigator, Master Senoj, called the alien sailors the
“Hunters”, because he and his colleagues had found many drawings and
paintings of what they thought were hunting scenes. In the presumed
captain’s chamber, there was a painting made of colored grains of sand,
fixated by an unknown method. It depicted a lush, green forest, bent at
strange angles, in the background, while the foreground was taken up by an
apparently wide area, covered by yellow-greenish stubble that could be an
unfamiliar kind of grass. Three beings were shown in the sand painting.
Two seemed like a cross between spiders and scorpions – four actual,
armored legs; two appendages that had taken the function of arms, with
less armor; pincers around the arachnoid head; pinkish white fur covering
the bulbous body which ends in a tail quite like a scorpion’s sting.
These two were holding weapons in their arms, apparently projectile
weapons like bows but very different in their appearance. (The projectiles
were included in the painting, which is our best clue to their function.)
The third being in the painting was running away from the pair of
spider-scorpions, and it was a bird – although a ferocious and
apparently flightless creature with a terrible beak, a vulture-like head,
and thick, long legs that ended in deep claws. It was bleeding on one
flank, with an apparent arrow embedded in its flesh.
Before
Senoj saw that painting, the other drawings – some carved into planks,
some on medallions that had been forgotten by the crew in their flight –
had not made any sense to the discoverers. The creatures there were too
stylized, so that the depictions had been discarded as meaningless – or
at least incomprehensible – scribblings.
Putting
it all together, Master Senoj concluded that this civilization was very
keen on the hunt, indeed that it must have held some deep religious
connotation to them. How else to account for the plentitude of these
depictions? At the very least the hunt must have been, Master Senoj wrote,
a pillar of their society. Hence he called the aliens “Hunters”.
We
have no other proof of their existence. Some have gone so far as to call
the entire ship a hoax, a means for Master Senoj to gain importance in
scientific circles. (I find that unlikely. Amongst the discoverers was one
person, Master Trar’ycon, who was always the sharpest critic of Master
Senoj. It is quite improbable that he would have agreed to collaborate on
a fraud with his archfoe.)
Is
it proper for me to rely on children’s tales to speculate on far-away
lands? Perhaps these are the works of fiction as which they are presented,
yet I find a few of them eerily reminiscent – despite the fact that they
originate in many different places.
The
tale of the Snow Queen is one that I have poured over since I was a boy of
six years. How strange it was for a boy growing up in a hot and humid
place as Chazevo to imagine a place of ice and snow! I had never seen snow
(and I must confess that little has changed about that in the decades
since; once I travelled as far south as the border of Robhovard, but that
was my sole encounter with snow.) The paintings in my children’s book
sent my mind soaring, and I imagined my hometown covered with a sleet of
white snow. (Of course I failed to understand the meaning of cold.)
It
remained a cherished memory of mine until I began my journeys in the
service of the Seeker of Knowledge, during which I visited a great number
of lands and places of Cotechi – and found that the Snow Queen was
familiar to them as well, although by other names and varying
descriptions. At first I discarded that information, since it is very
likely that this tale has travelled along with our forefathers when they
settled Chazevo.
Then
I began to correlate – on a whim – the various stories and found that
there were many matching details. In further studies I found that the
Tonomai have a similar story, and so have some elven and dwarven clans.
That was the crucial discovery. Humans may have disseminated a
children’s tale amongst themselves, retold and adjusted it over the
centuries, but there might still be an original story hidden under the
alterations. But why would other races tell an essentially human story to
their children? Considering the ideas many dwarves and elves harbor about
us, it is very much inconceivable. (The same is obviously true in reverse,
as my readers – whichever race they are a part of – can attest in
their everyday lives.) After all, an open-minded elf might enjoy a human
tale – but would she tell it to her child, in lieu of an indigenous
tale?
It
is for that reason that I believe the Snow Queen’s realm has a root in
actual history and geography of our world. The matching elements that I
have sifted from the diverse stories are that this realm would have to be
located to the south of Robhovard and the land of the Furrag, probably
deep within the iceland where few humanoids have ever gone. Polar dwarves
are known to live on the edges, in their remote and well separated
villages – so far apart that they rarely know their neighbors, except
from chance encounters and tales of the same handed down through the
generations. So we cannot hope to find any revelations about the Snow
Queen’s realm from them, except through their own legends which do
involve a mythical land where breath turns to ice, where you have to
bundle up your throat, lest the air freeze in your mouth and choke you to
death. (Ahh, yes, the very lines from the children’s tale that are
omnipresent in the various versions, although the polar dwarves’ version
is far more gruesome, underlined by the fact that they have at least
seventy-eight words for kinds of cold weather.)
We
cannot be sure what species the Snow Queen and her people would be members
of. They are said to be colored a pale blue, unlike elves, humans or
dwarves. Otherwise they are always adjusted to whoever is recounting the
tale, with tapered ears among the elves, a squat build among the dwarves,
and so forth. There is always a female ruler in the tales – hence the
Snow Queen -, but further details about the society vary greatly.
The
queen always rules in an ice palace, constructed by magical means. There
are no fires, the queen and her subjects are themselves as cold as ice.
(Some variants do mention fires, perhaps to make these people more
comprehensible to us.) They use large bear-like creatures as riding
mounts, with the bears sometimes walking on their hindlegs, sometimes on
all four.
By
rank of nobility, the snow people have growing magical abilities which
allow them to control ice – craft objects of varying size, move the ice,
and so forth, without ever using their hands. The tales contain many
examples of this, with great differences, yet the basic ability to sculpt
and master the ice is a constant factor. (Personally, I am loath to give
up on the fire beams that the Snow Queen of my childhood’s tale could
fire from her eyes. Unfortunately it doesn’t fit any of the other tales,
nor does it truly belong to a queen of icy cold.)
There
are more details that I could enumerate here – mostly concerned with
geography, important places and their descriptions, some phrases and names
-, but they would far exceed the space I have granted for this overview. I
recommend the book that a colleague of mine, Master Snah Nesredna from the
Leahcim Darawk Academy, will publish next year (3166 A.E., by the time of
this writing, the title is still undecided). Snah and I have collaborated
on the basic research, although it was my friend’s work to put it
together – not least of all because he is more versatile in the analysis
of folk tales. He is sure to answer most if not all your questions
regarding the tales of the Snow Queen.
I
also direct your attention to the expedition that the Nash’Geo and
Darawk clergy of Shtet Lyariov in Kraznyczar are preparing for the end of
this decade. They are planning to explore the depths of the polar
dwarves’ abode, and – if possible – beyond. The goal is to find the
edge of the world that the proponents of the flat world theory decree is
there. (How curious that I would ask you to rely on information garnered
by those who strongly disagree with my own view of the world. Yet as a
cleric of Darawk, I would welcome to be corrected if they should find that
edge.) With some luck they are going to find out how far the ice extends
down there, and whether – as my preferred theory of a round world would
predict – the climate of ice would shift at some point, the pole of the
world. Beyond that temperatures should rise again. Judging by the degree
of preparation and care that the clerics are putting into their endeavor,
I am quite hopeful that we should glean a marvelous amount of news from
them.
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