Altalia: a fertile peninsula jutting from the harsh interior of a largely barren continent, blessed with good soil, navigable rivers, and temperate climate. Here, sheltered by mountain ranges and separated by difficult terrain, three towns have grown over nine centuries from scattered settlements into thriving centers of culture and commerce. In the year 930 since founding, Nakares numbers some 21,000 souls, Pirentia 16,000, and Velanza 10,000.
Each town stands at the center of its own region—surrounded by farmsteads, small hamlets, and rural populations that look to the town for markets, governance, and cultural leadership. Yet the three remain unknown to each other, separated not only by distance but by formidable geographical barriers: the Sakalin Mountains between Nakares and Pirentia, the Graos Ash Barrens between Pirentia and Velanza, the Rasatean Highlands between Velanza and Nakares. Each has developed trade networks with scattered rural populations and minor settlements, but until now, these networks have never intersected.
The world they share has not been kind. Altalia sits at the mercy of environmental forces that sweep across the entire peninsula—volcanic eruptions from the northern peaks, pandemic diseases carried by migratory birds, climatic shifts that simultaneously devastate all three regions. Year 158 saw the Great Ash Fall, when volcanic debris darkened skies across the entire peninsula for two seasons. Year 360 brought the Red Fever, a pandemic that killed indiscriminately regardless of isolation. These shared catastrophes have shaped all three cultures, yet each has interpreted their suffering differently, developing distinct responses to common challenges.
Now, in the 930th year, expanding trade routes and growing populations are finally pushing beyond old boundaries. Nakaretan merchants venture into the northern passes. Pirentine traders follow rivers to their sources. Velanzan prospectors explore new territories. The meeting is inevitable, and it will transform everything.
Town: Nakares, population 21,000
Location: Steep river valleys in northern Altalia
Key Resource: Terraced agriculture, timber, water management
Cultural Keywords: Guilt, pragmatism, reluctant innovation
Nakares sits at the confluence of three rivers, surrounded by steep valleys that have been transformed over centuries into ascending gardens of terraced fields. From the market plaza, one can see the work of thirty generations: stone walls climbing toward the sky like staircases for giants, irrigation channels cut into cliffsides, managed forests stepping up hillsides in careful patterns. The evening light catches the water flowing through the terraces, turning the entire landscape into cascading mirrors.
It is beautiful. And that beauty weighs heavily on the Nakaretan conscience.
Their most sacred texts—records etched on bark-paper and stored in the Halls of Accounting—speak of the land as a living creditor from whom they borrow against the future. "We borrow from tomorrow's soil," reads the proverb carved above the town's main gate, "and the debt compounds with each season." The Nakaretan word for their landscape works—nakarad—literally translates as "the necessary wound." Yet necessity has forced them to wound beautifully.
This tension between practical achievement and moral anxiety defines Nakaretan culture. They are master engineers who apologize for their mastery, skilled builders who question every project even as they complete it with meticulous care. A Nakaretan terrace is not merely functional but elegant, its stones fitted with precision that will be admired for generations—and every artisan who builds it will speak of their work with a mixture of pride and shame.
Nakares has developed sophisticated practical knowledge. Their watchers track weather patterns from tall observation towers, recording atmospheric phenomena in detailed journals. Their farmers maintain breeding records for crops and livestock going back centuries. Their engineers have compiled extensive technical manuals on terrace construction, irrigation design, and flood control.
Yet the status of scholars and technical specialists remains paradoxically low. The finest structures in Nakares house granaries and workshops, not libraries or observatories. The watchers work from austere towers despite the importance of their predictions. "The watcher sees but does not build," goes the saying, capturing the cultural preference for direct action over contemplation.
This creates a class of quietly resentful but dedicated scholars who continue their essential work despite limited recognition. When they do speak, their advice is often ignored—until crisis proves them right. The pattern repeats every generation: scholars warn, builders dismiss, disaster strikes, everyone acknowledges the wisdom in retrospect but changes nothing about the social dynamics.
Recently, a new technology has begun to change this: movable type printing, adapted from designs acquired through trade with distant artisans. Several print shops now operate in Nakares, producing agricultural almanacs, weather records, and technical manuals. This democratization of knowledge has created an emerging class of literate farmers and craftspeople who read and apply technical texts—much to the dismay of traditional work-leaders who prefer experience over book-learning.
Every field, water channel, and harvest share in Nakaretan territory is precisely defined by renskel—claim-markers of stone, carved wood, or iron posts. Elaborate property records are maintained in the Halls of Accounting. Water rights are measured to the minute. Inheritance laws specify division of land down to individual terrace rows.
Yet to openly care about these boundaries marks one as petty and ungenerous. The ideal Nakaretan is one who knows exactly what belongs to them but acts as though it doesn't matter, sharing freely while keeping precise private accounts. This creates a culture of performative generosity underlaid by meticulous calculation—everyone shares, everyone tracks what they've shared, and everyone pretends not to be tracking it.
The contradiction runs so deep that Nakaretans have a specific term for it: renskelskam, roughly "boundary-shame"—the embarrassment of being caught caring too much about what is legally yours. The most respected citizens are those who can maintain the fiction of carelessness most convincingly, while the most despised are the renskelaad or "boundary-counters" who voice what everyone is thinking but knows not to say.
For all their moral anxiety, Nakaretans know how to celebrate. Their harvest festivals are legendary—three days of feasting, music, and elaborate displays of their agricultural bounty. The Festival of First Terraces in early spring commemorates the year's planting with processions carrying seed grain blessed by community elders. The Autumn Reckoning combines harvest celebration with a solemn accounting of the year's environmental costs, creating a distinctly Nakaretan blend of joy and guilt.
Their music reflects this duality: work songs with complex harmonies sung while building terraces, melancholy ballads about the beauty of transformed landscapes, drinking songs with lyrics about debt and obligation. The Nakaretan orchestra—featuring strings, winds, and elaborate percussion—is considered among their finest achievements, producing music of haunting beauty that often moves listeners to tears.
Nakaretan visual arts tend toward the functional: beautifully carved tool handles, elegantly proportioned furniture, decorated pottery that serves daily use. Pure ornament is viewed with suspicion, but objects that combine utility with beauty are cherished. The most prized possessions in any household are ancient farming tools passed down through generations—a hoe with a worn handle smooth as glass, an irrigation scoop carved with flowing water patterns.
One domain where Nakaretans feel less conflicted is their relationship with domesticated animals. Unlike their guilt about landscape modification, they view selective breeding and animal husbandry as collaborative rather than exploitative. This has produced remarkable results.
Nakaretan cattle—compact, sure-footed, with gentle temperaments—are perfectly adapted to the terraced landscape. Their mountain goats can graze on slopes too steep for anything else. Their sheep produce wool of exceptional quality, carefully bred over centuries. Every animal has a name, a known lineage, and a place in the complex social ecology of Nakaretan farming.
The twice-yearly livestock markets are major social events where breeders from throughout the region display their finest animals. Bloodlines are discussed with the same intensity as family genealogies. The most successful breeders achieve a status that even the culture's anti-scholarly bias cannot diminish—because their work produces visible, immediate, and undeniable benefits.
Nakares has no formal government beyond work-coordination. Projects—terrace maintenance, irrigation repair, harvest organization—are led by kareten (work-chiefs) who earn authority through demonstrated competence. Major decisions are made in assemblies where every household head has voice, gathered in the central plaza or, in bad weather, in the vast Communal Hall whose wooden beams are carved with scenes of agricultural labor.
This system has grown strained as population has increased. Coordinating 21,000 people across a landscape of terraced valleys requires more structure than informal assemblies can provide. Some kareten have begun to accumulate lasting influence, creating an unofficial hierarchy that contradicts egalitarian values. The tension between the need for coordination and fear of permanent authority intensifies with each generation.
Recently, a new institution has emerged: the Council of Seasons, a standing body of seven members who coordinate major projects and manage conflicts. Officially, they're just werkhadden who happen to meet regularly. Unofficially, they're beginning to resemble a permanent government. No one is quite comfortable with this development, but everyone recognizes its necessity.
Nakares faces a fundamental problem: they have nearly exhausted the easily-terraced land in their valleys. Further expansion requires increasingly dramatic interventions—major river diversions, terracing of near-vertical slopes, clearing of the last old-growth forests that anchor the soil during winter floods.
Some among the younger generation argue for a new philosophy: if they're already guilty of transforming the land, they might as well be efficient and thorough rather than half-hearted. Others advocate for limiting growth, accepting population constraints rather than further expansion. Most fall somewhere between, caught in the characteristic Nakaretan paralysis between practical necessity and moral discomfort.
The emerging trade networks offer a potential solution. Nakaretan engineering expertise and water-management techniques could be valuable to other peoples, as could their breeding stock and agricultural knowledge. But this requires contact with outsiders, and no one knows what to expect from such encounters.
What the Nakaretans don't realize is that their moral anxiety about environmental modification—their sense that transformation comes with obligation and cost—may prove to be their greatest strength in a changing world.
Town: Pirentia, population 16,000
Location: River floodplains in central Altalia
Key Resource: Fertile agriculture, timber crafts, textile production
Cultural Keywords: Ritual, renewal, emotional restraint, aesthetic conflict
Pirentia is magnificent. Soaring timber-frame buildings line wide avenues, their facades carved with elaborate patterns and painted in rich colors—ochre, deep blue, crimson, gold leaf on important structures. The Council Hall rises four stories, its exterior a masterwork of carved wooden panels depicting the town's history in stylized scenes. The Market of Seven Bridges spans the river with elegant arches, its stalls shaded by painted canopies that flutter in the breeze.
In twenty years, much of this beauty may be destroyed and rebuilt differently.
Pirentia exists in a perpetual cycle of aesthetic creation and iconoclastic destruction, building up elaborate beauty only to tear it down in periodic movements of purification. These rentovar (turnings) are as much a part of Pirentine culture as the art itself. The current generation lives in what historians will later call the Golden Era—a period of unprecedented artistic flourishing—while reformist preachers in the market squares call for simplification and return to authentic ways.
This cycle shapes every aspect of Pirentine life. Artists create knowing their work may be destroyed. Citizens accumulate beautiful objects while preparing mentally to surrender them. The culture perpetually oscillates between abundance and austerity, never finding stable ground between aesthetic joy and moral simplicity.
At age three, every Pirentine child is taken from their birth family and raised communally in an escalario—a house of learning where they will remain until age sixteen. This practice, considered essential to prevent narrow family loyalties that might fracture the community, is simultaneously Pirentia's proudest achievement and deepest source of pain.
The day a child leaves for the escalario is marked by the Ceremony of First Separation, a solemn ritual where parents formally surrender their child to the community. Parents speak with pride of their sacrifice while struggling not to weep. Children too young to fully understand are dressed in the gray robes of students and led away to houses where they will learn to become proper Pirentines.
The escalario buildings themselves are imposing structures—large dormitories, dining halls, classrooms, workshops. Currently, they feature beautiful murals depicting historical scenes and moral lessons. During the last rentovar in Year 722, these same walls were stripped bare and left unpainted for a generation. The children raised during that period speak of the starkness with a mixture of pride and melancholy.
The system produces exactly what it's designed to produce: citizens whose primary loyalty is to Pirentia as a whole rather than to individual families. But it also produces adults who are emotionally guarded, having learned early that all attachments are temporary and contingent. Pirentines are masters of appropriate feeling—they know exactly what emotion to display in any ritual context—but often struggle with spontaneous intimacy.
Yet there is warmth here too. The cohorts who pass through escalario together form deep bonds, creating a network of age-mates who remain close throughout life. These escalasi (escalario-siblings) often become closer than biological siblings, united by shared experience of institutional upbringing. Reunions of escalario cohorts are major social events featuring distinctive songs and inside jokes incomprehensible to outsiders.
Pirentine life is governed by elaborate ritual. Birth, naming, first words, first steps, separation to escalario, coming of age, betrothal, marriage, death—each transition has prescribed forms that must be followed exactly. But there are also rituals for beginning construction, for harvest, for market days, for settling disputes, for greeting distinguished visitors, for acknowledging misfortune, for celebrating good news.
These pirentesca (literally "necessary bindings") are widely resented even as they're universally observed. Every Pirentine can recount examples of ritual run amok—ceremonies that took longer than the events they celebrated, protocols that prevented sensible action, forms that obscured rather than clarified. Yet everyone continues to perform them, because to break with ritual is to risk being labeled spentratto—unbound, untrustworthy, outside the social order.
The recent spread of printed books has begun to change this. Ritual manuals that once existed only in expensive manuscript copies maintained by ritual specialists can now be purchased cheaply. This democratization has led to increasing arguments about correct procedure, with various factions citing different printed sources. Some see this as chaos; others see it as the beginning of necessary reform.
Year 156, 361, 544, 722: these dates mark the great turnings when Pirentia dramatically simplified its way of life. The pattern is predictable. Wealth accumulates, art flourishes, social displays become increasingly elaborate. Anxiety about moral decay grows. Charismatic reformers emerge, calling for destruction of excessive decoration, abandonment of false luxuries, return to authentic simplicity.
Buildings are stripped of ornamentation. Visual art is destroyed—paintings whitewashed, sculptures smashed, decorated textiles burned. The culture enters a period of aggressive austerity. The rentovar of Year 722 was particularly severe, with the population dropping by several thousand not from famine or disease but from the disruption itself—people dying from inadequate shelter, insufficient clothing, and the chaos of forced simplification.
Yet within a generation or two, decoration begins creeping back. First in private spaces—a painted cabinet, an embroidered curtain. Then gradually in public—carved door frames, decorated market stalls, painted building facades. A new aesthetic emerges, often quite different from what was destroyed, and the cycle begins anew.
The current era has seen extraordinary artistic flourishing. Pirentine painters have developed sophisticated techniques with plant-based pigments. Woodcarvers create works of astounding intricacy. Textile weavers produce fabrics that shimmer with complex patterns. The finest Pirentine work rivals anything imagined, and everyone knows it cannot last.
Some young artists have begun deliberately creating ephemeral works—paintings on water-soluble panels, ice sculptures, sand paintings—art designed to be temporary, embracing rather than fearing the coming destruction. Others have started hiding works in secret locations, hoping to preserve them through the next rentovar. Still others argue that this rentovar can be prevented, that the cycle can finally be broken.
The reformist preachers are already gathering followers in the market squares.
Pirentines recognize that people need rest but cannot grant it social value. Those who advocate for leisure are seen as lazy; those who work without pause are viewed as unbalanced. The result is that people rest furtively, guilty about their own downtime, taking breaks but feeling they shouldn't.
This extends to festivals and celebrations, which are numerous in the Pirentine calendar. The Festival of Bridges in spring, celebrating the river's renewal. The Summer Harmonies, featuring elaborate musical performances. The Autumn Procession, when the entire town walks its boundaries in ceremonial order. The Winter Lighting, when every building is decorated with lamps and candles.
These festivals should be joyful, and in some ways they are—the music is beautiful, the food abundant, the spectacle impressive. But they're also exhausting. Each festival requires elaborate preparation, specific rituals to observe, social obligations to fulfill. By the time a festival ends, people are often more tired than when it began, ready to return to regular work as a form of rest.
Yet Pirentines take genuine pride in their festivals. The town has developed distinctive musical traditions—part songs featuring intricate harmonies, processional music with complex rhythms, festival hymns passed down through generations. The Festival of Bridges in particular is a time of authentic joy, when the whole town gathers by the river to watch elaborate boat processions and enjoy the first foods of spring.
Pirentia has no single ruler. Authority is distributed through a complex web of councils, each with precisely defined jurisdiction: the Agricultural Council, the Building Council, the Escalmet Council, the River Council, the Ritual Council. Decisions are made through formal procedures requiring consensus or supermajority votes.
This system provides stability but makes rapid response to crises difficult. During the environmental shock of Year 164, the necessary councils couldn't coordinate quickly enough to implement emergency measures, leading to significant population loss and, subsequently, to one of the vesperaat movements.
Recently, a new intellectual movement has emerged: pirentalis, roughly translated as "human-centeredness" or humanism. These thinkers argue that Pirentine ritual and social structure should serve human flourishing rather than existing as ends in themselves. They point out that the escalario system causes real pain, that the rentovar cycles destroy genuine value, that ritual often obscures rather than clarifies meaning.
This movement has found unexpected support among the growing merchant class—traders who deal with distant peoples and have glimpsed alternative social arrangements. They're publishing treatises, holding public debates, attracting followers among the younger generation. The traditional Ritual Council views them with alarm, seeing them as precursors to the next rentovar. But the pirentalis advocates argue they're trying to prevent the rentovar by reforming gradually rather than destroying dramatically.
The tension between these forces will shape Pirentia's response to the coming contact with other cultures.
Pirentia now numbers sixteen thousand souls, living in the central town and scattered through surrounding farmsteads. Their agricultural lands are productive, their crafts sophisticated, their social structures stable if rigid. They have more than recovered from the last rentovar and have accumulated considerable wealth.
The signs of the next turning are apparent to anyone paying attention. Reformist preachers draw growing crowds. Debates about excessive decoration intensify. Some citizens have begun voluntarily simplifying their lives, sensing what's coming.
The expanding trade networks offer both opportunity and risk. Contact with other peoples will provide evidence that alternative social arrangements are possible—evidence that could either accelerate the rentovar (by demonstrating how far Pirentia has strayed from simplicity) or prevent it (by showing that different doesn't mean wrong).
The Pirentines don't yet know that they're about to meet not just different trading partners but entirely different cultures. The encounter will force questions they've carefully avoided: Are their rigid forms necessary or merely comfortable? Does the escalario system really prevent social fragmentation, or does it create problems worse than those it solves? Can a culture break its own cycles, or must it forever oscillate between extremes?
Town: Velanza, population 10,000
Location: Mineral-rich uplands in eastern Altalia
Key Resource: Copper, iron, medicinal plants, trade position
Cultural Keywords: Extraction, argumentation, consciousness alteration, wealth without production
Velanza sprawls across rocky hills honeycombed with mines and quarries. Unlike the organic growth of Nakares or the planned elegance of Pirentia, Velanza has the haphazard quality of a place built around resource extraction. Here a cluster of workshops processing copper ore, there a market dealing in refined metals, everywhere the signs of material accumulation—warehouses, counting houses, the mansions of successful traders filled with collected objects.
The finest structures in Velanza are the razkel—record halls where every transaction, every agreement, every observation is meticulously documented. The Central Archive is a fortress-like building with copper-sheathed doors and multiple levels of secure storage. Its collection of records goes back to the founding, written first on clay tablets, later on bark-paper, most recently in printed books from Velanzan presses.
These magnificent archives have limited practical influence. Records exist primarily to establish claims and precedents in disputes, not to guide policy or preserve wisdom. A merchant might consult documents going back decades to demonstrate historical ownership of a mine. But suggestions to improve mining techniques based on archived observations are routinely ignored in favor of current intuition.
This paradox—elaborate documentation without practical application—exemplifies Velanzan culture. They are simultaneously highly literate and deeply anti-intellectual, valuing records as property and tools of argument but not as sources of knowledge.
Velanzans have developed an elaborate philosophical justification for their extractive practices. "All material things," teaches the Velanzal (their core philosophical text), "are temporary assemblages. To take copper from the earth is merely to hasten its inevitable transformation. The ore that sits in darkness serves nothing; refined and traded, it serves many."
This philosophy extends to all forms of resource exploitation, creating a culture unburdened by guilt about environmental impact. Mines are cut deep into hillsides without concern for long-term consequences. Forests are harvested for mine timbers without replanting. The landscape around Velanza bears the scars of nine centuries of extraction—bare hills, diverted streams, tailings piles.
Yet Velanzans don't see these scars as wounds. They see them as evidence of transformation, of materials moved from lower to higher purposes. The barren hills are proof of productive activity. The town's wealth—its refined metals, its accumulated trade goods, its extensive archives—justifies the extraction that produced it.
This creates a culture disconnected from cycles of renewal. Velanzans extract, refine, accumulate, and trade, but they rarely build or create in the generative sense. Their greatest constructions are their archives and their mines—one to store wealth, the other to extract it.
Every Velanzan neighborhood has a moraza—a meeting house where citizens gather to debate questions of right conduct, proper motivation, and moral obligation. These debates follow elaborate formal structures with rules for argumentation, citation of precedent, and logical progression. They are taken extraordinarily seriously.
Reputations rise and fall based on performance in moral debate. The ability to construct a compelling ethical argument is valued above practical competence. Citizens who have never worked a mine or managed a trade caravan can achieve high status through philosophical prowess. The greatest debaters are celebrated, their particularly elegant arguments recorded in the archives and studied by future generations.
The content of these debates can be startlingly disconnected from reality. A mining overseer might deliver an eloquent treatise on the moral implications of worker exploitation while making no effort to improve conditions in his own mine. A merchant might win acclaim for subtle arguments about fair pricing while ruthlessly manipulating markets. The debates are performances, displays of intellectual skill untethered from action.
Yet Velanzans don't see this as hypocrisy. In their view, determining what is right and actually doing it are separate activities. The moraza establishes moral truth; implementation is a practical matter involving different considerations. This separation allows them to maintain sophisticated ethical frameworks while accepting harsh realities in daily life.
Recently, some younger philosophers have begun arguing that this separation is itself immoral—that ethics without action is mere performance. These alzari (practicals) advocate for what they call "embodied philosophy"—moral reasoning that directly shapes behavior. They remain a minority, often defeated in formal debates by more skilled traditional arguers, but their influence is growing.
One domain where Velanzan philosophy directly influences behavior is their use of consciousness-altering substances. The harsh uplands produce various plants with psychoactive properties, and Velanzans have developed elaborate practices around their use.
These substances are not recreational but sacramental, consumed in controlled settings under the guidance of trained zethren (true-seers). The practice is considered essential for philosophical insight, a way to perceive beyond ordinary material reality to the fundamental patterns underlying existence. Those who never undergo the experience are pitied as trapped in superficial awareness.
Different substances produce different effects and are prescribed for different purposes. Silvara (the silver root) facilitates moral clarity, helping debaters perceive ethical patterns. Ruval (the red flower) enhances pattern recognition, used by those studying archived records. Amenth (the bitter bark) produces states of ego-dissolution where individual identity temporarily disappears, considered essential for understanding the Velanzal's teachings about temporary assemblages.
The zethren maintain extensive pharmacological knowledge, all carefully documented in the archives. They know precise dosages, interaction effects, methods of preparation, appropriate settings for each experience. This knowledge has made Velanza the world's foremost authority on consciousness-altering substances—though no one else knows this yet.
The practice creates genuine community. Sessions are typically group experiences where participants share their insights afterward. The bonds formed during altered states are considered particularly authentic, creating networks of trust that transcend ordinary social divisions. Many of the most important trade partnerships and philosophical collaborations begin in zethren-guided sessions.
Wealthy Velanzans maintain mirazen—viewing platforms and gathering spaces designed for observation. Some overlook the town, providing vantage points to watch daily activities. Others face natural phenomena—sunsets over the hills, storm patterns, seasonal changes. Still others are positioned to observe social interactions in markets or meeting houses.
These observations are catalogued and discussed, creating a culture of watchers who chronicle but rarely intervene. A mirazen keeper might document decades of market behaviors, noting patterns in prices, preferences, and trading strategies. But they're unlikely to use this knowledge to improve market efficiency or help struggling traders. The observation is the point.
This extends to Velanzan collectors, who accumulate objects from their own acquisitive activities and through trade: worked metals, preserved foods, fine textiles, curiosities from distant settlements. These collections serve multiple purposes—displays of status, stores of portable wealth, and material for lengthy arguments about aesthetic merit and historical significance.
The practice of collecting extends to observations themselves. Some Velanzans specialize in collecting accounts of altered states, comparing experiences across different substances and individuals. Others collect records of moral arguments, cataloguing rhetorical strategies and logical structures. Still others collect price histories, weather observations, or accounts of past population crashes.
Yet despite this accumulated knowledge, Velanzans show little interest in synthesis or application. The collections grow, the observations accumulate, the archives expand—but the actual behavior of Velanzan society changes slowly if at all.
More than either Nakares or Pirentia, Velanza has experienced dramatic population crashes. Years 158, 360, 528, 636, 681, 772, 784, and 806 each saw population plummet by forty percent or more. These weren't isolated local events but manifestations of peninsula-wide catastrophes—volcanic eruptions, pandemics, climatic shifts—that affected all of Altalia.
What distinguishes Velanza is how these crashes affected them specifically. Their extractive economy makes them particularly vulnerable. When trade collapses, their wealth becomes useless—refined copper can't be eaten. When pandemic strikes, their use of consciousness-altering substances (which can compromise immune function) makes them susceptible. When environmental crisis hits, their depleted local landscape provides no backup food sources.
The archives contain detailed records of each crash and subsequent recovery, yet this documentation provides neither warning nor wisdom. Each generation experiences the crash as though unprecedented, then recovers through the same mechanisms: intensified extraction, renewed trade, gradual population growth until the next crisis.
Some Velanzans recognize this pattern. The pratiskaa philosophers point to it as evidence that accumulated knowledge without application is worthless. But traditional debaters respond with elegant arguments explaining why each crash was unique and unpredictable, why past experience can't guide future action, why attempting to prevent crashes would itself be a form of moral presumption.
The most recent crash in 806 killed two-thirds of the population in a single season. The current generation has grown up hearing stories of those dark times, yet the memory hasn't fundamentally changed behavior. Velanza has recovered, the mines are producing again, wealth is accumulating, and most citizens assume the worst is behind them.
Velanza's governance operates through velomar—the principle of preventing extremes. Authority exists primarily to stop others from accumulating too much power, not to coordinate positive action. Whenever anyone begins to dominate trade in a particular commodity or gain too much influence in philosophical debates, coalitions form to constrain them.
This creates a society with weak central authority but strong mechanisms preventing tyranny. It also makes coordinated response to crisis nearly impossible. During population crashes, each family or trading group responds independently. Some hoard resources, others trade them away for portable wealth, still others simply give up.
The Council of Limitation—Velanza's closest approximation to government—consists of seven members whose primary function is to veto proposals that might concentrate power. They can prevent actions but rarely authorize them. Major decisions require not just majority support but absence of strong opposition, creating a system biased toward inaction.
Recently, some merchants have proposed creating new institutions—a Council of Trade to coordinate commerce, a Council of Mines to manage extraction, a Council of Archives to synthesize recorded knowledge. These proposals face fierce opposition from traditionalists who see them as threats to velomar. The debate continues in the velazara, elaborate arguments on both sides, while the actual institutions remain unchanged.
Velanza was the first town in Altalia to develop movable type printing, adapting techniques from distant sources through their trade networks. Several print shops now operate, producing philosophical treatises, moral debate transcripts, technical manuals for mining and metallurgy, and commercial records.
This has begun to shift the culture in unexpected ways. Philosophical debates that were once ephemeral performances are now preserved and distributed. Arguments can be studied, refined, critiqued by distant readers. This is creating a community of philosophy beyond the moraskaa walls—people who engage with ethical questions through reading rather than formal debate.
Print has also made technical knowledge more accessible. Miners can now read manuals about shaft construction and ore processing, though whether they apply this knowledge remains uncertain. The pratiskaa movement has used print to spread their ideas beyond what formal debates could achieve, publishing manifestos arguing for embodied philosophy.
The traditional elite—skilled debaters and archive-keepers—are uncomfortable with these changes. Print threatens their monopoly on philosophical discourse and record interpretation. But the commercial advantages are undeniable. Printed trade records and contracts reduce disputes. Printed technical manuals standardize practices. Printed philosophical texts expand markets for Velanzan ideas.
Velanza is simultaneously rich and poor. They possess considerable accumulated wealth—refined metals, trade goods, archived knowledge. Yet they have fewer people than either Nakares or Pirentia, and many are engaged in extraction, record-keeping, and philosophical debate rather than productive labor.
This creates puzzling economic dynamics. Velanza is rich but perpetually short of basic necessities like food and textiles, which must be acquired through trade. They have extensive archives but limited ability to apply archived knowledge. They engage in complex moral reasoning but show little practical compassion. They accumulate collections but create few original works.
The town depends on trade with scattered rural settlements and distant sources—exchanging refined metals and processed materials for food, timber, textiles, and manufactured goods. This trade network is expanding, bringing word of more distant peoples and stranger goods. Some merchants speak of encountering settlements with languages unintelligible, practices incomprehensible, goods of unfamiliar manufacture.
These merchants are beginning to ask questions that formal philosophical debates can't answer: How do you negotiate with people whose moral frameworks are entirely different? How do you value goods with no precedent in the archives? How do you establish trust with those who don't practice true-seeing or engage in moral debate?
Velanza now numbers approximately ten thousand, having recovered from the crash of 806. The mines continue to produce valuable materials. The archives continue to grow. The moraza continue their elaborate ethical debates. The zethren continue guiding altered-state experiences.
The alzari movement has gained enough influence to establish their own meeting house, where they attempt to practice embodied philosophy—actually implementing the moral principles they debate. They've improved conditions in some mines, established fairer trade practices, created emergency food stores. But they remain a minority, often defeated in formal debates by more skilled traditional arguers.
Meanwhile, expanding trade routes are bringing more frequent contact with distant peoples. Merchants return with strange goods and stranger tales. They speak of settlements with elaborate agricultural terraces unlike anything in Velanza, of towns with buildings decorated like nothing seen before, of peoples with customs that seem incomprehensible.
Soon, the Velanzans will face a profound challenge to their worldview. They have spent centuries convincing themselves that their way of life—extraction, accumulation, observation—is philosophically justified and practically necessary. They have elaborate arguments for why consciousness alteration provides genuine insight, why detailed record-keeping serves ultimate purposes, why their periodic population crashes are acceptable costs of their chosen path.
The encounter with peoples who thrive through different means will force questions the archives can't answer and the moraza can't resolve. Will their accumulated records finally prove useful? Can their ethical frameworks accommodate radically different moral systems? Will the alzari's embodied philosophy become newly relevant when philosophy must guide actual interaction with others?
The stage is set for transformation.
Three towns, each shaped by their particular landscape and accumulated choices. Three approaches to survival: the Nakaretans' guilty transformation of their environment, the Pirentines' rigid social forms and periodic renewals, the Velanzans' extraction and philosophical justification. Three distinct relationships with knowledge: the Nakaretans' practical observations socially disrespected, the Pirentines' documented rituals deliberately destroyed in cycles, the Velanzans' elaborate archives paralyzed by over-analysis.
Each town has blind spots, contradictions, tensions simmering for centuries. Each has developed sophisticated responses to challenges while simultaneously creating new problems. Each stands at a moment of potential crisis: Nakares facing the limits of their landscape, Pirentia on the edge of another rentovar, Velanza recovering from another crash.
And now, in the 930th year since founding, their isolation ends.
Trade routes that once served only scattered hamlets and distant minor settlements are expanding. Nakaretan merchants venture into northern passes seeking new markets for their engineering expertise and breeding stock. Pirentine traders follow rivers to their sources, looking for timber and minerals. Velanzan prospectors explore new territories searching for deposits and customers.
The meeting is inevitable. Three towns, numbering 47,000 people collectively, each convinced of the rightness of their particular path, are about to discover each other. The Nakaretans will encounter the Pirentines' escalario system and be horrified. The Pirentines will learn of Velanzan consciousness alteration and face questions about their own rituals. The Velanzans will discover Nakaretan landscape engineering and perhaps recognize productive alternatives to pure extraction.
Each town's carefully maintained worldview will face unprecedented challenges. How will the Nakaretans respond when they meet a people unburdened by guilt about environmental transformation? Will Pirentia's next rentovar be accelerated or prevented by contact with alien social forms? Can Velanza's elaborate moral philosophy accommodate the moral frameworks of others?
The peninsula of Altalia stands on the threshold of a new age. Three towns, three cultures, three ways of understanding the world—about to collide and transform. By the close of the millennium, they may become the city-states that dominate their regions. But first, they must navigate the crisis of first contact.
Nothing will remain unchanged.