Sarenal

ar-Meksirys dyta bel elva.

Our summers are short and cold; good times rarely last.

Sarenal is a hilly country once well-known for its fertile soil. The summers are mild, and the winters are cold. Forests are scattered across the region, but the cold and centuries of clear-cutting have made them sparse. Old roads wind across the landscape. They’re cracking and overgrown.

The ocean borders Sarenal to the south. The river Dirnekyn, or Fir Azvi, is to the west, and the river Salm is to the east. These two rivers form a triangle-like shape. If you ask most people, they’re Sarenal’s borders.

Communities are mostly rural. They’re often by rivers and forests. They grow grain fields and graze goats and sheep. But Sarenal’s most striking settlements are the abandoned ones, centuries-dead. Many years ago, Sarenal’s first snows fell heavy as grave dirt.

Fasłyn

Sarenal was once part of the Fasłyn empire, which stretched wide across the continent. It was a hub for trade, and harvests were abundant. The heart of the western empire, Sarenal was comfortably wealthy.

Despite this, Sarenal had a strange reputation. Writers from the capital often described the rural population as sacreligious, strange, and backwater. A contemporary described the Sarenalian dialect as such:

There they have a butchered form of Lirsamka. The nobles and the scholars speak well, but the rural people slur their consonants together. S and Z both turn to mush in their mouths. I do not mean the citizens of port towns, who speak with an unplacable mesh of accents. The farmers, and the immigrants who join them, are as uncivilized as their local gods.

The names of their two great rivers: Dirnekyn and Salm. They’re each in a language since rendered irrelevant. But though most Sarenalians now speak the people’s tongue, I believe they blend aspects of into their dialect. It’s quite unlike other forms of Lirsamka, and, in my opinion, unpleasant to the ear.

Of course, the writer is long dead, as is Fasłyn. More relevant to us now is the story of the cold times.

Ekryta Belyn

Three or so centuries ago, the world grew very cold. No one knows the exact reason, but Sarenalians often explain it with a story about the sun god, Mures. A common version goes like this:

For many years, a mortal woman courted Mures. Each day, she left offerings for him, and she spoke to him of her love. She had a very fair face, and Mures was charmed by it. He appeared at her door one evening. They kissed and coupled through the night.

Their tryst went on for many nights, and after some time, the mortal woman made her request. She asked Mures for godhood. He refused her, and she began to scheme.

The next time Mures visited, she offered him a draught of wine. In it she put poison. He drank deep, and soon he fell very ill. For three days he laid in her home, and for those three days the world was pitch-black and cold. On the fourth day, he rose and dragged himself across the sky. But the poison had weakened him and left him ill. In his sickness, the world grew cold.

Whatever the truth, Sarenalians took to calling this Ekryta Belyn, or the cold times. Harvests failed, and many starved. Others froze to death. Some people died in their homes, roofs collapsing under the weight of snow. Fasłyn fractured and fell under the pressure.

The first decade was the worst. Slowly, the survivors managed to grow crops. Sarenal, with crops from all over the world, was especially well-suited to survive. But the population still isn’t what it once was. It’s spread thin, and everyone’s haunted by the specter of hunger.