March Content Update: An Account of the Reach Folk (Patreon)

To the far north, beyond the peaks of the Barazin Mountains, lie a land of icy hillocks and pastures, split by many fast-moving rivers with steep and rocky banks. This is the land of what the Khazari and the Barazini refer to as the Reach Folk. Very little is known about these people, even less so in the lands which do not directly border such territory. The Barazini, divided from such lands as they are by the mountains, pay them little attention save to guard the passes against the very rare raid. They are more pre-occupied with their generations-long contention with the Khazari along their heavily fortified and heavily guarded southern border. As the for the Khazari themselves, their means of accessing the Northern Reach comes only through the upstream navigation of the Ullanye and Baraz rivers - with the former being blocked by regular Barazini patrols and fortresses - and the latter being treacherous to navigate at the best of times, and nearly impassable for most parts of the year.

As a result, there are very few reliable sources regarding the Reachfolk. The customary legends of mountain cave-cities with halls encrusted with gems, and adorned with rivers of molten gold can be dismissed out of hand. As can the idea of flying fortresses levitating on the power of some unknown magic, similar to that which sustains certain relics of the Flowering Court, which once occupied the lands of the Concordat. Indeed, the state of the Reach Folk, in the perspective of the few who deal with them in an official capacity might probably be best summed up by the words of a Khazari bureaucrat whose remit included the surveying of the Ullanye River: "they are not wealthy enough to trade with, and not troublesome enough to conquer".

This is not to say that the Reach Folk are not worthy of study. Despite the harshness of the territory which they inhabit, they have evidently not only been able to settle the land in permanent ways, but thrive in conditions which would be considered unsuitable for settlement by most. In a relative absence of wood, of metal, and of land capable of supporting most crops, they have built homes which have evidently lasted for centuries. While the techniques and tools which they use to secure such lives may not seem as impressive or as complex as those familiar to the means by which our own people have tamed the desert, it remains something worthy of study. Last of all, there remains the fact that the Reach Folk, although distant and unfamiliar, remain a people, and it is our duty as scholars and adventurers to learn of all of the world's inhabitants, so that we may better understand the nature of creation.

Unfortunately, such understanding does not come easily. The Reach itself is nearly impossible to approach, and thus all our knowledge comes from Khazari sources, or second hand, via the Barazini Princes, whom we do not have regular contact with. As a result, such sources might be distorted, incomplete, or otherwise create false impressions, being as they are taken from multiple contacts over the course of over a century, across a wide region. However, they do give us a coherent picture of the Reach Folk, no matter how obscured or incomplete it may be.

The Reach Folk are primarily divided into two groups: those who dwell atop and within the hills, and those who dwell along the banks of the rivers.

From what is understood to me, the Hill-dwellers settle in the highest of the hills. There, they dig pits and cover them with sod to shelter themselves from the elements. They sustain themselves mostly from the raising of sheep, and the village claims all it can survey from the top of its hill as the rightful pasture land for its herds. The Hill-dwellers have no kings or lords or officials. Instead, all decisions are taken in common, with the owner of each herd having a say when the village meets at the beginning of each month to decide how things should be done. These votes are not even, for at the beginning of each month, each herd-owner must provide or pledge to provide a certain number of animals from their herd, to be butchered to provide common meat for those without herds and common wool and hides for trade and those who require it. The greater the number of animals pledged, the greater the weight of a given herd-owner's vote in the subsequent deliberations.

Aside from the meat and milk from their herds, the Hill-dwellers also grow plots of root vegetables during the warmest season of the year when such things are possible. These vegetables they harvest and store in the deepest parts of their homes, where they are able to resist decay the longest period of time. The growing plots are manured with the droppings of the herds and the people alike, but even with such efforts, the land is so poor that it is common for a household to share the eating of maybe only a single onion in the course of two or three days.

Lacking a central authority, the villages of the Hill-dwellers are in a constant state of war with one another, although rarely to the degree which we consider normal for warfare in the Empire. Young members of a village who lack animals of their own will often conduct night raids on the herds of a rival village to steal some animals with which to form the foundations of their own herds. Likewise, brawls between villages are common in regards to the possession of a given hillock, especially one which is within view of multiple villages. These combats often have more the character of games or contests than battles, with injuries being common but deaths being very rare. The Hill-dwellers do not hold grudges over these contests, for the great frequency of these "battles" mean that a hillock lost may be regained in a month or two once the wounded have healed sufficiently to contest ownership once again.

However, this does not mean that the Hill-dwellers take no defensive measures. Most villages will possess a strong fence or terrace wall made of sod and fieldstone around its dwellings, with space enough for all the herds of the village folk to be drawn inside in case a hostile raid is discovered. Likewise, most villages also possess a great mound in its centre, upon which sits a tower of stone, or very rarely, wood, from which a village might not only see attacks approaching, but might also be used to survey - and thus claim - greater amounts of grazing land.

River-dwellers differ from Hill-dwellers primarily due to their choice of habitation. Instead of living atop hills, they live by the banks of rivers, near natural fords, or river bends which lead to the formation of lakes, marshes, or other bodies of water which might be made more calm than the typical fast-moving current of the Reach's rivers. These settlements will often further improve the natural features of the waterway by excavating fish ponds, or protected harbours from which boats of sizes ranging from single-person craft to large vessels nearly equal in size to the smaller variety of sea-going galley might be built. 

These boats make for curious sights, for although some small stands of trees exist in the Reach, especially along the deepest of the river valleys, such material remains exceptionally rare and valuable, to the degree that only those villages which live the closest to those meagre forests which exist might even consider building their watercraft entirely out of wood. In most cases, wood is used for keels and frames only, with the rest being filled in with reeds or oiled hides. As a result, these craft tend to be rather shallower and more fragile than those which might be found in the Concordat or the Khazari territories, and those who crew them very rarely stray too far from the waters around their settlements.

As for the settlements themselves, these are of a rather different character than those of the Hill-dwellers. Rather than being dug into the ground, they are raised on embankments of sod and stone, to keep them safe from flooding. The walls too are made from stone, with the use of sod and reeds reserved primarily for roofs. The one exception is the centre of each settlement, a building made entirely of stone, which houses at all times a great fire used to dry and smoke the fish caught by the fishermen. This too is the political centre of each village, for every year, a person among them is chosen whose sole duty is to keep the fire in this stone house fed and burning. They are required to watch the fire at all times, and as a result, is fed and clothed by the donations of the village, and possesses the power to demand a certain amount of fuel as a sort of tax. The importance of this role comes from the fact that the fish which the River-dwellers rely upon for sustenance would otherwise rot quickly in the cold and wet conditions of the Reach, thus making the preservation of such harvested fish to be of utmost importance.

Because the River-Dwellers do not make regular contact with other villages along the river, and do not require the use of pastures as the Hill-dwellers do, River-dweller villages very rarely go to war with other settlements. Indeed, it is very common for Hill-dwellers and River-dwellers to engage in regular trade with one another. The hides which almost all Reach Folk wear are made from the skins of Hill-dweller herds, but are treated with oil made from River-dweller fish to better keep out rain and wind. Fish too is often traded to the Hill-dwellers to help manure their fields, which grow root vegetables sometimes traded to the River-dwellers to supplement a diet which would otherwise be made almost entirely of fish, smoked or fresh.

This forms a picture of the way which the Reach Folk interact with one another, but it is only a rough one, of broad outlines and dim shapes. These accounts come second or third hand, and cannot be verified directly by anyone who might be subject to the rigours of formal scholarship. Thus, it must be said that it is entirely possible such accounts are nothing more than the fanciful tales of ferry-workers and merchants, to be left unconfirmed until the day they the Reach Folk themselves come south to correct the record.

Or until the day we come to them.