Eresar

What the Grassland Gives

Eresar has been a farming town since the Ashanar first put down foundations in the south-west, which makes it older than a good many cities that outgrew it. It never outgrew anything. Modest is the honest word for it: a working settlement on open grass, sized to the land it works. The country around lies in plough and pasture by turns, cut by stock roads and dotted with threshing floors, and the year runs on sowing, lambing, hay, harvest and the slow winter of repairs. Surplus leaves by wagon, and what the town cannot make for itself comes back the same way.

A Small Place, Sworn

The Ashanar keep their bargains, and Eresar's bargain is a plain one: it grows food and it hands over its share. Allegiance runs to Bareshum on the grassland, whose demands arrive counted in loads and beasts and, when the grass turns to a mustering field, in men. Age lends the town a certain standing among its neighbours, the way anything long-established is respected without being envied. It is not a place where great things are decided. It is part of the reason greater places can afford to decide them.