Sarakal

Water on the Steppe

Everything Sarakal does is measured against the lake. Steppe runs a long way in every other direction, dry and thinly grassed, so the narrow belt of watered ground along the shore is worth more than any quantity of open range, and the town works it with more care than the land strictly deserves. Sarakal is old, one of the original Ashanar foundations, and it has stayed modest: irrigation off the water, grain and fodder in the wet soil, herds walked out onto the dry grass and brought back to drink. The whole settlement is arranged around how far a beast can travel between waterings.

Loyalty Across the Grass

The Ashanar here are the landward cousins of the coastal cities, holding to the same habit of the sworn word without the sea to carry it across. Sarakal's allegiance runs to Tiramun, and through Tiramun to the wider bloc of Kerevoz, a chain that reaches inland from salt water to dry grass. In the town it is felt as levies, and as the carts that come each season for whatever the watered ground has spared.