Of Ealdorfold, Its Governance, and Its Bearing Upon the Empire’s Northern Interests

I must confess at the outset that what follows is drawn from secondhand accounts, merchant reports, and the careful inferences of scholars who have north of Wattle. Your Grace should weigh it accordingly. I have omitted nothing I believe useful, but, having not explored these lands myself, there may be considerable gaps in the knowledge herein.

Ealdorfold is an ancient place. In what scholars call the Aethelgarthian age, it sustained a kingdom of considerable sophistication. This kingdom was not ended not by conquest or decay, but by the Tungolsweorc: great boulders fell from the sky, the land was cratered, the civilization erased.

In this we find the cause of previous calamities, among them the fall of Samarskand, and the drowning of Taprobane, even of Wattle and Daub rebuilding from Himakatupura; and yet Ealdorfold, as we know it, cannot be said to have climbed back to those heights.

Of Their Military and Commercial Position

Ealdorfold does not project strong land armies. There are stories of great and ancient hero-kings, such as Cynebald, who is still said to sleep in the Roonwud, the ancient forest that encompasses much of Ealdorfold; and of Wulfhaeden the Twice-Named Archmage, whose title is still held by powerful magicians in the North and West; there is Sunnflaed of the Seven Wells and Eadwulf the Incomplete, from whom the Pendraigs of today claim some distant descent. But there are no great tales of armies.

However, the Ealdorfold navy is among the finest operating in northern waters. Indeed it is the only force genuinely expert in coldwater navigation.

Ealdorfold’s accessible coastline, dominated by the broad foggy channel of the Mistigsund, punishes those without Ealdorfold escort. The port of Roke’s Landing connects to Aethelburh; this is Wattle’s primary northern trade connection, and thus, at one remove, touches Daub and the Empire.

From Aethelburh, to the North, lies Weligadael, which in our tongue translates to something close to “valley of prosperity” or “wealth-dale”; thereing lies much fertile farmland and forts and manors of the powerful of Ealdorfold.

Inward lies the mountains and the fortress-town of Cynebald’s Rest; this interior, which leads to Staanbyrig, the great mining city carved into the Eesenhlaw highlands, is guarded with forts up its passage. Our information on the exact disposition of these places is not very fine; map-makers and surveyors are treated with great suspicion, and often we must rely on bard’s tales to position our maps.

More immediately relevant to Your Grace’s position: Staanbyrig produces a steel we cannot replicate. The alloy is harder than anything Singhapura or Wattle manufactures, and it incorporates the Tungolstaanas through processes the Staanwearda guilds guard with jealous care.

The Empire imports heavily from this source. The guilds of Staanbyrig are aware of their leverage in this matter; a supply that cannot be easily substituted and cannot be seized is among the most durable forms of power. Thus

Of Galdorcraeft and Its Implications

The magic of Ealdorfold is galdorcraeft, or the Craft as they call it. To us it falls within the domain of Invoking, as understood by the Taprobane scholars. Where the Taprobane system works through formal structure and language, galdorcraeft operates through what its practitioners call the Sympathy: a perception of hidden connections between things, worked through sound, intention, and material.

Ealdorfold is unique in that the land breeds magicians like the Church breeds priests. The Tungolstaana craters seed the land; children born in crater-country manifest the Craft involuntarily. Ealdorfold’s magical population is thus a product of the land itself. Galdors themselves are prohibited from leaving Ealdorfold, though over the years there have been a few defectors.

The island of Sceadeg, positioned in the Mistigsund, houses one working wonder from ancient times: the Hlystend Steepel, a structure that projects a dome suppressing all magic in its vicinity. Whatever its mechanism, it represents a powerful defensive capability; indeed it is said that its workings bear some relation to the modern-day Order of the Sound of One Hand Clapping. Thus, Ealdorfold is guarded not only by its waters, but by powerful workings; there may be others yet unknown to us.

It is my opinion that the Taprobane system has, to date, demonstrated superiority over anything Ealdorfold’s practitioners have produced, but I would not rest on this assessment indefinitely. Anything with centuries of practice behind it develops refinements that are not readily visible to us outside.

The bards of the Hasselblad School of Topological Rhyme are unique among Galdors in that they alone have permission to travel freely, owing to Ealdorfold laws prohibiting the infringement of musicians and storytellerrs. Their magic may be distinct from much of the other workings of galdorcraeft; operate on the thesis that the world is a story and that sufficiently precise understanding of narrative structure allows one to change outcomes. Your Grace will find them in political situations where they have no obvious business being.

Our best current understanding is that they are a potent spy network, ranging far afield, trading entertainment for information. They are best treated as one treats any intelligence asset of uncertain loyalty: acknowledged, monitored, never trusted with any save the most inconsequential secret.

Of the Leohtgield and Its Purpose

The governing body of Ealdorfold is the Leohtgield: a rotating council with a shared code of laws and collective diplomatic identity. They elect a monarch, who alone has the power to ratify proposals brought to them, and governs until death or removal (also, surprisingly, by vote). The monarch cannot come from among the members of the council; by law it must be from outside, some notable galdor of great repute, sufficiently trained under the old masters. Upon selection, the monarch-to-be is stripped of all name, titles, and kin before being renamed and recast for their ascension; they are forbidden to sire children.

As of present, this is Ursule, Queen Under Heaven, as she is styled. She is in the fifteenth year of her reign. Not much is known about her; she is known only to speak to ambassadors through an intermediary. This intermediary, styled the Speaker, is the object of much interest.

We suspect that much of this structur is a device for remaining indigestible to Singhapura. The Empire has Wattle. It has Daub. It has Tangowan to the south. The Leohtgield’s members have oriented themselves steadfastly toward making acquisition more costly than the Empire can justify. In this Your Grace is well-advised to make some study of them.

However, the extremes displayed may yet be its downfall. The Leohtgield, in its dealings with the Empire, has become a force bent on conservation. Foreign loan-words have been purged from the language; many classes citizens may not leave their borders without permission; trade and diplomacy are confined to that one port; and the Haugris Church and the worship of Raavan are banned under pain of public execution. Your Grace will appreciate the alternative logic: they have chosen exclusion where you have chosen equilibrium. In this we have an example of the road not travelled by, and thus an opportunity to observe both perils and pitfalls of the approach; and thus Your Grace may make careful amendments to your policies as new events unfold, at no risk to your people or city.

Another key observation for Your Grace’s purposes: the Leohtgield will not provoke Singhapura direclty, but it may already be participatinig in Daub’s politics indirectly, via the old displaced lords, especially the Pendraig coalition. In that its interests seem to align with whatever participation serves as a hedge against Singhapura dominion. This makes it a potential partner of considerable value and a dangerous and persistent enemy to leave unattended.

Of additional interest are the Staanwearda guilds of Staanbyrig. They have been the most welcoming of the Singhapura Merchants Guild among all Ealdorfold’s factions. This makes them the Empire’s best point of access into the Leohtgield and the faction most likely to develop interests that diverge from the League’s conservative consensus. In the words of the Merchants, they vote as a bloc, drink as a bloc, and negotiate as a bloc. If Your Grace looks northwards, it is perhaps here that it should first alight.

Of Ealdorfold’s Cultural Power

I am aware that literary matters do not always appear in political analyses, but I beg Your Grace’s attention here.

Ealdorfold produces literature at a rate entirely disproportionate to its size and, by most material measures, its importance. The scholars of Orvaine College have proposed various explanations: an oral tradition that cultivates narrative capacity; long winters; the Tungolstaana craters warping whatever faculty produces metaphor. Whatever the mechanism, the result is that Ealdorfold’s cultural output circulates through Taprobane’s student population, through the Hasselblad bards, through Singhapura’s theater circles, through the reading habits of your own merchant class. Horda Roona Weard is read by every generation of Taprobane students; I myself read it as a student. It is, perhaps, one of the finest literary works that understand what it means to be young, intelligent, and convinced of the failings of one’s elders. Blooma Daeg, set in Aethelburh itself, divided opinion so violently that it set off an explosion in Singhapura theater that lasted a decade. Even Daub’s Antler Hall takes its name from The Ballad of Broken Antlers.

Thus, an observation: the people who will one day advise the Adhiraj, and make up the mechanisms of the Empire, will, in some way, have spent their formative years inside Ealdorfold’s imagination. Your Grace should not underestimate this: it is a remarkably cost-effective defense. After all, what is the price of a story? Surely less than an army and the rations to feed it, Your Grace.

I would close by observing that I have likely told Your Grace less than you would wish to know. The internal politics of the noble houses, the precise boundaries secular and galdor authority, the extent of the Roonwud - these remain opaque even to the Merchants Guild. Ealdorfold keeps its own counsel better than almost any polity of comparable size. This, too, is a form of power.

Further Reading

On the Tungolsweorc and the Aethelgarthian age, various Taprobane Conference proceedings cover the subject in detail, although I am told that reading them is not unlike torture.

The Ithihaasa Potha contains possible the earliest passage that mentions Ealdorfold: They fired bricks and called them stone; they smeared tar and called it eternal. They said, let us build a tower so high; let us pierce the sky itself. And the sky heard them, and moved in anger, and laid low the stones, and even banished their memory. It is of common concensus that this refers to the calamity that struck Ealdorfold in its ancient days. Thus we may infer that this kingdom was old even in the time of Singhapura, though not so old as Samarskand.

The Ballad of Broken Antlers follows seven generations of a family beside a Tungolsweorc crater, and is the most thorough account of galdorcraeft from within that exists in any language. It is the only known piece of literature to require that the reader have a chart of genealogies on hand, but for those with the patience, it is well worth understanding what knowledge and skills and consequences were transferred thus.

Emmeline is set in the Weligedael. It takes place about five generations ago and depicts the Lēohtgield cities as aspirational rather than the metropolises they are today. The story dulls the senses, but is an excellent account of the social history of these cities and the forces that drove them together. Of particular interest, Your Grace, is what these people believe to be their lot. Though diminished, they aspire to respectability; especially the respectability of convention; to an order that has been dismantled and is being rebuilt piecemeal by descendants who many not necessarily understand why their ways must change.

Blooma Daeg follows three figures-a young galdor, a trinket-peddler, and his wife-through a single day in Aethelburh. It is perhaps the best portrait we have of what everyday life and aspirations might look like for ordinary citizens of Ealdorfold. Of interest is the deep skepticism that its figures seem to hold for the national project; that there is a great sense of unmoving, or inertia, of society and people. I have heard it alternatively described as a pile of steaming excrement and as one of the greatest works of our times. I would perhaps suggest Your Grace have one of your servants provide you with excerpts instead of reading the whole.

Staanbyrig follows a young miner who has convinced himself that great-spirited individuals are unbound by common moral law, murders an elderly galdor and her apprentice to test this belief, and discovers, across the remainder of the novel that he is not among the unbound. It is the most accurate account available of how Ealdorfold justice operates from the inside. Of particular interest is the depictions of poverty herein, and of both the social power of Stanbyrig miners, who are often young men lacking in such education as to the finer points of law and morality.

Horda Roona Weard is about students at one of the Leohtgield academies. It is, as I said before, much-loved, but the academy mentioned therein is most likely fictional. I can only recommend it if Your Grace is in need of some light entertainment and wishes to feel young at heart again.

Folio XI · Of Provinces

Transcribed by Victor Konara