It is a place where stucco buildings perch along cliffs as red as the tiled roofs. The towns and cities along the northern coast of the Sea of Sarketh are some of the oldest in Myrrah, second only to those along the Archipelago of Bellaia in age and standing.
The sea frothing at the feet of wharves and buildings supplies the routes of commerce and a large portion of merchantable goods thanks to plentiful fisheries. The winds off the land bring the smells of the other prime products of this area: oranges and almonds along with the olive groves and vineyards.
This is a place where if you journey inland enough to escape the smell of salt air, you’ve entered a landscape covered with scant shrubs and dry soil unless you travel along one of the riverways flowing from the north. This is the land where the epic fantasy series the Rise of the Fifth Order begins in the very ordinary fishfolk and olive growers in the town of Mirocyne.
Compared to the great port cities of Dion and Kyrron, Mirocyne is a small back water with a tiny sheltered bay. Its town elders, mostly male and all old, rule without fuss and with only slight preference to friends and family. Of course, they may turn a blind eye, and open hand, to those living or calling home to the rougher sections of town that exist closest to the docks at the foot of Mirocyne’s cliff, far below the fine villas the wealthy call home.
Kyrron is the jewel of these wealthy cities lining the north shore of the great sea. From Mount Eyrt to its west to the terraced hills along the eastern flank of rolling hills, Kyrron rises along its sweeping harbor like a sun-bleached coral reef, or so Lavinia describes it. The city of Dion is second to Kyrron, with a market filled with thousands of vendors shouting to sell their wares. A walk down either of these great cities would be a day, days, filled with the sights of beauty and luxuary.
The most eccentric harness great birds to chariots to dash down cobble streets. Small demi-dragons are kept as pets like living jeweled wraps, though ones with teeth and claws. Fresh dates, oranges, figs, and olives compete with freshly caught fish, crocks of locally produced wine, imported silk, and blown glass in the markets. This is a land where water is reverred for it brings the trade routes and the storms that close them. It provides fish and fruit or kills crops for the lack of it. The fire of bright days is balanced by the silent strength of the sea.
That balance suffuses the lives who live along this section of the sea. And it is why they pay homage to the Goddess Mhyrah and the Elementals who are her legacy. Northern Sarkethians mind the festivals when the Priests or Priestesses from the Church of Four Orders come, bringing with them the gifts of Fire, Water, Air, or Earth. Just as they mind the old traditions and send their children off to an apprenticeship for two years when they turn the adult age of seventeen. Rules here are followed.
Which is why when a paradox of rules are broken, one by a family who hides their children from the Church of Four Orders, two by a Water Priestess who neglects her duty, three by a boy who escapes his apprenticeship to fall into a dishonest life, and four by a girl who would protect her brother and friend no matter the cost, when those four meet world unravel and Born of Water begins.
