And now, presenting some basic analysis of this Erezza map:
As a disclaimer, this is most likely not a 100% full map of the country: it cuts of Sescia and the Aegre Strait in the south, as well as the peninsula north of Cocenza in the north, but it nevertheless gives us a good foundation to work with. All numbers below and working solely with the Erezza pictured above.
Each cell is labeled (EH, EC, EP, etc.), with the “E” likely standing for Erezza. Here’s the frequency of each cell type on the map, and what they likely correspond to:
- EH (35.8%) – Hills (crags, probably)
- EC (23.7%) – Cultivation
- EP (12.8%) – Plains (or more broadly, land unsuitable for cultivation)
- EF (12.6%) – Forest
- EI (3.6%) – Irrigation?
- EG (1.8%) –
- ET (0.3%) – Taiga?
- EU (<0.01%) – Urban (Soretto, the capital)
Forest, hills, and plains (a la the Brecks) are trivially confirmed by cross-referencing with the core gameworld map. Cultivation is a likely guess, given the importance of farmland to the crises ahead. The Halassurq border has likely been scarred by Theurgic fire and is under perpetual threat from infiltrators, and so that stretch of plains seems to be potential arable land if the war ends.
“I” is the most interesting, because it’s concentrated around major settlements. In the southwest, you can see three pockets roughly corresponding to Amaccia, Avezia, and Rinocci. The largest sections of “I” are in the middle of Erezza, with one around Soretto, the capital (which is marked with “EU”), and one around Cocenza further north. We see another pocket around Moncezano (Cerlota’s hometown) in the east. Given that these “I” lands are surrounded by “C”, and following visual design principles, we can argue that this is irrigated land.
This would mean that 12% of agricultural land in Erezza is irrigated.
It’s not clear to me what “G” means, aside from likely being related to the sea, but it’s noteworthy that the two in the northwest correspond to known settlements, Salere and Canterna.
Following these assumptions, we notice one unusual settlement: Lacevra, the hometown of Ennearch Ilaria Lacevra, Cerlota’s mentor. While it’s situated by a river, none of the surrounding land seems to be agricultural. This may suggest that there’s something in those hills really worth mining for – gold, maybe, or alchemical minerals.
And because I’ve taken a very clinical approach to describing Erezza, I just want to interject Cerlota reminiscing about her homeland to really put the map into perspective:
“Away from the ravaged border country, Erezza is the most beautiful of lands. Mountain crags emerging from the ocean, in sheer cliffs that stretch from sky-height straight down to unfathomed depths. Great forests of pine and oak, fir and birch, dotted with flower meadows. Steep valleys of a thousand cascades. And almost everywhere, even in the heights, you can hear seabirds crying for the waves.” Cerlota’s eyes are faraway and mournful. “Our poets are the envy of the world, and it is because they grow up feeding their minds on such beauties.”
And this will help put into perspective what Erezza (and any fledgling union that hopes to integrate Erezza) stands to lose. Halassur would demand suzerainty from Kochent (Cocenza) eastwards in exchange for peace, according to Erjan. To represent this, I use the BK column as a border, a bit west of Cocenza. This constitutes 31% of Erezza’s total land area, and 36% of Erezza’s farmland. And that’s not counting the ravaged border country: if we treat all of that as potential farmland once the war ends and the land has been given time to recover, Halassur’s imperial demands suddenly become 47% of Erezza’s farmland.
Now, what if Shayard reconquers Aveche (Avezia)? It’s not clear where the historical territory of Aveche ends: placing Avezia at the border would be a relatively small loss, about 4% of territory and 6% of farmland. But if a conqueror were to see all that farmland and claim territory up to, say, the river east of Aveche: then we’re looking at a more substantial loss of farmland, maybe around 11%.
Anyway, with that done, I also want to talk about Elery…
Elery is a character driven by intense emotion and loyalty to those she loves – which makes losing them all the harder, and all the more something she wants to avoid.
Elery suffering as everyone she loves dies around her
When Elery learns of Zvad’s death, her first reaction is to find you and punch you in the face.
“Your fault, ${kuria}, damn you!” she howls as you try belatedly to fend off her fists. Her own face is swollen and streaked from weeping—and taut with rage. “Damn you! You and your Xthon’damned sneaking around! If we’d gutted Hector rather than trying to avoid him, we’d still have Zvad!”
[…]
“Weeks, ${kuria}. We only had weeks.” Her voice is numb, choked-sounding. “If there are Angels, damn Them for Their shitty little mercies.”
[…]
“What I need right now, ${kuria}? Either Hector Keriatou or myself dead. If They want to, the bloody Angels can kill me and welcome.” Elery’s voice is beginning to crack again by her last sentence, and she stalks off in the middle of it.
Elery screams in frantic denial. You crawl over to where the voice came from. Yebben Skinner’s body is almost as pallid as a Nyr, drained of all its blood. Whatever he managed to do saved you, but at a fearsome cost.
Grief and fury are stark in her eyes. “Lead these bastards, ${kuria} ${lname}? Help you lead the swivers who just murdered ${xhim}?”
And I’d bet she’d rather die than betray those she loves, and would rather die fighting than watch them die before her. That much is on display at the Fourth Harrowing, when she attacks the Theurges and is the first to die because of it. “Damn the Thaumatarch! And damn you all!” She does not easily forget, and she does not easily forgive.
And so we see exactly why Elery stayed when we “murdered” Breden:
“Xthonos damn you both,” she whispers. “If I thought Yebben and I had a chance anywhere else…” She spits on the ground and stalks away.
or if we drive Breden away:
An hour later, Elery storms into your tent and jabs a finger at you as if she wishes it were a dagger. “Yebben has asked me to stay. That’s the only reason I’m still here, you brainless bastard. And I won’t be the only one to feel that way.”
The only way to separate her from Yebben is to kill so much of the band that they mutiny — and even then, the mutineers send back food and supplies to keep the rest of the band alive.
- (Incidentally, many including myself find it pretty likely that Breden survived the assassination attempt in the winter, and that the first opportunity to genuinely kill them is after the hellebore poisoning. But we’ll find out soon enough.)
Now, when it comes to the aristocracy, it’s true that Elery hasn’t exactly suffered the same trauma as, say, Radmar, seeing that Poric was beaten to the verge of death and had his tongue cut out because an aristo didn’t want to admit to getting birth control. Or to Kal, who was raped, and whose mother was raped and consequently executed. It’s possible she had kinder masters – we just don’t know (incidentally, if I had to wager a guess, I’d go with House de Morgane). But she was still Radmar and Poric’s friend, and lived under the perpetual fear that every helot in Rim Square did, and that’s more than enough to foster a hatred for the aristocracy and all that it stands for.
I’ll ask Elery to protect them.
Elery arches an eyebrow when you whisper your thoughts. “You’d have to convince me not to help ${kalt} first, ${kuria}. A Leilatou’s no friend to us.”
She can come to see some nobles as allies, if they can prove their loyalty: de Firiac being the case for that. It’s true that Elery has a natural alignment against “the merchants who profit from the rule of the oppressor” (in her words, during a New Sacrament), and her tactical skills at banditry are wielded effectively against merchant caravans in the mountain passes. But if the merchants are condemned by profiting off the oppression, there’s little doubt that the oppressors are condemned with them.
And don’t forget that her own skepticism places her at odds with the priests to begin with. Radmar’s opposition to the priests during a new sacrament might be foreshadowing an eventual break with Xthonos worship (for the Forgotten Gods), but Elery’s the lieutenant who’s ahead of the curve on calling the priests liars right now.
Though one interesting detail I recall is that the aristo Father, in being uncooperative and refusing to help us after seeing Horion under duress due to being, well, kidnapped, uses moot as a verb, which is to say:
But at my last Season, anyone named Leilatou was being mooted for Archon. Same for kurios Horion as anyone else.
It raises some neat questions about how Archons are chosen, since they seem to be handpicked by the Thaumatarchy for the most part. Not sure if those are useful questions though… I might be bearish about Archon Phrygia’s life expectancy, but I wonder if the Thaumatarchy would even appoint a successor, or try for any veneer of legitimacy from anyone but their loyalists.
For a glimpse of what Aekos, the Heart of the World, might be like, we can reference the time we can visit Grand Shayard back in Uprising…
You'd had no idea the Rim was so big, let alone the world.
As you approach the capital, for the first time in your life you see other machines that look as elaborate as Harrowers, but turned to the spinning of wool, the grinding of flour, or the weaving of cloth. Your captors tell you before you arrive that twenty-two hundred Rim Squares would fit comfortably into Grand Shayard…but that’s a reality beyond imagining until you see the smudge in the sky from a hundred thousand house-fires, and finally look down onto a vertiginously huge city, ramshackle houses spreading out to the horizon on all sides.
Your Slow-Harrowing on the steps of the Naos takes six days. On the last day, when your limbs have all been flayed and severed, you
(This might also be a taste of what Soretto is like, and why it got a category of its own on the map of Erezza. That’s right, we have continuity in this post.)