Peresan of Mytea - Prologue

I am Peresan of Mytea, one of its most celebrated warriors. My father once told me that all should record their deeds so they might be remembered after their passing. Like much he said it was wise and in my twilight years I find myself thinking often of those words. I am centuries old, admittedly perhaps not an unusual achievement, and my life has been full of adventures that have taken me across the world.

It is a dangerous place, every city set against its neighbours and the wilds between. That is a recently arrived situation though, as recent as things can be considering our lifespans, but even by the time of my birth history was already muddled. Were these cities of yesteryear daughters escaping a bossy mother or sons overthrowing the rule of a tyrannical father?

In either case the progenitor of the world's dominant culture was lost. All that remains is its institutions, the way society is ordered. The warrior class rules for example, we earn that right by defending the people, but we are first among equals and not their overlords.

The peoples of the world live almost entirely in the territories of the Great Cities, the ones that survived the upheaval. Each is mighty, with both a long reach and the power to enforce its claim when it extends that reach further. Of course it is the warriors that gives a city that power, we are justly celebrated as sword and shield.

It is the nyasuma that has always driven expansion, food and water being plentiful compared to that wondrous mineral. Such expansion nearly always leads to conflict and these conflicts change the status of many people from freeman to slave. The slaves are owned by the city that conquered them, put to use down mines or in orchards, although a select few are handed out in recognition of one deed or another. I myself have a small collection.

Prisoners of war are joined in their state of bondage by arrested criminals. If the average warrior is held in high regard by the common citizenry then the watchmen who patrol each city are held in high regard by us. They are more likely to possess political office, knowledgeable about laws the average warrior isn't.