The Rivan Codex

by David Eddings

  Sendaria

  COINAGE

  Because their kingdom was established by Imperial decree at a time when Sendaria was dominated by Tolnedra, Sendarian coins are the same as Tolnedran except the King’s likeness is on the coins, and Sendarian coins suffer a 5–7% discount due to impurities in the metal. The term ‘Sendarian’ is a prefix to their coinage to distinguish between their coins and Tolnedran.

  Extensive presence of other coins in circulation.

  COSTUME

  Standard medieval. Jerkins, tabards, leggings, hose, caps, toques, shoes of soft leather. Hooded jackets, etc. among commoners. Stout capes for foul weather.

  Women wear short-sleeved dresses. Headdresses for formal occasions. Kerchiefs for informal. Broad aprons.

  All wear wooden shoes in muddy fields.

  MERCANTILE CLASSES AND TRADESMEN

  Wear clothing associated with their trade or long gowns and bag hats. Their women wear fine gowns, if they can. Young men tend to be a bit foppish—doublets, hose, fancy shoes and the long visored cap.

  MEMBERS OF THE NOBILITY

  Wear gowns trimmed with fur, hose, surcoats, woolen or linen shirts. On very formal occasions the chain-mail suit with surcoat, helmet and sword.

  YOUNG MEN

  Are quite foppish, hose, doublets, soft shoes or boots, small-swords (less than the broadsword but more than a rapier) similar to sons of tradesmen or merchants but richer, and the sword distinguishes them.

  WOMEN

  Wear the gown and the wimple. The high pointed hat. A great deal of bosom is displayed. A great deal of fancy cloth used. Hair is generally worn long in Sendaria. Variously coiffed. Women’s garb is more likely to reflect the national heritage of the family than that of the men.

  Except for the nobility, it is not standard practice in Sendaria to go about armed. Not illegal, but not customary.

  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  Status goes thus: Nobility, Mercantile, tradesmen, farmers, laborers.

  It is considered bad manners to snub those of lower rank. Sendars are very polite to each other. The bulk of the land consists of free-holdings—privately owned farms. The large farmers (equivalent to an 18th century squire) have certain legal duties as well (as magistrates). They are called free-holders, a term of respect.

  Sendaria is divided into Districts. Some are almost exclusively occupied by members of one racial grouping; others more homogeneous. Many towns and villages. Districts administered by an Earl (chief magistrate). Districts divided into Ridings. Ridings into Townships. These divisions are usually each associated with a town or village. Townsmen and villagers tend to look down on farmers.

  Sendarian farmsteads are usually constructed in the central European defensive style (all walls facing out around a courtyard). Crofts are small, rented farms. Villagers often farm the nearby fields.

  Churches are used in common by all religions—careful scheduling.

  RANK

  THE KING AND QUEEN

  At the court in Sendar. By custom, they rule jointly.

  THE EARLS

  Chief administrators of Districts.

  THE COUNTS

  Chief administrators of Ridings.

  BARONS

  Chief administrators of a Township (sometimes)—not all Townships have Barons.

  ASSORTED

  Lords, Marquis, Viscounts, Baronets, Margraves, Knights, Dukes, etc. These are titles bestowed by the King for service or to honor excellent men. Some are hereditary, some are not. No one is quite sure which ranks higher, and Sendars are too polite to push it. These titles are usually bestowed on court functionaries. The work loaded on them far outweighs the honor of the title.

  MODES OF ADDRESS

  To the King and Queen—Your Highness, Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness.

  To all other nobles—‘My Lord’ or ‘your Grace’. ‘My Lord’ used among nobles, ‘your Grace’ by commoners. The Unlettered sometimes say ‘your Honor’ not knowing what else to say.

  To Burgers, Merchants or Free-holders—Title ‘Merchant John’, ‘Free-holder Fred’ or simply ‘your honor’.

  All other—‘Goodman’.

  MANNERS

  Sendars are extremely polite. (They are, after all, elemental Englishmen.) They have a great deal of interest in local affairs but are extremely provincial. They are hospitable. They treat their employees well. Wages and prices are set on all goods and services in the kingdom. They are watchful of strangers but are friendly.

  The nobility is not haughty and, like the King, look upon their rank as a responsibility rather than a privilege. More father figures than masters.

  They are hard-working and thrifty. The ‘Free-holding’ is a large (usually 100 acres or more) farm, neatly kept, and the farm buildings around the central court are extensive—a rabbit-warren of single rooms. Huge kitchens and a vast dining hall. Many workers on such a farm. Since room and board is part of the pay, not too much cash is involved in hiring a worker. There is an effort to have all useful arts represented on the free-holding—blacksmith, cobbler, cooper, wheelwright, carpenter etc. Married couples usually rent a croft and save up to buy their own free-holding.

  Marketing is well-organized. Customary practice is for buyers to visit the town and village market places and some of the larger free-holdings. They bring their own wagons or rent those of independent wagoneers—a rowdy bunch. Hauled quickly to a major market, re-sold for delivery to places all up and down the west coast. Tend not to deal in extremely perishable goods—root crops, beans and moist-land grains— because of transit-time.

  HOLIDAYS

  Erastide—A really big thing in Sendaria—a two week orgy of gifts, feasts, dancing, jollity and sentimental good fellowship. Midwinter.

  Sendaria Day—The date of the coronation of the first King. A big midsummer holiday. (4th of July.)

  Blessing Day—A spring ritual. The blessing of the fields. Priests of most of the Gods go about with a big procession/ following and bless the fields prior to planting.

  Harvest Day—Celebration in the fall at the conclusion of the harvest (Thanksgiving).

  RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES

  Priests of most religions in most communities (no Grolims). Observances are civilized and engender good-feeling. Friends will wait for each other to finish in the church before usual Sabbath frolics. (In actuality three Gods in Sendaria— Belar, Chaldan and Nedra. Very few Angaraks, no Marags— of course—and no Nyissans.)

  POPULATION

  Population about 3–4 million.

  ARENDIA

  GEOGRAPHY

  Arendia is the heavily forested area lying between Sendaria to the north and Tolnedra to the south and stretching from the mountains, where it borders Ulgoland, to the Great Western sea. Vast fertile plains extend for hundreds of leagues in the southern and western reaches of the kingdom, and those plains are largely given over to the production of wheat. The mineral deposits in the eastern highlands have been largely undeveloped, but there is a thriving cottage industry in weaving and the inevitable black-smithery. There are—or rather were—three major cities in Arendia, Vo Mimbre, Vo Astur, and Vo Wacune. The latter two cities are uninhabited ruins now as a result of the savagery of the Civil Wars. Vo Mimbre is a grim fortress still bearing the scars of the vast battle fought there against the Angaraks of Kal-Torak. Of all the kingdoms of the west Arendia is certainly the most blessed by nature. Her dark and bloody history, however, proves that tragedy is possible even in the brightest of settings.

  THE PEOPLE56

  The Arends are the most stiff-necked people of the twelve kingdoms, intensely proud and with a vast sense of honor. While the common people appear to have normal sense, the nobility (as one Tolnedran ambassador was wont to say) have minds unviolated by thought. The culture is the most fundamentally feudal and conservative in the west. The Arends are shorter and darker than the rangy blond Alorns to the north and show certain racial similarities to Tolnedrans and Nyissans. They are a humorless people wi
th strong tendencies toward melancholy. Their songs are lugubrious accounts of lost battles and hopeless last stands against overwhelming odds—complete with lengthy casualty lists which include the genealogy of each of the slain. If the songs are to be believed, Arendish maidens are rampantly suicidal, casting themselves off towers or into rivers or plunging a variety of sharp instruments into themselves on the slightest pretext. Arendish men are savage warriors, but the Knights consider the most elemental tactics or strategy beneath their dignity. They are masters of the frontal attack and the last stand. The charge of the Mimbrate Knights at the Battle of Vo Mimbre was truly awe-inspiring, although its purpose was largely diversionary.

  Cautionary note: Arends are extremely proud and sensitive. The tiniest slight, real or imaginary, will evoke anything from a blow to the side of the head up to and including a formal challenge to single combat—always fought to the death in Arendia. Only the most skilled diplomats should ever have dealings with these people.

  THE HISTORY OF ARENDIA

  Like the other peoples of the western kingdoms, the Arends migrated out of the east during the early centuries of the first millennium. By the year 2000, the three major cities, Vo Mimbre, Vo Wacune and Vo Astur existed in their present locations, and were the seats of three more or less rival Duchies. The Mimbrate house controlled the southern reaches, the Asturians the west, the Wacites the north. (The Wacite holdings were located primarily in what is now Sendaria.)

  The institution of Knighthood among the Arends has always been a hindrance to the development of the kingdom. By the 23rd century, Arendia was dotted with castles, keeps, forts and strongholds. The entire energy of the nation has been devoted to war and the preparation for war, and Arendish Knights live in an almost perpetual state of armed conflict. The struggles between the contending Duchies is duplicated at the local level. A dispute over a pig or a broken fence can set neighbors at each other’s throats, and because of the interlocking relationships between the various barons, earls, viscounts etc., these disputes spread rapidly and can, if unchecked, flare into open civil war.

  The third millennium marked the period of Arendish expansionism. The Asturians solidified their hold on the west and, in a surprise move, fortified the southern bank of the Astur River against the Wacites and the southern edge of the great Arendish Forest against the Mimbrates, effectively cutting Arendia in two by extending a band of control from the borders of Ulgoland on the east to the sea on the west. The Mimbrates and Wacites naturally both declared war at that point, but the hastily-erected wooden blockhouses of the Asturians proved to be substantial enough to repel them. In point of fact, neither of the other Duchies could bring their full forces to bear on the Asturians since the Wacites were engaged in a war against Cherek in the northern reaches of Sendaria as a part of their grand plan to extend their power to the north and the Mimbrates were engaged in their centuries-long dispute with Tolnedra in their attempt to extend their influence to the south.

  The Duke of Asturia then proclaimed himself King of Arendia (2618) and called upon his fellow Dukes to come to Vo Astur to pay him homage. It is difficult to determine if this maneuver by the Duke of Asturia was a clever ploy designed to infuriate the other two Dukes into a precipitous withdrawal from their foreign wars in order to attack him or if it was the result of sheer, arrogant stupidity. One is always tempted to believe the worst of an Arend, but we must look at the results rather than the appearance.

  The war of the three kingdoms followed, lasting for approximately eleven hundred years. The Wacite and the Mimbrate Dukes each proclaimed themselves King of Arendia and issued royal commands similar to that made by the Asturian. Thus there were three kings in Arendia, all contending.

  The Chereks quite naturally took advantage of the preoccupation of the Wacite Duke and bit off large pieces of northern Sendaria. Similarly, Tolnedran generals took the opportunity to push seriously weakened Mimbrate forces back beyond the River Arend, eliminating for the time the threat of Arendish invasion.

  The war of the three kingdoms was one of the darkest periods in Arendish history. It was a time of alliances broken, of betrayal, of surprise attack, of assassination and ambush. One example should serve to illustrate. In 2890 the Asturians and Mimbrates had formed an alliance against the Wacites, who were dominant at that time. The expedition into Wacune was highly successful, and the Wacite nobility was virtually wiped out. In the latter days of the campaign in what is now south-central Sendaria, the Asturians suddenly turned on their Mimbrate allies and annihilated them. Thus, with one stroke, the Asturians had very nearly destroyed Wacune and had wiped out a major part of the Mimbrate Army. To defend themselves and to prevent the Asturian Duke from achieving the monarchy, the Mimbrates immediately formed an alliance with the remnants of the Wacites and concluded treaties with certain Cherek chieftains and some of the western clans in Algaria. These freebooters assaulted Asturia from the seaward and the landward side while the Mimbrates attacked her southern borders and the Wacites struck from the north. Asturia quite naturally collapsed and immediately formed an alliance with Wacune to attack the now-dominant Mimbrates.

  As a result of constant attrition, the effect not only of the civil war but also of the ceaseless attacks by Cherek seafarers and Algar horsemen, the Wacite Duchy was finally so weakened that it was possible in 2943 for the Asturians to move decisively against their northern cousins at a time when the Mimbrates were preoccupied by a border war against Tolnedra. The campaign was short and brutal. Wacune was crushed, never to rise again. Vo Wacune was torn down, and all surviving members of the Wacite nobility were sold to Nyissan slavers, who carried them off to the south.

  The savage destruction of Wacune by Asturia shocked the civilized world, and the weight of sympathy of other nations was firmly on the side of the Mimbrate Arends. The consolidation made possible, however, by the elimination of the Wacite nobility and the absorption of the Wacite serfs into the Asturian feudal system, made Asturia virtually impregnable for centuries.57

  It must be candidly admitted, however, that through the closing centuries of the third millennium and throughout most of the fourth, it was a basic tenet of Tolnedran policy to maintain the balance of power between the contending Duchies of Mimbre and Asturia. From a practical standpoint, it was to the enormous advantage of the Empire to encourage the friction between the two contending houses, since a strong and unified Arendia would have made the development of the Tolnedran Empire an impossibility. It is of course a truism that the Arendish Knights are one of the most awe-some forces in the west. Had the Arends been united at any time during the third or fourth millennia, the Empire would never have been, and the whole history of the west would have changed. The stalemate between Mimbre and Asturia lasted until 3793 when the Mimbrates concluded a secret treaty with Tolnedra. In return for certain military assistance from the Empire (largely the removal of restrictions upon Cherek freebooters and Algar raiders and the northward march of a column of ten legions from Tol Vordue toward Asturia’s southern border) the Mimbrates pledged a limited allegiance to the Tolnedran Emperor. This opportunity arose when the continual warfare in Arendia had become a nuisance hindering the construction of the Great West Road and an interference with normal commerce.

  The four-pronged attack against her so stretched the defensive capability of the Asturians that their supply of manpower dried up, and the nation collapsed into that most useless (and most typically Arendish) defense—the retreat into fortified strongholds. The details are gloomy and need not be repeated. The results were inevitable. Asturia fell. Vo Astur was laid waste. The last Duke of Astur fell in battle, and his family was all but exterminated. Asturia as a recognizable nation was no more. It was, however, a weakened Mimbrate Duke who was crowned the first unchallenged King of Arendia, and the Tolnedran design in the west was complete. Arendia was no longer a threat.

  Although a Mimbrate King sat on the throne at Vo Mimbre, he was in many respects a puppet-king—albeit a dangerous one. The
most elemental of the rights of sovereignty, that of conducting one’s own relations with other nations, was severely curtailed by the provisions of the Treaty of Tol Vordue. Arendish merchants were severely limited in terms of what commodities and goods they could import or export, and Tolnedra profited hugely from the arrangement.

  The Kings at Vo Mimbre had other problems, however, which did not give them time to brood about the possible injustices implicit in their treaty with Tolnedra. Although the cities and strongholds of the Asturians had been destroyed, the Asturian nobility and yeomanry remained intact—although greatly diminished. The nobles simply retreated into the vast reaches of the Arendish Forest, taking the always-loyal peasantry with them. What they could not carry off, they burned. Thus the Mimbrate King fell heir to a smoking wasteland, empty and unpeopled. The fiefdoms granted his loyal followers became a punishment instead of a reward, since land without the people to work it is a burden. Whole villages in the Duchy of the Mimbrates were uprooted and transplanted into the north to work the holdings of their feudal lords, and their efforts were largely to no avail since Asturian brigands crept from the forests by night, burning crops and villages with abandon. It was also observed that Asturian bowmen routinely used Mimbrate peasants for target-practice. This quite naturally caused the peasants to avoid the edges of those fields which abutted on the forest, and in time this grisly game developed in the Asturian bowman a capability of phenomenal accuracy at unbelievable ranges.