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Large Kingdom to the east of Sartor
Capital: Miraleste
Language: Lor-Sartoran or "Miralestan" (a dialect of Sartoran, heavily influenced by Khani and Kifelian)
Ruler: Darian Irad until 4734, then spoiler Peitar Selenna
After the Fall, many Sartorans fled into the forests and mountains that made up Sarendan's geography at that time. The mountains between Sartor and Sarendan are natural, made when the world's active tectonics touched off volcanoes and hot springs. The volcanoes are gone, but the hot springs persist, having been harnessed by degree over the centuries by the morvende. Free commerce between the sunsiders and the mountain dwellers ceased after about a thousand years.
The sunsiders were fierce people--they had to be, to have survived the Fall and its results. For a long time the area was crossed by roaming tribes who attacked the farm and forest folk, as well as each other; as tribes joined into polities, everyone looked north toward better land and weather. That was the beginning of the period when the newly emerging magic council commenced mountain-raising as a defensive tactic. Sarendan and Sartor both cut themselves off in desperate attemtps to ward off maurauders--unsuccessfully, and the price the land paid was felt for centuries afterward. Except for Colend raising its own mountain range to ward off the Chwahir, there was no more such radical tampering with the terrain.
Internal strife eventually settled, especially under the Selenna family, who brought south from Colend the idea of treaty marriages instead of wars to promote peace. Tanderaen Selenna introduced the idea of court around 3200: the capital becoming a playground, at royal expense, for nobles at least part of the year. The Selennas subsequently intermarried with the Lirendi family of Colend once a century thereafter; they did not always hold the throne, but were generally near it. It took several centuries to tame the local princes, the Selenna family's own holding (for heirs and second children) being the last holdout; when the throne was taken by the Irads, the Selennas retired to this principality and remained in harmony with the Irads. In the meantime Miraleste, built over the top of hills east of a beautiful lake, was burned to the ground three different times, and rebuilt.
Relations with Sartor have usually been good. Sartor's long tradition and its powerful mages lent an aura of stability to Sarendan, and Sartoran presence at court often had a civilizing effect. Sarendan's rulers for many centuries sent their promising youth to Sartor to be trained, as its magic council was firm about ignoring political boundaries in favor of the general good. Many royal aids were Sartoran-trained mages.
This reliance was broken only when Sartor lost its battle with Detlev of Norsunder just after 4600; gradually distrust of mages for partisanship (real or imagined) caused the strong resistance to the presence of mages by the Irad kings.
Sarendan is largely self-sufficient, though they import many things, such as Gyrnian wines, silks from Colend, magic-related things from Sartor. The mountains are rich in ores, the land permits a variety of crops, but the portion of the vast plains farmed mostly yields cotton and wheat, which they trade north to wetter lands. The one area left alone is the forest of Dianneh in the southwest corner, hard up against the mountains--directly north of Delfina Valley. This is cove forest in the very heart, maple-hickory within, home to many wandering types such as maulan and hervithe. Humans tend to avoid it, feeling that it is haunted. Which it is; that is, time and physical reality tend to ripple there, an effect far more common in the mountains.
The Valley of Delfina became a refuge at different periods for mages who refused to get drawn into politics. These mages could watch the Norsunder land base by magic. Ferociously complicated and nigh unbreakable magic bounds this valley, magic untouched by the indigenous races as the mages who live in the valley are sworn to peace. Flight is the method of travel; the people who live in the valley are mostly descendants of magical races who fled the company of humans long ago.
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