Introduction to the World

This is a extensive overview of the world, those will not be interesting unless you wish to expand the story in some way, because this is a personal story of Lina, the Huntress, i wont detail too much outside the region of Valley in which Lina lives in, but in the future, i am thinking about expanding this world as to make it possible to people to write stories with other characters in it, but this wont happend immediately. Please bear in mind this is not a exaustive description of the world, just a overview, i urge you to look into the furue chapters i will publish describing in mroe detail the different aspects of it.

This is a nameless world, i mean, there are many names each people in it give to it, but there isn´t such a consensus like "Terra" or "Earth" to name it that everyone accepts. To understand what i mean, just think, how did people in the middle-ages called the planet? Maybe "World"? I don´t know and even if there was a name, it would be specific to that culture, the ancient greeks called the world "Gaia", but this was also the name of the goddess, but probably the Celts didn´t agree with this naming. This also means there is no sense of a "world" besides the limited scope of a specific region or continent, the common peoples don´t travel very far from their birthplaces, if you are a villager, you may know of your suzerain or even have an idea of what happens beyond the vicinities of your village, but unless you were conscripted to fight in the war, you probabl won´t know in detail the politics of the larger region beyond.

This world´s origins are unkown, there are many myths, not unlike our own, but those different myths compete amongst them, this also mean there isn´t a religion (or religious complex) that most people on the continent hold, there is not "christianity" or "islam" or "hinduism", but a plethora of many religions, some are monotheistic, some are polytheistic, some are even pantheistic. But, directly relevant to Lina´s story at this point, is the religion the Bloch Vilage holds. Is is a monotheistic religion based on the Cult of the Spirit of the World, a being of pure abstraction, it doesn´t anwser to prayers and the religion revolves around a nomistic system, that is, there is a nomos, that is, a sacred law, transmitted orally. I will get deeper into the religions of the "known" world in another chapter, but just so you can understand what i mean, think of the chapter "Leave at it", where i describe how one of the Bloch Village´s rules is that everyone must gather to eat together, save exceptions, this is one of the Laws of the Spirit, this also explains why Lina was willing to think of paying such a price like sexual favors to Clovis to eat those breads before everyone else, because she knows its not a secular law but a sacred one and the consequences of disobeying them can be, as i will describe later, severe. This also explains why Lina had to bring a worthy prey to the Village, because it is going to be used the Ritual to realize her as a fully-fledged Huntress (of course, i didn´t think of this when i´ve wrote the story, all those years ago, but that i´ve decided to do some worldbuilding for it, i´ve decided to retroactively insert this religious element to the story), her ritual consists of the Deer being cooked by the Elders and eaten by the whole Village, this is because this is not a sacrificial religion, but a ritualistic one, that and much more will be explained in the relevant chapter.

Next we will take a look at the region in which the Bloch Village is located. Bloch Village is part of the Gressbund Duchy, a independent state located at the western region of the continent of Vessaria, on a heavily forested valley of the Dross Mountains, because the Dross Valley is a highland, that is, high-altitude, relative to the sea, the climate is temperate with dry-winters and some rain at the summer, but not a lot, also the terrain on most of the Valley (with the exeption of the lower-altitude regions of the Duchy) is unsuited to agriculture, this means most villages must be fed mostly though hunting and gathering, but small-scale agriculture is also praticed, specially grains like rice and wheat, some apiculture (bee farming) and also smaller livestock like sheep and cattle. A big economic activity on the Duchy is mineration, due to its location near the Dross Mountains, which are rich in iron, copper, tin and coal, for many centuries now, the region has been known to produce masterfully-made bronze pieces, like knives, swords, daggers, vases and much more, more recently, steel has substituted bronze as the main material for weaponry and utensils, so bronze is mostly used as material for luxury items and ritualistic weapons. The steel produced on the region is famous for its low-quality, for some reason, the Valley´s smiths, so famous for their bronze works, werent able to produce steel items of such high-quality, its is brittler than steel made elsewhere, especially when compared to Dwarf Steel, made deep in the Velorian Mountains.

The politics of the Valley is dominated by the Bressund Duchy, ruled by the Half-Elven descent Bressund dynasty for roughly 500 years now, they came to power by conquest, when a tribe of the nomadic Steppe Elves invaded the many different petty states of the Valley, mostly human, established by the tribe´s chief Bressund, founder of the Bressund Dynasty, who styled himself Duke of the Valley. The elves were, initually hesitant to interact too much with the human population of the valley, but within decades, they began intermigling with them, forming a small but powerful population fo half-elves, in time, the micigenation became so rampant, that most pure-blooded elves, even among the Dressunds, were breeded out of existence and replaced, this doesn´t mean pure-blooded elves do not exist, but they are very rare and looked upon with suspicion both by half-elves and humans alike, being gradually ostracized from politics. The esteriotype goes that pure-blood elves are arrogant, deceitful, pompous, pedantic and territorial, which, like most esteriotypes, is based on some truth, ost of the elves of the Valley, today, live as "free-spirits", this can mean diferent things, from a lone nomad hunter-gatherer who lives off the forest in isolation, to bandits and mercenaries, who are more accepting of the Pure-Bloods. The current ruler of the Valley is the old but decadent Duke Jason V Dressund, a half-elf who has lived a long life, even to the standards of the half-elves, he has lived long 140 years, a 103 years of which he has ruled as the Duke, following the **** of his grandfather, Eric II Dressund, who was known as one of the best rulers of the Valley, famous for his expedition outside the Valley and into the Vredd Plains, to defeat Gretta, the Conqueror, who had terrorized the western regions of Vessaria with her Orcish tribe of steppe nomads, burning many cities in her way, until she was defeated and her hordes dispersed by the efforts of the greatest warriors and strategists of the age, in the famous Vredd Campaign, leaded by no other than King Harold III Yarod of the Yarod Kingdom. I will speak more of this event in the chapter about the history of the continent, but to us, it is important to know the Eric II Bressund, known to posterity as "The Gray" because of his advanced age at the time, played a very improtant role in it. Jason V Dressund is a man who lives in the shadow of his grandfather´s acomplishments, but he had neither the talent, inclination nor the opportunity to replicate them, so he concentrated his time maintaining the Valley´s bureocracy, being the reasonably competent administrator that he was, but even so, he hasn´t done anything to correct the many problems of the Valley and he is considered to be a weak, uninteresting Duke, save from the fact of his great longevity.

Although a mostly halfling aristocracy exists, mosts titles like Count and Baron are cerimonial, they live mostly as bureaucrats and public officers, those are reponsible for the micromanagement of the Duchy and respond directly to the Duke, but because of the laissez-faire attitude of the current Duke, most of those officers and bureaucrats have mostly free-hands (within the law) to do what they want, some are stricter, some are almost tyrannical and some are benevolent figures for the peoples who lives under their rule. Even though the majority of those powerful officers are halflings, there are cases of humans and even a peculiar case of a pure-blood among their ranks. The Bloch Village is administrated by a halfling named Falkner Verhoven, a capable if absent administrator, he makes sure the villages are well-treated and not too heavily taxed but not much more, he is more or less indiferent to the small problems each of them has and the rampan banditry i his region, at the times of Eric II, he would probably been fired from his office from this, but Jason V seem not to care so long the taxes are coming and no major disruption to the economy happens. he has been doing this for 10 years now and the consequences are that his region suffers from the consequences of insecurity and this is beggining to show on his tax revenues.

Finnaly, the major religion in the Valley is, of course, the Cult of the Spirit of The World, it was a religion brought by the original steppe elfs and adopted by most of the population of the Valley, more details will be given at the relevant chapters.