LANTERN OF THE THIRTEENTH WORD
The Dragon-Ship Clans of Mirithar
THE MIRITHARIN
Foreign chroniclers describe the Miritharin as primitive. This is the sort of judgment commonly made by scholars who have never crossed a winter sea, built a hall before the first snow, or remembered six generations of law without committing a word of it to paper.
Mirithar is an archipelago of cold rivers, pine forests, high mountains, and broad moors beneath a near-permanent ceiling of cloud. Its human settlements cling to rocky bays and defensible valleys, each village a people unto itself. A Miritharin belongs not merely to a family but to a place: Storm Cove, Black Cairn, Red Stag Village, or any of a hundred communities whose names sound equally suited to a homeland, a warship, or a warning.
Each village follows the strongest leader it is willing to accept. Strength may mean skill with an axe, courage before an enemy, wisdom during a lean winter, or simply possessing enough good sense to listen when the Druids speak. Leadership is not guaranteed by blood. A chief who fails the village may be challenged, replaced, exiled, or remembered in an exceptionally cruel song.
Beyond Mirithar, they are best known for their Dragon Ships: long, narrow vessels built to cross hostile water quickly and arrive where they have not been invited. Miritharin crews have raided nearly every coast of the Old World. Their ships bear names meant to survive them—Wave-Biter, Iron Raven, Shield-Breaker—and their captains collect reputations as eagerly as silver.
Yet raiding is only the portion of Miritharin life most often witnessed by foreigners. At home they are fishers, herders, shipwrights, smiths, brewers, poets, hunters, and keepers of ancestral names. Their laws live in memory. Their histories live in song. Their sacred places are watched by Druids who read the tides, stars, dreams, and old stones.
Call them barbarians if you must. I recommend doing so from beyond bowshot.
—Lantern of the Thirteenth Word
