Sustainen

Sustainen is the capitol city of an unnamed remote autonomous region on Lim Phat in the Outer Rim. The region was first settled late in the Long Night by separatists fleeing oppression under Samuel Fate.

History

The early histories of Sustainen are somewhat muddled. The first wave of settlers were illiterate(as were most under Fate's grip), and had access to only the crudest of record-keeping methods. The generally-agreed-upon account held that forty families set out in secret and plunged straight into the remote wilderness, looking for someplace where they could live in peace. They had only what few items they could carry with them, and given the conditions they had been subjected to, these were technologically primitive at best.

The widely published account is that the forty families struck out 677 years before the start of the [[New Day], however archaeological evidence indicates it was less than that, perhaps as little as two hundred years, and that the number of migrants was quite a bit higher along with arriving in several waves.

Initially, the region was accessible only through a single narrow mountain pass, and once the population had reached sustainable levels, this pass was blocked off to deny further access. This is believed to have happened around the time of Fate's defeat at the hands of Hunter Jusenkyou, however because Sustainen was so cut-off, they did not hear the news. From then on, the region developed in isolation.

Founding of Sustainen

By around N.D. 111, the region was home to hundreds of small farming villages that traded with one another. The primary arteries of the region were two wide, shallow rivers which came together around a large sandy island. In the summer months this was often home to a temporary trading camp, which then had to be moved to a less desirable area before the fall harvest when the rivers began to swell and much of the sandy island went underwater.

This is most likely when the myth of the forty families emerged. While each village had a fair amount of diversity and democracy was largely the order of the day, governing was usually done by a quasi-hereditary family. The exact number is not known for certain, but somewhere in the neighborhood of forty such families from the wealthiest villages, pledged to build a permanent settlement on the island in order to support a year-round market. The new town was to be called Sustainen.

Construction methods were crude but efficient. During the summer low workers marked out the boundaries of the island with large wooden pilings. They waited for winder, with using sleds dragged many bags of stones and dirt to the area marked out by the pilings. More stakes were driven through the ice, and as much material as possible put in. The work was described as "grueling" and dangerous, but no deaths were recorded, and surviving diaries indicate the conditioners were actually quite pleasant. Most of the fill came from very nearby, and the workmen were housed in simple but comfortable lodges.

When the spring that came, the fill materials settled into berms surrounding the island, but trapped significant ponds of water inside. These had to be laboriously drained by hand, but led to a new invention: the windmill. The people of Sustainen had used water wheels for centuries at that point, but no one had ever harnessed the wind in this way. By summer the island was drained, and when fall came and the rivers swelled, the trading camp was able to remain.

All through the summer and fall months, every trader coming to sell his wares on the island was required to bring one sack of rocks. As a reward, he was given a small copper medallion, which later became the basis for Sustainen's money system. These stones were used as additional infill, and when the winter workman returned they were able to complete the raising of the island to above the winter floods. Parts of the island would still flood in spring, but this area was set aside as the market quarter.

The next year, the first permanent residents took up station on the island. These were mostly the sons and daughters of the prominent families who had financed the island, the port town of Sustainen was founded. According to the local calendar, this happened in FoM 788, but it was probably around N.D. 113.

The little village grew into a sizable town and finally a major city, still centered around the island and still with an important market. Sustainen developed an entire culture of it's own, and did not formally join the New Day Alliance until N.D. 497, though they had sporadic contact before then.

Language

The settlers began speaking common, but had no system for writing because it had been banned by Samuel Fate. However, the people knew of the concept because of their oral traditions, and many even carried small ornaments which included letters from the now "lost" common tongue.

Still, it took generations before the first attempts at re-learning writing were possible. Numeracy had been common and was well-used, so the first attempts at a written language focused on the use of numbers. While this worked well for trade, it was ineffective for communicating more complex ideas. A large part of Sustainen culture centered around the use of myths and parables that had universal meanings. Any writing system needed to be able to portray these.

The people of Sustainen then turned to their heirlooms, precious items(mostly of jewelry) that had been handed down through the ages and eventually carried to this new land. On them were some words written in Common, but so much time had passed that the holders of these relics could not say which were words and which were decorations. All tolled, they had about 12 of the 26 letters in the common alphabet. To this they added another 10 symbols taken from decorations mistaken for characters, and over time created twenty more symbols for a total of 42.

Grammatically, the Sustainen script bears many similarities to Common. Writing is done left to right, and includes punctuation and spacing. The Sustainen alphabet has more sounds and all spelling is phonetic. What makes it special is the inclusion of characters specifically to denote emotion.