Addendum to "The Scavach Basin"

 ["The Scavach Basin" is a track written for Tales from the Farlands, an Ongaku Concept Collective album. It's a bit of a concept album, with each team writing a track for a fictional country they invented. I ended up the only one working on the track, however, this is the concept I worked from. Special Thanks to Jack Doherty - as I remember, this was a combination of both of our ideas; similarly, I used ideas similar to his early sketches in the final track that I wrote.]

Q: What is the name of your country?
  Macha, with the ch pronounced in the throaty manner of the Irish.

Q: What is the geography of the country like?
  Somewhere between a steppe and a chasm, the Scavach Basin sits considerably below sea level, surrounded on all sides by the Viochtal Mountains. These mountains are crucial for protecting the Basin, because it is the home of all surviving land-dragons – the wind-dragons have the clouds and forests; the fire-dragons deserts and volcanos; the water-dragons the seasons and oceans; but on land, Man has driven off the land-dragons, and the Scavach Basin is (perhaps) the last place they can be found. The handful of valleys and paths through the mountains that allow access to the Basin are viciously defended.
  A minor fault runs through the center of the Basin, one of the few bumps on its landscape. Minor earthquakes are frequent; and often accompanying them are rockslides and avalanches. How, then, do the land-dragons feed themselves? The mountains, thankfully, are rich in various kinds of berries and fruit trees at their bases, and they play host to a variety of game bird and goat. Water? A handful of lakes, a couple mountain springs, and one winding valley that leads to the ocean (with the water-dragons happy to help their grounded brethren).

Q: What sort of government does your country have?
  The immensity of the Basin is such that it has been divided into twenty-three smaller subdivisions, generally in accordance with the primary settlement and settlements. This administrative division, despite the relatively small population, is necessary because a sudden earthquake or avalanche must be dealt with there, in the moment. Each subdivision is ruled by a king or queen, and above the kings and queens sits the Council of Elders – the eldest of each subdivision – and at the head of the Council, the Eldest Dragon, which represents the species as a whole and is deified after death, its spirit understood both to have disseminated among all the land-dragons and to have joined the spirits of the other Eldest Dragons in some world beyond our own.

Q: What are some interesting characteristics of this country and its culture?
  Though anything earth ought to be the natural province of the land-dragons, centuries in the Scavach Basin have given the land-dragons something of a fear of heights and a fear of spaces that aren’t open – which means that those that go out to hunt goat and bird are at once admired and looked upon with puzzlement (or, among the more simply-minded, looked upon with fear themselves). Humankind has been rejected absolutely: those valleys that might allow them access are defended with extreme viciousness, and none have made it into the Basin since the land-dragons moved in. Prestige within the culture of the land-dragons is accrued in two ways: firstly, by the ability to make up for the deficiencies of others. Within a people that feels itself to be at risk of extinction, the survival of every member – because every member carries the potential to breed – becomes vital, no matter their physical or mental limitations. Secondly, spiritually, prestige accrues through age: as already mentioned, within the spirituality of the land-dragons, the Eldest dragons are deified after death. But it is assumed, also, that dragons of extreme age have been favored by the gods (these gods do have names: the ancestral, near-mythical gods, which may or may not have been the Eldest of their time, and generally the names of the half-dozen or so most recent Eldest are remembered). Their age makes them wise, and knowledgeable. Lest the previous mention of prestige accruing to those who make up for the deficiencies of others create the impression of a culture of excess loveliness, let it be noted that young land-dragons are not given names until their second birthday, and not granted their family names until their twentieth.