Tuesday, December 11, 2012

The Sharab Spring

The Sharab are an ancient people - humans, desert hardened, once great sea traders.  They made a life out of the most inhospitable part of the Furnace Coast and it's unrelenting dry heat. More than merely eking out an existence, they founded great cities, built on the wealth brought over the sea from far away fantastical kingdoms.

But, that history is old and in the recent years leading up-to the rule of Thereanthor, their cities had become disheveled  their larders emptied and their people scattered.
Still, there stood Febril; shining like a jewel wrapped in a desert cloth, the greatest trading port in all of Fissa.

It was the one place kept alive as, since being taken by the holy order of St. Cuthbert, the power shifted away from the ancient Sharab people and to the incomers in Febril.  The Sharab became a minority in their own land and few now refer to them as such anymore.

A hundred years later and this land is now utterly ruled by Thereanthor, as is everywhere from the south of Fissa where the dragon's eldest son Yddraig rules, through the mountains running East and West, right up to the North and Gom Dulat the power base of the Ancient Blue herself.

But, something is changing. The black cloaks are becoming fewer. Some suspect that those under the cloaks are not the formidible dragon force that once they were.  It is also clear that Thereanthor has eyes elsewhere and pays little attention to the subjected Furnace Coast. Despite this the black cloaks have been raising higher and higher taxes with local leaders assuming jumped up political powers and wielding them with a cruel hand.

You can pull a people so far, and no further. Their fabric was woven of the tough and proud Sharab, and at some point it could be pulled no more.  The *Snap* was audible.  In a little town of Bouazizi the market traders revolted, threw out the black cloaks and  never looked back.

Inevitably, the eye of the dragon must be drawn to them, and they will pay a terrible price.  But the delay in it happening is baffling.
Why is she distracted? Who knows.
Why are the black cloaks not able to cope? Who can say?

And all the while the revolution rumbles on.

1 comment: