Going Downhill: The Pem-Pah, Part 1.

[In a remarkably short period of time, Roberick Bertrum Litte's already haphazard subscalanean office/dormitory has become even more disheveled. With no one to man the half-door to the utility closet during Litte's extended archaeology leave (all two days of it so far), its discount stationery and other discreet acquisitions have been ransacked by his usual customers. For the most part they haven't intended to disturb his personal effects, but when the wooden board nailed to the half-door was bumped into during an entry, the makeshift desk was nearly torn free, and all of its contents scattered across the minority of the floor which was not already taken up by shelves and a bed. While many papers have been looked over for "thesis seeds" by desperate freshmen, this sheaf of unpublished papers is the only one which has been read through with any amount of interest so far.]



"It is the well-known law both domestically and inter-communally that the possession of this volume of taboo metals and gemstones is strictly forbidden. You are fortunate I am not also charging you with intent to smuggle or sell."
- Ortej Tella, customs officer of Quibgyal Commune.

"N-Now tarry just a moment! Surely you know that the laws also state that a provision is made for the cultural folkways of all ethnic lowland-folk! And I'll have you know my grandmother was one quarter full-blooded Pem-Mih!"
- Junral Chyok, amateur peddler, clueless to the fact that Ortej was a matrilineal cousin of his.



It would be entirely remiss of me to suggest that the Pach-Pah community¹ is limited only to their ancestral mountains as well as a handful of border towns on the slopes to their north. Their ancient history was filled with pioneering folk, as well as those whose bravery and soaring imagination brought them down from the peaks of their birth. This led to the ethnogenisis of many inspired peoples who continue to exist in some capacity to this very day, not least of which among them being the Pem-Pah.

Pem-Pah is an exonym of highland origin, meaning "the people who went downhill to water". This is quite an apt description of the group's migration and eventual settlement along the southwestern coast. However, in everyday speech in their native dialect, the people known as the Pem-Pah refer to themselves simply as "the people". For the purpose of keeping the two groups distinct in my writing, I will continue to use the term Pem-Pah.

At some point in prehistory a group of people from the Pach-Pah Yul began to migrate away from the valleys and watered slopes of the mountain chain's interior, moving outward in successive waves toward the west and south. Eventually these waves of settlers pushed past the borders of the mountain range and the hills at its feet, into the lowlands and coastal regions bordering on the western sea. The highest concentration of people during these last settlement waves seemed to be in and around the Khaitom-po, a massive body of water fed by several rivers which has been described variously as a bay, estuary, or brackish-water lake.

As evidenced by the handful of digs which have been conducted outside of the Pach-Pah homeland, the ancestors of the modern Pem-Pah readily took to fishing here. This has inspired a cuisine vastly different from that of their cousin culture, as well as more than a few unique cultural points of view or folklore tropes. First the spear, and then the hooked line and net were used, after which developed the earliest boats and rafts known to the people in and around the mountain chain.

This is thanks in part to the relative abundance of wood found in the lowlands, compared to the scarce and carefully conserved pygmy forests of the mountains. Reedy grasses and palm trees unheard of in the highlands allowed for the construction of wooden vessels as well as buildings, alongside the tradition of stonework which--due to the Pem-Pah lack of involvement in the events leading up to the Collapse--was never forsaken. The settlers maintained their traditional forms of herding and weaving throughout, but also broadened and intensified their practice of agriculture to include and take advantage of the wider variety of crops which could not thrive in the mountains. Even jewelry which makes use of precious stones or metals continues to be made in Pem-Pah territory, much to the chagrin of those who were against the inclusion of Khaitom-po into the Communes with partial membership.

The people who would come to be known as the Pem-Pah proper are first mentioned in civil records from the imperial age of Pach-Pah Yul starting at about 400 years prior to the Collapse, and the death of the last Miqh Pach-Pah. These records are of trade and business transactions, suggesting that the Pem-Pah were already quite established as a culture and an economy, and that commerce and exchange between them and their upland neighbors was at least somewhat regular and normalized by that point. But because the Pem-Pah were not a part of the Pach-Pah empire and an effort was apparently never made to incorporate them, they do not often appear in official, imperial records. According to the reckoning of the Pem-Pah themselves, they were established no less than 1,200 years prior to the time of that exchange. This would make them contemporaries of the earliest incarnation of the empire, as well as the last of the pre-imperial petty-kingdoms. Little work has been done by uninvolved scholars on these old records however, owing to the extreme rarity of visits to the Pem'Pah homeland by outsiders.

This paucity of visitors is not from lack of effort or hospitality, however. Many travelers throughout the eras were known to have set off for the lands of the Khaitom-po, with few of them making it many leagues beyond the border markets.

By that point, they tend to either run screaming back home, or to collapse from need of urgent medical attention.



¹ I would also like to apologize to the Pach-Pah community for my varied and repeated mistakes in rendering its name. Being that Pach-Pah literally means "People of the Earth", it has been brought to my attention by thoughtful readers that all of my uses of the phrase "Pach-Pah people(s)" or the colloquialism "Pach-Pahs" have been erroneous and redundant. I will also make an effort to use the grammatically correct singular Pach-Mih, or simply mih² when appropriate.

² I would also like to point out to my uninitiated readers how mih is etymologically linked to--though very separate in meaning from--the old kingly title of Miqh. Mih is a person, while Miqh is a "great" person.

Looking Southward and Backward, Part 11.

Sarq shakily accepted Elrusyo's hand, and the two shook vigorously for several seconds as the hedge-magician drew his self-injured arm back in under his cloak. He then shook hands with Hraela and Ciudo, and I was forced to oblige as well, and in the subsequent moments of celebration in which the rest of the caravan's nerves became somewhat more settled, another shot of drink went around.

Now, after sputtering fire for a second time this day, I am attempting to balance out the alcohol with water from a skin which simply insists upon dripping dangerously close to the fresh ink on my parchments. Seeing that there simply will be no stopping me, as I have come to accept in return with him, Elrusyo asks that I at least scribble something of value while I do. At the conclusion of the first day of this little travelogue, which we are already nearing, he states that he has a very important bit of history to initiate each of us into. Each of us save for Hraela, he makes a note of. She would already be very familiar with this, considering her family roots. This suggestion leaves her looking somewhat bemused. Ciudo and Sarq quietly worry that this is another child-burning celebration.

Elrusyo laughs, but does not say no.

I know what he has in mind, however. I had hoped that it would only be a brief stop for our caravan, but it is apparent that our attendants are itching to overnight at the very same place. I speak of course of the southernmost of all "authentic-styled" Gertish¹ alehouses in the domain claimed by the city-state of Deneroth; Janskurf's Severed Toe, also known as Janskurf's Place.

Janskurf, according to the legend emblazoned on a large wood-and-metal plaque displayed prominently upon the alehouse's roadside sign as well as one of the walls of its common room, was a Gertish hero from the lifetime of Haraal himself. He led a clan of Gertish tribesmen down from the northern coasts to fight for the emperor, and was involved in a famous battle with the classic villains and scapegoats of the empire, an army of Esgodarrans. This teeming horde of hill-people, however, was reportedly unique in that it was aided by a contingent of "treasonous mountain-slingers" commonly identified as either Pach-Pah soldiers from a splinter faction allied with the locals to their north, or as a mercenary group composed largely of individuals of mixed ethnic background.²

As the story goes, Janskurf led his people to a quick and decisive victory over his opponents, but when they feigned surrender, he was struck across the temple by a sling bullet and then chopped upon the foot while he was stunned. They still won the battle, but Janskurf lost his big toe. Hobbled for the rest of his life, Janskurf and some of his people settled the site of their victory and built a small town. When Janskurf died at the ripe old age of over two hundred years, the resentful Esgodarrans naturally invaded once more and tried to raze the town to the ground, but much to their horror his ghost rose up to defend the alehouse under which he had been buried. And so it still stands to this day.

Of course, there is no great battle between Esgodarrans and Gertish tribesmen on the southern border of what would become Deneroth in any historical record but what the establishment claims. Likewise, it is doubtful that a prominent man named Janskurf ever lived among the Gerts who allied with the Haraalians, or elsewhere for that matter, considering the fact that it is by all accounts a gibberish name only vaguely identifiable as "Gertish-enough" by an outsider with an eye for stereotypes. And as a matter of fact, the "traditional" beer and ale culture of the Gertish people is almost wholly a result of centuries of interactions with their southern neighbors- an emphatic consensus by indigenous groups and travelers to the low riverlands alike is that the "original" Gertish drink of choice is a spirit distilled from a wide variety of vegetation known to their homes. If the blindingly blonde wigs worn by many of the attendants of that establishment are any indication, the locals might not even care about the inaccuracies, if they do know.

Though I wish there were a gentler way of saying it, the Ivory Tower University's recent close examination of the alehouse and its history was completely accurate in saying that Janskurf's Severed Toe is little more than a culture-appropriating tourist trap geared to play off of the expectations and ignorances of traveling city-dwellers and University students alike.

I can see the land flattening out up ahead as we enter the broad section of heath in which the alehouse and attached caravansary are located. I should find a way to approach the subject with Hraela tactfully while there is still time, lest someone or something end up with a longsword driven through it this evening.



¹ Note that I have changed over from "Gertisch" to "Gertish" and will attempt to remain that way for the remainder of my journey. Confined to the University as I so often am, it is difficult to resist the hypercorrective pull of the -isch ending, which was made standard in all academic material some five generations ago by the short-lived yet deeply impactful Committee for Agreeable Exonyms. They hold no power over me here however, and so I shall endeavor to use the more common rendering of the adjective, in keeping with my hopes of making this work more approachable to people living beyond the vaunted walls of my home city.

² As will become apparent as we near this expedition's destination, our peoples are more than capable of intermingling, and many marriages or other productive pairings of the sort have occurred in the border regions between mountain and lowland over the centuries. Though mildly stigmatized in the north, these folk face relatively little discrimination from their southerly parentage. In particular, the descendants of former Pach-Pah noble families were quick to infuse their family lines with as much "new blood" as possible once the practice of enforced intra-familial marriage came crashing to an end. The safe assumption that someone two to three feet taller than oneself and born hundreds of miles away was probably not a relative became an important guideline for courtship in those lineages of diminishing status following the revolution(s).

Looking Southward and Backward: An Ethnographic and Historically-Minded Travelogue, Part 1.

((As I cling to the seat of a bus shuddering down 9W toward the only part of New York State which doesn't count as "upstate", two things occur to me.

One is a sense of bemusement born from a simultaneous gratefulness for the presence of bus wifi, and terror at an absence of bus seat belts.

The other is that I have never given sufficient thought to the importance, frequency, or severity of travel in the universe of the ITU.

Of course I have explicitly or implicitly explained the importance of movement and migration for the nomads and semi-nomads of the world, and perhaps that is in fact the norm at this time; the vast world has been disconnected for some time, with maintained roads and traveler culture long ago abandoned.

But now that a certain pasty academic has been temporarily ejected from his subscalanean office, the perfect opportunity arises for a few travelogues between now and his arrival at a certain dig site. For those of you who prefer his more researched articles, have no fear. Plenty of his parchments remain scattered upon the desk attached to his doorway, ripe for publication... after they've been sanitized of sensitive subject matter unbecoming of the publishing house of the ITU, of course.))



The Ivory Tower has become somehow even dingier, it seems.

Though we've left at dawn, with the sun's first rays highlighting the old city in full glory, the stains and crumbling patches along the tower's height are only more pronounced for it. An enormous sum of money has been reclaimed by the latest budget meetings by the Board of the Directorate to be put toward the restoration of the campus' namesake, but the estimated date of completion for these efforts numbers in the years, rather than months or weeks. In my first exchange with someone not tied to the University in several weeks, I heard the remark that some of the darkest patches closest to the tower's dilapidated top must date all the way back to the Rupture. I would scarcely be surprised if this were true.

Our party moves quickly to get the wains ready for departure, everyone but the Gertisch student being as unused to the cold as I am. Thanks to the generosity and relative bribeability of several professors not to be named, my study abroad has been furnished with three of my fellow undergraduates.

Ciudo, majoring in foreign languages and literature, shall be our interpreter during the times when Denerothi Ersuut will fail us, which I anticipated to be increasingly regular the farther south we go.

Shoring up our armament for the siege against the language barrier is or resident physician (technically only a botanist-in-training), Sarq. He is one of our precious few students of Nambarish stock, though unfortunately not of geographic origin. I must remember to inquire into the meaning and popularity of his name at a later date. I anticipate that it has its origins in the name of some folk hero, much the same way you might see ten thousand different permutations of "Haraal" walking the streets of Deneroth today.¹

Minoring in both historical ordination and Gertisch fencing, Hraela will be assisting me directly in the recording and analysis of everything we encounter leading up to and at the dig site. She has also elected to bring her training longsword with her, both to keep practicing for the semester's finals, as well as to ensure our getting along without any "man-made inconveniences" along the road. I am alarmed that Instructor Vogt has his pupils maintain their training equipment at shaving sharpness, and it is my hope that I never encounter anything which he would qualify as "battle-ready".²

We are joined by a hired retinue of ten porters, drivers, pathfinders, and other assistants from outside of the campus to ensure that we reach the Pach-Pahs in a timely fashion. What time that will be is unfortunately little more exact than the Board's estimate of Tower repairs, for the weather will play an adversarial role in our travels south.

Winter approaches Deneroth quickly. Even the Beige Trees of Citadel Grove have begun to lose their leaves in full this month, and a Denerothi winter is a wet and snowy one. But we must endure such hardships in order to reach the dig site, which is located beyond the first wave of peaks in the northern reaches of territory under supervision by the People's Anarcho-Syndicalistic Communes of Pach-Pah Yul (PASCOPPY hereafter). There, beyond the rain shadow of what we call the Near Pashels, the winter is quite dry. And in order to have an environment which is not bogged down in mud and influxes of breeding populations of Howler Ibexes, the locals must conduct their archaeological research in the dry cold.

Our wagons are just beginning to turn their wheels now, and it shall take some time and practice to get used to writing on the move. For now, I shall leave this parchment to dry and look upon the many tiers of our fair and introverted city before it is put behind us.

I feel a pang of affection for the city, and even for the University, as our path becomes set and irreversible.

Clearly I need another nip of Esgodarran Whiskey in order to wake up fully.



¹ Mind you, the total population of Deneroth is, as of last decade's census, scarcely higher than twenty thousand, to indicate the sheer inescapability of the name.

² It is a little-known fact that despite including it proudly in his resume, Professor Berchtold Vogt was never awarded the title of Éïsęnmễïster by any known or reputable school of fencing and swordsmanship in Deneroth or the sister cities of the Upper Lowlands. Nor is he known to have ever attended one.