It's got some marvelous details, and ideas for adventuring; enjoy!

Lately I've spent some time writing about the home of one of my characters on alt.Dragons-Inn - Einaugar of the House of Bear. The result is a fairly long piece in the form of a letter between two Dragons of the Dragon Isle (Don't ask me why - it just happened.) The result is quite long and still rather rough around the edges. (The part that links the Austerners to Dragon Isle might have to go, for instance.

Anyway, I'm rather proud of the Austir-isles (as the land is called) and feel I have created an original setting rife with good opportunites for adventure, so I thought it might be worthy of inclusion on the Dragon's Inn web-side.

Well, enough self-gratifaction. The piece is included below, so you can make up your own mind about it.

The following is a letter from the dragon-mage Vismann to his friend Flyglaft the cunning, describing the people and the society of the Austir-isles.

Have you ever met a man of the Austir-isles, friend Flyglaft? I spent some time among them recently; six, maybe seven decenniums ago. I wonder if there is any left among them that remembers me? The humans live such short lives. Here and gone in a blink of the eye. Strange that they have proven so strong despite this... But I digress, my topic of choice was the men of the Austir-isles.

Just on the brink between the inner Sea of Varnia and the outer Great Sea, four days flying to the north from the eastern-most part of Dragon-isle, lies the island of Hothr - or Hodr-augir as the Austerner say it. To the west of this island, just on the edge of it's storm shadow, is a handfull of small, rocky islands, scattered as thrown away dice. This is the Austir-isles.

[Note - this would be somewhere near the north-pointing sword on the very large scale map.]

Even though the massive form of the Hothr islands protects them from the full anger of the great sea, great storms often rage above the Austir-isles and violent seas sometimes isolate the isles from one another for weeks at a time.  I have seen storms over the Austir-isles in which no Dragon, not even Red the reckless, would have dared to try his wings.

The men of the Austir-isles have no words for 'calm seas' and their word for 'sailing' also means both 'risk' and 'necessity'. There are no better sailors on Ifreann than the Austerners, and there is no more sea-worthy vessel than the Austir _skarp-baugar_. The have a saying along the coast of Varnia: "When sailors remain in port, the women take in the washing.  When Austerners, the children."

But as I was saying, the Austir-isles is a handfull of small, rocky isles and is often isolated from one another for several weeks during the autumn and spring. On 21 of these slabs of rock do there live people. Each of the inhabited islands is the seat of one of the _Houses_. A House is all the people that live on the island, that can be as little as a hundred or as much as twenty times hundred, and it owns everything on it except the boat-houses.

They are close to the spirits these Austerners. The gift of second sight is not uncommon among them, and each of the houses have pledged themselves to a guardian among the spirits of Beasts. The houses are named after their Guardian, and the members of a house is often closer to their Guardian than you would believe a human could be. It is just as foolish to stand between riches and the House of Wolf as it is to stand between a deer and Wolf himself.

But an Austerner is not only of a House, he is also of a clan. The clans are their bloodlines, counted from father to son and mother to daughter. There are almost half a hundred clans among the Austerners, counting both male and female, and it is the power of the clans that balance the power of the Houses. The clans control the salt, the spices, the clothing and all the boats.  The Houses control the food, the weapons and all the buildings. Without boat-houses the boats of the clans are at risk from the storms, and without salt and spices the Houses can not store their food.

When an Austerner is born, the clan decides what House he will be fostered in. The first three years of his life he spends with his mother in her house, but from he is three to he comes of age at fourteen he lives in the foster-House. When he comes of age he can ask to be accepted into another house, but most decide to stay with the foster-House. Thus the clans and the Houses are intermixed. And as they are also inter-dependent, a minimum of peace is maintained.

Their politics may seem dynamic in the extreme - power and alliances change from year to year, sometimes even from month to month. Add to this that the ethical rules varies with the Houses and the clans involved, things can get very complicated - even more so than the interlocking plans and secret alliances of the Dragon council. For instance, while a member of the House of Hawk is expected to defend an oath to his death, those of the House of Fox routinely break half a dozen blood-oaths before breakfast, without raising an eye-brow among the other Houses. And while clan Trym doesn't shy away from political assasination, a Trym of the house of Owl could only assasinate a sober victim, as the rules of that house forbids to take advantage of somebody's intoxication.

Yet strangely enough, despite the furious pace and the infinite complexities of their politics, things stay very much the same. While this House may be in power this year, and that house next year, very little will change from a decade to the next. The clans are the same today as five hundred years ago, and the Houses stand where they always have stood.

(I did hear some vague rumors about a 'forbidden House' that apparently had been destroyed 'several generations ago', but whenever I asked about this afterwards, I was met with a wall of silence. It was obvious that this was taboo to anybody not of the Austerners. I can not help but feel that this indicates that there is a core of truth to this matter.)

The Austir-isles are mostly barren. The ever-blowing wind prevents anything larger than creeping bushes from growing there, and there is barely enough soil on these scattered rocks even for that.  Unsurprisingly, farming is not an Austerner form of life.  Most of their food comes from fishing. Together with various sea-weeds, fish make up most of their diet. In addition to this they gather eggs and catch some of the sea-birds that nests on these isles in large numbers. They also hunt seals and small whales, the fur and oil of which is traded in Varnia for grain and salt. They also trade bird-eggs and other overland goods with the tribes of mermen along the coast of Varnia.  However, the food gathered in these ways are only enough in especially good years. In normal and bad years, the island of Hothr is absolutely vital to the Austerners.

Ah, yes. The Hodr-Augir. From sea it looms above you like a mountain, the cliff sides starting half a mile above you and hurling themselves straight down into the sea in front of you. Only on a handfull of places on the west side is the sea calm enough for a boat to you close enough to touch the stone. And only on two of these places can the looming sides be climbed. And once every year, the moon before the beginning of the storm-season, a handfull of Austerners make their way up these water-slick surfaces, one handhold at a time. It can take as much as two days before they finally reach the top.

Once there, they rest for a full day. Eating dried meat and drinking rainwater from cisterns that have been built there. Then they tie together the lengths of rope they carried with them. The rope come from the deep forests of xxxxxx, and is woven of silk scavenged from the webs of the giant spider-beasts that lives there. It is as thin as a bow-string and weighs almost nothing, but it is strong enough to hold the weight of twenty men.

Full lengths of rope is then lowered down the side to the skarp-baugar that have returned, loaded with rope-ladders. The full eight hundred meters of a rope ladder is too heavy, both for the spider-ropes and the men on top. So they haul them up in lengths of fifty meters each, and assemble them on the top.  When the first rope-ladder hits the water a gigantic cheer rise from the many people in the skarp-baugar. Soon, several dozens rope ladders filled with people is decorating the cliff-side. More than three thousand people are thus transported onto the island.

The great mountain peaks on the eastern side of the island stand as a barrier against the pounding storms of the Great Sea, and the forest-covered island of Hothr is a lush paradise to the Austerners; teeming with game, wild berries and edible plants. I know, dear friend, that you are wondering about why the Austerners do not settle on Hothr and live off it's abundance all through the year. The main reason for this is that the island is already inhabited. The Austerners seemd to feel that the hunting on Hothr was a privilege granted and not a right taken.

I never saw one of the _Huldre_, as they are called, but from what the Austerners told me, it is possible that they are a fairy people. I did, however, come upon the traces of a strange enchantment. It was too faded for me to deduct what it's function had been, but it felt somewhat too much to the point and down to earth to be of fairy origin. They are said to live inside the hills (not in caves - actually on the _inside_ of the hills) and to be expert hunters and farmers. (Their farms are also supposed to be _inside_ of the hills) They were rumored to be incredible rich, gold and silver in abundance, and the womenfolk were supposed to be enchantingly beautifull. (The clan Skjulte is supposed to be direct descendants from a female huldre that was married to an Austerners. While there is certainly something outlandish about the Skjulte, it may be nothing more than that.)

Like many of the fairy people they were said to have a weakness for cold steel (which apparently disappeared when they were married to a human) but they were described to be as tall and strong as humans and they were never said to act frivolous or to work mischief. One Austerner told me that they (the Huldre) were "good neighbors, but prefers to keep to themselves."

But like all true paradises, Hothr can be deadly. The real danger is not the stray troll or ogre from the mountains, nor the renegade Huldre that sometimes enchant and imprisons lone hunters. No, the real danger to the Austerners on Hodr-augir is themselves. You see, the ever-present rain and sea-spray on the Austir-isles makes it next to impossible to use a bow - before the first arrow is cocked and drawn the bow-string is wet and useless. So only those Austerners that spend some of their years as mercenaries in foreign lands learn to use the bow. Instead, most Austerners rely on the spear. But hunting with spear is difficult, and on the part of Hodr-island where the Austerners dare to go, there is only a few places where you can expect to get good results, narrow valleys, ponds and springs - the _jakt-stands_. There are not enough jakt-stands for all the Houses, so there are fierce competition about them.

The first House to reach a jakt-stand can lay claim to it. They can lose this right to another House in _holm-gangir_ - ritualised combat, but the claim-holding House have the advantage of choosing the form of holm-gangir.  In good years the holm-gangir amounts to little more than good-natured competitions of sport - wrestling, swimming and running competitions where everybody have a good time. But in lean years they become knife-throat fights for survival and deaths are not uncommon. The fierceness of these 'hunger-fights' are terrifying to witness, especially because the losing House often will be forced to drown their infants least the entire House starves during the storm-season.

I guess you are asking yourself right now why I am telling you this, after all, you find your thrills in the in the politics of the Dragon council and not in the study of the Mensch. However, I am certain that this wich I am about to reveal to you will make you read through this letter again with renewed interes. Last week I was returning from the island of Hothr (a rather well kept secret of my own is that the mountains of Hothr is the home to a tribe of Rocs and the hunting there is extraordinarily. I trust this remains between the two of us.) About a day home I spotted a small skarp-baugar below me, headed for the northern part of Dragon Isle.

Now this was unusual, as the Austerners always told me that they kept well clear of Dragon Isle 'because of the lizards'. Curious, I made myself invisible and followed the boat at a close distance. There was only three men aboard the boat. From the rune-writing on their weapons I could read that they were all of the House of Bear, and that one of them was the Bear Keeper of Arms, second in power only to the Keeper of the House himself.

I had followed the skarp-baugar's leisurly pace for a couple of hours when the boat and the people aboard it suddenly disappeared. For a second or two I could still smell the sweat and tar, but then that to faded. I quickly cast a number of divination spells, but was only able to glimpse a vague shimmering of the spell-weave before it wove itself completely into the surrounding.  However cast that invisibility-spell was good. Far better than myself, and I have always prided myself of my skills in those parts of the Lore. From what little I glimpsed of the spell-weave I dare say that the caster was at least a Grand-mage.

Although I do not have your experience and cleverness in such cases, it appears obvious that someone on this island is in contact with the Austerners and is putting a lot of effort into keeping this contact a secret.

The question that first leaps to mind is 'Why?' but I believe that the best vector of attack will be to answer the question 'What is there to gain.' - if we can answer that we will also be able to answer 'Who?'. And when we know who, you will be able to take advantage of it.

I think I will spend some more time hunting Roc in the months to come.

Your Friend

Vismann.