The southern king has the biggest ships and strongest navy, and messages pass between both ships and water-scrying seers with relative ease. There's at least one fellow who can whistle up an otter- or dolphin-sized water elemental (I'm imagining a bit like a fury from the Furies of Caldera series by Jim Butcher) and pass messages swiftly.
Also- it's not so much that the high king has *control* of the low kings- at least, it's long been a matter of courtesy between the two levels of office- as he's the one who is acknowledged the strongest and wealthiest, and the one to whom greater disputes are brought when it cannot be solved by a lower king, or if the matter is between two low kings and the others gang up to vote against them. It wasn't their business that he managed to gain huge amounts of territory beyond their traditional lands, and previous generations made the trip home more often. Then suddenly, in the last century, it was as if they were just one more client state in a vast empire- the tax-ship came, the king's judges/bards came and went, and they were no longer the proud carriers of the local high culture but the rusticated boonies to a much stronger power, who had become a stranger to them.
I still need to figure out a map to see how the length of the coast between the north and the south encompasses all this turf and accounts for the difference in temperature.
Aksinya's part of the royal family, which means that, while she has that connection, she has access to spirits, major and minor, that her family has bound in the past. A wendigo, a kraken- but also a great bear that was more than a bear, but a small god of the forest in its sovereign territory that was soothed from the ancient spears in its hide and bound for the debt; ice-spirits and pine-spirits of the old forests, bad-weather equivalents of fauns that look like white mountain goats. This in addition to more usual flying eel and river-dolphin type spirits, that aren't as intelligent or nearly as powerful, but are a lot more accessible and friendly.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-06-03 07:51 am (UTC)Also- it's not so much that the high king has *control* of the low kings- at least, it's long been a matter of courtesy between the two levels of office- as he's the one who is acknowledged the strongest and wealthiest, and the one to whom greater disputes are brought when it cannot be solved by a lower king, or if the matter is between two low kings and the others gang up to vote against them. It wasn't their business that he managed to gain huge amounts of territory beyond their traditional lands, and previous generations made the trip home more often. Then suddenly, in the last century, it was as if they were just one more client state in a vast empire- the tax-ship came, the king's judges/bards came and went, and they were no longer the proud carriers of the local high culture but the rusticated boonies to a much stronger power, who had become a stranger to them.
I still need to figure out a map to see how the length of the coast between the north and the south encompasses all this turf and accounts for the difference in temperature.
Aksinya's part of the royal family, which means that, while she has that connection, she has access to spirits, major and minor, that her family has bound in the past. A wendigo, a kraken- but also a great bear that was more than a bear, but a small god of the forest in its sovereign territory that was soothed from the ancient spears in its hide and bound for the debt; ice-spirits and pine-spirits of the old forests, bad-weather equivalents of fauns that look like white mountain goats. This in addition to more usual flying eel and river-dolphin type spirits, that aren't as intelligent or nearly as powerful, but are a lot more accessible and friendly.