Menias (MEN-ee-ass) was originally part of Oraset. The society is almost identical. The Pharaoh is always a woman, and brother-sister marriage is forbidden. Both nations have their coast on the Holy Sea. The people are the Orasetti (ORR-er-set-ee) and Menni (MEN-ee).

Oraset (ORR-er-set) was founded by a great Power, who is still as feared as he is respected in the country named after him. In Brokk they tell a different part of the story of Oraset of Oraset.

Oraset is ruled by a Pharaoh, who must be male, though the right to the throne is passed down through the female line.

The dead are held to be dangerous, and must be contained. Bodies of peasants are firmly but respectfully bound in tight bandages, and consigned to the desert sands, where, it is hoped, they will get lost before finding their way back to their village. More important people are more dangerous, and so are buried in pyramids whose one exit is firmly sealed.

The Orasetti are scared of their dead partly because of Lich Pharaoh Ozrin, whose reign is still a byword for tyranny, partly a muddled sort of ancestor worship, partly a memory of Oraset of Oraset, and mostly because the dead do return. What in Vailand is done with great difficulty, the creation of mummies, happens by accident in Oraset, and is not welcomed.

Peasants pay 20% of their produce to the Pharaoh, and work for him one month in each year. Vast granaries are maintained to feed the populace in a bad year.

Temples, canals and pyramids used to be built using the tributary labor. Now the overseers are peasants or retired soldiers, but the workers are slaves. They are treated with such contempt that it is permitted to create work-zombies from their corpses. 10% of the slave labor force is undead in Oraset. Menias does not allow any undead to be created.

The major exports are papyrus, wine and wheat.

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