Apart from the differences noted below, and the language, Sutung (SOO-tongue), is very similar to Gelmir. The people are the Suti (SOO-tee). The coast is on the Silken Sea.

A cold current, straight from the Arctic, flows past the north-east corner of Sutung, making it the coldest nation in the known world, and the only place (except mountain tops) where there is year-round ice.

There is a volcano here, which is worshipped as Li Shen. The people believe that a mighty dragon lives in chambers hollowed into the cone of the volcano. A virgin bride is sent to him every year. She climbs the volcano to the accompaniment of cheers from the watching crowds, then descending into the mouth of the volcano, never to be seen again.

There have been no reliable reports of the dragon for many generations. He is said to wander in winter in the shape of a man, checking that his people have not forgotten to be generous to travelers.

What, if anything, he does with all those virgins is unknown.

The land is not very fertile, and agriculture is of the slash-and-burn type. The people are nomads, driving their cattle to fresh pastures in winter, returning in spring to their farmlands. When a farm’s productivity declines (after four to five years) it is allowed to return to wilderness, and the tribe clears a fresh site that owned it.

The men can have as many wives as they can support. A woman can only have one husband, but it is commonplace for women several lovers. This is only considered a crime if she bears a child to a man other than her husband, when her husband can have her and the child executed.

The wolf is a sacred animal. No boy can become a man until he can turn into a wolf. Anyone still not initiated into manhood five years after puberty is ritually torn to pieces and eaten by a neighboring tribe in wolf-form. The shamans of the two tribes organize this, because it would be abhorrent for a tribe to kill and eat its own children.

In each tribe’s territory there is a hilltop on which stands a stone obelisk, two to three meters high, and covered in delicately incised drawings and strange writing. Most of the carved drawings show people wearing barbaric trousers and fur cloaks being hauled on chains by men in robes, who sit cross-legged on floating platforms.

The tribes say that these obelisks were erected by the Empire of the Mages, "But only because they could not really defeat us, so they made a seeming of our defeat, hoping it would be so. But we were strong then, as we are now."

Such hilltops are tabu, except for the tribe’s shaman, who goes up there to meditate, and summon spirits.

Return to main page. Return to Introduction. Return to Silken Sea. Return to top of page.