letter from Werzier to Jade

Unto His Grace, the Duke of Dothasse, Earl of Penthuer and Nakkueneda, Marquis of Alethnea.

My Lord Duke: it is with pleasure I write from Your Grace’s new lands and may I take this opportunity to again congratulate Your Grace on the procurement of an array of noble titles. Might I also say a right and proper start to a life of nobility hath been made by choosing to hire the best Master Mason in all of Hellot to design your Grace’s palace. I pen this missif from the banks of a cool river north of the main Schallass road, in a land the local boy here calls Nakke Penthuer, or more simply, Penthuer. Through my Zargrad man, Feidir, who speaks both the tongues of this peculiar boy and of the Felinish, of which latter language I myself have an understanding, I am told Nakke Penthuer means Steppe-land of Thorns. But I have yet to see a single thorn tree, and so strikes me this an odd name.

Indeed what a pleasant land doth lie about me here. The valley is broad and beautiful with a pleasant spring air. The river rushes with a most soothing tone. Gently rolling plains, covered in long nodding grasses, spread as far as my eye may see in all directions but west. The west, at the bottom of a sharply falling scarp, be a swampy land of a different nature. Yet here, on this broad plain and in this pleasant valley,  the earth is good and charming yellow poppies and primroses grow happily in plentiful bunches. 

Feidir, who gladly informs me he was a farmer before a trader and trapper, claims the soil is rich and good for grains. And the boy, Alkioth he is called, can attest for his family he claims wrests ample living from this land. I have noted several old copses of deep shaded beech and hard-beam trees. They would make good heavy lumber for any building your Grace might wish in these pleasant parts. Yet by far the predominant trees are young, quickly growing ash and pine. Fine tool handles could be fashioned from the former and resin from the latter put to use for caulking and lamp oil. Alkioth the boy, who claims to be the nephew of a local lord unknown to myself, tells us this land, the Earldom of Penthuer, is bound in the north by a river and by another river in the south. The eastern  border doth lie at the entrance of the Fogge forest, growing at the base of a cluster of mountain peaks I see from here. To the west, the Earldom is bound by a massive scarp the boy calls the Ridge of Elaenn.  When I enquire who the lady Elaenn is I am told she was a queen who lived far to the north, where the great mountains meet the sea. Feidir guesses this must be a land he knows as Wassa.  

W. Werzier