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oral culture, did not keep written records as the Bards did, and so it is much less well documented than Annaren culture. They did invent a system of runes, which the Bards adapted and extended into the Ladhen runes. Unfortunately, all we know of the Pilanel writing is what remains in the Ladhen runes, since no examples have so far been found; it seems likely that the Pilanel runes were simply scratched at need into trees and stones, to be read by other travelers. Such knowledge as we do have of the Pilanel peoples comes mainly from those Pilanel Dhillarearën who became Annaren Bards, and wrote about their own people in Annaren script. However, even those records are full of elisions, as it was forbidden for Pilanel to reveal many of their customs and beliefs to non-Pilanel.5

The extant records portray an extremely resourceful and adaptive people who possessed a rich and ancient visual and oral culture of their own with roots that went back, unbroken, to before the Great Silence. They had their share of Dhillarearën, some of whom, like Maerad’s father, Dorn à Triberi, went south to the Schools to be trained in Annaren lore. Those who went to the Schools seem to be the exceptions, rather than the rule, and Pilanel with the Voice (as they referred to those born with the Gift) held honored places in Pilanel culture. These roles were similar in some ways to those that Bards held in Annar and the Seven Kingdoms. However, the Pilanel did not have the system of dual authority that held sway in the south, and it was not unusual for the chieftains of the tribes to be Dhillarearën. Lineages of the Howe leaders recorded by Anarkin of Lirigon, himself a Pilanel Bard, mark about half the Pilanel rulers as Dhillarearën.6

The Pilanel divided themselves roughly into two major populations, the Northern and the Southern Clans, who were identified by the Howe — Murask in the South or Tlon in the North — to which they traveled to spend each winter. There was no clear division between the Northern and Southern Clans, as intermarriage was common, and some clans would regularly swap between the Howes. A clan was a loose grouping generally, but not necessarily, related by blood, which traveled together during the summer months; it varied in size from perhaps half a dozen people to several dozen. Moving between clans, through marriage or need or inclination, was also not uncommon.

The Southern Pilanel were famous horsebreeders and trainers (most of the Bard horses were bred and trained by Pilanel), but they also pursued a bewildering range of crafts and employments during the summer months. Some were traders, selling goods made during the long winter months in the Howe, and would also travel as far as the Suderain to buy goods in the markets, which they would then sell in Annar; some were hawkers and tinkers, repairing household goods; some became itinerant laborers and worked on Annaren farms during the summer. The Northern Pilanel traded furs, textiles, and carved goods, and also herded and bred the oribanik deer, which they used for milk, skins, and meat.

The Howes, giant earth and stone fortresses capable of housing several thousand, were some of the most ancient structures in Edil-Amarandh, dating (like Turbansk, the great city of Suderain in the South) from the Inela, the time after the Age of the Elementals and before the Dawn Age. There is an extremely detailed description of the Murask Howe’s sophisticated heating and water system by Belgar of Gent at the Restoration,7 and there is every reason to believe that the Schools borrowed and adapted the Howe systems for their own use. The Murask Howe is described in detail in the Naraudh Lar-Chanë, as is the Pilanel’s communal style of living.

The Jussacks

The Jussacks first appeared in Zmarkan in the mid-N800s. It is thought their arrival coincided with Arkan’s return to the Trukuch Range — his original home, from which he had been banished after the Great Silence — and that they originated from the shores of the Ipiilinik Darsk (Ice Sea), in the area known as Norsk. Arkan was forbidden