Holding VI, The Others.
Opened Year 169. Last corrected Year 395. Contact is occasional. Graded adequate in the register.
A winged people holding Perganis, the third orb. They trace their descent from the Aarakocra of Rolara and say their forebears left that world centuries ago. They live in cities woven through the great trees and in settlements under the sea. We have seen the first and only heard of the second.
The relationship
Occasional and never regular. Eleven meetings in two hundred and twenty-six years, every one at their initiative or at a shared port, and never at Perganis by invitation.
The dealings were correct and left nothing owed either way. We sold chart corrections. They sold nothing we needed and bought little, being well supplied by a standing trade with the dwarves of Keiter that is by every account older and warmer than anything they have had with us.
No grievance and no favour on either side.
The Rolara question
The Sylphen believe the land of Rolara is no longer viable. It is the reason they give for leaving and the reason they give for not going back.
It is not true. Our charts and our arrivals have shown that for as long as this holding has existed. Rolara is populous, worked, and contested, and the condition they describe has not held within the memory of anyone we have questioned. Reports carried in during Year 393 make their position weaker still.
Standing instruction, entered Year 222 and renewed at every seating since: do not raise it. A delegation dealing with the Sylphen corrects for the error in its own reckoning and does not correct the Sylphen.
Three reasons are recorded with the instruction.
That we have not been asked, and that this holding does not volunteer corrections to a people’s account of themselves.
That why a people left a world is not a navigational matter and so falls outside what we trade in.
That the Exemplars declined to be the ones who told a people they had abandoned a world on a false account of it. This is the only one of the three entered as a reason rather than as a rule.
One objection stands against the renewal of Year 395, from Yshara Voidweaver Longwatch, Keeper of Record: that the first reason does not match our practice, since we have sold the Sylphen chart corrections on eleven occasions without being asked for them. The objection was noted. The instruction was renewed unchanged.
Dealing with them
Contact happens at shared ports. They have never invited a delegation of ours to Perganis, and an invitation is not to be treated as owed or asked for.
They want little from us. Charts and corrections are the only goods we have ever sold them.
Nothing stands owed in either direction, which is unusual in this holding. Every dealing with the Sylphen starts from nothing, and should be conducted on that footing.