Associations of Sustenance

Creation is a vast and varied landscape, and mortals had spread to nearly every corner of it even in the Primordial Age. These mortals, and others besides, grew tribes into townships, townships into nations, and each culture had to find means to sustain itself, ten thousand different fruits and herbs, game and beasts of burden, materials for weaving and building. Once, the location of these peoples would have been sure sign of what types of things their civilization required for sustenance, but trade, both near and far, spread many of these across the face of Creation to those who had need of them and those who merely loved them for exotic difference, and today Creation’s civilizations remain varied indeed, difficult to predict merely by direction.

Nevertheless, the agricultural sages of the Golden Age and the storytellers of the Time of Tumult have long held there to be certain correspondences, motonic resonances and poetic associations, between the Direction of a people and the plants and animals which sustain them. It is said by such savants that each civilization requires four things to sustain itself: a food grain that can be eaten or rendered for dough, a domesticated livestock animal that can be eaten for meat, a textile from which clothing and shelters can be formed, and a fur for comfort and authority. These are the crops First Age almanacs advise to plant in these regions, the references playwrights drop to pull the audience to a foreign clime, and the answers when teachers must speak to children as to the origin of a thing.

Direction	Grain	Livestock	Textile	Fur
North	Potato	Dog	Leathers	Mammoth
Northeast	Barley	Sheep	Wool	Bear
River Province	Wheat	Pork	Asbestos	Rabbit
East	Oats	Duck Lizard	Jute & Rattan	Deer
Southeast	Lovegrass (Teff)	Horse	Linen	Cat
South	Corn	Cattle	Cotton	Camel
Southwest	Millet	Alpaca	Hemp	Water Pig
West	Yam	Goat	Coir	Feathers
Center	Rice	Poultry	Silk	Fox

The scions of the Scarlet Dynasty and the Patrician Clans learn these basic associations in Realm Primary Schools, and if a Dynast plans a themed gala based upon a direction this will usually dictate the menu and the dress of the serving staff, even if they might not be fitting for the actual tribe being referenced. Amongst the first lessons taught new students at the Spiral Academy is how inaccurate those oversimplified associations truly are... but also how to employ them for exploiting the expectations of those whose support for a project must be secured.