There's no place like Wind Reach..!
Home is where your heart is they say, and for both Rista and me I say that this amazing city is the place that we will always return to and refer to as home. Not only is it completely unique in layout and remoteness, beautiful with it's spectacular views over the westernmost parts of Kalea's mountain ranges and high altitude, the people that live within it are also delightfully temperamental, and incredibly complex.
Complex is actually a rather good way of describing the city, I think. It seems so simple at first. There is work to be done in order to survive, and depending on what kind of things you can do for the people and the city, you get a rank, and is treating with more or less respect depending on what that rank is. So far it has a simplistic beauty that everyone can understand without too much trouble. Clean-cut, elegant... As long as you are Inarta and know your place everything is peachy.
But then.. What is it that makes an Inarta into Inarta? Is it the blood in your veins, the color of your hair and skin, is it the things you do for the city and the people, or is there something else entirely that makes a person Inarta? What is it that define a persons worth in this remote, isolated city that sees so few visitors?
Is a fully functional and talented person with mixed heritage still worth more than someone of unquestionable Inartan blood, albeit crippled and unable to provide for themselves and their people?
Racism is inevitable in a place where everyone has red hair and pale skin, where everyone is related to someone else after hundreds of years of near isolation; not only do the Inarta peck on those from the outside that try to live among them, they also peck on themselves. Who has more skills, who is better, who is more worthy, who's honor is greater?
Within the ranks there are other kinds of rank; on personal levels, in strength of mind and will, of blood and family; the further one delves into the under-currents of Inarta politics, the more violent the torrents become.
This, I think, is a part of what I love so much about this city. While it is small in comparison to many other settlements throughout Mizahar, the small population makes it all the more interesting to interact with other characters. They all have their views on how the city should be, on who's better and worth more, and whom they can sweep under the carpet and step on. Everyone knows someone else that knows a third that knows the first, and that makes interaction delightfully complicated, interesting and endlessly entertaining. It's impossible to grow tired of the place, for even though there are few new people passing by, there is always something going on, always someone that makes things interesting.
After spending all of my initiating three (soon, at least!) months solely within Wind Reach, I can say for certain that it is a wonderful place, simple and complicated at once, beautiful and rough, scary and harsh and so incredibly warm that it tears in me to leave it behind, even if it's just for a while.
"Amid pleasures and palaces
though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble,
there's no place like HOME."
by Taln on September 27th, 2011, 9:28 pm 
