Varsabad

The Indonesia analog. For the world map and scale, see Geography.

Name. Varsabad (VAR-sah-bahd), an old Persian-style name for the far islands, ending in -ābād, "settled place," as many Persian place names do.

On the Draft 4 map, the islands sit inside Khavaran's outline: the Scholar Nation's reach out here is measured in sea lanes and tribute rather than occupied territory.

The Far-Eastern Elven Vassal

One Indonesian island is a second Elven foothold, held as a vassal of Dar Ilm al-Zakir rather than as part of Silbriesti. That gives the Elves the east and west split the setting has been leaning toward, with a cool, isolationist Taniere on one edge of the map and a tropical, maritime island on the other. It also sets the Scholar Nation up as an Indian Ocean power whose reach is measured in sea lanes and tribute rather than occupied territory, which is the same coherence-through-networks model it already runs at home. The original vassal-state framing still holds: interested in succeeding but not desperate, since Dar Ilm isn't a pushy patron. This replaces the earlier idea of a Korea-, China-, or Japan-inspired island.

Open: which island it is (deliberately left for much later); its name; its culture beyond "tropical, maritime, Elven"; whether it answers to Silbriesti at all or only to Dar Ilm; how the two Elven peoples regard each other; how it fared in the Long War.