Smyth Meadow

Place

Place Name:

Smyth Meadow

Biome:

Meadow

Size:

Unknown

Continent:

Unknown

Subcontinent

Unknown

Geography

Since the famous battle of Smyth, the whole region has come to be known as Smyth, including the place where the village used to stand. New villages and towns that used to be loyal to the Emperor have sprung up — but now of course the empire has fallen and they now live under the shadow of the Olera kin’toni clan instead. One of the villages has arisen in the ruins of Fort Smyth, and has repaired it and improved it beyond its original design. Now it’s a sturdy little walled farming town. The walls are still made of dirt and stone, but they’ve been reinforced with even more stone and also with timber.

A gatehouse has been added, buildings have been built directly into the walls, the roads are well-paved, and the sewers function properly. (Even after two hundred and fifty years of broken civilization, the people of Smyth still insist on proper sewage systems and clean towns — Smyth is one of the few places in this modern world where you can still find sewers.) This village has come to be known as the Fort Village, for obvious reasons. Another new village has been built to the north of the Fort Village, in the place where the village razed to the ground by Lord Muraza used to stand.

This place, too, has functioning sewers, and farms, and roads, but it has no walls, and it’s much smaller. The beer brewed here is undoubtedly much better than the stuff served in the Fort Village, however. And thus this village has come to be known as the Beer Village., There are two other villages in Smyth, built on the western end of the plains, but they’re not as important. They’re called the Tree Village and the River Village, after their respective surroundings. Smyth’s weather is a little warmer than average, but the amount of rain it receives is normal.

The slight hills and inclinations in the flat terrain tend to guide the water either to one of Smyth’s few ponds, or else towards the rivers that mark the borders of the land. It’s very seldom that the land floods. There are few trees in Smyth; those few trees that you can see in the surrounding countryside were probably planted by zu’aan, either for aesthetic purposes, or, if they grow in a particularly large and numerous clump, for chopping or farming purposes. Most trees are grown near the Tree Village, of course. The rest of the land is plain and simple, consisting either of tilled farms or of untilled meadows.

The Olera kin’toni clan does not actually live in Smyth, since they control multiple territories; the farmers of Smyth are therefore more or less powerless to strike back against their oppressors. They just keep farming, since this is their life and was their fathers’ lives and their grandfathers’ lives, and will probably be their children’s lives. There’s something noble about farming. And where would they go if they wanted to leave? It’s not like any of the surrounding lands are any better off.

Plants

The farmers of Smyth grow very few plants: mostly pahs and vegetables. Flour they import from elsewhere. But they’re very proud of the pahs and vegetables that they grow, even though there are plenty of lands that produce better, larger, tastier pahs, and better, larger, tastier vegetables. The meadows of Smyth likewise have very little variety in the vegetation: it’s almost all grass, grass, and more grass. You get some stranger, aquatic grasses if you investigate the ponds or rivers, and occasionally you find a portion of some field covered in wildflowers.

But other than these exceptions, Smyth is perhaps the blandest of all lands for a botanist to investigate. (That being said, some of the fields of wildflowers can be quite pretty. And that being said, even the ordinary fields of Smyth can be quite pretty. But botanists aren’t paid to investigate the beauty of plants, they’re paid to investigate plants.) A botanist will find a singular redeeming quality in the plants of Smyth, and that quality is the existence of the chyr Tree. It’s unlike any other ordinary tree. The chyr Tree is basically the only tree grown in most of Smyth.

In terms of construction purposes, there are no trees worse than the chyr. In terms of fuel purposes, there are still no trees worse than the chyr. The chyr, in fact, is the weed of the tree family. It grows everywhere, even in the places where nothing else can grow. Builders hate it because it’s not good for anything useful. Hunters hate it, because the fire it makes is extremely smoky. Gardeners hate it, because it’s ugly and annoying to get it out of their gardens. But farmers like it, because it makes amazing fertilizer.

The chyr tree grows quite quickly, at approximately three times the speed of other trees. Even during its young stages, you can tell it’s going to be an eyesore, what with its greenish brown, tentacle-like leaves, and its trunk, which tends to grow sideways. It begins rotting about three weeks after you cut it down. It smells terrible while doing so. And after about a week, it’s done rotting, having deteriorated into a bunch of damp woodchips which still smell terrible, but are very healthy for your garden plants. Or at least, so it’s said.

All of Smyth’s fields are fertilized with chyr bits, and there’s little difference between their fields and the fields of the next land over. There are other, normal, less annoying trees that grow in Smyth, but these trees are almost exclusively found by the Tree Village, where the trees are actively planted, grown, and harvested for their wood. Even then, some chyr trees still sprout in the tree farms, but their existence is tolerated for the sake of the fertility of the soil. Men have tried to grow better trees in the soil of Smyth, but the land doesn’t seem to like any other trees.

The exception once again being the land about the Tree Village.

Animals

The farmers of Smyth grow pahs and vegetables, so naturally, they raise livestock that can be raised well on pahs and vegetables, and feed these livestock nothing else. The usual specimen of livestock raised in Smyth is the grugrusks. These hulking, furless grey beasts, if born and raised in the wild, become fierce and intelligent hunters, digging enormous pits just beneath the topsoil, so that anything heavy that steps on the trap will fall into the pit. Their nigh-insatiable hunger drives them to attack and devour even armed men, if such men fall into their traps.

Because of their ferocity, and also because of their exceptionally tasty meat, the grugrusks was everywhere else hunted to extinction or near-extinction. But somebody in Smyth realized at some point that grugruskss love eating pahs, and that if you feed them enough pahs to fill up their stomachs… then they become quite placid animals, even willing to follow the hand feeding them the pahs. (Somebody else later realized with a bit of a violent shock that grugruskss do not like eating vegetables. But he survived the shock… barely.) Once you’ve fed these beasts enough pahs.

(and maybe some poultry, if you’re feeling generous), they soon grow too fat to move and too placid to attack you even if you forget to feed it for a few days. Today, there are no wild grugruskss left. The only remnants left of those terrifyingly majestic creatures of old are the enormous blobs of meat and fat in the backyards and barns of the farmers of Smyth. The inhabitants of Smyth also raise thilias. thilias are of the kind of insects that form colonies. A thilia has a large, armoured exoskeleton which is a dark red colour, six long legs with three joints each, and four extremely long wings.

Along with large mandibles and a large abdomen. Male thilias have larger mandibles and wings, while females have larger abdomens. The King thilia and the Queen thilia are twice as large as any of their children; they’re the parents of the whole colony. The King has six wings instead of four, and mandibles capable of tearing the toughest meat with ease. The Queen’s abdomen is so large that she needs the assistance of the King to fly. These dark red insects look terrifying in large swarms. Fortunately, if you know how to treat thilias, they’re happy to ignore you, or to eat the strawberries you bring them.

By presenting sweet things like fruit or flowers to a prince and princess of the thilia, you can effectively bring them wherever you like, and start your own colony of thilias in your backyard. They dig elaborate underground palaces. thilias are helpful for farmers to have because they’re natural gardeners: they pollinate garden plants, devour the insects that eat the plants, devour weeds (and only weeds), and they even prune bushes. It’s true, they’ll eat some of the fruits of the garden plants, but that’s a small price to pay for free gardening services.

Historical Timeline of Ages

Age Name	Dates	Controller
Stone Age	Before 1E 0	Unknown
Copper Age	1E 1–1E 2200	Unknown
Bronze Age	1E 2200–1E 4400	Unknown
Iron Age	2E 0–2E 700	Unknown
Ancient Age	2E 700–2E 2200	Unknown
Middle Age	3E 0–3E 2050	Unknown
Early Modern Age	3E 2050–3E 2600	Unknown
Industrial Age	3E 2600–3E 2700	Unknown
Machine Age	3E 2700–3E 2800	Unknown
Atomic Age	3E 2800–3E 2850	Unknown
Space Age	3E 2850–3E 2875	Unknown
Information Age	3E 2875–3E 2900	Unknown
Genetic Age	3E 2950–3E 3000	Unknown
Awakening Age	3E 3000–3E 3415	Unknown
Twilight Age	4E 0–4E 500	Olera Kin'toni Clan

Place

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Smyth Meadow

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This article is written by Xerxes Worldweaver. Copyright 2026 Xerxes Worldweaver. All rights reserved.