Sarkenis
"Hold the heaviest weight with the lightest hand. Be the fixed point, and let the rest of the board turn around you."
House: Imperia
Terrain: Pelagic (+2 power)
Name: recovered from the ancient record through translation
Sarkenis is an ocean territory of House Imperia, a pelagic world whose archipelago breaks a cold sea into channels and sounds.
Naming voice
Sarkenis bites at the front, the hard k landing early and the rest of the word running out level behind it, three syllables that arrive in a single fall like a wave going over. Among the Imperia names it is the one sailors on the archipelago shorten in daily use, down to Sark. The house tolerates the clipping at sea and writes the name in full in every record.
The inscription
One of the 54 edicts: the inscription this world carries, protected under the Stratagem Accord.
Theme: Power held lightly.
Discovery. On a rocky island in the archipelago a stone dome stands just above the tide line, its curve so smooth that the gales find nothing on it to take hold of. The survey landed by boat in a break between storms and found the entrance on the lee side, a low passage the breakers had packed shut with shingle, which the crew dug clear by hand in an afternoon. Inside, the air was dry and the sea came through the shell as a low, steady register, more felt than heard. The edict ran along the curved inner surface at the height of a standing reader, and while the crew were still copying it the next storm arrived and broke over the dome, and the words did not so much as dampen.