DOTLAN EveMaps

u'Let\u2019s now turn our gaze to our brothers to the north, to the S\xfarian birthed beneath and to emerge upon the isle of S\xfar.

Here is a primary example of the \u2018inanimate\u2019 applying its pressures upon the course of history. The S\xfarian, during Asr al-N\xe4hd\xe4h\u2014\u201cthe age of awakening\u201d\u2014chose not to battle for the precious waters, but for the Glass itself. As an intractable opponent, the S\xfarian pitted their collective talents against an adversary that would neither tarry nor show mercy, grow complacent, nor remove itself from the necessity of impeccable stoicism.

In the first age after Asr al-N\xe4hd\xe4h, S\xfarian naval technology and consequential dominance manifested itself as the first legitimate jind and the first that is officially recorded in the histories. Innovators and consummate entrepreneurs, they chose to forgo the prize of the Solh\xed, and sought their own ambitions; which in effect, drove them farther out upon the Glass and farther from their home-isle of S\xfar.

To compete against the \u2018inanimate\u2019, again the \u2018animate\u2019 manifested innovation itself via the expansion of S\xfarian technological capacity; accelerating their knowledge of N\xe4r and themselves within it. Bartering their newly-discovered naval technologies for the precious waters and materials necessary to feed their own burgeoning sciences and exploration, the S\xfarian subsequently opened the Glass for others and had begun to cut the channels of future survival of the whole. This choice of trade versus imperial expansion reflected the unusual spirit al-Solh\xed had demonstrated and proved the S\xfarians to be viable candidates as one of the original and still surviving four. As nature has oft demonstrated: it is often easier to \u2018take\u2019 than to \u2018trade\u2019, yet the S\xfarians forwent naval aggression and bartered their wealth among all the oulaad\u2014ultimately benefiting the whole.

Fundamentally, irrationality again trumped natural tendency, and set sail the course of the future.

Thereby, a study of al-S\xfar, can be said to be one of \'discovery\' and \'exploration\', but at its heart, it was this unique evolution towards specialization that gave birth to Jind al-S\xfar.


--Book of Solh'