Editing Perenian (section)

== '''SOCIETY''' ==
The tales of a united Perenia dance around the hearths and cookouts of nearly every village. Perhaps its jaunt reaches close to a truth, but whatever it is resides only in the past. There is little that can be said of “Perenia” besides it being a vague gesture to a geographic region in the heart of Eastroam. The average Perenian does not know much about life outside of their village and perhaps a few neighboring ones. Fellow Perenians fifty miles away are as foreign as the Sadafi and any authority beyond their immediate liege lord is lost to them. Life happens on the village level, as agrarian people can barely afford to travel far. Logging and mining communities exist as well, but due to their perceived poverty they are seen as existing on the fringes of society and are mistrusted.

Scattered nobles claim dominion over the many villages that dot the landscape, but they rarely have the means to project their power. Without many knights and sworn soldiers, most are reluctant to engage in anything more than small feuds which are frequent but almost never destructive. Serfs exist only in name, but rare traveling means that even though they do have the freedom to leave, few ever do. Aside from a small tax to their liege lord, most villages are free to govern themselves. Long eras of peace have enabled prominent families to rise and establish their power in the villages, giving them an authority that exists in an ill-defined status between local leaders and noble overlords. Larger towns are similarly self-governing, but they have more formal structures of government, of which the urbanized nobility are a regular part of.

After the fall of the last Perenian Emperor of Zusko, power in the region rapidly devolved and decentralized. There is no one authority said to represent Perenia, but customs developed after the fall of the Empire of Zusko have allowed for an elected ''Szef'' (often translated as ‘king’, but is more accurately defined as a leader) to be picked by the Perenian nobility in times of crisis. Interestingly, the ''Szef'' does not formally lose their title even after the emergency period, but historically their power has been limited after this brief period of time. The ''Szef'' is non-hereditary and expires upon the death of the current titleholder, requiring the nobles of Perenia to vote on a new leader if they feel the need.

This is not to say that Perenians are a completely backwards people. Several large trading towns dot the landscape, serving as the greatest and most well-known centers of regional authority. Music flourishes as aspiring composers and musicians travel to the countryside to hear bawdy tavern songs or visit the magnificent opera halls in one of the larger towns to get inspiration. A diversity in local legends and oral tradition more than compensates for low literacy. The end of a working day is a celebration, as pubs become packed with jubilant Perenians that wish for nothing more than to spend their hard-earned coin on beer. While hardly a place to visit, Perenia is certainly a place to live.

The feast is one of the most important facets of Perenian culture. In the average village, wealth is measured not by coin or even land, but by the ability to fill one’s table with meat, bread, and beer. Perenian noblemen have been known to ruin their fortunes on large harvest celebrations that span all of their domains. Famine is infrequent, but most villages have sophisticated food storage and rationing systems in place to prevent mass-starvation in times of need. The potato is not usually a popular crop given the abundance of wheat, but the highest potato yields usually come after periods of famine, perhaps as a preparatory measure for a repeated year of bad harvests.