I want them to be something cool, but I fear they are another 'border'. If we knew too much about them, we'd go looking for a 6th and 7th tribes that migrated north, east, and south of Eanna. An over the western sea!
I'm thinking of this interview:
Q: Being as meticulous as you are, have you ever drawn a "world map" of the areas that are outside the ones already depicted?
A: I’m not sure ‘meticulous’ is a word that I have any right to. Any rigour in my worldbuilding is simply the product of having lived with (and in) Earwa for so long. I’ve actually resisted mapping out the entire globe over the years. Ideas for alternate civilizations seem to crop up like mushrooms in my imagination, and the temptation is to make good on them by giving them a ‘place.’
But way back, I wrote this paper on the difference between ancient and modern roads (in the context of a philosopher named Levinas). The signature conceptual difference, I argued, was the way modern roads enclose the globe, the way civilization, in a sense, never runs out for us the way it did for the ancients. At the time I decided the best way to remain true to the ancient headspace I was trying to conjure was to make sure all the roads in Earwa run out, to make the terra incognita in my world absolute.
But this isn’t to say that surprises haven’t been painted across the horizon.
http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-r-scott-bakker-interview-part-1.htmlIt is strange to me that there are 5 tribes
before they enter Earwe. In Earwe, they all live somewhat spaced apart, but in Eanna they lived close enough together for 4 to cross and 1 to refuse to cross in migrations. I suppose there doesn't have to be a problem there, but it kind of looks like some really selective breeding in close quarters--like a Dunyain thing.
We need a Romeo and Juliet story about a Scylvendi and a Ketyai falling in love during a migration. They die together, leaping off a precipice into a roiling mass of sranc.
