While in many of the Mother Countries, the population may be naturally divided into three groups (giants at the top, sibeccai at the bottom, and everyone else in the middle), in the small nation of Rrerrshbarr the tables are if not turned then at least rotated. From the nestlike Rrerrshbarr river valley, its fiercely independent denizens (over seventy percent of whom are litorians) have resisted numerous attempts at conquest by the nearby Empire of Perfection over the course of the last three centuries.

This resistance to invasion cannot be attributed solely to the nationalist fervor of the Rrerrshbarrians, nor can the Imperial ambitions be laid entirely at the feet of imperialism. The great resource of Rrerrshbarr is its apple-yards, where the intensely magical White Apples yet grow.

Nature-magic, the purview of the backwards greenbonds, is in the Mother Countries widely considered a poor cousin to witchery, the runes, the Dark, and all the other paths to magical power. The wan spirits of the sea and sky make poor companions, and were it not for their talent as healers, greenbonds would surely find themselves unwelcome in all but the most bumpkin communities. A handful of sites or items of power, however, attest to the remaining potence of nature-magic, and the White Apples are among them.

Those who consume one of these tasty, large fruits fresh off tree find themselves coursing with vigor. For perhaps an hour after the consumption, they are capable of feats of strength unmatchable without the most forceful of enhancing spell, able to leap thirty feet or more in the air, balance on one hand without tiring, or wrestle an alligator without assistance.

While many call it unfortunate that the power of the White Apples fades after their removal from the tree, and that the trees cannot be compelled to grow outside the ancient apple-yards, the Rrerrshbarrians are not among them, for they have parleyed their monopoly on the magical fruit into continued independence.

See Also: the Empire of Perfection, Nature-magic