Bar Strannach

This village of 900, strategically placed along the great Jalpa-Rel Deven highway, has a legend even more peculiar than that of Balaour. In CY 172 a huge fomorian giant, said to be 40 feet tall, staggered into the village, slew half the occupants, and then screamed some crazed and allegedly prophetic utterances regarding the Great Kingdom's future history and fate. Collapsing in a ghastly fit, the giant spewed forth a book, the Lays of Bar Strannach which is still preserved in a small shrine to Boccob. This shrine also has the spine and skull of the fomorian, from which one could estimate the giant to have been perhaps 25 feet tall—much less than the embellished legend suggests, but still extraordinary.

The book has endless riddling verses which indeed seem to be some kind of prophetic and demagogic work. It is possible, with imagination, to see the rise of the House of Naelax and its fall in the verses inscribed in Old Suloise by its unknown author. Sages and scribes regularly travel to consult it, and Mordenkainen (disguised) and Philidor (openly) are among them; so, too, are representatives of Xavener and Strychan. That such luminaries consult this work suggests that it cannot be merely pretension and dissimulation, but its riddling is so obscure as to confound all but the very wisest of those who read it.

More mundanely, Bar Strannach is home to 100 of Farland's excellent light cavalry who protect the roads leading to Jalpa and for some 60 miles westward. Along the dirawaen road farther west, Rel Deven's men patrol; relations between the two groups are generally good, but cool.