Thimble

Overview

The Thimble is located in the Eastring in the Navarr territory of Therunin. Custodianship of the Thimble grants an Imperial title; a seat on the Imperial Bourse; and a seasonal bounty of valuable weirwood.

The Resource

The Thimble is a vast stretch of forest that covers a series of rolling hills allegedly laid out in the pattern of a tailor's thimble. The Thimble was one of the earliest areas of Therunin to be cleared of vallorn influence. As the campaign to reclaim Therunin continued, the significant loss of life led to several areas around the Thimble becoming the final resting places of heroic Navarr and allied Imperials alike. The glades where the fallen were laid are not harvested by the workers, and to this day pilgrims still come to those corpse glades, to hang mementoes of and for their fallen ancestors. By long tradition, anyone who has worked a full season at the Thimble may ask to be laid to rest in the glades here, and some steadings and stridings make pilgrimages across the Empire specifically to honour these final wishes.

According to some records, the Thimble was initially intended to become an Imperial resource (with the Navarr keeping the Golden Trees of Seren instead), but to the surprise of the Imperial Seante the Navarr Senators refused - despite the fact that the forests of Miaren produce a greater bounty. The inability of the Senate to provide assurances that the funeral glades would never be touched forced the Navarr to place loyalty to, and reverence for, the fallen over merely economic considerations.

Today, the thimble provides an impressive supply of valuable weirwood for the Navarr use. Many Navarr, both within Therunin and without, worry about its proximity to the Druj controlled lands of the Mallum - especially after what happened to the Great Forest at Reikos when the barbarians launched their surprise attack. There have been several incursions from the east over the last several centuries, attempting to seize Eastring and the great weirwood forests, but ruthless action by the Navarr has meant that the Druj have been driven back each time.

There is an informal expectation that at least a portion of the bounty of weirwood the Thimble provides be used to expand the herb gardens of the Navarr - with a further expectation that those who supported the Seat candidate who wins the title receiving the lion's share. While this expectation is impossible to enforce, those who have voluntarily done so have benefited in the long term both by ensuring that their supporters continue to support them, and by ensuring that they have more votes with which to do so.

Some Navarr are bitter about the fact that their lands contain not one but three large weirwood forests - but only a third of that bounty is actually in Navarr hands. The Golden Trees in Miaren and the Heartwood of the Great Vale in Hercynia are both Imperial resources. With the loss of the Great Forest at Reikos, the Navarr territories produce a little more than half the weirwood used by the Empire - yet they control less than a fifth of that production. More than a few brokers grumble that this situation is unfair; but there is little the Navarr senators can do about it. At various points in Imperial history, loose conglomerates of Navarr brokers have "bought back" what many see as their legacy - using unexpected monetary reserves to size the "missing" Navarr weirwood and using it to improve the herb gardens and forest preserves of the Navarr.

The broker Idris Eternal of the Eternal Family - he can be identified
by his sash showing the motif of a weirwood tree