The Bankright Circles

Overview

The Bankright Circles are the first major named Kavari civilization on Caeldon.

They grew out of the old ways of the Kavari, who never leave their rivers, rather than from any ruler or capital. Around c. 190,000-c. 160,000 BR the bank councils, pool-kin circles, nursery keepers, and seasonal gatherings of many linked tributaries began to stand together, and the Circles were born.

They are strongest on the middle rivers and tributaries of The Tidebound Reaches, where Kavari homes and nurseries lie on the same water other peoples want to pass through.

Civilizational Nature

The Bankright Circles hold the waters they live in, and nothing else.

A community holds a water because it lives in it through flood and drought, births and burials, and because there are enough of it on the banks to turn others away. Bank-right is not ownership. It is a claim made good by care for banks, pools, rootbanks, cold inlets, food waters, burial reaches, and nursery places, and by spears when care is not enough.

Most days the Circles are quiet and local. Pool-kin households remember which waters owe what. Bank councils settle access, repair, shelter, and quarrels between neighbours, and the oldest pool-kin usually get their way. Channel stewards keep the water flowing without pretending a river can be held to one bed. An outsider can earn a place by long care, above all by protecting the young.

Historical Role

The Circles had long stood together when the first redirected Thaluren runs came up their rivers, and that is why the Kavari could say no.

In The Gravel Oath Accord, nursery keepers met an incoming run with barbed spears in the lower channels and stopped it before it reached the beds, and blood went into the water on both sides before anyone sat down to bargain. A single village could have been pushed aside as a local nuisance. The Circles could not: behind that line of spears stood every bank council on the river, saying that a water is not empty because outsiders can use it. The Gravelbraid Nurseries, where the line was drawn, still show it every return season.