Field Notes of Orek bi Łestkin, Amateur Ethnographer

These Field Notes on the life, events, and habits of the people of the western Benacian Green were compiled through the diligent work of one Orek bi Łestkin, a Montycriscan untitled noble and self-styled amateur ethnographer.

Background

Traveller and Ethnographer, scholar, and a gentleman of a particular nature.

Orek bi Łestkin was introduced to the western Benacian Green while serving as a Draconary in the Imperial Army during Operation Way of Force, and the way in which the scattered peoples successfully clung to life in the wasteland.

Following the completion of his required military service in 1659 AN, Orek immediately set to work planning for an expedition into the Green. After demonstrating his combat skill with both sabre and pistol, Lach clansmen in the Mandate of Tellia decided he was sportly enough not to bother enslaving, and agreed to escort him across the frontier, which they did on 3.II.1660 AN.

First Cache

Received at the border by 4th Coh, Leg XXIX, Imperial Army, on 16.III.1660.

Notes are dated between 5.II.1660 and 24.II.1660.

Later career and works

Orek's work in later years lost its naturalistic precision and became more impressionistic, distorted under the influence of all he had witnessed during the destruction of Stonetree (1666).

After a number of years where Orek's whereabouts were unknown he re-emerged in the Inner Benacian capital of Stonetree in the last month of 1665 AN in the somewhat surprising position of Editor-in-Chief to the Nəbẑəṣ̂ă Łăpqăr (Laqi: "Young Nation") newspaper. Orek's survival and subsequent elevation in Inner Benacian society was ultimately revealed to have been down to his pragmatic decision to "suck the nipple" (i.e. become a bondsman) of Dzarfeis Serverem Labeśx°emć'e, the Sasos and de-facto dictator of Inner Benacia for much of the 1660s. The Sasos had, it transpired, uses for a literate illustrator, especially one familiar with the ways of the lower tiers of the Shirerithian nobility and government. How Orek felt about working for a man who was actively backing the cause of Laqi and Tellian separatists in Shirerithian territory was unrecorded but he appears to have performed his work diligently and in a manner satisfactory to his master.