Cheska Ovar. The Heart Endures.
Office of the High Warden
Luxemburry / History / The Five Valleys
Before the Charter there was no Luxemburry, only five valleys in the high Alps, each governed by its own council and each holding its own pass against the others. The Realm was made from them, and the five regions of today are the five valleys of then.
| Valley then | Region now | Held |
|---|---|---|
| The Valdoria Valley | Valdoria Valley | The river crossing and the cathedral |
| The Cinder valley | Cinder Highlands | The Cinder pass and the mountain shrine |
| The eastern valleys | Eastern Peaks | The pass toward Switzerland |
| The lake shore | Aurelia Lakelands | The lake and the south road |
| The forest valley | Western Forest March | The timber and the road to France |
Each valley had a council of household heads that met in its church. Each kept its own pass with its own keepers, and each charged the others for the crossing. In a hard winter the passes closed and the valleys starved separately. The Luxian language was already common to all five, and so was the legend of the Stone Heart, and so was skiing, which the valleys had used for winter travel for as long as anyone recorded.
The earliest skis in the Royal Archives are from the Cinder valley, long, narrow, and bound with leather. Zevi the Great surveyed the whole country on a pair like them. The Archives display them beside the first map.
Three reasons, in the order Zevi gave them to the councils in 1723: the passes, which one Realm could keep open where five valleys could not; the coin, so that a Cinder farmer could sell in Valdoria without changing money twice; and the feast, so that the valleys would know each other's faces. The councils signed. The pass keepers became the Mountain Sentinels, and the councils became the Council of the Peaks.
The three reasons Zevi gave the five councils for becoming one Realm. All three are in the Charter.
