People — Meridia

Twenty-eight million. A volcanic peninsula, the Volkar always in sight, and the canonical paradox: the land nearest to Seal III is the most productive on the continent.

1. The body

Average 164 cm — the shortest on the continent. Elite at 169, field and fishing at 162.

Not out of poverty: Meridia eats well and eats variously. It eats little meat. Olive oil, bread, fish, bitter greens, goat cheese, wine — a diet that sustains a long life and does not build stature. The south of Cross is short and healthy at the same time, and that confounds the Kantonal physicians who have been publishing on the matter since 1860.

Marks

• The Vela Tarda fever. The malaria-analogue of the marshy lands of the south. Enlarged spleen, pallor beneath dark skin, recurrent fever for life. A Meridian of the lowlands has episodes until he dies, and knows how to predict the arrival of one by the smell of his own sweat.
• Early cataract among the fishermen — sun glare off water, forty years of it.
• The ash hand. The Ardentine refinery worker: the skin of the hands permanently grey, which comes off with nothing, and is not dirt — it is the mineral in the tissue.
• The ear of the Volkar. Those who live on the lower slopes develop an extremely low auditory threshold for low sound. They hear the volcano before the instruments do, and the Order tried three times to build a warning network on that basis, and gave up because it could not explain it.

Longevity: Meridia has the highest life expectancy on the continent among those who reach twenty. It also has one of the highest infant mortalities. It is a bloc where it is hard to be born and easy to grow old, and the whole culture comes out of that.