People — Vykhradia

Thirty million, and it was twenty-six in 1780 — fifteen per cent in a hundred and ten years. Granary of the continent, and the bloc that changed least of all.

1. The body

Average 169 cm. Magnates at 176, serfs at 166.

Meat and grain in abundance — Vykhradia feeds half the continent — and even so ten centimetres of spread, because the abundance does not reach those who produce it. Serfdom: field work from the age of eight, and a Vykhradian serf of thirty has the spine of a man of fifty.

Marks

• The teeth. Rye bread milled on stone carries grit. The teeth of a Vykhradian peasant are worn to the root by forty, and it is the most universal physical marker of the bloc — more than height, more than skin.
• The rein hand. Vykhradia is the bloc of the horse. Magnate, cavalryman and carter share the same band of callus on the inside of the fingers, and it is the only thing the aristocracy and the people share in the body.
• Steppe skin — dry wind all year. A face marked early, without the red of the north: dry, not burnt.
• Magnate cavalry — the badly knitted collarbone. Everyone falls. A shoulder left crooked is an informal insignia.

Canonical physiology: the Vykhradian winter is dry cold, not damp. It freezes without wetting. That is why the bloc has extremely high rates of frostbite in the extremities and extremely low rates of respiratory disease — the exact opposite of Brytonia. A Vykhradian in Manchaster falls ill in three weeks, and a Brytonian in Vykhrad loses fingers.