Directly north of Tarsh is Holay, which includes Mirin’s Cross, the great Daughter’s Road from Jillaro to Filichet, and several Sun Dome Temples. Holay is the most populous of the Lunar Provinces, with some 600,000 inhabitants, of whom 400,000 are adults. Some 120,000 are initiates of the Lunar Way, including 24,000 followers of Hwarin Dalthippa.
However, some 68,000 follow the Lightbringers (including Orlanth, Chalana Arroy, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy, and Humakt), and about 70,000 follow Ernalda and her immediate household.
The Yelmalio cult is a powerful counter-weight to keep the Orlanthi in check, with 40,000 followers of the Light God. There are another 16,000 Solar cultists, as well as 32,000 initiates of Lodril, and another 20,000 initiates of Oria. Another 16,000 follow the River Goddess Oslira, not a friend of the Red Goddess, but kept in check by Lodril.
So again, you can see the common pattern in the Lunar Provinces – a Lunar core, probably originally settlers from the Heartlands, allied with Solar cultists and assisted by the Provincial Army, are able to keep the Orlanthi in check.
Holay is interesting because it has an active cult to one of the Underworld gods normally only placated. That would be Jajagappa, the Hunter of Souls, with some 8000 initiates.
There are plenty of smaller cults than these – but this is a broad-stroke overview of the main cults, and it gives a glimpse into how the province functions.
Thee map shows the region between Furthest (the square with a dot in it on the lower right corner of the map) and Jillaro (the square with the dot in it on the top left side of the map). You can clearly see the Daughter’s Roads, as well as major trade roads. This is the area commonly called Saird in old maps.
Is the older Wesley Quadros map considered at all canonical, or at least roughly correct? I really don’t know as I didn’t work off it or even use it as a reference while making either the Guide or the master maps. I worked directly off Greg’s originals.
If we think about this as ethnographic-linguistic groups, we have three main languages, each with about a third of the population – Tarshite (I suspect Tarshite and Holayan are the same language), New Pelorian, and Dara Happan (I think that Dara Happan has been the language of the Sun Dome Temples of Saird since the late Second Age). Collectively that is some 85-90% of the population.
There are several smaller languages. Imtherite (related to Tarshite) is spoken by a small minority, maybe 5% of the population. Riverspeech is about 4% of the population. And maybe 2% of the population speaks Jajalaring.
New Pelorian and Trade Talk are the lingua francas of the region.
So the whole area is a bunch of very different communities, all held together ceremonially since at least 1458 by the Queen of Filichet, who is the Lunar provincial king, and more coercively since 1586 by the Provincial Overseer in Mirin’s Cross.
So we have Fililchet in the south, which is a ceremonial and religious centre, closely tied to Tarsh, and Mirin’s Cross in roughly the middle, which is a political centre and a New Pelorian-Dara Happan settlement more closely tied to the Lunar Heartlands.
The whole thing reminds me a bit of medieval Transylvania or Poland-Lithuania with several capitals.