The Definitive Country Almanac: The Line Free Ports — Part 1#

Kethra Almanac • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 18 September 2026 • Sections 1–4 (Sections 5–8 are in Part 2)

Status: approved. Briana approved the whole almanac on 19 September 2026 (the Almanac Approval Decision). Where this file calls something a proposal, read it as approved, except the open points that decision lists.

Status before approval:

• An original grouping from the chapters, not a roster faction. Everything here is a proposal except the following, which is already in the almanac:
  • Merchant republics, each "governed by a council of ship-owners and guild-masters"; Saltline the largest (2.9 million) and the Rovessa's home harbour (Chapter II, Chapter III).
  • The Line Isles: volcanic arcs ringed with reefstone, the best spaceport sites on the planet; 40 million people including about 6 million Rovessa afloat (the spine, Introduction, Chapter I).
  • Free-port status won in the Salt Wars (1180–1242), and the Line made neutral.
  • Entrepôt trade, transshipment, shipbuilding for the Rovessa, finance and insurance; "neutral ground" (Chapter VI).
  • Salt Fever (1422–1431, about 3 million dead); quarantine at the Line ports; the grey pennant (Chapter I).
  • The Line port-note, pegged at par with the crown; Saltline Launch; drop-capsules to the Line spaceports (Chapter VI).
  • The Line style of building; Linecant; signs printed "Selenne / Kethra"; the greeting "Fair tide" (Chapters III and IV).
  • Membership of the Homeworld Assembly (Chapter II); the Armistice of Saltline (AL 2291).
  • In the Who's Who: "neutrality that pays", and the fear of "being forced to choose a side".
• It is built on the spine, the chapters and the other almanacs.

Reading note. The free ports are twelve small republics on twelve island groups along the equator, bound in one league with one seat at the Assembly. They are neutral ground: the place where every other power trades, insures, launches, quarantines and, in 2291, signs its peace. Every place named here is in the interactive Atlas, and the full list is the generated Register of the Line Free Ports.

Section 1: National Overview & Identity#

Official Name & Etymology#

• Formal name: The Free Ports of the Line, in Tide Congress
• Short name: the Line free ports, the free ports, or simply the Line
• Adjective: Line. People: Line-born (Chapter I), or by port: a Saltliner, a Ternsman, a Glasswater woman.

Where the name comes from. The Line is the equator (the spine). The ports stand on it, and they are free because the Treaty of Hollowby that ended the Salt Wars in 1242 left them free of both the Crown and the Imperium. The Tide Congress is named for its old rule: it meets at the double spring tide, when no ship can leave the Saltline lagoon anyway.

What others call them:

Greeting: "Fair tide." Reply: "Fair tide, and a berth." (Chapter IV.)

National Symbols#

Fair Tide, first verse (original lyrics):

Fair tide to the north and fair tide to the south, Salt on the wind and the Line in our mouth; Come in on the flood and go out on the ebb — Every ship's welcome; no ship is ours.

The State Profile#

Chronological Timeline#

Section 2: Geography & Environment#

Physical Geography#

The Twelve Ports#

Topography & Landforms#

• Volcanic cones at the heart of the larger isles, with rainforest of native growth that no one eats.
• Reefstone shallows: "warm, clear, full of life. All of it is inedible to humans" (Introduction).
• Lagoons, above all Saltline's, where the great carriers moor.
• Stilt-towns over the lagoons; white reefstone-lime towns on the slopes.

Climate & Weather#

• Equatorial: hot, wet, the same all year. Heavy rainfall, and cisterns in every town (Introduction).
• Girdle storms: huge, slow tropical cyclones in the late summer of each hemisphere. "They can stall over the Line Isles for days" (Introduction). The Line therefore has two storm seasons, one for each hemisphere.
• The rising sea: about 0.3 m a century and accelerating (the spine). The stilt-towns will cope. The quays, salt pans and lower streets of Saltline will not.

Flora & Fauna#

• Reefstone, the living rock the islands are ringed with. Burned for lime (Chapter III).
• Tidehounds, the native sea hunters; hence "tidehound-proof railings" on the stilt-towns (Chapter III).
• Native rainforest on the high slopes, inedible.
• Earthkin: stocked fish shoals and terraced gardens, and not much else. The ports live on imported grain.

Natural Resources#

Section 3: History & Chronology#

Before the Ports Were Free#

The Line Isles were settled by boat families in the Kindling: salt-makers, fishers and pilots. When the Rovessa Houses arose in the 900s, Saltline's lagoon became their harbour, and the islands became the crossroads of the world. That made them worth owning. By about 1000 the Imperium held the salt islands and taxed every ship; the Crown held the northern approaches and wanted the rest.

Founding & Sovereignty: the Salt Wars#

The Salt Wars (1180–1242) had three sides. The ports rose against the Imperial governors in 1180, the Salt Rising. The Crown fought the Imperium for the islands, and for a while the ports fought beside it. When it became clear the Crown meant to rule them in the Imperium's place, the ports turned on the Crown too. The Rovessa carried for all three.

The Treaty of Hollowby (1242) ended it. The Imperium lost its Line islands (the Vardane almanac); the ports became free; and "neutral carriage was established" (Chapter IV). The same treaty fixed the order of precedence at Crown ceremonies that gave the Lesser Crowns their name. The ports met at Saltline the same year, formed the Tide Congress, and passed the Neutral Law: no port shall keep a ship of war. Owning nothing anyone could fight over was the point.

Modern Era#

Salt Fever (1422–1431) killed about 3 million in the ports, a cholera-like fever from Earth (Chapter I). It made the ports the world's experts in quarantine. The Quarantine Roads off Saltline, where ships flying the grey pennant wait, date from 1432.

Money and law. From the Par of 1702 every port-note has been worth a crown. The ports became the place where contracts between enemies are written, insured and settled.

The Stilt Riots (1903–1904). The stilt-towns rose against the owners' councils over water prices. Every port added an elected Common Hall, which can veto taxes and water prices, to its Council of Owners and Masters.

Space. Saltline Launch opened in 2046 for anyone who pays, and the Tether Yard followed in orbit. Supplies for orbit and the belt go up from the Line spaceports (Chapter VI).

The Corridor War (2279–2291) was fought around the ports: over "Crown-controlled Line sea-corridors" and Pharos Isle, which sits in the middle of the chain (Crown almanac). The ports stayed neutral. At Driftmark in 2286, Imperial frames landed on the reef flats to outflank Pharos, and Crown frames drove them off. Nobody fired on the port, and the port could not have stopped them. After Driftmark, some Line people began to ask whether owning nothing worth fighting over was still enough.

The Armistice of Saltline (2291) was signed in Saltline because it was the only neutral ground left, on the Rovessa's Captains' Table. The Armistice Commission sits in Saltline to carry out its phosphate, fuel and corridor inspections.

Historical Rulers & Leaders#

Portreeves of the Line (complete)#

168 Portreeves of the Line since the first Tide Congress of 1242. The Portreeve of the Line is chosen by the Congress from among the ports' own Portreeves, for five years, and may be re-elected once. Line names are often doubled, joining both parents' families, as Line people are "borrowed from everywhere". (All proposal. Generated from a fixed seed with mixed name pools, so that no single Earth culture owns the Line; see the naming principles.) The current Portreeve is in bold.

Figures every Line child knows#

Section 4: Demographics & Society#

Population Metrics#

Descent, Language and Class#

• Line-born: "mixed ancestry; the most varied population on Kethra", "every people's crossroads" (Chapter I).
• Landspeech and Linecant (Chapter IV). Most Line people speak both, and switch mid-sentence.
• Double names, joining both parents' families: Nilufar Oakes-Tamaru.
• Class is simple and sharp: the owners and masters of the councils; the clerks, pilots and yardmen; and the stilt-town poor. The north calls all of them tidewrack.

Religion & Belief Systems#

Every faith has a chapel or a hall at Saltline, and the Exchange closes for none of them.

Public Health#

• Quarantine "at the Line ports is an old institution" (Chapter I). Ships with sickness aboard fly the grey pennant and wait at the Quarantine Roads.
• Salt Fever is why every port has a water board, and why Line people boil their water whatever the board says.
• Water: "rain cisterns on every roof, plus desalination in the large ports" (Chapter III).
• Heat and storms are the everyday killers.

Education#