Tala n'Itran
Tala n'Itran, "the Spring of the Stars," is a concealed Folk enclave in the Moroccan interior, built around a spring in the pre-Saharan country south of the High Atlas. It is one of the oldest Folk settlements anywhere outside Iberia, and among the very first the Folk raised after The Rift.
Founding
When the Folk who survived the Rift began to scatter from Castile, the surest road out of the Inquisition's reach ran south, across the strait into Morocco. The first to take it traveled the same smuggling routes the expelled Sephardim and moriscos were using in those same years, and many crossed in their company. A small party pushed on past the ports and caravan roads, deep into the interior, and there found a spring that had no business existing: cold water rising in open desert, under a night sky so clear that the stars seemed to gather in the pool. They warded the place and settled it, taking its name from the Amazigh who had guided them, tala for the spring and itran for the stars.
Governance and knowledge
Tala n'Itran governs itself in the open at The Forum, a roofless three-ring council house where a founding royal house, the settlement's elected officials, and a high council all answer to a community that watches every ruling made. Its memory is kept at Shahzir's Library, founded by the scholar Shahzir to preserve what the first refugees carried out of the Lost Realm before it could be lost a second time.
Today
By 1990, Tala n'Itran is a respected elder among the North African Folk governments under the Concordat of Lyon, consulted on questions of concealment more often than its modest size would suggest. It sends students abroad (a few each generation reach the Nawadzi School for Forgotten Folk across the ocean).