Sel

A sel, sele, or all-room was an institution in Vasarean societies housed in the metonymous large, covered structure, where the whole of a larger co-habiting community came to gather and socialize. Gatherings were not structured events; in most cases participants mingled as they pleased, independently coming to decisions and agreements of consequence within specific interactions. Some facilities stereotypically associated with sels included temples, taverns, markets, and public messengers if not officials.

The sel's functions should be considered as part but also definitive of the society that produced it, which in Pagerian times starting in the 2nd millennium BCE Reign of Lamps was marked by fragmentary division into vish households, and later under the influence of Pastism in the Reign of Trials presumed independent 'primary' social units such as vishes or vish-based guilds to co-exist under Arta. The sel provided a venue for interaction beyond one's primary and identifying culture, but also a way to communicate and cooperate at the level of those units whether for business or politics, and thus was a critical junction of society. It in turn provided for a highly fragmented, polycentric constitution of Vasarean society, where no wider society existed beyond most organizations, or at least in a way to directly govern their actions and character &mdash; only the law of omnipresent Arta as a moral code, and the types of practical deals made under the roof of a sel.

The sel as an independent concept of an institution was weakened from the 1st century CE when the White Order was introduced via the rise of varshtanitan adventurer-military rulers and then the Vasarean Legations, in which the courts of newly emerging types of kings or the dam functioned to coordinate and even command social orders. Nevertheless, kings had existed before as experts or officials of law and custom, and even as the actual sel's own importance declined, a virtual 'sel layer' to politics remained as important. It even reasserted itself during the collapse of Tarsian-led integration in the 5th-century Legate wars and subsequent resurgence of self-sufficient social units, which post-legate rulers functioned as mediators of. Fragmentary estates were still common and significant as late as the 11th century, but after this developments associated with the Stegamenian Order, the Jangearean Missions, and the prelude to the Edifice put an end to it with a renewed unification of orders.