Tarim is part of a hereditary aristocracy in a country, Çerda (chair-da) risen from the ashes of a multiethnic trading empire. Rather than simply "falling" as we suppose Rome to have done, this earlier regime gradually lost its status as an economic power and became more structurally sound amid massive cultural changes taking place in a fairly short period. Some of those changes were on imperial orders, others the product of inter-group conflicts across the region which the government and people attempted to solve with compromises.

In that time, the language also changed immensely from a fairly isolating creole with massive variations in dialect (in most cases opposite ends of the country would not have understood each other despite its being a trade language) to a more synthetic spoken and written language with a standardized form and much more mutually intelligible dialects. Although the spoken form of the language changed enormously with the people speaking it over time, its written form has remained virtually the same, making literacy difficult to acquire and mostly restricting it to the political and academic classes. Merchants and trade workers are more likely to understand basic writing and mathematics depending on their need of those skills. However, rural serf and peasant families generally have the worst lot in this area, with very few understanding written language, even those talented with magic.

Magic permeates the world and is as essential to it as air. Unfortunately, it is volatile and unpredictable, often gathering into critical masses of unstable power in random locations across the country. Wandering into one of these can irrevocably warp essential parts of someone's innermost being and cause magical afflictions that range from turning someone into a motif animal at the drop of a hat (sometimes literally) to permanent interference with one's ability to interact with the world around them, sometimes going so far as to totally unbalance the victim's personal reality. Using magic successfully is widely considered the trait that defines humans as separate from and superior to animals; to be in any way under its sway without one's own volition is considered to make a person lesser by default.

Addendum: A lot of political structures and cultural traditions are holdovers from the previous imperial period, including the ruling family holding the title of emperor/empress and the magically enforced system of firstborn inheritance, regardless of gender.