Pody

Pody is a small island in the Archipelago, one of only four southern isles—Roke, Ensmer, Pody, and Wathort—where the rare and fierce creature called the otak is found. The otak is a small, sleek animal with broad face, dark brown or brindle fur, and great bright eyes; it has no call or cry or any voice. Its teeth are cruel and its temper fierce, so they are not made pets of. This zoological distinction is the only mention of Pody in the narrative of Ged's early life, and it appears in a context that underscores the creature's rarity and wildness rather than any human settlement or event on the island itself.

The Kargad Empire and Pody

Pody is also named as one of the four great lands that constitute the Kargad Empire, which lies between the Northern and Eastern Reaches. The other three are Karego-At, Atuan, and Hur-at-Hur. The Kargish people are described as a savage, white-skinned, yellow-haired, and fierce race, liking the sight of blood and the smell of burning towns. They speak a tongue not like any spoken in the Archipelago or the other Reaches. In the time of Ged's boyhood, the Kargad Empire was strong, and its raiders attacked the Torikles and Torheven, and later sacked Spevy, looting and laying it waste and taking its people as slaves. They then sailed to Gont in a host of thirty great longships, burning East Port and marching up the Northward Vale, which led to the fog-weaving incident at Ten Alders where Ged first proved his power.

The Kargish Raid on Ten Alders

During the Kargish raid on Gont, the warriors who attacked Ten Alders were armored with bronze helmets and greaves and breastplates of heavy leather and shields of wood and bronze, and armed with swords and the long Kargish lance. They shouted their war-cry, the names of the White Godbrothers of Atuan: "Wuluah! Atwah!" The Kargs were ultimately harried back down to the beaches above East Port, where they found their ships burnt, and fought with their backs to the sea till every man of them was killed, and the sands of Armouth were brown with blood until the tide came in. This event is the most significant interaction between the Kargad Empire and the Archipelago in the book, and Pody, as one of the four Kargad lands, is part of that empire's identity.

The Nameless Isle and the Kargish Castaways

Later in his journey, Ged is shipwrecked on a nameless sandbar isle in the East Reach, where he encounters an old man and an old woman who are castaways. The old woman shows him a little child's dress of silk brocade stiff with seed-pearls, stained with salt, yellow with years. On the small bodice the pearls are worked in a shape Ged knows: the double arrow of the God-Brothers of the Kargad Empire, surmounted by a king's crown. Ged guesses that these two might be children of some royal house of the Kargad Empire, a tyrant or usurper who feared to shed kingly blood had sent them to be cast away on an uncharted islet far from Karego-At. The old woman also gives him a bit of dark metal, a piece of broken jewelry, the half-circle of a broken ring, which Ged later learns is part of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. This encounter links the Kargad Empire, and by extension Pody as one of its constituent lands, to the larger quest for the Ring that Ged undertakes in later years.

Racial and Cultural Depiction

The book's depiction of the Kargish people as white-skinned and fierce, and the Archipelagans as various shades of copper and brown, is a deliberate subversion of the racist tradition in fantasy literature. The author notes that she was bucking the racist tradition, "making a statement"—but she made it quietly, and it went almost unnoticed. The Kargish raiders in the first chapter are white, while Ged is copper-brown and his friend Vetch is black. Serret, who both as girl and woman betrays Ged, is white. This racial coding places Pody, as a Kargad land, within a framework where light-skinned people are associated with the savage, invading empire, while the dark-skinned Archipelagans are the protagonists. The author also notes that the light-skinned people among the Archipelagans have far-northern or Kargish ancestors, indicating a history of contact and mixture between the two groups.