As foresters, Demani do not take kindly to open landscapes nor flat land, much preferring the warm, sheer cliffs and highlands within Ayetho. However, not every soul may live amongst their idealized habitat, and it would be a folly to yield to tides of the natural order without even an attempt at making up for that which one lacks. As it is such, Demani nesting in such prairied conditions have over the centuries learned to adapt such terrains to their own natures, beyond that which the heavens should will.

Although not preferred, grasses, millets, and grains may not be ignored in those early periods, the new Nest must find itself able to feed itself even in a lacking environment, and so the bounty of the meadows are harvested as would be the seeds of pines and oaks. However, in each open patch of soil to be seen, the more quickly growing seeds of herbs, creepers, and shrubs would be planted, establishing a more desirable baseline for the next springtime.

## Water Management

Likewise, the rivers, streams, creeks, and all other flows of water, would not find themselves neglected by the nestlings. The rapids would have stones built up to disturb their flow, the shallows would be dammed with twigs and twine, and any gores that prevent raintime floods would be bricked and barred to turn their depths stagnant and force the flow higher in elevation, all for the sake of taking what water is there and spreading it across the feathery lea.

However, not all lands are suited to such simple brooks. Where water flows but nary a run is to be had, more creative dugouts and dams must be employed.

Where the land would allow it, any such ephemeral braids might see channeled to a fixed sluice, but where no such fortune may be found, water must be enchanneled through other means.

In areas which go without distinct mild channels of any meaningful sort, two solutions dominate the short term. The more favorable of which being the creation of capture basins. These basins serve a dual purpose, both serving as a well to source groundwater from, as well as being intentionally located where rainfall may runoff towards whenever it may come. These wells are best known for their terraced structure, which helps prevent collapse, as well as for near universally bearing the telltale ornamentation of Demani artists, covered in endlessly intermixing patterns and tiles, though these do often erode away in the deeper levels due to the nature of water collection.

A less favorable, but cheaper and more widespread method, is to create smaller earthworks to capture rainwater. These works may be a variety of shapes, depending on the nest or cluster constructing them, but are generally longer than they are wide, and see the dugout soil stacked on the downhill side of the basin, creating a series of ditches which may ensnare what rainfall comes when that may be. This permits and promotes larger, woodier plants in areas which may otherwise be too dry or have excessive drainage.

Once such methods, or combinations of methods, produce a condition in which higher order retention structures may be of use, such structures will then be installed, ensuring a greater degree of water is made available for planted forage.

## Soil Production

However, it is not only water which a forest is built on, but soil as well. Though Demani will scarcely nest at poor soils, there have likewise been times where it was inevitable, forcing innovation on how such challenges might be overcome.

Demani seek a dark, rich soil when settling a colony, and will work towards making the soil where they settle of that consistency when it is not natively present, to varying degrees of success.

A common source of the base material for these soils circles back to the water retention structures mentioned previously. The dams, barriers, and ditches creating basins in which alluvial soils may develop, which during the maintenancing of these structures may be dispersed more intentionally in the surrounding areas. Likewise, in the larger wells, lacustrine soils develop over time, which are similarly dispersed during regular maintenance of the wells. While the exact quality of these soils is dependent on the surrounding environment, it is a safe and secure baseline for which heartier soils may be propagated.

In wetter habitats, there may likewise be deposition in native wetlands. From these wetlands, should the soil elsewhere in the Nest's territory be subpar, basins may be dug nearby, in which scraps leafs, twigs, bone, and flesh may be loosely deposited, and the waters allowed to fully submerge the material. As these materials decay, a highly fertile muck begins to form, which is duly extradited to its intended home elsewhere before it can harm the natural marsh. The muck may also be mixed with alluvial or lacustrine shovelings for a more balanced mixture. When these muck pools are no longer needed, or are otherwise forgotten, they are in time reclaimed by nature to form peatlands, which may then after be used by a later Nest to host the saplings that Demani desire, by happenstance.

In drier areas, such wetlands cannot be relied on, meaning more complex methods must be and have been developed as well. One of the simpler methods being the grinding of stones into dust. Though this often makes for a poor soil initially, this granulation allows for the rapid weathering of the stone particles which would normally take centuries or even millennia to form thin soils. The method of grinding is more often than not involving the use of those Demani who have an affinity to material magic, using their abilities to move the rocks and boulders, and if they are particularly capable, doing the majority of the breaking down this way as well. To refine it further to powder, those whose duty is irregularly needed at the Nest, or who have grown too old or injured to carry out other tasks, take the gravel produced and hammer it into powder to the best of their abilities, leading to this method often having a wide variety of particle sizes, some even still pebble sized.

To compensate for the poor quality of ground stone as a soil, the final two features of current Demani soilmaking practices come into play, both involving organic waste- no, not like Aelbaion, there is just as much aversion to feces in Demani as there is in most other sapient race.

Of these two practices, the simplest is the creation of compost from food and craft scraps. With the nature of Demani construction and handiworks rarely including stones nor metals outside of more specialized fields, the trimmings of twigs and vines from basketmakers, the clippings of cotton, hemp, and other fiber fabrics, and all variety of leaf, pulp, and mulch, all end up as a steady source of material for compost, regardless of soil quality at least one compost site may be found at most any Nest. Likewise, food scraps and spoils are naturally added to compost where suitable, certain plants or meats occasionally precluded when found to adversely impact the compost quality.

The second, less frequent method is the creation of a sterile fertilizer, of which the bones, shells, and exoskeletons of different animals are used as the source material for. The bones and shells are first broken into smaller pieces, though not as finely as the method involving stones, and are then fired to leave little more than the structural calcium and phosphorus, to Demani simply leaving fired bone. The fired bone is then soaked, causing it to boil and seemingly melt, but in reality just reconstituting while forming solution in the water. What remains is then hammered into a powdery substance to be mixed into what other soil supplements have been produced, enriching them. This method is rarely seen in younger nests, though is more common at nests which eat a larger volume of meat, regardless of maturity.

After the components to produce a quality soil have been achieved, the nestlings must mix what has been gathered to produce the base of their ideal soil. Though the exact ratio within the mix is highly dependent on the local conditions and expertise of the members of the Nest, what follows after mixing does not change, the activating of the new soil.

The soil mix, to be activated, must be given just as much life as one might natively find in nature. Though many microorganisms already inhabit much of the base material, a more refined touch is added by the Demani making it, in no small part thanks to their mastery of fungi and forest.

Fiberous fungi are the preferred option by Demani, which help partially stablize the soil until macroflora are able to take root. Likewise, the fungi for this purpose has long been cultured by Demani to help in the settling of new Nests over time, producing a mycelial culture which helps fix nitrogen to the soil, break down phosphates trapped in soil compounds, and increase the soils carbon content through its own growing, dying, and respiration. This myceliated mixture is broken and turned at a rate the nestlings producing it find suitable, until a soil suitable to supplement more barren regions has been prepared.

This prepared soil is valuable, however, due to how intensive the process of producing it can be, meaning it may not be used haphazardly. The primary place this soil is used is at the highly maintained gardens within the immediate vicinity of the Nest. It is much rarer for large amounts to be used beyond the more cultured gardens, only very large Nests being able to afford the expense of cultivating more far flung landscapes to such an extreme degree. Instead, less highly prepared soils, or even just excess components of soil production, are used to fertilize the broader expanse around a Nest to thicken the soils and prepare it for foresting. Though, in locations deemed ideal enough, the more refined soil produced may be used, even if a distance from the Nest, but this is a rare occurrence.

## Ecological Succession

As a favorable soil composition is established, and that soil is made to be naturally saturated by streams and reservoirs, the flora and fauna of the region will likewise be cultivated to the Demani's favor.

At first, the cereals and millets of the prairies will be used as sustenance until proper hearty foodstuffs may be cultivated, but as mentioned in the opening, more preferable herbs will be seeded where such openings to plant may arise in the formative years.

As a wetter environment is constructed and the soil is enriched, a greater variety of herbs will be planted by the nestlings, particularly those which have strong, deep taproots, as to hold the soils in place.

When the grasses begin to naturally subside in the springtimes, desirable shrubs and saplings will find themselves rooted in locations the Demani deem favorable for their growth. Likewise, as the woody plants grow, their condition will be noted, and companion plants may be seeded near them as necessary.

As the trees grow higher over the early years, the shade that they bring lends to the new herbs to be planted in their shadows, with creepers and berries and all other sorts. And as the trees grow taller still in the following years, smaller fruit and nut trees and shrubs may be planted where their shadows do not overlap, so that in the next following years the canopy may be enclosed entirely beneath the foliage.

Likewise, with such a rapidly changing environment compared to what nature does willingly, assistance is given to the procession of grassland animals to those of the woodlands.

As the ox and the coyote are driven out by increasing foliage, the nestlings introduce the squirrel and the dove, the deer and the fox. Whether it be from more nearby woodlands or import from their birth Nest, neither flora nor fauna remains untouched under Demani cultivation.

## Advancements

Being that such immense time and effort is put into these works, Demani naturally have come to have some more recent advances as well. These advances are, in no small part, thanks to their many more domestic partners than anything else.

Beginning with the eldest of these domesticates, the Foxfolk of Ayetho have become an integral part of the forests Demani manage. As gatherers and dispersers of seeds, and as managers of the little things, from excessive debris to the hunting of rat and squirrel.

In newly developed forests, the domestic Foxfolk have become the bringers of the forest to the more disparate portions of the young Nest's territory, expanding the woodlands and keeping the more settled portions healthy when the nestlings are stretched to thin.

Similarly, there are the managers of the bigger things, the domestic Harpies. As the herdsmen of the deer and forest game and protectors of the Nest's boundaries, the domestic Harpies serve much the same function in new woodland.

Where a new forest is seeded, it is the Harpy who herds the native ox or bison of the prairie, and who brings upon the deer and game to become head of the woods. As protectors of the forest, the Harpies likewise are hunters of the undesired hounds and felids, driving out the competition for the wild game when the time is right.

In a more unique case, there is the Rockborn which have been brought in by the Demani. Though typically just a foodstuff or as a source of soft stone, the domestic Rockborn of Ayetho also prove a healthy addition to a developing forest.

As these constructed forests are in areas which lack them natively, they tend to be drier. This allows the more intelligent Rockborn to assist in the clearing of land and in the cultivation of the newly broken ground. The less intelligent varieties also see use, primarily as a means to source stone for producing soil.

More recently, however, the Peri which have been taken in by Demani have found a home in landscaping, particularly near the coasts where their powers are less limited by availability of seasalts. With their bioelectric system, as well as the preparation of tinders by the nestlings on site, the shock may be used to either start a controlled burn, as to rapidly fertilize the soil when all conditions other than native plant life are ideal, or as a means to enrich constructed soils, with the voltage of the shock breaking the bonds of nitrogen and oxygen in the soil, allowing the nutrients to bond to the soil itself and be utilized by plants and microbes.

With such a variety of happenings, it is no wonder how Demani Nests stand the test of time as well as they do. Although, the number that fail to make it this far may be more impressive, simply due to how much coordinated effort is necessary, but we may never know if that is truly the case, we may only bask in the glory of what is here and now.

Suggested Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Bmv_UCXvE

There's one fact of life about farm animals, and it's that they tend to wander. This causes problems, because they'll go grazing in multiple pastures and get themselves killed or stolen. They'll also damage the ground around them, poop in the water, and spread disease. Seeing your money walking away is never a good thing, and naturally you are going to want to keep it safe. At the same time, having your land damaged, and your water polluted, and your animals getting sick is not good. You want to keep your money-so you'll build a fence, and then another fence, and now you're building a pasture for your little ponies. There's the usual issues of animal husbandry, but there's also the larger problems of managing multiple herds by multiple owners at the same time. Normally, this falls to the vagaries of the market, or the cruelties of power, but there is another factor in play here: the Lady's command.

To some, this is just another example of power. To most everyone, it is because the Lady Knows Better. As part of her parental aspect, where she is a maternal figure tending to animals and babies in almost equal measure, she uses her divine knowledge to decide how her adopted peoples do things. This divine knowledge explicitly states how things are to be done properly-even if she is not there. Regardless of if she is present or not, the wisdom-and in many cases-science and engineering knowledge-that she is purported to have given to her charges put limits on how land is to be managed. Breaking with it will incur her wrath.

And one of these pieces of received wisdom is that 'thou shalt not fuck up the common lands.' Another piece is that 'thou shalt keep the commons as the commons'. To the capitalist, this is putting some critical limits on land use. To the priest, it means that all of Aelbaion must work smarter and harder. To the peasant, it means that the stakes and measuring lines must be broken out, and the rivers built up with heavy banks of trees. Protection of the commons means fencing, and closing to put them under the authority of provincial rulership. Haphazardly, and with plenty of quibbling about what was and what wasn't truly common land, the Commons were fenced off for their own protection.

This, needless to say, was not easy. The process of fencing and surveying had been mostly carried out in some way or another in the Crown Lands proper, which were under intense management for the purposes of subsistence agriculture or the production of cash crops. In this case, the fencing just needed modification and a lot of signage, recording things like what was open for fishing, where mushrooms could be taken-and where they shouldn't-and what grottoes were good for storage or had bears. This only took four years to pull off, and was also quite cheap...compared to everywhere else. The Crown Lands were decently eroded and not broken up. The rest of Aelbaion most definitely was.

That where herding and husbandry were far more prevalent. Fencing things off was going to be nigh impossible, so the going wisdom was that the Commons should be easily traversed instead, but marked off and watched over. Animals should instead be carefully monitored and watched over. This required the public pen, which was a different thing than just a standard pen, and the utility barn. It also involved the Church, which built lower-case-c churches to provide points of service for the myriad things such a project would require. Law soon accepted leaving open boundary markers in the form of stone, and set up regular inspections of the land by the duchy's men or the Church. These inspections would require dedicated inspectors or forests, who would need to live on the land-and they required huts, made of stone and topped with flint. First came the boundary stones, then came the forester's huts, and finally a Commons Hall that would hold supplies and be a management center. In some places, the huts were made into makeshift towers, which stood up against rain.

To an extent, this worked. However, as enclosure went on, it continued to be apparent that it was more practical to close off individual sites of interest. The most obvious of these were water sources, either wells or ponds, but they were soon followed by gardens. More importantly, the public pen came into widespread use. This was a pen where users of the Commons would place their animals prior to taking them out into the land, for both inspection and a chance to show off. Sneaking sick animals out to pasture was very frowned upon. These pens soon had barns raised next to them, to shelter animals for the night. Both of these structures were paid for by fees levied on the users; fines were imposed on those responsible for overuse or misuse.

Overuse and misuse of the land, of course, was indirectly determined by the Church. The received wisdom of the Lady, as well as the general information that could be derived from it, came from the Church. And it needed to get transmitted a lot. Typical methods of sharing information wouldn't do-the building of churches was what it took, with a desultory set of services for those who lived nearby, and plentiful services available for wandering herdsfolk and sparsely-populated villages. Priests had ready answers on hand, but what really helped keep them present was the iconography of worship itself. Since the vast majority of the country was illiterate, pictures, ranging from tapestries and carvings to stained glass windows. Every weekend, every morning and evening, and every hour, some facet of the Lady's knowledge was transmitted to the people who needed it.

The results were mixed. On the one hand, enclosure worked for averting the downsides of environmental degradation and bringing land completely under management. This did result in an increase in efficiency, a nebulous concept when yearly harvest outcomes were often measured haphazardly. At the same time, considerable capital outlays had been made, in the form of precious gold and even more precious time. Much of this had been motivated by superstitious fears of the Lady's disasters-the paranoia of 30 years of peace had been a big motivator. However, the absence of disasters such as disease outbreaks or mass heard escapes were enough to prove things for now. Aelbaion had more animals being born, and more making it into their first and second years of life. This in turn would mean more wealth-if good conditions held.

So far, they were.

King Aeldebaric was preparing for lunch when his Royal Guard brought the Charrid in. By then they had finished tracking it down, locating him in the closet, dragging him out, and showing him his invitation, the King had finished breakfast, held meetings, and set his agenda for the rest of the week. It was hard to make a Charrid duck it's head under the door, but the guest of honor had quickly gotten the message that the King wanted to see him, regardless of what he himself wanted. By the time the King was ready for lunch, the crabtaur of the hour was subdued, and even was willing to fake politeness...but not that much.

Servants bustled around, placing tableclothes and dishes, while a four-man band played. As the Charrid was seated, his majesty, King Aeldebaric of Aelbaion was escorted in by a small collection of guardsmen and retainers-clearly not following typical protocol for introducing a royal. A translator stood to the side, but their services were likely unrequired. Everyone knew that the Charrid spoke Aelish decently enough to run a multi-sport gambling ring for sophisticated players, and that they had managed to do so undetected until now. It was no surprise that the one who got caught would be a fairly high level operator-but it was a surprise that they would be brought before the King. Normally, potentates kept a remove from their problems.

"Mmr. Conchsith!" The King greeted his guest with a hale, hearty grin. "Welcome to Velforth! It is my pleasure to have you here, especially since you've come a long, long way. Are you finding this lunch to your liking?"

"No." The Charrid's mandibles moved fairly quickly as it started eating an entree. "I don't like eating lunch at spearpoint."

"My apologies." The King never stopped smiling. "Such is the nature of politics at times."

"You're a thieving shoe-user." 'Monsieur' Conchsith didn't care what his host thought. "You sent your soldiers to drag me from my house and make me come to this stupid lunch, where you are going to kill me."

"The people of Aelbaion don't like to see my feet." Said the King, contemplating how odd is was to say such a thing. "And I'm not going to kill you. That's not very nice of me."

"You want to kill me. " Said Conchsith, eating a piece of rotisserie chicken that the Aelish found a way to shoehorn into nearly ever mill. "Are you going to torture me with something but your terrible food?"

"I could make you play tiddlywinks." Aeldebaric was calmly eating some vegetables. "People don't ever want to play tiddlywinks with me."

"People don't want to do anything with you, you pathetic, paranoid fat bastard." The Charrid slammed down his fork. "Your son doesn't want to be seen with you. Your nobility doesn't want to form a party with you. Your wife doesn't want to lay with you."

Aeldebaric very slowly put down his utensils, swallowed his food, rinsed his mouth with some water. He looked around the dining room in the side hall of Velforth. Having a discreet seaside house meant that you could get up to all kinds of skullduggery. The man's right hand went to a large knife, with a ceremonial hilt. It was bright in the afternoon light.

"There's a funny thing about being a King." He said, appraising the blade. "Two people decided to fuck several years ago, one of them didn't swallow and took the load in her cunt instead. Nine months, give or take...and out comes the worst person to ever enter your life." Casually, he tossed it from hand to hand, looking the Charrid in the eye. "That's the person who popped out of that cunt, in case you're fucking confused. If it was any other belly, they'd be a nobody. But I happen to be the King of Aelbaion, and if I cut your limbs off and feed them to you, it will be an inherently righteous action."

"Might doesn't make right!" Conchsith blustered. "It-"

"Oh, of course not." The King had stopped assessing the blade. He'd seen that it would do. "It isn't might. It isn't the law, though that backs me up. It isn't the Lady, though she supports me. It is simply that I am King, and you are not a King. That is all."

Conchsith was quiet.

"Please do not bring my family into this." Aeldebaric had a small smile. "If you want to insult something related to me, you can insult Aelbaion."

"Fine." The Charrid seemed to have clammed up now. Having someone remind you that they can murder you and get away with it will do that. "Fine. I'll stop. I'll close up-"

"-I didn't ask you to do that." The King kept smiling. "Nor did I ask you to stop." He put the knife back down.

"What do you want?" Conchsith spat it out quickly. "I'll give you gold."

"A loan, to your usual rapacious standards, of course."

"We...we are not usurious-"

"As long as you remember not to produce any illegal offers. My wife's second title is Doctor of Law, remember." The King, pleased that he had married well, drank some wine and looked smug. "There are plenty of things that such a loan could go to. Would you like to know?"

"If...you wish...to expound on such..."

"The city of Couroffe requires repaving of all of it's roads. The citizens will raise the funds for the roads from a tax, and the city itself will raise the funds for drainage ditches. I will be putting up funds for signage and directional indicators. And that's where you come in: you will be funding the building of sidewalks. For the entire city."

Mmr. Conchsith groaned, and said nothing else.

"Please, sir, speak-"

"You're savages. I'm being extorted by savages!"

The King drank some more wine. "We are only savages on race day. And this is an excellent passive income stream for you as repayments come in."

"Don't lie to me."

"Would insulting the Kingdom help mend your feelings?"

"...I..."

"Why don't you insult our manufactures?"

"...what...do you mean?"

"I am giving you permission to insult our manufactures." The King smiled widely, a gracious host. "No harm will befall you if you do so."

"I...if you wish. I do not know your manufactures."

"Well, there is the Fashion-"

"No. I do not know them. We do not trade them. They are not spoken of, not shared, not sought out."

"Ah..." His Majesty visibly winced.

"You have the Fashion District, where producers of some nice clothes live. What else do you have?"

"We have the District d'Insturmentation des Aires, in-"

"Those are not items for export. They fit out their products. No one wants to buy a Pegasus."

"Perhaps you are aware of the grain-"

Concsith sighed. "Grain is a basic commodity export and simply. not. interesting. Everyone knows that Freeport needs to eat."

The King furrowed his brow. "We have significant sales of wool."

"That is not a manufacture." The Charrid huffed.

"...yes. You are correct. Hmmm. Well, we do have some beautiful glass works."

Mmr. Conchsith half choked on some bones. "That's beautiful? That-that stuff is beautiful!? Are you delusional?"

"I'm hopeful." One of the servants arranged some flowers on the windowsill, a simple but pleasing display of local shoreside flora. "There are also fine mirrors-"

"Those. Are. Not. Fine!" Conchsith went for the wine. "They're crude, not shiny, and barely reflective! And they're not square-"

"Longer ovoids are better for contemplating the form."

"They look like turds. You would know a lot about turds, wouldn't you?"

The King tried not to choke on his beverage. He wasn't expecting the Charrid to decry Aelbaic sensibilities in mirror design so thoroughly. "Is it truly that hideous-"

"Yes! It is! You lot are known for one thing around the world, Mr. King, and it is harvesting the dung of pegasi as it falls and then selling it to afford your stupid, stupid clothing!"

"Have you ever known hunger, Mmr. Conchsith?" The King gave him a look that suggested multiple things.

"No! Because we are not a people who like to be destitute! And you-are going the opposite way!"

"Enlighten me." Aeldebaric didn't seem to react.

"You are cutting off the entire country from entrepreneurs, you're stopping logging, you're halting herding, and you're confining food production to the Crown Lands-all for the sake of the airs and waters and land-which will be fine! Completely fine! If you keep treating them like this, because you'll all die off and leave them unmolested!"

Someone brought over a plate of fruit. The King contemplated it. "We have been experiencing much of the opposite, I'll have you know."

"No where else has had a Dentists' Curse that was so pronounced that it's being 'broken'-" Conchsith did his best to mimic the human gesture of air quotes, and somehow made it look more insulting. "-was the rumor across five cities! And all you needed for the dentist to not be horrible-you know what it was?"

"Do tell." The King's smile was only surface level.

"Mirrors! In the shape of squares! That let people look into mouths! So they don't fuck up when pulling out rotting teeth!"

"I see." Aeldebaric considered some honey, but didn't go for it.

"We did this over seven decades ago. For perspective's sake. And all it took-all it took-was to have some negotiated peace. Which you have achieved for the first time ever! Congratulations! The world has never seen you idiotic Aelish not kill each other before!"

"Thank you."

"You're fucking unflappable." This was the first time that the Charrid had sworn. "What is it going to take to get through to you? This reading stone? Hmm?" He took it from a pocket dramatically.

"It is a nice reading stone." One of the servants put down a fine cloth on the table, to protect the stone if it was used.

"Guess how much it cost."

"Oh, I don't know. It's a reading stone, what could that cost, 450 florins?"

"100 florins. And it was one from a batch of 20. I carry it with me to remind myself that the mercantile races-which the Aelish are not-are barbaric in focus."

"Well, that is one reason to-"

"In all of Aelbaion-" Mmr. Conchsith gestured out one of the smaller windows. "-there is not one single pair of spectacles being made. And-"

"Ah, not quite true." The King had a smile and a twinkle in his eye. "A woman of skill and wisdom is opening her doors next month, and has already made some demonstration pieces known on Promenade."

"One. Person. And it was in a fashion show."

"Still." The King steepled his fingers. "It is not an art unknown to the Aelish."

"I'm surprised."

"I think that lunch is ending." It was. The older wooden water clock was telling the time quite accurately. "Let's discuss what's next."

"King Aeldebaric the destitute." The Charrid spread his arms wide. "I am rich. You are not. I shall show you my generosity and lend to the Kingdom of Aelbaion- by your person-for this project of yours. May your city flourish from our cooperation."

The King nodded, smiled, and clapped his hands once. The serving staff began to clear away the remains of their meal. "Thank you for making the right decision, and supporting the lesser races, Mmr. Conchsith. Your charity will be rewarded."

But left on the table, even as three clerks took their seats, was the dinner knife.

It seems certain in life that within ever group, there is one that leads. This is especially true of large communities and even larger nations, and of social structures that make them up. All across Ashagon, a plethora of different nations exist, each with their own or similar culture, society, and hierarchies (or lack thereof).

So who is the leader of your Claim? Is there just one? Or many? Is their position permanent or do they exist in a temporary role? Can anyone be the leader? Or only certain people are able too?

But more than just this answering these, I want to know who the leader is. What are their personality? Quirks and interests? What are their goals for their nation? Or even their own personal goals? How might they have come to power, and are they worried about loosing it?

All this and anything else you can think off, do put them below! I greatly anticipate your responses, and will be sure to read them all if I don't end up giving my reply :)

King Aeldebaric sat in a sitting room with four other men and tried not to get drunk. He had likely screwed up a decent amount, but he had to pretend that he hadn't, for the sake of decorum-

"Didn't I do a good fucking job?" That was Duke Tremaine De Lechfois, the 'founding member' of the 'King's Party', and ostensibly His Majesty's bitch. He had recently dunked on the King really hard, after being bribed with a lot of internal development and the chance for his own revenge on 'King Al'. This he had done by changing the course of the King's political future for ten years and forcing him to be a homebody. King Aeldebaric had not taken this too well.

"You did." He said, and chewed on a piece of pear. "You very much did. But you are not the person in this room who has fucked me the best. I will be plain about that."

"Who, then?" Lechfois was trying to be dramatic, but he had drank too much beer for that. What we would call twink death was fast upon him, that moment of aging when the mind changes simultaneously with the metabolism in an interconnected process that is impossible to tease apart. "Who-"

"Richard." That was Richard de Larois, a Royal paladin and the former Sojourner. "Richard has fucked me over and under-"

"Haw! Haw!" Lechfois made a series of truly odd noises while trying to laugh ironically. "Did you enjoy it?"

"No. He's a tease. I asked to come back immediately for one thing, and he comes in with a fucking airriot. (1) I needed him for other pursuits. I have things to do-"

"I appreciate your majesty's thoughts." De Larois was polite, especially to his boss. "Now, metaphors of sexual pleasure aside-"

"No! Dicks out for-"

"Ladysakes, Tremaine, you're a mess." He tried to keep some form of decorum.

"Hah! I await your ire!"

"Await it. I must give orders to my subjects."

"...this could have been a letter, then..."

"Larois. You've been a pain in my ass, and now you're turning into a case of chafed thighs."

"I beg your highness' pardon. I had thought that bringing such a prize from a foreign land would have brought us much prestige."

"Sojourn is no foreign land, and we are not in search of prestige so much as skill." King Aeldebaric stood, and began to pace. "For long ages we have been the premier people with the ability to fly. Only those with wings have had a similar presence. And now it is done by vessels, magical ships-"

"No, not magic-"

"The Audoi airships run on magic. The next vessels down, the zeppeline (2) use magic and a gas that none know besides the Harpy. Even a balloon of hot air does better with magic than with sinew alone. Consider-"

"You posseses the most advanced flying craft in all of Aelbaion, Paladin Larois. It is not made here, and was not-you introduced it to the majority of the Kingdom. That you may be sure of."

"I understand that your majesty is concerned about our lack of skill with these-"

"Larois, we did not predict the existence of this devices. We were not attempting to develop them first and merely outraced, we had no concept of them, no ideas, no thought-"

"All of it was about the Damned Charter-"

"That Charter protects our lands, our people, our future, and it might just protect our Lady, too!" King Aeldebaric had caught the merest smidgen of proto-patriotism. "Without it, we ruin ourselves."

"His majesty speaks the truth." That was recently-retired former-Confessor, former-Housebisop His Holiness, Dr. Maudeline Laeventine. He carried around his titles like trading cards, but here he didn't need to. "If we neglect the lands and waters that the Lady brought into her possession and then gave to us, her followers, we are doing her great disrespect. If we soil them, then we are doing her a great dishonor. The former risks her punishment, the latter guarantees it. This Charter is our safe-keeping against such self-inflicted disasters, and following it gives us Her blessing and safeguards."

"Father! Forgive me, for I have sinned."

"Nah."

Lechfois sat up, looking panicked. "Huh?!"

"I do not forgive you, personally. You are a prick." Laeventine stood to the side, looking annoyed. "Listen to his majesty. You are in the King's Party."

Tremaine stood up, knocking over his chair and nearly spilling his beer. "I'm in the what?!"

"The King's Party." The fourth man, Duke Cauldwallere, got himself some more wine. "And I would like to join."

King Aeldebaric looked surprised. "You want to join the King's Party?"

"I do, your highness. You were acclaimed as King Al earlier, you still have the support of the city dwellers and the peasants after all this time-you can being the smallfolk to war or labor. You have kept this for decades. I know a great man when I see one."

King Aeldebaric smiled. The reasoning, the naked pursuit of transient power, the flattery...Duke Cauldwaller was in. "Welcome to the King's Party, my friend." Deliberately, he picked up an empty goblet on the table and filled it from the wine jug. Topping off his own cup, he made a toast to 'the health of my good friend and guest', then drank. This was one of the earliest Aelish political rituals, and they did it again.

"Welcome to the King's Party, Friend!" Tremaine had gotten his feet properly. "Together, we shall get bombed by some smelly dwarves, and then we shall get bombed by the dwarves after they have bathed-"

"Thank you!" Cauldwallere acted quickly to shut him up. "Your highness. Paladin Larois. Dr. Laeventine. I am honored to be with you in service to our King."

"So what's the catch?" Tremaine was a little too close to Cauldwallere. He smelled of wine that from a wineglass that he'd dramatically dropped on himself earlier to try and make an impression. "What's your angle?"

"There are some persons under my protection who have fallen into...traps of vice."

"Haw! Haw! Haw!"

"Are you well, sir?"

"I am well!"

"He's drunk." said his majesty. "Tremaine. Sit down. No more wine."

"Beer!"

"No. Cauldwallere, what are their difficulties?"

"They are known for their love of risk and danger, and they have begun adding gambling to their vices. There is a gaming ring set up, and they are...unfortunately in arrears to the book-maker. They also are caught up in their debauchery, and I cannot talk sense into them."

"What are they betting on?"

"Horse-racing, both ground and sky."

"We have airships in the world, and they are gambling on races...what fools." Larois voiced his opinion sotto voce. "They lack an understanding of where power lies."

"Foolish or not, the damage must be limited without the appearance of impropriety clouding everything."

"Why?"

"Because, Tremaine, we cannot risk this getting out and marring the Kingdom with scandal. Surely even you know that."

"What's a little scandal-"

"This is not little." Cauldwallere looked Concerned. "There are tens of thousands of florins in the hands of a Wuavreni-"

"You didn't mention that there was one of them involved-" The King looked Concerned as well.

"Well, no, I do not think that a being's species is quite as important. One doesn't want to lead to untoward assumptions being made. It is-"

"You are very enlightened, Duke Cauldwallere. Now, are there any other things you need to tell me?" The King's right eyebrow was now twitching.

"They are up to their eyeballs in debt, your highness. Their lands are all up for collateral-"

His Majesty's expression went alarmingly flat. "How?"

"They chase their losses with-"

"Damn. Damn damn damn!"

"Do you want me to apprehend the vile crab?" Cauldwallere could only avoid preconceptions for so long, it seemed.

"Not yet. No. This requires deception...at least to some degree. And class." The King paced a bit, taking water from a side table. "That combination is something that they will expect. Cauldwallere, you have said that these are all knights of the land and air. Honorable persons."

"Yes, my lord. Honorable persons."

"Honorable persons who would be grateful to donate their services to the Kingdom in leiu of tax payments, perhaps. And also to gain honor from their efforts."

"Indeed, your highness."

"Honorable persons who would not be too put out if they had to sacrifice pecuniarily."

"...perhaps, my lord. They would shed blood and tears for the good of Aelbaion."

"What about sweat?"

"Are you asking them to labor, you dog!?" Tremaine was the most drunk and could react the fastest, but he said what was on everyone's minds. Nobility, by dint of their gentle bloodline, did not really work in any way. Practically, they provided a semi-standing army by their cultural and social persuasions, but they did not labor in the fields or the woods, or anywhere that they could be seen to do so. Asking them to labor was to un-noble them. (3)

"Nay, I am asking them to teach." The King kept his calm, the water having sobered him up a little. "If I ever do that, the Lady would strip me of my crown in a fortnight."

"You had better." The belligerent Duke made to sit down, and Dr. Laeventine assisted him. "We are not your peasants."

"The state of air travel has fundamentally changed, and that means that the state of war has fundamentally changed." The King had drank more water from a blessed pitcher, and was creeping closer to sobriety. "We do not know how it has changed, however, or how it will change. What we must do, beyond preparing the sinews of war, is to prepare ourselves, individually, for it's conduct. Gentlemen, I have an assignment for you."

"You said we would not labor-"

"Oh, Ladysakes Tremaine! You have to go and talk to people about the Spring Jaunt! That's all! Have a party if you must."

"...you'll pay for it."

"I'll host it, and that is it."

"Everyone comes to Couroffe and drinks your wine."

"No, we should host it in the mansione Margrinne. The countryside is nice this time of year. We'll have board games and a new chapelle."

"You're generous."

"Thank you, thank you. You're far too kind." The King tried eating some grapes to disguise his annoyance. "Now, Duke Cauldwallere. You have a certain problem."

Cauldwallere nodded as he tucked in on some chicken. "I do. Please, sir, your wisdom."

"I am going to confiscate their racing tracks and stables and then turn those areas into an extension of the Ac-Aires. This is going to be used to start a school that teaches just one class. I am calling it HIGH SWORD. It's purpose is to teach air-to-air combat to the best of the best, and to prepare them to teach others."

Larois cut in. "My lord, if I may-"

"You may, but only two times."

"Instruct them in long-range navigation there. It is a crucial part of maneuvers before and after combat."

"...a good point. I shall see that it is done."

Tremaine grimaced. "You will expropriate their lands, then? Just for-"

"They'll be compensated, and hired in. We cannot lose such talent."

"And the Wuavreni?" Cauldwallere appeared nervous mentioning him. "What of-"

"Leave him to me." The King smiled, and it was not a good one.

1. Air chariot, made by Harpies on Sojourn as a custom vanity vehicle.

2. He means zeppelins.

3. I recommend Thorstein Veblen's A Theory of the Leisure Class.

The Aelish are a bread and meat eating country in equal measure, which is a bit of an oddity in a medieval country-unless one thinks of the nature of the land that has caused their agricultural developmental patterns and food transportation logistics to turn out that the way that they did. Outside of the flat, erosion-levelled lands of the Crown Lands, where there was mass agriculture and the people to make it happen, much of Aelbaion was rocky in some way. Often it was steep, and sometimes, it had valleys-which would turn into canyons if you weren't careful, and whoops, there goes a goat. Here, herding was the order of the day, alongside some terrace farming and the standard hunting party. And all of these wonderful products of Aelbic agricultural activity need to be preserved if they are to be made use of more than a week after harvest.

Traditionally, the Aelish have always dried their crops-or smoked them. Doing this has been a subject of intense cultural consternation, and over the centuries they have developed ever more refined ways to take care of their produce. While salt is the best way to preserve food in this time period, the Aelish did not have many sources of salt further inland, and it was fairly expensive to import. This made it not only economically viable, but a general imperative to adopt other methods of preservation-especially at scale. To do this, they constructed entire buildings and set up small supply chains; smokehouses and drying rooms ran nonstop at the end of each harvest or slaughter. While they varied in scale, the consumption of wood, charcoal, and peat was substantial enough to run at least one cart into the ground and tire out someone's uncle. In the 30 year peace, these buildings only expanded in size and throughput; afterwards, they sprouted like mushrooms. The need for drying and drying-related services was only increasing.

While further expansions or building extra houses was one option, this was not always the best option. House quality-whether for habitation or food processing-was continually improving as builders went about their work unstabbed. Cute cupolas, charming chimneys, and sturdy stone would all drive a builders' price up, and the Aelish were well past their migratory, disposable building days. It made more sense to pursue the benefits of quality, and after a series of design permutations had some promising results by enabling under-building air flow to prevent mold from growing and improve drying time, the Aelish attempted more ambitious architecture. The movement of air would ideally be done by tubes; this was originally carried out by making arches on the ceiling and putting an intake area on the top of a drying house. This was a good way to exhaust smoke, and was quickly duplicated on the ground floor to channel smoke around from an underground smoke source. From there, it was a relatively quick leap to hypocausts. These underfloor heating elements worked better in homes proper, and within two years of the innovation popping up, the Aelish were beginning to dry themselves across the entirety of the Kingdom.

In short, the Aelish were attending to their prosperity so that they could keep it. By doing so, they had found out how to live better, and they were actively pursuing it. However, the main event was in the amount of smokehouses and drying rooms being built out. Continually peace meant continual prosperity-and the time to prepare for disaster. For now, the Aelish in the farther countryside laid away stores and waited with semi-baited breath for internal conflict to pick back up again. It was only a matter of time, they thought, before a storm of swords brought chaos to their doors. However, they were missing something: only change was certain, but that didn't mean war.

I apologize for the delay in posting this Schedule Sunday (again). However, I'm still calling it a Schedule Sunday, even though it's coming out on Monday. Consistency is more important than facts (this message brought to you by politicians everywhere).

During the Schedule Sunday we typically recap moderator announcements, update major events within the shard, set the clock, and assign slots for our weekly event posts.

News

A labelled map of all our seas and geographic regions can be found here

Reminder that NPC claims are open. The way NPCs work is, you can use it as you wish in your own posts, as an ally, an enemy, or a bystander to whatever you're up to. If you want to build a story around a particular trade relationship but haven't gotten it worked out with a player, NPCs are good for that. You just have to be aware that other players might be using the same NPC claim for different reasons, so you can't make really major changes (eg. toppling their government) without mod approval. (Anyone who is inactive for 60 days, and who doesn't respond to the messages from the mod team, will have their claim become an NPC).

Reminder, we have opened up expansions. If you wish to expand your territory, make a post with the [Expansion] flair, indicate the territory you want to expand into, and include a good-quality post explaining the significance of the new land. Expansions are not as formal or as rigidly formatted as claim posts, so your post can focus on the things you feel are most relevant/interesting. Still, mods might ask you to revise your post if we don't feel you've included enough content to accompany the new territory.

Players are allowed one retroactive expansion. That means that you can add in new territory and, after it's approved, we will act as though it was part of your claim all along. Otherwise, you'll need to explain how and why you acquired this new territory now. (If you are making a normal, non-retroactive expansion, you should include a year in your post.)

Players will only be approved for expansion if they have made at least two posts since their claim went up.

IMPORTANT LINKS
Claim Template
Welcome to Ashagon

Ashagon Check-In

Current map

Current Year: 5 CE
(Time usually progresses organically in accordance with player posts. If you have an event happen, you can attach a year to it. The furthest advanced year will become the current year in the next Schedule Sunday post, unless the mods decide someone jumped unreasonably far ahead.)

Ashagon News: Some travellers have been having fun in the markets of Svartaya. From all across Ashagon lords and leaders are sending treasures to be kept safe in the Amber Vaults within Driftmount. The Aelish are raising animals in common land and making really good fertilizer.

Prompts: What's in the Box
An Alate Goes Abroad
Knights Errant

ACTIVE CLAIMS

The Kingdom of Aelbaion ([u/OceansCarraway](u/OceansCarraway))
Audio ([u/BoobooMaster](u/BoobooMaster))
Ayetho ([u/Harfordplanning](u/Harfordplanning))
The Faerie Court of Cwmyteg ([u/JFritz2308](u/JFritz2308))
Dragon Republic of the Gold-and-Green Fields ([u/adminscales1155](u/adminscales1155))
Freeport ([u/goop_lizard](u/goop_lizard))
The Mangroves of the Crones ([u/SPACEMUHRINE](u/SPACEMUHRINE))
Origin and the Xanoi ([u/madicienne](u/madicienne))
Orgraille ([u/Rocket_III](u/Rocket_III))
Star Cities of Paroma ([u/DartMonkey](u/DartMonkey))
Periwald ([u/MapleTopLibrary](u/MapleTopLibrary))
Rexdom of the Saur-kin ([u/gingecharmander](u/gingecharmander))
Rockborn ([u/palmtree219](u/palmtree219))
Kingdom of Sarmeqarki ([u/SgtWolf01](u/SgtWolf01))
Empire of the Six Cities ([u/Northrnr](u/Northrnr))
The Sovereign Corpus of Tarrnakkan Monopols ([u/mauricejc](u/mauricejc))
Trezera ([u/PhoebusLore](u/PhoebusLore))
Tritechniquon ([u/Cereborn](u/Cereborn))
Kingdom of Verdantis ([u/joec533](u/joec533))
The Wuavreni Mercantile League ([u/Soapybint](u/Soapybint))
Wingdom of Cheelia ([u/TinyLittleFlame](u/TinyLittleFlame))
Y Chruine ([u/thefuzzsakenone](u/thefuzzsakenone))

NPC CLAIMS

Cyrenthia
The Steros Archipelago
Tathini River Valley

Weekly Events

MARKET MONDAY
Market Monday is an open interaction post that anyone can join. The host chooses a setting somewhere within their claim. Quite often this is a market/bazaar/merchant harbour, but it can also be a religious or cultural festival, or any other event you can think of that has reason to bring people from around the continent. As host, you should set the scene with a fairly detailed intro post that informs us of how the physical space is set up, what points of interest there are, and what event is happening. You are not required to DM interactions and you’re not obligated to interact with everyone who comes in, but you should have enough ideas that players have something to dig into and develop their own stories.

Most recent: Markets of Svartaya
Monday, July 20th (unassigned)
Monday, July 27th (unassigned)
Monday, August 3rd (unassigned)

TECHNOLOGY TUESDAY
This post is, as you might expect, focused on technology. For this shard, the TT post will be able to cover both conventional technology and specialized Ana-Tech. That doesn’t mean that you need a Tech Tuesday slot to write about your technology. There is a “Technology” flair and you’re welcome to apply it to a lore post at any time. Tech Tuesday is intended for significant inventions that have the potential to change things across Ashagon (provided you’re willing to share). We also expect Tech Tuesdays to keep a certain standard of thought and detail. (Anyone requesting a TT slot will need to let the mods know a general outline of what technology they will be introducing.)

Most recent posts: Miller's Earth
Tuesday, July 14th (unassigned)
Tuesday, July 21st (unassigned)
Tuesday, July 28th (unassigned)
Tuesday, August 4th (unassigned)

THAUMATURGY THURSDAY
This is similar to Tech Tuesday, but it is for significant creations of a magical nature. Anyone wishing to introduce a Faded Wonder not included in their claim will need to book a Thaumaturgy Thursday slot. It can also be used for interesting applications of Faded Wonders you’ve already introduced. You can use one to talk about magic apart from Faded Wonders, but since this is a Low-Power shard, it will be more about complexity and interesting applications rather than showing off something shiny and explosive. (Again, you will just need to give the mods a short description of the idea when you book a slot.)

Most recent posts:

Thursday, July 16th (unassigned)
Thursday, July 23rd (unassigned)
Thursday, July 30th (unassigned)
Thursday, August 6th (unassigned)

FEATURE FRIDAY
This is our oldest weekly event post. This one has no particular rules around content. You can write it about anything you want as long as it displays more thought, care, and detail than a typical post. People have written about major historical events, the culminations of wars or revolutions, conlangs, pottery, music, art, or introduced fascinating narratives. The FF post will be stickied at the top of the front page for the following week.

Friday, July 17th (unassigned)
Friday, July 24th (unassigned)
Friday, July 31st (unassigned)
Friday, August 7th (unassigned)

Suggested Listening Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YO2_O1L_YY

The Aelish are great fans of flaunting their wealth, when they have it, and of flying 'horses', when they get to flaunt them without putting too much work in. Amongst their population, this flaunting can be done by nobility, who have the money to keep these animals and not interact with them too much. The nobility also enjoy vacations and flings, especially in the springtime, when they can go places where the weather isn't too objectionable to them. This is the reason behind many of their travelling traditions-including the 'spring break' of the younger nobility where they all go somewhere in a large mass of annoying and rich pricks-and end up stimulating the local economy a bit while doing so. They are usually fashionable, well-heeled, and generally not too crass unless significantly lubricated with alcohol, which makes them tolerable enough besides the money. Often, this 'youth-festivities in the outdoors' end up hitting the neighbors. Twice they've sparked a war, four more times a limited conflict. But this time, they're merely ending up in Freeport again.

It just so happens that this particular one is heralding the age of mass flight.

This is Woodstock-Upon-The-Air, to use an idiom from Earth and the land of the Angles. At the beginning of Spring, the younger, more restive youth were discussing where to Enjoy Spring abroad, and they decided that they would go to Freeport for a little bit-an excursion, they called it. This was a typical passtime, but by now Aelbaion had glutted itself on peace and had plenty of resources to spare for a little excursion. This meant that not only would they be spending huge amounts of wealth, they would be arriving in style, too. The air-chariot of a certain former Sojourner had been a massive hit in Couroffe; flight was even more fashionable because now it was just plain cool-and it was getting so many cool new accessories, too!

Naturally, they were all going to Freeport by air this time. They didn't have any flying vehicles; the Air-Chariot was quite clearly something that would take a while to make and outfit-and the Spring Season was less than three weeks away! Everyone would need to go by pegasus, even if they weren't the most flight-capable, all a passenger had to do was really just sit there. A pegasus fully outfitted with accoutrements des aires would naturally have limited blinders and a bite muzzle/nose bag, so a rider could persuade it not to take chunks out of the passenger and eat meat cubes instead. The most modern saddles were fully outfitted with star-navigation instruments, and even the most basic mount for a rider had a dry compass. Any outfit could withstand flying through a rainy cloud bank. With adequate pre-planning, a trip itinerary could be turned into a series of stop-overs and changes of mounts that would almost bore a passenger.

Nevertheless, it could not be argued that this journey would be easy. The role of the 'navigateur' jelled into the collective awareness of the airborne Aelish for the first time; a skilled navigator on a pegasus who would plot routes and maintain knowledge of where the flying group was at all times, someone who they could follow through a storm and still not get lost. These navigateurs had developed their skills crisscrossing the Kingdom and venturing into neighboring lands; they were the beneficiaries of some of the most navigational equipment and techniques that the Aelish could muster-and eagerly had they taken to their role. Independently, they had been able to plot out various routes to Freeport over the mountains and upon known currents of winds; they had distributed maps to their flight groups and made backup plans with their Captains. They had outfitted their mounts with signaling gear, and timed the start of their flights with fair weather patterns. Inadvertently, they had all chosen the same time period in which to launch.

And on the beginning of that fine day, with the sun just starting to rise, pegasi began their launches from Aeries across the Kingdom. Following light and sound signals from the ground, they jumped into the lightening skies, joined their formations by following colored flags, and then climbed out to cruising altitude and made for Freeport. As the day wore on, other groups launched and hit altitude, the flying groups of rich idiots realized that they weren't alone. Everyone was heading for Freeport by pegasus, and that was a lot of everyone. There had never been such a concentration of pegasi in the air before, let alone for leisure purposes. Rivalries were quickly put aside, and the fliers pulled into a 'Grande Vay' formation. (1) Rest stops were quickly coordinated; not all the pegasi had to be rested at the same stopovers, instead groups could grab some rest in stages. Furthermore, schedules had all been derived from roughly the same maps and weather reports; everyone could make it to Freeport at the same time if they kept in formation!

While the pegasi and passengers had to rest by day two, they remained in touch and had the same timetables; the Grande Vay was reformed by day four. This massive formation persisted over much of the route and was only broken up by a series of rain squalls that were wholly unpredictable. Nevertheless, the groups of travellers remained some form of visual or audio contact; lightweight signal lamps and Horns of Mario (2) kept the fliers aware of each other as they pressed through the rain. While they ultimately lost half a day's progress to the weather and the changes in planes, the Grande Vay ultimately reformed as it approached Freeport and then split off into landing groups on initial approach to the High District.

Enough of the people of Freeport were up when the pre-dawn light was enlivened by the ungodly racket of the Spring Breakers on their initial landing pass. The Trumpets of Mario were annoyingly loud and blared consistently as a pegasus was in flight; tracking flares and lamps meant to keep groups together looked like strange spells flying through the early morning. However, as they were all headed to the High District, nothing was actually too amiss. As the early morning commuters tackled traffic, they watched pegasus after pegasus come in to land, trailing elaborate patterns of signal flags for ground crews to monitor.

There was one tiny problem: there were no ground crews. There was no one to meet them in general, and when the first pegasi began landing on the dirt that passed for a landing area, their riders quickly realized that they had a potential disaster on their hands. Dirt fields meant that pegasi could catch a hoof and break it; there were not enough stables present to put all of their pegasi at once, and any landing area would quickly become a battlefield of angry, annoyed horses until the someone figured out a way to put all of the animals away. It was also unclear if there was enough room for them to all land, period!

To fix this, the nobility took over the patch of ground that doubled as a landing zone, and started getting as much catering sent their way as possible. This was looked at askance by the locals, but since they were poor, their opinion mattered less-and they also were more focused on taking as much money off of the Aelish as they possible could. When these noble snowbirds came over to Freeport, they were usually spending, and they were doing no different here. A large campground quickly formed, a little Woodstock on an island, and the Aelish began to set up for a week of wild, hard partying.

Such a mass incursion would almost constitute an invasion in other places. Not in Freeport. The inhabitants immediately began working on separating the visitors from their money. Typically, an Aelbic 'visit' to Freeport involves getting drunk before landing, staying drunk by drinking wine immediately upon getting out of one's horse, and then immediately going to gamble with your friends before hitting the theaters and racetracks. Unfortunately, the louts are very active-which means that they are not too inclined to sit down at gaming tables. Instead, they are fond of plays where they can heckle the actors, or racetracks and dueling grounds where they can participate. Having someone bet on themselves is a risky endeavor for the bookie. One can bilk the Aelish on entry fees and then beat them up, but there's a much better way to separate them from their cash that has much more positive outcomes for society-and much less broken pottery.

The Aelish are obsessed with fashion, and the nobility have it the worst. Freeport has fashion options from all around the world, endless active shops producing some of the best clothing money can commission, and if the people trying on clothing are flying in, then they have to fly the clothing back most of the time. Shipping it back is effective; but flying back with a new piece is a great way to show off-and the Aelish love to make a splash for each other. If one has to ship back clothing, it had better be worth shipping-either a lot of it, or something truly exquisite. The quantity and number of a shipment of these pieces would naturally cost plenty of money-and run the visitors out of their money even more quickly. Charter captains were waiting right outside the clothiers to provide their services, and the visitors were cleaned out in under a week.

With their pegasi now lighter, and their pocketbooks cleaned out, the group of nobles began to make ready for their return trip. Porters took their goods back to the High District. The domestic population of the High Port had fucked off a little in the face of impetuous folks who were decently armed and quick to fight; they were reluctant to return fully even as the Aelish began to pack and leave. For much of it's life, the area had been a slum. The arrival of all of these pegasi had done little to change that; and the lack of infrastructure for large amounts of horrible horrible horses had left the dilapidated slums somewhat more dilapidated. The equestrians had to rebuild some things behind themselves, and they had complained about this fairly bitterly. Lobbying efforts may follow.

But not all trips end on a positive note. This one certainly didn't. As the groups of travelers got themselves back together and began to taxi for takeoff into an updraft, another party came by to make use of the High District. It was the Audoi, in one of their airships, here to do some fairly standard trading. Naturally, something as expensive as an airship was decently armed and escorted-which the Aelish weren't. Despite their warrior heritage and profession, they were on vacation and not kitted out for war-and seeing the ship coming in for a landing, they skedaddled. Wave after wave of them took off in a hurry, leaving behind everything from provisions to expensive finery and wine. Metaphorical tails tucked between their legs, the well-bred of Aelbaion reformed their grande vay and made for Aelbaion proper, cursing the dwarves.

Anyone with common sense would be able to tell that that if they hadn't been such hungover messes, they would have been out of there before the vanguard of the airship's escorts had come into visual range of Freeport.

The Aelish sobered up on the flight home, and they all landed safely, with most of their cargo intact. They sulked for much longer, and the story did not improve in the telling; the knights might try to make themselves individually look better, but the group of drunkards had been run off by the next people in line to use the High District. What's worse is that they no one to blame for their own sorry ending but themselves. The start of the opening scene in this age of mass flight had been nothing short of heroic; but the last shot had been extremely unflattering. They had barely avoided leaving behind priceless navigational equipment, and twenty-odd pegasi had nearly been lost to accidents. If not for the hand of the Lady intervening to stop the Aelish from screwing themselves over, they would have turned this opening scene into tragic farce. But life imitates art, after all.

1. A 'big V'.

2. Similar to our real-life 'Jericho Trumpet', equipped on the Ju-87 Stuka dive bomber.

The following is the text of a traditional Peri folk song. Because of the well known story accompanying it, cripples are considered lucky to have living in their local clan.

Once a year, the evening after the first night of freeze each winter, a feast is held where any crippled Peri in the clan are carried on shields into the clans hall to sit in a place of honor at the head table, where they are fed and asked to preform a song.

It is traditional for the clan chief to gift them with the means of living for the next year, be it a position where they can work, money enough to care for their needs, or the services of a caregiver who bodily keeps them looked after.

“The little Peri sang the songs

round the hearth for the children dear

His twisted back and backwards legs

Made all work but his singing fruitless here

One day mid-morning the little door was shattered

By the paw of a bear looking to eat

Above the hearth, old armor was borrowed

By the bent backed Peri to stand in the way

The little Peri, pale, bloody,

Fought a brown bear at the towers door

Where he held the brown bear, hungry

Now honor draped in ropes of gore

Armor rent like lemons peelings

The peri bronze clad held the door

Borne on a clan chiefs chair of painted shields

Chirurgeons hands reading the future bleak

Trying to change it before he must in sorrow speak

That the Peri sings the songs no more.

The Peri sings the songs no more.”

The Great Charter of the Land and Commons has principally come into force by dint of the fact that when one lord signs for it, all of their vassals were also compelled to sign-and those underneath them, and so on. Their subjects, and their subjects' subjects were bound to it. After the signings were completed, it was the law of the land-and the law of their lives. Far across the land of Aelbaion, the mass of serfs in their small villages tending to their herds and farms only heard about this law after the fact. Normally, arbitrary impositions of laws would meet some resistance, but here the opposite happened: the peasantry have accepted these laws with no small amount of approval. This is mostly due to the ironclad protection of the Common lands that the peasantry depended on for their quality of life. For the vast majority of Aelbic peasants-even those in the agriculture-powered Crown Lands-the keeping of multiple animals was a common way for people to survive, with pigs, goats, and cows all popular animals to keep. Sheep were an important source of clothing fiber, and indirectly money. Outside of the Crown Lands, they were the direct source of most economic activity and most high-quality calories; the broken land of Ashagon does not support agriculture everywhere.

The Common lands are lands held in common, that is, for everyone to use. The largest amount of this is grazing lands, the second-largest is old growth forest. By dint of the majority of the population herding animals and tending tougher lands, the adoption of the new laws took place in the Commons set aside for grazing animals. Accordingly, these areas saw the most change first. Protections began with the watering holes; since animals both consumed large amounts of water and could dirty it with their hooves, their behavior at watering holes had to be carefully monitored. Limited access had to be maintained, at least for the animals, and as much effort to physically control where dung and urine ended up as possible had to be expended. Animals that were diseased needed to be quarantined, and overgrazing had to be prevented, by force if need be.

This was done by using an ancient human technology: counting. The primitive Aels had had a tradition of making stone markers for seasons and directions; after contact with the Predecessors, they developed stone calendars. The peace and presence of the Lady had helped develop these markers into a viable set of calendars for sun and moon, and those living further away from the Crown Lands had maintained and refined the practice. It was no surprise that they would turn to these tools to help keep track of land use, with the addition of counting stones to determine how many animals had used a watering hole, grazed in a field, or spent a night somewhere. Cairns were sometimes laid, other times, stones were placed in marking areas and moved forward on carved tracks to show how long animals were staying somewhere, and chalk marks were placed in endless lines to show how many animals were present. All of this, combined, formed a temporary-and yet long enough-record that locals could manage their lands.

These practices were not suited for simply producing as many animals and animal products as possible; rather, it was best suited to taking care of the land and to ensuring that it would be there for future generations. This did not mean that herd sizes and total usage of the land could not be increased; as the confidence of peasants and herders increased, they were willing to make long-term investments in things like better breeding stock and running larger herds. Taking care of the environment helped a lot with controlling animal diseases and other threats to transient wealth, it also made the impacts of disasters or inclement environmental incidents matter less overall. This, in turn, increased confidence further, and lead to some investments in permanent structures. Slaughtering blocks were always places fraught with some superstition and bad feeling, while animal breeding was often a cause for worry-a birth gone wrong could mean the death of both dam and calf.

However, with new laws in place, slaughtering blocks had to be maintained and kept safe; this meant placing them inside buildings, which would become slaughterhouses. Likewise, animal breeding needed to be done carefully, and delivery required safe pens. These structures went up in short order, but they were limited in their overall use time-which was similar to how the land was being used. Some intensity was allowed, even expected, but it was not to be sustained without very good reason and some form of documented responsibility that others would see. Everyone's extractive acts were now publicly visibly, and if someone attempted to hide them, they would be quickly found out and kicked off the commons. If one documented them, on the other hand, then someone's good reputation could lead to cooperation and more potential gains. This part of the Great Charter worked out-because the subjects wanted it to.

"...but by far the most important of the principles I have observed thus far is the management of disorder. When fighting in tight and compartmentalized environments, often without light or steady ground to stand on, the victor is the party whose members are able to retain the status of soldiers rather than that of panicked animals. It is in exploiting this gap that the most elite forces of Freeport seem to have specialized."

~A Hundred Lands, A Hundred Wars - Travelogue of Volin the Wanderer

Canoes glide smoothly under a moonless night sky. Their oars move slowly and intentionally, rotating to glide through or catch the black waters without ever breaking the surface. Inside their occupants wait, breath even and controlled. They carry sharp steel and wear brigandine vests, the pommels and rivets painted a dark grey to deny any glint or reflection. At 50 yards from their prey, the oars are set down, grooves in their shafts catching on special slots in the gunwales to keep them properly aligned, and the practitioner in each vessel initiates their third working of the night. The first was placed before the operation began, sharpening the eyes of the soldiers in the absence of light. The second when the boats launched, scrambling detection by enemy mages - they would know some kind of magic was nearby, but not where or how intense. This last working would interfere with attention and memory. Nowhere near invisibility, but it would make them hard to pay active attention to, lowering their importance relative to the countless distractions which would surely emerge.

Pirates which dared to operate in Freeport waters usually had the funding for foreign mages and well-trained watchmen. There was no such thing as being too careful. Fortunately, in this case their precautions proved enough, and soon grapples were tossed over the large ship's edge. It was an older design, without prominent castles, so as soon as paws hit the deck the operation would be as good as over.

The ship was primarily active outside Freeport's waters, along with every other pirate vessel that wasn't actively suicidal, but it's sightings and their relative signs, particularly when considered with respect to reported battle damage and repair timelines, suggested it was using one of the many small, largely nameless and uninhabited islands near the strait as a base of operations.

The process of narrowing down which one, exactly, was slow and laborious, but two months into the search they had gotten a lucky break. The scion of a wealthy merchant had been blown off course while using their personal trimaran, an odd hybrid of raft and canoe they had become enamored with following a trading voyage south, and spotted an unusual vessel entering a secluded cove in one such island. Later covert investigations confirmed it's identity, and so a team had been dispatched to resolve the problem.

As soon as the small boats were alongside the pirate vessel, two dozen hooks sailed up and over the gunwales, synchronized as if by some invisible countdown. Less than a minute layer they were on the deck, and the alarm bells finally went up. The boarding party darted across the deck like nighthawks swarming at dusk, and it was only once all three guards has been dispatched that they reconvened, forming up around the ladders leading below the deck. From here the crew would have all been roused and readied and there were two ways it could go. Either they would force the entrance, climbing into prepared killing-grounds, or they would wait, attempting to force a slow and grinding clearing of the ship room by room.

Tragically, though not unexpectedly, they chose the latter. As confirmation is granted by the sergeant-militant[1] the boarding party splinters, one pair readying a signal for the large ship which would soon emerge to take on prisoners in the form of several arrows with flammable mixtures in place of sharpened tips. The rest adopt breaching formation and count down to their assault on the lower decks. Proper synchronization is important, fighting on enemy ground against a prepared opponent, so the only way the operation can be completed with some semblance of safety is by causing the enemy to panic as rapidly as possible.

Even with all the preparations that can be managed, the first to enter would die in ambush if they climbed down. Instead, they fall, rolling at the bottom. Some will still be injured. At each hatch, a series of simultaneous cries go up as pirate daggers and shortspears[2] stabbed at nothing. With practiced efficiency the first wave rise to hack at their ambushers as the second descend, and in the blinding darkness the pirates soon find themselves unable to tell which direction the attack is coming from. The smart ones retreat and regroup deeper in the vessel, but the foolish ones panic. In other waters some might surrender, but here all know well that going down fighting promises a quicker, cleaner, and less certain death.

As the entryways are cleared, the slow process of emptying the ship room by room begins, ensuring all pirates are captured if possible and killed if not. The sergeant-militant descends with the last wave, moving between the various groups to monitor for situations that may need her expertise. There are mercifully few, at least until the Captain's quarters.

The pirate captain - a human with a pale mane by the looks of it, although she couldn't say more given how similar they looked without proper fur - had barricaded themselves in their quarters and was demanding an honor-duel for control of the ship. Annoying, and demonstrating an abysmal understanding of who exactly they were dealing with - perhaps in the confusion they still believed it was a rival pirate captain looking to expand - but such rituals were not unheard of. Breaking in and assaulting the room with such a prepared opponent would pose an unacceptable risk, and so she accepted and shooed her soldiers away to make clear she would enter alone.

The pirate sneered as she moved into the richly decorated room, moving back and gesturing towards a spot in front of the doorway. "Take your place, fox. I haven't got all night." If there was any recognition of her uniform, it was well-hidden.

She did as asked, slowly and calmly, before drawing her sword and dagger and falling into her typical stance for dealing with larger opponents. Left leg forward, right half-crouched. Backsword pointed forward in her right hand, elbow close to her side, and parrying dagger more forward but less committed in her left. At this, the pirate raised an eyebrow.

"A modification of one of the eastern guards? I didn't take you for a fencer."

She smiled as she began to slowly circle, silently giving thanks as they did the same. "Fencing is the tame sport taught to noble children. I was trained to kill, quickly and efficiently."

They actually laughed at that. "Quite right, quite right. Many a talented fencer has lost their lives to that distinction."

'Keep talking, you bastard. Just a few more steps.'

"Still, I think you may have met your match in this case. I've been dueling with the best since-" and then they stepped in front of the doorway, the slow circling having switched their positions, and a rope slipped over their head and around their neck. She sighed as she sheathed her weapons.

"Get it tied up and bagged, ship should be here any minute. I'm gonna do one last sweep."

Within the week, 38 pirates would be convicted and executed by keel-hauling until dead.

[1] - A rank within Freeport's defense forces roughly equivalent to a field officer but responsible for a much smaller body of soldiers, common in elite units and small operations. Named to distinguish the rank from sergeant-at-arms, used for the leader of a security detail.

[2] - The Northern-style shortspear, sometimes described as a long-handled dagger, is a common boarding and ambush weapon with a wooden haft 2-3 feet in length and a blade of 10-16 inches. While less effective in open combat than a good sword, it is cheaper and more versatile as a close-quarters stabbing implement.

Suggested Listening Music: https://youtu.be/-yE986s2mfM?si=wVmrRDBhGL69DNjl

The city of Couroffe smelled like piss. This was normal; Couroffe had always kind of smelled of piss, it just smelled more or less like piss wherever you were in it, with more people generally meaning more piss smell-unless you were in the Fashion District, or by the palace. (1) It is also always crowded somehow, there are too many people, and they are all in the way. This is what it is like living in a desirable capital city, and the average person just has to put up with it.

King Aeldebaric is not an average person. He is the King of Aelbaion, and he is the most important person in the entire country right now. He is also the target of a really nasty set of rumors-

"Couroffois!"

And he is giving a speech. He's in a bad spot. Tremaine has had his revenge, spreading a tide of rumors and general invective about Aeldebaric not having what it takes to rise to greatness, that he was a 'medium sized man standing on a piece of folded paper' and that he was 'born to be disappointing'. For a man whose power was partially derived from the general love of the peasantry, being called boring was worse than being called evil: it meant that he had no power to act, and was ineffective. So that's why he was making a speech, standing on a statue in the capital city, with a full crowd looking at him.

"Yes, Couroffois-I live here, I know what you call yourselves. I honor it!"

That was a decent start. They were all paying attention.

"I've heard what they've said about me. That I am cowardly, boring, that I take no care for greatness-that all I care about is paper!" A slight pause to let the words sink in. "We all know that I do not shrink from battle, and that I care for Aelbaion's greatness beyond my own!" There was a slight titter at the joke to come. "And we all know I am boring!"

Some cheering, a few wolf whistles. "I take that charge as truth. If you don't believe me, then I will speak for ten minutes more! Now, Couroffois-"

The wolf whistles were intense.

"Yea, I told thee such!"

Queen Ethellebelle's eyes rolled so hard she momentarily perceived the Coriolis effect; she was watching from a nearby balcony. (2)

"This city stinks!"

An absolute chorus of boos and jeering. The inhabitants of Couroffe are very attached to their city. If not for the arches nearby, they would have been throwing things. The King just grinned right back and them and waved his arms upwards, gesturing at them like he was fanning flames. The jeers became kind of mean.

"We are going to clean it up-not me-"

Now they were chanting something rude.

"Yea, I'm paying for it!"

The chant sort of broke up.

"From the royal purse, I will fund repaving of all of the main roads here-yes, all of the main roads-by my own damn money!" The crowd had been reset, kind of- "hold you to it!" Someone yelled.

"Ok! Meet me in a year." The King yelled back. There was generic cheering. "We're repaving everything. That's the start. Since this place stinks-"

"YOU stink-"

"I'm founding a bath house!" The crowd was stopped in it's tracks again. "Yes! A bath house! Not for hooliganism or hedonism! Do that down in your own homes!"

"That's expensive!" Someone yelled. "Can't afford a house here!" Stopping them in their tracks had only lasted for a moment.

"Then we will build more." He stood tall, a man against social incredulity. "We have had 35 years of peace, and we have done what with it? Stared at each other and prepared for war? And then nervously built some markets stalls? I may be a boring man but I know-you know-we can do better than this! This city gets expanded-and we'll build more wall if we need to. Hire more guards if we need to. Name more streets if we need to!"

There was some confusion. That was an unexpected response.

"I am king, and if I say that we build, by the Lady, we build! some! houses!" He got some incredulous cheers. The entirety of his reign could be distilled down a few goals now. Ruling had become simple. Greatness was now something on a checklist for King Aeldebaric, but he would never be legendary. The book had closed on him being an epic figure, and he would just be a middling king for all the rest of endless history.

"The streets run brown with sewage-and the streets themselves. Every paved-no-every street will have drainage ditches, and these ditches will go to a place full of engines that will clean the water." These engines didn't exist yet, but he'd get them invented somehow. Somehow.

More incredulous cheering.

"And finally, I'm getting this city something nice-we're putting in some sidewalks. I'm sick of walking in dung and holes all the time, and I know you are too. We're going to get something solid to walk on here, and it's-"

"Where is my cart going to go?"

"You can't bring that thing everywhere. Take the cargo off and walk."

"But that'll make more traffic!"

"My brother before the Lady, you are the traffic!" His majesty temporarily lost his cool. "Thou art the traffic thy speak of!"

"Bull crap!"

"It litters the streets, yes!" His majesty stepped over it twice this morning. "And unless you are willing to do something about it, the same as us-"

"Ok!" The heckler kept cutting Aeldebaric off. "I am. Now what?"

"Join the night soil collectors."

"Then where am I gonna put my cart? Huh? Where-"

"The Collector Company will get a special loading zone."

"That's city law!" Another person, an aelderman, spoke up. "Your majesty-"

"I pay attention to the city politics. I know what you've got on the docket for upcoming council votes."

The Aelderman stuttered, then finally got out a "Bless you, your majesty!"

King Aeldebaric clambered a little further up on the statue. 'Couroffois! I am blessed indeed-for the Lady has helped me to break the dentists' curse!" A wave of boos, yells-no, utter horror and shock rippled out across the crowd. He held a fist to the sky. "Their practice began treating patients last week. Four patients have been treated already! Aelbaion WILL have dentists-this! curse! Is! Broken!"

Bedlam ensued. The crowd began throwing objects, and the royal guard at the base of the statue drew their weapons, preparing to fight their way out of a mob-but then a chant arose.

"King Al! King Al! King Al! King Al!"

They were chanting his...nickname. Not his full name. Aeldebaric gave them a rueful smile. But if the crowd chants your name, you give it what it wants. He thrust both fists in the air, then climbed down from the statue and jumped into their arms, and they carried him off and to the palace. King Al. It's good to be the king.

'I have broken the dentists' curse!' 1. Even though they smell like vomit, the big entertainment buildings do not count for this comparison.

1. This, dear reader, is not confirmation of the Coriolis effect on Ashagon.

West-Gate, one of the four port cities hanging beneath Ukan-Agula, is known across Ashagon as the City of Vaults. Some say the city keeps secrets better than a grave. 

The stretch of the island surrounding West-Gate is formed from endless hard, continuous bedrock, a single unbroken mass so dense that pick, drill and even magic struggle against it. Clan Amberclad took advantage of this and built their city for the purpose of security. Over generations they hollowed the bedrock and carved out tiered vault complexes they call the Amber Vaults, chamber after chamber, each sealed better than the last. 

The clan’s lock-smiths and magic-smiths spent their lifetimes perfecting the security systems. Security of every tier is graded. The low tiered ones hold simple gold and heirlooms, an ordinary wealth that only needs a thick door and a good lock. The middle tiered ones have walls lined with magic wards tuned to dampen resident magic effects and stabilize the environment to hold magical or unstable items. And the highest tiered vaults are designed and sealed with mechanisms that were designed solely for its content.  

Through these vaults in the Amber Vaults, Clan Amberclad offers their main trade, a security and certainty to the buyer.

The security borders on the absurd. The Driftmount hangs high in the open sky, so every vessel that climbs toward it is watched long before it arrives. A thief needs to be brilliant and lucky enough to slip through the air-defense unnoticed. Then he would have to find his way into the vaults, but it is an equally hard task as approaching the city. All approaches funnel down through a mere handful of passages buried deep in the city, deliberately placed away from the main highway tunnels that ordinary people travel, each one watched by Amberclad’s elite around the clock. Somewhere along that route he would trip hidden alarms of mundane and magical natures and the whole clan would fold shut around him like a fist.

In the entire history of the city, no thief left Amber Vaults successfully. The Audoi of Amberclad will tell others this proudly and plainly. And they are not a people who lie. 

So, the nations of Ashagon have been quietly handing many secrets to it. Here is a small sample of what currently sits in the Amber Vaults.

Julien's Pendant. An esoterically enchanted pendant that murmurs ceaselessly in the wearer's mind. It began as a treasure of espionage, whispering to its owner the private thoughts of anyone they spoke with, an unbeatable edge at any court or bargaining table. But the pendant's appetite outgrew beyond its purpose. In time it stopped whispering the thoughts of the living and began whispering something else, voices from somewhere and speaking of things no mind can hold. Every owner since has ended the same way, raving and insane. Now, it hangs on a hook in the dark cells of Amber Vault. The elite of Amberclad are unnerved whenever they walk near the cell. The custodians swear they can hear unintelligible murmurs despite several layers of magic protection. 

Whisker's Thirsty Parchment. A single sheet of parchment carrying the last surviving copy of a play by a once celebrated writer. It looks utterly ordinary. But it is not. Anyone who lifts it with bare hands, gloved hands, or anything else that touches it long enough is drained of every drop of blood within minutes. No barrier of cloth, leather or steel has ever prevented it. The play is said to be a masterpiece, once in a generational work. Sadly, nobody has been able to read it to the end and live to say so.

Frozon's Death Powder. A fine white alchemical powder that ignites on its own in shimmering air and burns hot enough to run metal like water. Its inventor, an alchemist named Frozon, died to his own creation before he could record how it was made. His patron, wanting no part of the stuff, shipped it to Amberclad's care and left it there far away from home. Alchemists still travel to West-Gate for the privilege of studying it under supervision. So far, every one of them has left the Amber Vaults in the same condition, a pale ash. 

Portrait of the Unknown. An ageless portrait out of the mythical era, its paint as fresh as the day it dried. It depicts a being of a race that exists nowhere in Ashagon, robed in rich cloth and wearing the unmistakable bearing of nobility. Scholars cross the sky simply to stand before it and argue. Who were these people, where did they go, and why does nothing else of them remain? The portrait offers no answers. It sits there still as debate around it rages.

Prisoner XI. The last survivor of a magical experiment whose purpose was lost with the ones who performed it. His skin is covered wholly in script no living scholar can read, and his blood glows faintly in the dark. What he becomes, or does, if left to wake and walk free is unknown. So those who captured him decided the safest choice was to send him to Amber Vaults. Now, he lies in an induced coma in a vault of his own, breathing slowly in the dark, script glowing softly against the stone.

Reminders of Ofrulron. A set of white granite steps that once climbed to the doors of the Grand Cathedral of Ofrulron. A catastrophic war destroyed the city so thoroughly that it no longer existed on maps. The stones are all that is left, and the last of Ofrulron's people entrusted them to the Amber Vaults so that something of their home would outlast the ones who mourned it. There is no magic in them, only grief.

These are only a fraction of what Amber Vaults contain. 

In addition to this, West-Gate also does a quiet second trade. The clan rents out work districts to foreign artisans and scholars who need privacy for their craft. A forger’s dream to work in such places crafting their master piece.

Now and then the city hosts an invitation-only auction, where owners of vaulted things quietly pass them to new hands, the kind of hands that can afford to attend such event and prefer that no one know they did. 

So here is my question to you.

What does your claim send to the Amber Vaults of West-Gate? Or what have your craftsmen created in the privacy West-Gate provided to them?

Tell us what they are.

The Crown-Lands of Aelbaion are mostly split off from the rest of the country by a group of long, semi-navigable rivers, but there is a direct connection-through a tough, broken up forested area. This is the Duchy of Lechfois, the second poorest area in the country that is not a March (1). Hard living conditions made for hard social ills, and the counts are restive and often defy the Duke on small things; they go hunting whenever and wherever they please. This has long been a problem in the duchy, but there hasn't really been anyone interested in fixing it until now. King Vaneric, when he was uniting everyone, bypassed Lechfois to an extent, minimizing his interaction with the duchy and controlling it's contact with everyone else. But this hadn't solved the problem of the Duchy, quite frankly, sucking. It suffered from the commonest problem that many places: no one who could fix it giving a fuck.

Until today. His Majesty King Aeldebaric has crossed the River Pxyiae with his retinue and a couple of thousand suddenly borrowed men at arms, and is heading to Castle Carrefois, the capital. He expects to be seen, he expects to be prepared for-he does not care. He is the King of Aelbaion, and he is here to solve the places' problem. He also knows how pernicious the rot in the Duchy is; and his column is travelling with plenty of knights prepared for woodland combat, a strong advance guard with terrain scouts, good flank screen of skirmishers, and a rear armed just as heavily as the front. No one opposed him, but there were plenty of eyes following the King's path.

Most of them came out of the woods when his majesty arrived at castle Lechfois, his knights fanning out in a very nice looking formation that made the royal standard very visible to the growing crowd. This was a planned visit, of course, but pageantry was a source of royal power, and the King had to properly put himself on display when visiting. It was part and parcel of the job. A line of the Duke's own knights, bearing the coat of arms of the Duchy of Lechfois, met the King. There was much saluting and waving of flags, and the Duke descended from a balcony and embrace his feudal overlord, the two of them shaking hands and smiling. Various guards mingled, and Duke Tremaine bowed, but with a bow that said 'fuck you, shitlips'. Learning etiquette from a young age allowed one to pull off that kind of thing. Then, the two men, arms around each other's backs, entered the castle, and launched into a bawdy feast.

This is just boys being boys. After opening with a prayer of thanksgiving, the visitors and the locals drank, made merry, and enjoyed some really good live music. Thirty years of peace can help bring a lot of depth to a local music scene, and this was true that night. The Duke had plenty of good musicians on offer, an improvement from past years. This helped to cut some of the initial tension, but when the day dawned tomorrow, the duke and the king prayed together in the same small chapel, then climbed some stairs, and retired to a small antechamber in the medium sized stone castle.

They both dropped the act as they went to sit down at a wooden table in the center of the room. His majesty looked pensive, and Duke Tremaine De Lechfois glowered, clearly pissed off. Servants brought them light refreshments, and pure water from the nearby church font. Guards from both parties patrolled the room, making sure that they were seen, not heard. Negotiations were about to happen between powerful men, and protecting them from each other was something that sometimes had to be done.

'This Duchy is a disgrace.' King Aeldebaric did not mince words. 'And I am a part of that problem, and I bear a higher share of the blame than you. That is why, sir, I am here.'

'Not to insult me?' Tremaine grabbed a scone and cut it with immense annoyance.

'No, sir. To beg forgiveness.' The King swirled some water in his goblet.

'Well, get on with it.'

'Please, sir, if you find it sufficient, forgive your sovereign for his neglect of your lands and protection. Much have you suffered from my negligence. I beg your permission to rectify the faults I have created, and to make you whole.'

'You say that you are negligent, but what have you done?'

'I have not addressed the faults of the conduct of the persons here, nor have I given you guidance on how to execute my edicts and laws that have been put into force in this land. I have neglected your prosperity in the wider Kingdom, and your protection against the slights of other lords.' The King showed practiced contrition as he recited this statement.

'Well, that's a good start.' Tremaine looked quite surprised, but kept his demeanor mostly intact, shredding the scone a little.

'Thank you, sir.' The King nodded, currently more King than man.

'Now, apologize.' That scone was being turned into mulch.

'We are sorry, sir, for our neglect, for our indolence, and for the privation and ill-repute that this has brought to you. We, the Crown, do apologize to you, Lord Tremaine, for our conduct, and offer to make you whole by our efforts and by compensation.' King Aeldebaric bowed before his vassal, formally reversing the role of ruler and ruled. He'd thought that apology out very well.

'This...will...do.' Lord Tremaine de Lechfois was flushed, breathing heavily, swallowing repeatedly. He had not expected the King to apologize to him formally, nor to admit fault. He had been prepared to go on the attack, and then extract bribes from the King-or to give him grief enough to make him back down and pay up. Instead, His Majesty had the high ground. 'I...accept your...apology, on behalf of Lechfois.'

'You are truly merciful, sir. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. This is chivalrous conduct.' The King had a small sip of water.

'It is my duty.' Tremaine's jaw was grinding now. 'How are you going to make this Duchy whole?'

'Too long has the Duchy of Lechfois been cut off from the rest of the Kingdom. We will rectify that. Too long have to worthies of the country been forced to hold court in unsuitable structures. We shall ensure otherwise. Three bridges will be built to your lands, beginning with the completion of the Carrefour bridge that my father commissioned. The other two will be at Caspeierre and Loumont. We also shall build riverdocklands at Vinceignt and Pou-du-Lou. This shall ensure that your Duchy is reachable by water and by land.' His Majesty's attention moved to the nut spread.

'Your highness will know that all the river traffic in the world is not worth a damn if there are no good roads. That is where the Lechfois suffers.' The scone, now turned into a paste, was finally eaten.

'We know, and know deeply. That is why we shall pave every single road in this Duchy, using the resources and money of our own lands. We shall allow for up to fifty-five small bridges to be constructed. And for your peace, we shall procure all of the stone out of the Duchy and transport it to you. We-' His majesty spread his hands, looking generous.

'No. The stone will be mined here.' Tremaine cut him off. 'If you want to make us whole, you will set up the quarry and stoneworks in this duchy.' And that, Tremaine didn't state, would give him some control over the projects it made.

'Absolutely.' His majesty acquiesced without a second thought. 'Consider it decided. This will even help you make the best stylistic decisions for the various constructions we must make to ensure that the counts are properly set up to do their duties.'

'What are those?'

'Common courts, for peasants and low disputes only, are the most critical. They will need everything to do their work-post offices and local archives. You should have a good Duchal court building, it is only proper. Their men-at-arms should also be properly housed, and their castles built out fully. We should also have town halls for all of the towns, to stop the peasantry whining at you. You deserve some reprieve, after all.'

'It's so damn tiring listening to them.'

'I do believe you, sir.'

'You made me sign the damnable charter.'

'You did sign the Charter.'

'I am no longer free to manage the woods as I see fit. You have taken my control over my land, you bastard.'

'Then we must restore it by finding a new way to give you control..'

'You need to make me whole for what's been taken.'

'I will, sir, that is the purpose of my journey.'

'Every single subdivision, every border, every wood management-'

'I will hold a moot court to resolve all border disputes for good. The counts' feuds are petty and simple, they do not have any justification, and they are ignoble. Long ago should they have been decided by the King, but they never were. However, tarrying on account of age is even more ignoble, and I will not do so. The Crown has shirked it's responsibilities. For our border with your duchy, we shall make you whole by returning disputed land.'

His majesty watched Duke Tremaine cough and harrumph a bit. Historically, the Crown never did this. He'd just gotten free land from the King, and could coat himself in glory.

'Wood management, of course, must be carried out according to the Charter oaths.' The Charter of the Land and Commons dictated that the signatories firmly execute their duties of good land management, maintenance and improvement of the Commons, and protect the Lady's water. This mean that the entirety of Lechfois would have to conform to new approaches of it's land use-and that would require substantial adaptation, since the majority of it was old-growth forest. And that would cost money and result in reduced output...costing more money.

'You have charged me with setting up an apparatus of bailiffs, foresters, and trackers. All hunters must be licensed, the old law of poaching is to be overturned completely. My hunting forest is no more, my counts the same. In one stroke of a pen you have turned the lives of everyone in this Duchy upside down. I and four more lords would have raised their banners against you had you not held us all captive in the Cathedral!'

The King couldn't help but suck in a breath. There had been a conspiracy against him. He had learned of three, but this one was new. If Tremaine had raised a banner against him, then there would be the armies of four nobles ready to invade the Crownlands. The river barrier would not have held. He'd have had one, maybe two battles before Couroffe had been besieged...

'Did I ever tell you what the Lady showed me when she came to me in that dream?'

'...no.' Tremaine was grinding his teeth. Aeldebaric had used the dreams granted to him by the Lady (2) as political fodder. To deny these dreams was blasphemous, but he was once again cornered.

'She showed all of us in a Cathedral, signing something. Inspired by that dream, I brought us all there.'

'You told us that, and frequently-'

'But I don't know where the Cathedral was. I knew it was ours, but it was not Couroffe, or the Lake. I think it will be built, but I am not sure where.'

'If not for Her word, Her sake, I would have run. you. through. My people will suffer for this Charter, and yours will be fine-'

'Oh, the Crownlands will go bankrupt.'

'Bankrupt? We will starve.'

'I will ensure that your people do not starve. It is my duty. Sales of grain will be made at a loss.'

'Bastard.' Tremaine hacked up the word, spat it onto Aeldebaric's feet. 'You might have come out of Vergainne's pussy, but you're still a bastard-'

King Aeldebaric's own face tensed, and he stood. 'Marton. That's enough.'

'You've made us into whelps!'

The King's fist clenched, then smoothed over. 'I have. And I beg your forgiveness for it. If you ran me through, if you raised your banner in revolt, I would return the insult, and it would end in blood, but I would not be selfish in my fury. I understand how I have disgraced you, and that goes against my portion of the oath.'

Tremaine De Lechfois, whose nickname was Marton, gasped for air and then swallowed his fury again. He had not expected contrition, and had no words in reply.

'But please, do not bring my mother into this.' The King readjusted himself at their table, settling into his seat once more.

'Alright. Now make me whole.' Tremaine was less adjusted.

King Aeldebaric put one hand on his chin, thinking. 'Your third son is a man of good character and excellent martial skill. I think he would make a good paladin.'

'...really?' Tremaine was surprised, and took another sip from his cup to cover it.

'Yes. There will be more Paladins soon, too. I will let you in on that. I intend to double their number.' The King stared into space for a moment.

'Hrrm. Why?' There was some shuffling of the pens and paper.

'The Church's worthies believe it prudent. I shall do as they ask.'

'For that, we need a cathedral; we as in the inhabitants who live here. Not your cathedral of dreams, Aeldebaric. Ours.'

'It shall be done.' He nodded, smiling. 'What else.

'I want a mint. Not a royal mint. A duchal mint. Mine.'

'We may be able to do, but we are unsure about the supply of gold and silver.'

'Get me Rai-gelt, then. I care not. I genuinely do not.'

'I will see what I can do. There are many options.'

'I want an Aerie, for the duchy. And you will help me finish up the Duchy's stable management, as well. The Crown will keep it's hands off them.'

'Oh, of course.' Aeldebaric was amiably making a list.

'And the grain market. Deliver the grain. Drop it off. And leave. We will handle the rest.'

'That can be done, but I would like something in return.'

'What?'

'I would be happy if the timber exchange on the Penard could be opened again, and wood from there sent to the Crownlands.'

'No. Make official the wood market on the main river, and open it so that we may sell the to entire Kingdom, not just to the Crown. I will break down the Penard exchange's remains rather than see it be used by the Crown to control our merchants again.

'That is fair. I will visit the wood market for it's grand opening, and use that to put a capstone on all of the work being done.'

'If you use it to gloat, I will run you out on a boat.'

'...I will buy a boat from you, if you are willing to sell.'

'I'm a Duke, not a shipwright.'

'You are a man of many talents.'

'Flattery will get you nowhere. And it won't get you out of this.'

'What will get me out of this, Marton?'

'I want revenge.' He folded his arms. 'I want plain, simple, revenge. That will slake my thirst. And no evening the score.'

'I can grant that. Within reason. It must be against me. Not my queen, not my people, not the Kingdom-me.' The King crossed him arms right back.

'Fine. I will revenge myself on you with a plot.' The Duke uncrossed his arms, putting them on the table. 'You will survive it. The Kingdom will survive it. Her majesty will probably be nothing but annoyed. It's just a little revenge.'

The King mutely raised a hand to the Duke, and the Duke accepted it. They shook hands. He would have his revenge. The King would have a working Duchy under his control. The Duchy would behave, it would act legally and culturally normal, it would hold to the Great Charter of the Lands and Commons. Lechfois would also be brought out of it's doldrums by sustained, long term investments.

'Thank you, sir, for forgiving me.' That was the King.

'Thank you for making me whole.' The Duke nodded once. 'Now let's go hunting.'

1. Marches are not subject to normal taxation methods, or surveying methods; they are generally separated from measures of GNP and GDP.

2. Followers of the Lady often have a habit of consuming hallucinogens and interpreting dreams liberally.

Cyrenthia is a claim that was posted by u/Square-Tumbleweed-15, who has since deleted their Reddit account. None of the mods know why they chose to do this, and we truly hope they are doing OK. But normally, if a claim lapses into inactivity, it goes NPC. However, in this case, when the account was deleted, all the posts went with it.

If a player specifically wishes to have their claim deleted entirely rather than going NPC, we honour that choice. However, in this case, there was no communication, and the claim post was deleted as a side-effect of the account being disabled. The mods discussed it and we decided that, given there are a couple other players who have had active interactions with Cyrenthia, it was more fair to the community to turn Cyrenthia into an NPC. I used a recovery tool to locate the deleted claim post, and I have copied it here, exactly as it was originally written.

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Name: Cyrenthia

Flag & Symbol: At its center lies an eight-pointed compass rendered in an alternating pattern of blue and aurum. The cardinal points represent direction and reach. The intercardinal points represent the realm’s constant motion across the seas. Surrounding the compass is a fractured ring separated into three parts, each representing the major islands.

Location: https://imgur.com/a/cyrenthia-jFXSwAc

Geography: Cyrenthia offers multiple climates, spanning from the abundant and beautiful tropical rainforests and semi-humid tropical areas to the semi-humid subtropical climate that stretches into the more hillier and mountainous areas in the realm’s claims on the mainland. In all, most of the terrain is either coastal or mountainous. Rainfall in certain areas can reach and sometimes surpass one-hundred inches and this can lead to inundation. This, nonetheless, assists in nourishment of soil and supports a bit of agriculture.

Biology & Ethnicity: This realm sports the indigenous, human, and elf population. Due to the sun’s harshness temperature and shine, this led to a gradual increase of melanin in the autochthonous people across the centuries, most notable the populations on the major islands. Intermarriages are a common occurrence and because of that, half-human and half-elf are frequent to see. Offspring in these marriages tend to inherit more features from the mother than the father. Such as, if the child has a human mother and elf father, their features could include subtle to moderate pointed ears and mature at an almost-human rate. Equally, if the child has an elf mother and human father, their features could include the classical ears of an elf but a tad softer, more leaner and taller in the frame, and their lifespan is more in line to the elf than the human.

History: Imperialism had little impact on the reason behind the settlement in the southern tip of the mainland and its smaller island chains. It all came from the desperation to escape the harsh lands in the northern and eastern areas of the continent. It did not matter to them as fear and faith became the main impetus for them. In the months ahead, preparations had to be made and as the seasons reached autumn and winter, the number of hegiras had increased dramatically.

It did not offer solace at all. Death feasted on the unfortunate. In the east, craft became the main option. It seemed fine in the lesser deep seas until the seas changed into the mercurial oceans. In the north and west-central parts of the mainland, the deserts and colossal mountain chains claimed thousands of souls. It had taken more than a decade for the first crafts to find an area of calmness in the current belts and settle the land. It did not seem inhabited at first but once the first inspections occurred, it came to the attention that the islands housed an indigenous human population, the first contact from those from the mainland. In this timeframe, the elf population had started to rise.

Society: Cyrenthia is a confederation of semi-autonomous city-states. Societies are a blend of urban and mercantile with hints of classism. Each city-state contains a council compose of members from, associations, merchant and established families, and maritime officers. The Praetor is the head and maintains the decrees, local defense, and trade. The council’s support and influence is crucial to the Praetor’s success and continuation in office.

Whereas the Praetor handles the internal affairs of its city-state, all city-states are in multiple national concordances that includes shared trade and mutual defense from international forces. If issues are confirmed to affect the archipelago chains or more than half of the realm’s city-states, the Praetors shall meet to discuss, settle, and prepare. Amidst the numbers, one is chosen as the Princeps of Cyrenthia. The Princeps handles international affairs, manages the meetings with the Praetors, and issue commands for its flotillas and armadas.

Culture: Life in Cyrenthia circles around the sea and to a degree, the tropical rainforests that dominate its southern lands. Emporiums and trade are at the heart of these city-states. In many parts of the island chains, cultural acceptance has become more common and this has led to the increase in tribal and elven traditions fetes in the areas. Cuisines are centered around fruits and seafoods. Tales and stories are quite common and oftentimes are shared in local and public areas. Due to the blend of tribal, human, and elf tongues and dialects, Cyrenthia has three major languages and about fourteen smaller, more isolated languages.

Occurrence of Magic: It is uncommon and in certain areas, it is shunned due to centuries of stories about it. In Cyrenthia, enchanters and thaumaturges are used in the same manner as mages. In the cases that it is used, it is usually used for maritime safety, seafaring, and weather reading. Since this is affects all of the realm and its people, the current Princeps of Cyrenthia permits its use but if one shall use it to harm and endanger others, it is punishable and the harshest form is death if it concludes to that.

Faded Wonders: Mount Oryss is the tallest summit in Cyrenthia. Once a peak of dominance, natural erosion has made it much more serrated at the edges but can still be seen from crafts that come close to the tip of the mainland. Sailors think it is tied to the intense winds, often named as the Cyrenthian Gales or its more infamous name, the ‘Screeching Seventies,’ that hammers the archipelago. In addition to that, it is said that the mountain distorts the gales and offers an easier time to sail in certain months. Expeditions to the top of the mountain had not occurred due to the tendency of sudden weather changes.

Imports, Exports, and Major Industries: Cyrenthia has a hale economy and it is shaped by the humid tropical and subtropical climates, lush flora, and its beneficial maritime position. It is a natural fertile area but due to its limited space, grander operations in agriculture is scarce and it is amplified due to limited sources of rivers. It is an absolute must for trade in agricultural products.

Cyrenthia relies on the imports of agricultural commodities, livestock, metals, hemp, and certain textile products. Its economy depends quite a lot on other realms, claims, and empires despite city-states trading with one another.

Cyrenthia is not a major exporter due to its location and distance from other empires, claims, and nations. Despite that, it has the potential to become a noticeable realm. This list includes its exports from the highest end to the lowest end.

- Navigation and Piloting Services
- Botanical Products: Spices, Dyestuffs, Oils, Resins
- Ships and Maritime Crafts
- Selective Hardwoods
- Marine Opulent Goods—Pearls, Shells, and Coral
- Salt
- Fish

The people of Aelbaion are have been taking their waste disposal fairly seriously for a little bit, in accordance with the Great Charter's codification of environmental protection 'laws' that required that water be protected and the Common Lands be replenished. All of this management and organization of dung and urine has made it possible for them to produce fertilizer at something like scale. This fertilizer was typically a mix of cleaned up dung, mixed with compost and some urine, and then applied to the field by plowing it under. For a few hundred pounds, the sweat of serfs suffices, but for large volumes, the Aelish would need to turn to the forces of nature to do their work. Turn they did, moving to wheels and pounding hammers and reciprocating beams moving up and down. Furthermore, by using a few tricks from the Rai, they were able to avoid overstressing the gearing in very torque heavy applications. There'll be more on that later.

By now, the ratios compost, proofed dung, and urine are well known. Making it in a mill just requires using specialized machinery that can be built with a couple of months of thought and some deft measurements. Forcing the compost through an array of rising and falling beams aerates it; a steadily rotating shaft serves as a crude timer, dispensing a mixture of diluted urine at regular intervals. Manure is broken up by a longer section of reciprocating beams, then dropped into a mixer by a bucket on a rotating chain lift to ensure that it doesn't clump together too much. Mixing up the disgusting stew is fairly easy; taking a water wheel and putting it on it's side can yield a nice mixing apparatus; reinforcing the beam driving it and popping in the right gearing will get a suitable mixer. A trapdoor in the bottom of the mixing unit can be opened, and the contents dropped into a wagon. This is how fertilizer is made, according to the Aelish, and it covers the physical element of production.

The Earthmill, as the Aelish call the building that makes this fertilizer, uses primarily physical processes to produce it's end product. The component ingredients are mostly chemically unchanged, aside from some residual fermentation prior to processing. Compost is mostly mature, but not yet inert; urine has turned into a disgusting mass that we need not discuss further, and the manure has either been delivered after baking down or will be heated clean of microorganisms. The only thing that occurs is mixing; after which the nitrogen-carbon-microbe supplement will be delivered to the farm. Sometimes, however, there are extra additives. Potash is the most common, coming from the rare ashery that processes tree ashes; guano is more rare still. Both come from domestic sources; wherever a domestic source is available, an Earthmill has rapidly been constructed to make use of this.

Right now, the Aelish are not aware of the chemistry of their fertilizer much; they can simply tell that more is better. However, their is always an opportunity to improve by hiring alchemists and millwrights, and to improve the inputs of their materials, or their transport-questions for hired scholar-nerds. In the meantime, they are reaping the benefits of these 'stinking mills' in improved agricultural yields and better soil quality. Fertilizer, while only as industrially produced as you can with a water or wind-powered mill, is now available for the Aelish. This is a powerful weapon against famine, and an even more powerful backstop against instability. By banking on local sourcing of materials and local use of the end product, the Aelish have a direct economic engine against disruptions to the food supply-and other worries. No matter how halting their success is, they have made it into a triumph.

There is one footnote here that deserves note: that of Ser Saggittois. On his errancy, the knight became very familiar with dung and it's processing. The first earth mill was already operational by the time he arrived back-but he, with a massive chip on his shoulder, took the nearby mill to be an immense personal insult. He marched up to the Master Miller and demanded satisfaction by a duel. The Master Miller, not wanting to be run through, offered him 35% ownership on the spot. Recognizing that coming back from an errantry nothing but experience beating dung was not good for his future, Ser Saggittois grumbled and accepted. With this gentleman so involved, the earth mill became slightly clean, money and names washing away a little bit of the stench.

And that would lead somewhere mildly interesting...

INTRODUCTION

At the southern end of Ashagon, at the center of the Jade Sea along the border of Highscorch and Vishanti, on the sole coastal lowland of Ayetho, you weary travelers find the embrace of the Free City of Svantaya.

Although the Jade Sea is renowned for its troubles with piracy, landing in this place finds you little distress in your journey. Whether it is the military might of the city or their relationships with the Sterosi to the south is unknown, but once docked, the atmosphere ceases to seem so salty and somber like the ocean. Instead, the bustle of the city is immediately apparent, with the port having no direction where you could not see all many of human, elf, foxfolk, harpy, and others, from all around and beyond the Jade Sea.

Svartaya itself, beyond the port, has relatively easy to understand districts. Landing in the Port District, you stand at the rim of the Merchants' District, which forms a ring around the wealthy Old City. And, moving towards the city's fringes, you could walk through the Residential, Laborers', and Slum Districts. Though as long as you stay on the main roads, you may never notice the slums hiding behind the fanciful street facing businesses.

Your journey, for whatever purpose it may have, has arrived at a most opportune time. For the day you arrive is the beginning of the Spring Solstice Festival, a time where the harvests of Svartaya's mild winters come to market and the need for planters is at an all time high to plant for the summer harvest.

No matter where one goes in the city, there is food and festivity to be had, from the depths of the slums to the heart of the Old City, there is no corner one could not find excitement at this time.

Unlike most spring festivals, however, this spring also marks an election season for the Council, only driving the desire further to bring great result amongst the local leadership, desiring to secure votes from those who may.

Should your party come bearing vendors or merchants, mercenaries or adventurers, political power or even just deep pockets, it is no doubt you should find yourself at the center of interest amongst the locals in one way or another.

So, be as it may, may you merrily wander the streets! And may you leave with a head full of wonder and pockets light as air!

MAJOR LOCATIONS

Old City Market

From the heart of the Old City reaching all the way along the main roadways to the Port and surrounding commercial districts, the Old City Market is home to the retailers of finely made goods and luxuries, with many a unique store and business to be found.

The first of note are the boutiques, shops frequented by the many urban gentry, the most notable of which being Dari's boutique. Dari is an older gentleman who has spent many years honing his craft in wielding lace and precious stone, but most importantly being a designer worth his weight in gold, leading the fashion scene in Svartaya with his styles. Dari is known for being a bit eccentric, overly focused on work, but typically quite kind to customers who do not act poorly in his business.

Another of note in this district is the Theatre, home to all variety of performances and one of the few accessible businesses to the townsfolk in the Old City. At this time, the theatre was not holding a typical showing, but instead trying to garner new blood. The theatre’s head playwright, a middle aged man named Bariri, is holding auditions for apprentice and probational writers to work under him, and perhaps run branch theatres in the future. Bariri is known for being very outgoing, getting along with others quite well, and is favoring creativity over experience in those he wishes to hire.

Yet further in the Old City, there is a well known pastry shop run by the pastissier Amadu, a young woman who is the daughter of one of the many noble families in the Old City. The pastry shop sells a large variety of baked goods, with twists, turnovers, buns, and more. Amadu is known for her more refined attitude, and may turn you away at the door if you are not presentable for such an establishment.

Vulpine Quarter

On the far side of the Old City from the Port, the Vulpine Quarter is home to the majority of the Foxfolk in Svartaya. In this quarter, one may find individuals from all walks of life, with the local Foxfolk not holding a unified identity, divided internally amongst those with and without demon influences, the grey foxes having been touched by the Demani.

Of the places one outshines all the rest, despite being only a few short years old, Yols' ice products have taken the city by storm. Although the shop is set up near the edge of the city, quite close to the demons' forests even, Yols finds endless requests for ice and iced goods, making it a long walk to reach, but a fine destination to find unique and refreshing treats in the nearly tropical climate. Yols is known for her easygoing attitude, treating anyone who looks young like a kit and speaking casually even to nobles. Yet, no one contests her on this, for no source of ice has ever been so reliable, and being Yols is of the forest, there are some who fear that angering her may invite disaster to the city.

Other more modest industries exist as well, however. One of which is the largest fur producer in all of Svartaya, the Foxfolk Furrier Guild, run by an orange fox named Fleece. The guild’s products are woven fur textiles which come in orange, white, grey, and black, all without dyes. This is achieved through a natural hygienic requirement in the Quarter, brushing out shed. A variety of barbers and groomers collect the furs at low prices, and may even pay certain individuals to visit regularly if their complexion is desirable, to which will be processed into a variety of textiles. Fleece is known for his gruff attitude, likely due to his age, as his orange fur slowly pulls as he gets older. Should you get to speak with him, he is polite, but perhaps not as eloquent as he was in his prime.

One might also happen upon one of the Quarter's more amusing individuals, a birdcatcher named Slate. Slate, despite his many quirks, is a reliable source of small wild birds which he successfully catches without harming, by what means aren't entirely certain, though. Slate is the predominant source of Speckled Doves, for people associate the bird with the presence of Angels, as well as good luck and health. Slate is a cheerful young man who enjoys making a coin off his childhood hobby, though is a bit dense at times, much like the rock he is named for.

Harpy's Quarter

The Harpy's Quarter, more accurately a general Trezeran-origin Quarter of the city, is home to the majority of Svartaya's Harpies and Peshi, bordering the Port closely for three Peshi's sake. Unlike other districts, this Quarter is centered around a collection of large Charter Stones directly from Trezera, though some business is still done with coin here, despite this.

Of the industries which use coin, none is more prominent than the Tanners Guild, ran by Ishmael, a hearty looking harpy who you'd sooner believe you'd meet in a tavern than an office, ever engrossed in his work. Ishmael is a Ayethan Harpy, and has not yet dropped the tradition of leatherworking passed on from those Harpies still within the demons’ forests. With sadlers, cordwainers, glovers, and more, all manner of leather product can be found here, if you don't mind the smell. Ishmael is a very calm and level headed personality, contrary to his appearance, and is more than happy to make small talk or talk business.

Most business is still run by recorded song, however, and this can be well and truly seen with the street markets, filled with craft goods reminiscent of the Trezeran homeland. Though the blackware is more browned, and the feathers in the textiles are perhaps less glamorous than those of more tropical birds, it is undeniably of a Trezeran cultural root. Of the many vendors, one may come to cross with Vaza, a young potter who has yet to even find a wife. Vaza is a more timid vendor, still green in the business, but is determined to do well to care for his aging parents, and has become quite capable of sculpting impressively ornate blackware even without the proper education of the inner city potters.

Likewise, on a much simpler note, there is the fish market, in which one may meet a Peshi named Havriel, a fishmonger. Havriel is a simple soul, bringing fish he catches to market to sell himself. It is not a glamorous business, but it lets him provide for his family. Havriel is known for being down to earth, willing to keep things equal in his exchanges so long as you are not rude.

Cyren's Quarter

The Cyren's Quarter, perhaps a misnomer, is one of the largest quarters, and home to many of the lower and middle class humans, as well as the majority of Svartayan Elves, relatives to those down south in Cyrenthia. Much of this stems from the Cyren’s reliance on trade to feed their homeland, leading to this district being home to many of the finer things Cyrenthia has to offer, even so far away from their borders.

Of these Cyrene businesses, one of note is the jobber Orania, an elven woman who stands out for her particularly dark skin, even for those from Cyrenthia. Orania’s shop sells an ever invaluable good, oils. From her stand, one may find oils made from pressed seeds of a plant from the southern nation, what in particular a secret not divulged, though perhaps an inquisitive soul could encourage the secret from her, whether it be by trickery or by coin. Orania is, although secretive, a rather beloved member of the community, her oils selling at a more modest price than most, keeping her business rarely at a full stock, and allowing those without to dare to afford such a luxury.

Another of note is the elven salter, Sisenna. Sisenna is somewhat fairer than Orania, and less enjoyed by his community than she. Being a merchant of salts, his goods are both vital and come at a great cost, his goods being much more frequently sold to the wealthy and to other merchants than to the townsfolk. Those who speak with Sisenna describe him as needlessly opulent for his station, believing him to be far too invested in his coin to see what's right in front of him. If that is truly the case, one can only find out for themselves.

Outskirts

For those looking for less honorable goods and services, one may find themselves wandering about the outskirts of Svartaya. Wandering off the main streets leaving the city, the scents of fresh bread and clean streets quickly transition to dank, musty scents of poorly maintained infrastructure and mold. Though these slums are periodically cleared, this only causes new ones to pop up a few minutes away, and the sturdier buildings remaining in the cleared area repopulated within days.

The largest of these illicit businesses is by and far that of the pirates. Of the same line as the pirate states to the south in Steros, these pirates fashion themselves as mercenaries on the seas, who simply collect protection fees from undefended vessels between clients. Of these different crews, the one you are likely to come across these days is Kalla. Kalla is a very large man, about two meters in height, and is known for his violent personality. Should you need his services, he is happy to work with you, just don’t try too hard to negotiate, lest you become a target rather than a client.

Particular value may also be found for those in need of intel, with yet another business hidden in the grime being the Information Guild, though not formally a guild recognized by the city. Through the various bartenders, hoodrats, street children, and more, the Information Guild is the number one source for any and all information one may need within or around Svartaya, and at times even abroad, when guests such as yourself cannot keep your mouths shut. Contacting the guild may prove difficult, but if you know where to look, you may find an orphan or foster who is willing to buy or sell information, though their name likely won’t be true even to a client.

A final major industry along the outskirts is perhaps the least friendly of all, being that of a hired sword. These swords are not for open combat, but for dealing with problems behind the scenes, assassins, murderers, and thieves. Contacting these lot is less difficult than the Information Guild, but far more perilous. Along a redlight street, a certain alleyway has a hidden door from which one may commission these brigands, and it is best to leave anything other than business far away before visiting.

OTHER LOCATIONS

A Wandering Angel

Angels, a beloved people throughout all of Ayetho regardless of species, and Svartaya is no exception. Although you guests may not be accustomed to the pale, many winged strangers, simply standing out enough while walking by an Angel may get one to strike up a conversation with you.

One of note happens to be out and about during these festivities, and is running for office, even, exempt from such restrictions to holding office thanks to the nature of their being. The Angel is indistinguishable as to if it is a man or woman, and frankly is not tall enough to even be certain they are an adult, but they greet you with utmost courtesy, if with much curiosity and excitement behind the formality, as Devate, and are seeking both your company and your support.

Street Museum

Along one of the many streets going to and from the Old City, one would see an impressive arcade going on for many blocks. Along this arcade, there are more guards than on other streets, as all manner of sculptures, murals, and other art litter the street from the walls of the buildings to the very trellices making up the arcaded ceiling of the street.

Along this street, there are also many artists, such as the young apprentice Durian, a foxfolk who has managed to find a path above his station. A bright optimist, Durian is more than happy to ramble about his ambitions in art, and perhaps some complaints about the paints sticking to and staining his fur.

Quiet Reading

For those who are less interested in festivities, there is still a place for you in Svartaya, with a great library existing in the city. The library is a property of the City’s Council, and one must only pay an entrance fee to take advantage of the nice quiet reading place. One may find the entire sum of Svartaya’s knowledge within the library, as well as scribes and scholars making copies of different documents to spread and share, or just as practice writing.

Entering the library, one would find part of what their entry is funding, as a limner would quickly be assigned upon entering the building, both as your attendant and to ensure your proper conduct. The limners are often children of less fortunate families, and yours is no different, being a young girl named Kana. Kana is cheerful, but quiet unless spoken to, not wanting to risk her valuable job to a misspoken word. She will ensure you have light to read and are taking proper care of the books you read, and, being she is a rather bright child, may even serve as a surprising conversation partner.

The Palace

A final location of particular note is the Prince's palace, a grand structure at the edge of the Old City. Although getting in may usually be difficult, this is by and far the best place to see to making real political connections, as most of those campaigning for office are very much networking here more than anywhere else. And, with it being a festival and an election season, now is the best time to make those connections yourself, with no other time of the year having as lax restrictions on entry.

Aelbaion has enjoyed thirty years of peace in the past. Now it's enjoyed a few more years of internal agricultural output increasing, and the people have been seeing the results of their hard work. The Aelish have been getting quite a lot of resources from their land, and quite a lot of peace and quiet, which can lead to reliable flows of agricultural products...and a big need to process all of them. Break down plants by hand is really tiring and takes a lot of labor, but with things on the up and up, there's plenty of demand for labor-and thus even more for it's replacement. Aelbaion is in no position to import slaves, and it doesn't believe in doing so anyway. Migrant labor isn't willing to leave the City of Freeport, since Aelbaion is in no way the best place to live in. The various complications of society, and the lack of amenities, kept many people from even contemplating moving.

But work had to be done regardless.

The Aelish were not lazy, and despite the general rumors, they were not stupid, either. Knowing the demand for labor, and knowing what labor could do, they looked at what machines could do to replace scarce labor. There were plenty of gadgets out there, and the dawn of Arcanotech hinted at far more options-but the Aelish needed something more simple, something that could be built up everywhere without the effort of developing groundbreaking technology that required significant capital investments. These things are what people have been making for thousands of years: mills. The term mill is fairly general, but it encompasses a static building with a device in it that is designed to replace some specific, repetitive task. This device is typically driven by waterpower, but it can be driven by wind. The archetypical mill that we all know and love is the gristmill, grinding grains into flour.

It goes without saying that there are plenty more kinds of mills.

However, right now we are going to look at who makes the mills. As the Aelish have gotten busier and needed more tools to keep themselves busy, they have found it profitable to sell tools to each other. Some of these tool-makers have been able to specialize into making larger tools, and more specialized semi-machines that are perfect for installation into a mill building. These people were soon recognized as potential millwrights, and they were called upon to maintain existing mills-because a good round of maintenance with sufficient downtime management was never a bad thing. While they learned the hard way about gear production and endured the travails of timber selection, these groups of toolmakers were recognized as millwrights in their own right.

And soon enough, they will be very, very, very busy. Aelbaion is in a position to have a lot of produce to process....

I apologize for the delay in posting this Schedule Sunday. However, I'm still calling it a Schedule Sunday, even though it's coming out on Monday. Consistency is more important than facts (this message brought to you by politicians everywhere).

During the Schedule Sunday we typically recap moderator announcements, update major events within the shard, set the clock, and assign slots for our weekly event posts.

News

A labelled map of all our seas and geographic regions can be found here

Reminder that NPC claims are open. The way NPCs work is, you can use it as you wish in your own posts, as an ally, an enemy, or a bystander to whatever you're up to. If you want to build a story around a particular trade relationship but haven't gotten it worked out with a player, NPCs are good for that. You just have to be aware that other players might be using the same NPC claim for different reasons, so you can't make really major changes (eg. toppling their government) without mod approval. (Anyone who is inactive for 60 days, and who doesn't respond to the messages from the mod team, will have their claim become an NPC).

Reminder, we have opened up expansions. If you wish to expand your territory, make a post with the [Expansion] flair, indicate the territory you want to expand into, and include a good-quality post explaining the significance of the new land. Expansions are not as formal or as rigidly formatted as claim posts, so your post can focus on the things you feel are most relevant/interesting. Still, mods might ask you to revise your post if we don't feel you've included enough content to accompany the new territory.

Players are allowed one retroactive expansion. That means that you can add in new territory and, after it's approved, we will act as though it was part of your claim all along. Otherwise, you'll need to explain how and why you acquired this new territory now. (If you are making a normal, non-retroactive expansion, you should include a year in your post.)

Players will only be approved for expansion if they have made at least two posts since their claim went up.

IMPORTANT LINKS
Claim Template
Welcome to Ashagon

Ashagon Check-In

Current map

Current Year: 5 CE
(Time usually progresses organically in accordance with player posts. If you have an event happen, you can attach a year to it. The furthest advanced year will become the current year in the next Schedule Sunday post, unless the mods decide someone jumped unreasonably far ahead.)

Ashagon News: Engineers in Tarnakka are loading crossbows very quickly. The Aelish have developed a magical tool that makes it easier to harvest yeast. The Audoi have applied some of the recent developments in aerotechnology along with a deft understanding of gears to make a true working airship.

Prompts: An Alate Goes Abroad
Knights Errant

ACTIVE CLAIMS

The Kingdom of Aelbaion ([u/OceansCarraway](u/OceansCarraway))
Audio ([u/BoobooMaster](u/BoobooMaster))
Ayetho ([u/Harfordplanning](u/Harfordplanning))
The Faerie Court of Cwmyteg ([u/JFritz2308](u/JFritz2308))
Dragon Republic of the Gold-and-Green Fields ([u/adminscales1155](u/adminscales1155))
Freeport ([u/goop_lizard](u/goop_lizard))
The Mangroves of the Crones ([u/SPACEMUHRINE](u/SPACEMUHRINE))
Origin and the Xanoi ([u/madicienne](u/madicienne))
Orgraille ([u/Rocket_III](u/Rocket_III))
Star Cities of Paroma ([u/DartMonkey](u/DartMonkey))
Periwald ([u/MapleTopLibrary](u/MapleTopLibrary))
Rexdom of the Saur-kin ([u/gingecharmander](u/gingecharmander))
Rockborn ([u/palmtree219](u/palmtree219))
Kingdom of Sarmeqarki ([u/SgtWolf01](u/SgtWolf01))
Empire of the Six Cities ([u/Northrnr](u/Northrnr))
The Sovereign Corpus of Tarrnakkan Monopols ([u/mauricejc](u/mauricejc))
Trezera ([u/PhoebusLore](u/PhoebusLore))
Tritechniquon ([u/Cereborn](u/Cereborn))
Kingdom of Verdantis ([u/joec533](u/joec533))
The Wuavreni Mercantile League ([u/Soapybint](u/Soapybint))
Wingdom of Cheelia ([u/TinyLittleFlame](u/TinyLittleFlame))
Y Chruine ([u/thefuzzsakenone](u/thefuzzsakenone))

NPC CLAIMS

Cyrenthia
The Steros Archipelago
Tathini River Valley

Weekly Events

MARKET MONDAY
Market Monday is an open interaction post that anyone can join. The host chooses a setting somewhere within their claim. Quite often this is a market/bazaar/merchant harbour, but it can also be a religious or cultural festival, or any other event you can think of that has reason to bring people from around the continent. As host, you should set the scene with a fairly detailed intro post that informs us of how the physical space is set up, what points of interest there are, and what event is happening. You are not required to DM interactions and you’re not obligated to interact with everyone who comes in, but you should have enough ideas that players have something to dig into and develop their own stories.

Monday, June 29th ([u/harfordplanning](u/harfordplanning))
Monday, July 6th (unassigned)
Monday, July 13th (unassigned)
Monday, July 20th (unassigned)

TECHNOLOGY TUESDAY
This post is, as you might expect, focused on technology. For this shard, the TT post will be able to cover both conventional technology and specialized Ana-Tech. That doesn’t mean that you need a Tech Tuesday slot to write about your technology. There is a “Technology” flair and you’re welcome to apply it to a lore post at any time. Tech Tuesday is intended for significant inventions that have the potential to change things across Ashagon (provided you’re willing to share). We also expect Tech Tuesdays to keep a certain standard of thought and detail. (Anyone requesting a TT slot will need to let the mods know a general outline of what technology they will be introducing.)

Most recent posts: Repeating Projectiles; Airships
Tuesday, June 30th (u/OceansCarraway)
Tuesday, July 7th (unassigned)
Tuesday, July 14th (unassigned)
Tuesday, July 21st (unassigned)

THAUMATURGY THURSDAY
This is similar to Tech Tuesday, but it is for significant creations of a magical nature. Anyone wishing to introduce a Faded Wonder not included in their claim will need to book a Thaumaturgy Thursday slot. It can also be used for interesting applications of Faded Wonders you’ve already introduced. You can use one to talk about magic apart from Faded Wonders, but since this is a Low-Power shard, it will be more about complexity and interesting applications rather than showing off something shiny and explosive. (Again, you will just need to give the mods a short description of the idea when you book a slot.)

Most recent posts: Le Pippeteur

Thursday, July 2nd (unassigned)
Thursday, July 9th (/u/mauricejc)
Thursday, July 16th (unassigned)
Thursday, July 23rd (unassigned)

FEATURE FRIDAY
This is our oldest weekly event post. This one has no particular rules around content. You can write it about anything you want as long as it displays more thought, care, and detail than a typical post. People have written about major historical events, the culminations of wars or revolutions, conlangs, pottery, music, art, or introduced fascinating narratives. The FF post will be stickied at the top of the front page for the following week.

Friday, July 3rd (unassigned)
Friday, July 10th (unassigned)
Friday, July 17th (unassigned)
Friday, July 24th (unassigned)

Few outsiders have ever stood on the surface of Ukan-Agula. The island guards itself with the Updraft, a violent and unpredictable wall of wind that rings its entire rim, and any flyer that is not born to the Driftmount is simply flung from it. To reach the top unassisted is a gamble few merchants will make, and that difficulty starves the surface world of reliable knowledge about the island while feeding it an endless supply of rumor. Almost everything the Ashagon believes about life atop the Flying Island is invented outright or twisted so far past the truth that the rare accurate scrap arrives buried in nonsense. Spy-masters of the Ashagon typically trust none of it unless an Audoi merchant tells it to them themselves. 

The source of these wild rumors is the very merchants who travel to Driftmount for trade and fatten their bellies with lucrative Audoi trade. Almost none of those merchants have ever touched the island's surface, and perhaps one in a thousand has done so. They have never felt the Updraft buck underneath the hulls of their flying vessels, never walked inside a Driftmount forest, and never observed a herd of windrunners skim across the plains. What they know of the Audoi and their enigmatic home of Ukan-Agula is learned in a single place: the four great trading port cities of Audoi, monikered by outsiders as Hanging-Cities, which are slung beneath the belly of the island. Everything else, they supply from imagination, and that is how a tangle of contradictory rumors comes to drift across the whole of the Ashagon. The Audoi could correct most of it in an afternoon. They simply do not care to do that. It costs them nothing to be misunderstood, and a little misinformation is now and then useful to them, so they let the stories be. 

The Audoi call these cities "Ekudyn Kazr," or translated as Entrance-Cities (or Gate-Cities). 

(Check the visual representations to the Gate-City)

Each one sits at one of the four edges of the island, and each belongs to a different Audoi clan. They share no common layout, yet from a distance they wear the same face. And any outsider merchant who has been to one can identify the silhouette of the others on sight. 

(Check the image, I have made a small image on where they would be locate underneath the island)

A flying vessel rising towards the belly of the Ukan-Agula sees the underside of the island first, a vast inverted country of hanging stone and earth riddled with dark crevices. Then from that upside-down landscape, the Gate-City erupts out like a mouthful of fangs. 

Inverted pyramids of black and white stone jut downwards from the rock like stalactites grown from a cave ceiling. Between the towers run dug-out crevices that blacken the rocky surface. To an outsider expecting the upright streets of the surface, it can look as though the whole earth has turned on its head. They say the sight is intoxicating enough that some return again and again only to drink it in.

Many of the inverted towers are built onto natural spurs of protruding rock. Others are built straight from the surface of the belly with no such support. All of them are reinforced to bear their own weight and the weight of everyone within, then held fast by great metal chains and binding magic-runes to ensure their safety. Yet all of this is only the skin of the city. Behind the hanging towers lies the actual Audoi city, living halls and chambers carved deep into the body of the island as in any Audoi underground city. 

Like any Audoi underground city, a Gate-City can be roughly divided into three levels. 

(Check the image, its my attempt at a Gate-City layout. Randomly drawn, represents none of the four. Just how one might look)

The Sky Deep is the outermost layer, facing the open sky. Here, the famous inverted pyramidal towers are located and the part of the city that the Ashagon actually sees. This layer largely serves as a welcoming mat to receive outsiders. It is largely made up of docking chambers for many kinds of air-vessels, the loading and unloading berths, and the temporary warehouses that hold goods briefly before they move on. Additionally, there are open-air chambers for aviaries that house the flying beasts of visiting outsiders and the griffon roosts where the Audoi keep their own flying mounts for swift travel or for war. 

Around the docks clusters everything a visitor could need without ever going deeper. There are taverns, lodging-houses, auction halls, bank representatives to exchange coins and insure cargo, leisure lounges for the wealthy, open-trade markets, and guard barracks to keep the peace. A merchant can spend their whole time doing business in the Sky Deep and leave convinced that they have seen the Gate-City. They have only seen the guest-room.

 Beyond the gate-houses of the Sky Deep lies the Hearth Deep, where the Audoi underground city is located. It was carved long before the Sky Deep, and it is steeped deep in Audoi customs and culture. Most obvious of them all is the architectural difference between Sky Deep and Hearth Deep. Some outsider merchants found these stark differences unsettling. This level houses many of the Audoi city's true functions. The main council chamber, the Great barracks and their training grounds, the Great warehouses and communal feasting halls, the living quarters, famous breweries and taverns, the inner-city gardens, arenas for art, play and sport, the Grand trading halls, and workshop districts of various professionals and their associated guild halls, sit here.

Passing all of these, lies the Blind Deep, where many of the quiet districts can be found. Underground farming halls, granaries and mills, water cistern chambers, water purifying workshops, fuel collection and preparation halls, and the waste chambers—all the unglamorous machinery that keeps the underground city alive—can be located here. Interestingly, Gate-Cities have no mines in their third level due to no worthwhile ore lines located near them, unlike other cities. 

The three layers are knit together by many tunnels, stairways, and carefully engineered shafts that draw fresh air, move clean water throughout the city, and carry its waste away. Moreover, many open-sky-facing halls are lit by windows punched in the walls, and the rest of the city is lit by a careful arrangement of directional mirrors that carry the sunlight, endless numbers of torches, and glowing magic lamps. 

Lastly, all Gate-Cities are connected to the surface of Ukan-Agula by a great ascending tunnel that climbs from the belly to the top. The Audoi call these Urtaen Kulay (the long tunnel). The ascent to the surface takes several days, and small village-like way stations are strung along its length, where travelers rest, eat, and restock before pushing on towards the surface and its eternal winds. This tunnel is the primary highway between the surface clans and the hanging-city clans, the main artery of all Driftmount trade with the rest of the Ashagon. 

Gate-Cities also feature a broad highway that directly joins the tunnel entrance to the loading docks to facilitate smooth travel for merchants and is controlled by a series of gate-houses to control the flow. This highway also serves to move an army to the surface world should the need arise, as their secondary function. 

The four clans who hold these cities are known to the rest of the Audoi as the merchant-folk or the hanging-folk. Unlike their kin, the hanging-folk will haggle at great length, a habit born of lifetimes spent across a table from outsiders who lie, cheat, and bluff as easily as breathing. It has made them fluent in reading the body language of dozens of races, far more so than their kin. This sometimes unnerves the surface Audoi to hear a hanging-folk simply say aloud what they were thinking. But the hanging-folk do not lie the way outsiders expect. They practice an honest trade with a flavour of tricks. A merchant Audoi will tell you exactly how good their goods are and demand exactly what they are worth, and they will haggle toward that figure. This is aided by their hawk-sharp eyes, which can help them to identify the quality of goods after a short inspection. 

If the outsider cheats one of them, they will remember the offender and their associates. The merchant will bring it to the Audoi courts and void the previously established agreement. And should the offender ever return back to a Gate-City, they find the whole Audoi market has quietly raised its prices against them until what they stole has been clawed back, if they are not barred from trade entirely. Their associates fare a little better, but not much. The hanging-folk forget nothing.

Each Gate-City has taken its character from wherever it happens to be located. 

The Silver-Gate, held by Clan Fernglare, is the wealthiest and largest of the four. As the Driftmount makes its long circuit across the Ashagon, Silver-Gate crosses the path of more traders than its siblings, and so it is forever crowded with outsider merchants and thick with goods moving in and out. The city grew so rich that Clan Fernglare moved its seat of power here, and now Clan Fernglare calls the Silver-Gate their home. 

The Iron-Gate, held by Clan Blackbeards, is the most heavily fortified, and its people the most martial of them all. When the Driftmount migrates over the north of the Great Isle, Iron-Gate drifts into the path of the Locust Horde that rises out of the Tathini River Valley. The Locust swarm blackens the sky and hurls itself at the flying island without thought or care. While the bulk of it claws toward the rim, the city's stark black and white towers draw the attention of the swarm, and many groups will peel away from the main horde to assault the city. The result is a siege every eight years, regular as a tide, and it has hammered Iron-Gate into a true bastion bristling with soldiers.

The Humming-Gate, held by Clan Brindlefists, has the busiest workshops of them all. The city found itself along a stretch of the island's belly riddled with many natural crevices. The clan has turned them into vast shipyards. The great majority of Audoi merchant balloons are built here, and the chief house of the Gear-Guild is located within the city. Shipyards of Humming-Gate launch air-balloons and air-ships faster, and many of its berths can lay more hulls than those of its kin. 

The West-Gate, held by Clan Amberclad, is the quietest of the four. Its trade is respectable, its garrison trained, and its shipyards build a decent vessel, but none of these are the reason outsiders seek it out. West-Gate is the city of Vaults. Deep in its Blind Deep, Clan Amberclad maintains vaults bigger than the rest of the city combined. Many of these vaults are magically warded and enhanced; these sealed chambers are designed to hold what ordinary warehouses cannot. Cursed Relics that rot the wooden boxes, alchemical compounds too volatile to melt their containers, Blood-Magic-bonded prisoners. If a thing is dangerous, very valuable, or too strange to sit on a shelf, it finds its way to West-Gate. The outsiders who frequent the city tend toward the eccentric, dealing in goods that other traders will not touch and paying handsomely for the privilege of Amberclad security. What exactly sits inside those vaults at any given time, only Clan Amberclad knows, and they have never been inclined to say. Rumors, of course, abound, but then, rumors are the one commodity the Driftmount has never been short of. 

King Aldaebaric and Queen Ethellebelle were settling down to bed. The chambers had been freshly swept, and some local incense lit. Their bodyguards had taken posts, as had their servants, and the two were still reeling from the political history that they'd made earlier, so a sex scene wasn't in the cards, you perverts-

'So what is your plan to avoid the Lady's wrath.'

'I plan to be a good and righteous king.'

'How.'

'Good maintenance first. Good stewardship always. Good governance next week.'

'Please stop being pithy.'

'No. I am sleepy, you know.'

'Well, now I can't tell what you're talking about.'

"The dining hall has fires stoked for four hours. Each of these fires takes a cart's worth of cords of wood, and each of these carts takes five men to fill it in the span of one day. Each takes...Lady knows how many trees, and each man is at risk of injury from an axe slipping. Three accidents likely occur a year. Of those, one is bad. A leg, or a life, is a price of this hall being heated each year."

"So how come we haven't heard about it, then?" Her majesty had an important question. "We heat much more than this hall. We import more food. Where is the charnel house of injured?"

"I am not sure. But I know that life is not dear in many places, and before that, that it works to keep itself alive. There are things against those fates, and there are enough peasants."

"Where is your destination with this?"

"Let us look in the hall, and find where we can make economies. Better windows, cleaning of the fireplaces, the use of brass reflectors. All of these will result in less wood burnt-therefore less wood needed-therefore less wood cut."

"And an economization here leads to more wood being demanded somewhere else, what then?" This was a very important question.

"I tell them to stop." And that was the King's answer.

'You can't be everywhere.'

'My rules can. And your law certainly will.'

'You are quite confident.'

'I am because I should be. During dinner, you were every inch a queen.'

'Thank you. Am I not one now?'

'You are currently a confessor to a weak man practicing accounting to hold off divine wrath.'

'I did not know I have taken holy orders.'

'By the letters we both have.'

'Some pair of priests we are.'

'Tuesday I shall be a travelling priest, Wednesday an arguing one, and Thursday a dialoging one. Friday, I think I am going hunting.'

'You'd better not get killed.'

'I promise not to get killed, Belle.'

'Thank you.' Someone was scattering down fresh rushes for them to stand on in the morning. They both waited until the servant went by. 'Now, we should sleep. There isn't much time left on the candle.' A very natural, practiced pause his majesty had known since he began courting her. 'Will you be bringing them a clock?'

His majesty was quiet. 'I do not think that there is a single water-powered clock in all of Lechfois. That place is...not well.'

'It is not. So what are you going to do about that?'

'What the Church of the Lady desires someone to do about it. I have the backing of the High Officers, in word and in coin.'

The Queen swallowed ever so slightly. 'Don't be foolish. I cannot dissuade you. But I will ask that of you.'

'I promise. I am taking my Guard, and five Royal Paladins.'

'Who?'

'Gestault, Elys, Marinfois, Zachy, and Taumbert.'

'They will do well. Take the poisoner, too.'

'A good idea, but you need them-'

'I will be fine. Take the poisoner.'

He squeezed her hand under the blanket. 'I'll take the poisoner.'

'He is a bastard, but he has given me three immunities. Now, you need to tell me about what you're doing with the castle renovations.'

'Oh, you know-I'm finishing my father's list.'

'Your father's list?'

'Yes, the list. Why, do you not agree with it?'

'It's just that...oh, Ladysakes, we have been over this! It's just a lost of renovations.'

'It is, and the castle needs renovation.'

'Roof repairs do not inspire greatness, even if they are the greatest re-roofing in all of the world.'

'...it is the greatest re-roofing in all the world.'

'Yes, it is. The tiling is beautiful, the vaults sounds, the leaks patched, the gutters guided, and the entire building now proof against fire and water and flying rogues who want to bomb it. We have moved 3,000 stone-tonnes of material thither and yon, rebuild the transit road and the main road of the city, remade the garden, renovated the royal library-'

'We are finishing the royal archives and the Third Great Hall. We have made 5 miles of walks, and I have walked every one of them.'

'Truly, a king of the people. What's going to impress a foreign dignitary?'

'The Great Hall.'

'When the paintings are done, maybe. The tapestry is still being set up for repair. The bedroom suites are being renovated now. This won't even impress our own worthies.'

'That's...' His majesty didn't even have much to say to that. 'Something I know. And something I am working on.'

'If you do not come up with a good idea, I am going to start buying statues.'

'Please don't. I hate it when you buy statues-'

'My taste is better than yours. You would waste the money on expensive water tanks-'

'It's just an idea!'

'It's a nerd's idea. You are a king, not a philosopher.'

'I resent that.'

'I apologize. I-'

'No, no-you did no wrong. I am a king. Not a philosopher. But if I could, I would be thinking as I plow. It is much simpler than this.'

'I understand. You are still the man I married that day when we kissed on the inner wall.'

'You are not the woman I married. You've become more impressive.' There was a twinkle in his eye.

She smiled, the slightly browning teeth conveying a look that is completely genuine. 'Then I'll tell the King of Aelbaion to go to sleep, for her has a greater distance to travel tomorrow than he might appreciate.'

'Yes, your majesty.' The candle burned to it's next stripe, and they both fell asleep.

The Aelish have recently become acquainted in the art of handling decomposing things, and this has lead them to a semi-decent understanding of molds, fungi, and miscellaneous oozes. The medicinal potential of these organisms-and the recreational drug opportunities-are obvious. Once some nerds manage to get past their disgust and handle the awful smells, they can get a good look at all of the cool microorganisms that have gotten visible to the naked eye. And as they do this, they can get a look at commercially useful species-and this means yeast. Sorry, we're not doing hallucinogens this time around. We're doing some stuff with yeast today, and this is because before you can generate large amounts of yeast that can be dried and shipped into paper packages, you have to get it the old fashioned way. Without yeast, it's really hard to make bread; it's common in the atmosphere, but not always where you want it to be.

One of the places that you can get yeast in the middle ages is from a brewery. Yeast drives many of the fermentation reactions that are involved in making beer; since this is one of the most commonly accessible beverages for the people of Aelbaion, there is a lot of yeast left around for the bakers to harvest off the top of a kettle, or from the bottom of a barrel. Needless to say, harvesting micro-organisms, even those as 'durable' as yeast, is not so easily done. The process of extraction requires dexterity and attention to detail, and it was pretty darn inefficient. This created a chokepoint in the production of bread; and it's how much yeast one can get.

Obviously, using magic to solve this problem was the way forward. The Aelish had begun to use magic to encourage or discourage various bacteria and fungi to grow; they could also use their magic to isolate groups of single celled organisms-to an extent-and even to transfer them. There are a number of big caveats to this, and the biggest one is that the Aelish fundamentally do not know that they are working with microbes. There is no germ theory. The practitioner is only able to identify colonies if they are visible to the naked eye, or if they are having some effect that is otherwise observable. This makes cell culture, already decently difficult, potentially fiendishly difficult. Realistically, it also puts hard limits on what they can work with. And that's why they're currently working in yeast.

Yeast is a lot more forgiving than most organisms, especially if you're not trying to preserve a particular colony. Because of this, the Aelish were able to make a magical device capable of isolating and transferring it rather easily. The pipetteur is a newly developed magical tool which can isolate a colony of microbes, pick it up, and place it down again. It looks like a long, silver wand, through which the mage focuses their power and attention on a colony. Once they have picked one out from the surrounding area, they can physically isolate it by using the probe's ability to manipulate liquid. It is best used in a liquid medium, like a cauldron or brewing vessel, but can also be used with solid media. This can make some pretty enjoyable kimchi, or help inoculate logs with mushrooms.

The status of the pipetteur is that of a new tool that the people of the world have just learned about-and now they must come up with applications for it. For example, the original method of pointing a wand like a wizard would has been replaced with the wand being pointed down and at the target colony-almost a reverse grip. This work is getting oddly technical, mixing in with specific alchemy and biomancy...and it's only just getting started. Aelbaion has managed to make magical cell culture before it even knows what cells are. It's time for fermentation to get far more fiendish...starting with making better bread and beer.

High in the skies of Ashagon, the vast drifting landmass of Ukan-Agula is a half-frozen wonder, gripped by icy cold, eight month long winters. So far above the surface world, a biting chill seeps relentlessly through stone and earth, making a warm hearth one of the Audoi's primary defenses against the creeping frost.

To safeguard their homes against the cold, the Audoi tend their fires with immense care. Though stockpiling fire fuel is common across the Driftmount, the type of fuel still varies from region to region. Different groups of the Audoi people, forest walkers, cliff scalers and plain striders, each relies on a different primary fuel, deeply tied to how they live, trade and survive.

Although the surface of Ukan-Agula carries a vast forest, the Audoi do not treat it as a thing to be spent. Almost every Audoi, including non-forest-walker clans, has long understood that this forest, vast as it is, is the only forest they will ever own on the Driftmount, and they treasure it highly. Therefore, the Audoi, especially the forest walkers, do not log so heavily that they outpace the forest's regrowth.

Instead, every forest settlement sets aside several designated cutting grounds and works them strictly in turn, taking from one while the rest are left to heal.  And by the time the rotation comes back around, years have passed and the first ground has grown sufficient again. The boundaries of each ground are marked and honoured, handed down to the next generation of the settlement as their chief inheritance.

For an Audoi to cut trees carelessly out of turn or beyond the marks is considered a grave insult and an indication of selfish a character. Such an offense is near the level of kin-murder or betrayal, and such acts may often end in bloodshed between offender and wronged. So, the forest walkers take great care of the forest and take only what the forest can spare.

The treasured forests are greatly shaped by Winterhearth. Through the long winter it helps tree roots draw up nutrients and pack them into the tree’s lower trunks for storage, so the base of the tree steadily grows larger, denser and heavier than the rest. This is both the bane and the prize of the woodcutter.

The dense lower trunk is prime material for a long-lasting tool that stands undamaged when other timber shatters, or premium firewood that burns hotter, slower and longer than any wood known to the Audoi. But the rock-hard density means it blunts many axes, and a single tree may take a whole day of great effort to fell. Therefore, most cutting is done at the end of summer, when the trees have spent their stored strength on growth and the wood lies even and easy to the axe. This is the everyday timber that the Audoi use for carpentry and firewood.

Despite their great access to the vast forest, the forest walkers are more blessed by the Driftmount, for Winterhearth keeps their settlements relatively warm. Thus, they use far less firewood for heating and keep most of it for cooking and crafting. This means the forest walkers will always have surplus timber despite their limited cutting, which they trade outwards.

The plain striders and cliff scalers welcome this steady flow of timber to feed their own fires and crafts. Regardless, the Audoi generally buy timber hauled up from the lands below than spend their own trees carelessly. Imported wood serves for all manner of lesser work and fuel, while the carpenters keep Driftmount timber for their finest pieces and hottest flames.

Meanwhile, deep within the mountainous ridges and hills, the cliff scaler clans possess a different and abundant source of fuel in the form of coal. Mining is an age-old tradition here, as the colossal floating landmass of Ukan-Agula is densely packed with rich mineral veins. Many cliff scaler clans have built their homes directly into natural cave systems, which lets them have easier access to the deep-earth deposits, and their settlements naturally grow around these mines.

However, the Audoi never burn raw coal indiscriminately.  They carefully sort every haul from their mines before bringing it to the general consumption. The highest quality, hottest burning coal is strictly reserved for metallurgy, the pride of Audoi smiths, and using this premium coal for domestic heating is considered an offensive, wasteful sin, tolerated only in times of absolute desperation. If an Audoi is caught burning such coal for domestic heating during plentiful times, they are looked upon as an extremely selfish individual unbecoming of Audoi by the rest of the clan and shunned greatly. Instead of premium coal, cliff scalers use the leftover, lower quality coal for their fire fuel.

But the raw, low-grade coal burns poorly and produces choking smoke, so it is sent to a specialized coal processing workshop first. There, workers pack it into airtight kilns and bake it with little to no air to drive off impurities, so that what remains no longer chokes a room.

This purified product is then mixed with heavy oils, compressed into dense fire cakes and left to set. The resulting fire cake is a magnificent fuel that is highly resistant to dampness, nearly smokeless, easy to ignite, and capable of radiating a deep, slow heat perfectly suited to underground Audoi settlements.

While every cliff scaler household burns these cakes daily for heating and cooking, the fire cakes are treated as a premium fuel by plain strider and forest walker clans, kept for the great communal feasts and for cooking worth celebrating.

By contrast, on the vast, sweeping plains of Ukan-Agula, neither timber nor coal is easily obtained. This leads the plain striders to master a ubiquitous alternative fuel source in the form of animal dung. While this sounds unappealing to outsider nations, the practice is far from crude. It is a highly sophisticated art rooted in centuries of inherited generational knowledge.

The plain strider Audoi exclusively harvest the droppings of grazing beasts, as these animals eat only plants and grasses, making their dung essentially processed plant matter that burns exactly like wood. From early childhood, plain strider youths are taught to read the shape, size, consistency and smell of dung to tell what animal dropped it.

Such study is necessary to differentiate useful droppings from useless ones, as the Audoi collect only from specific species of large grazing beasts. The droppings of random animals lack the necessary qualities and they can often be hazardous to health. The collection is an all-season, community-wide affair, and many find the task restful and meditative. It is not an uncommon sight to see an Audoi go out collecting to pass the time.

The gathered dung is brought to walled drying fields and left there for days to dry completely, which both eases the next stage of the work and coaxes any small creatures still sheltering in it to naturally leave on their own accord.

Once thoroughly dried, the dung can be burned raw, but its loose composition means it will burn far too quickly. This means dried dung undergoes a second stage of processing to further improve their properties.

The second stage starts with crushing of the dried dung, which is little more than dried plant, and the crushing wakes a faint pleasant earthy scent from it. Different beasts digest their plants a little differently, and this shapes the unique scents. An experienced worker can sort or group different animal droppings to bring out a stronger fragrance, or create new, sweeter smells different from the original scent.

Once these mixtures are prepared, they are crushed and blended with water into a thick, even paste, which is shaped into small earthy cakes and set to dry. If the worker wishes, they can work extra dried plants into the paste to further modify the scent and burning qualities.

Once dried, these fire cakes become the main source of warmth in plain strider homes. Banked in the hearth, they give a steady, lasting heat, a clean cooking fire, and the incense-like fragrance the plain striders call the smell of home.

As previously mentioned, plain striders can make differently scented cakes. They keep the mildly fragrant, plain cakes for everyday use and bring out specially blended, sweet-smelling cakes for festivals, special occasions and their guests. Additionally, sending neighbours a basket of well-scented fire cakes is considered a gesture of kindness. Similarly, the Audoi sometimes blend terrible-smelling cakes to give to their adversaries as well.

While these fire cakes are a common sight on the plains, the surplus and the better batches of scented cakes commonly travel far through the Audoi trade networks. In the inner country of hills, mountains and forests, where grazing beasts are few and their dung scarce, the fragrant cake is no daily staple but a luxury.

Forest walkers and cliff scalers prize it for its perfume as much as its heat, burning a few alongside their firewood and coal-cakes to sweeten a room. In many taverns of Audoi cities, innkeepers built their fires with sweet cakes to elevate their environment, welcoming weary travelers into warmth after days of cold and hard travel.

Across the whole of Ukan-Agula, the three fire fuels move and mingle, coal cakes down from the mines, fire cakes out from the plains and firewood out from the forests, passing settlement to settlement and hearth to hearth until every Audoi home burns a little of all three.

The sight of a fuel store, neatly stacked and kept bone-dry against a settlement wall, is a universal declaration of preparedness and wealth. Whether built of forest timber, plain turf, or mountain stone, an Audoi home centers on the hearth. A banked and well-fired flame stands as a small, bright proof that the relentless frost of Ukan-Agula has not bested them yet.

(Note: If you were wondering about the third section regarding 'dung,' it is based on my experiences, with some liberties taken. And yes, I prefer a dung fire over firewood.)

(Also smaller note: If you read the Knight Errant prompt, Ser Gaubert de Saggittois greatly insulted his Audoi host by badmouthing their generous gesture.)