"The Lands of Villtur are colloquially known as the blank lands among my colleagues. Few dare to travel into it to map it out, most of them seem to not come back."
The Wyndwalken maps are the standard reference at every court on Talan that can afford a copy, and their sheets of Ehizahar show the coast, the ranges, the great river, Veidrath, and green. Zenerious crossed the green in ninety days and measured every hill he sat on, and his colleagues have the log. The land is not the difficulty. A surveyor with a rule and a compass can fix a hill on the grass to the yard and come back to it, and he did.
"I have to admit, I have no idea how the Villturians do it, by eye alone I wouldn't be able to distinguish one green rolling hill from the next. Now I sit on this hill I couldn't distinguish with a token in my hand, they bound three colored strings to it, told me the Vindrakar Hooves would accept it and bring me to Veidrath."
What a map of Villtur cannot hold is where you are. Every clan rides a circuit, a seasonal loop that runs for hundreds of miles from pasture to water to growing-ground and back, and the circuits are the borders: a clan's grass is wherever its circuit runs, for as long as the clan can hold it, and the circuits are redrawn every year by who arrived at the gathering fat and who arrived thin. Two clans whose loops touch at a river-crossing this spring may not touch next spring. A city sits fixed inside its pasture-ring, and the ring's edge is wherever the nearest circuit stopped taking it. None of this is on the ground. It is in who will meet you on it.
Crossing Villtur is done the way Zenerious did it, and the way it has been done since: the Handing. You make a deal with the first clan whose grass you enter, at a fair or a river-ford or wherever a clan can be found, and the clan carries you to the edge of its circuit and hands you on. The instrument is the strings: three colored cords in the clan's own colors, bound to a token, which the next clan reads as the first clan's word that you are theirs to carry. Each clan honors the strings of the clans it has agreed to honor, and no others, and each carries you exactly as far as its own grass runs. Zenerious was handed nine times between Sagarri and the Scar of Aeris: two grass-clans, a river-clan, a city's delegation, the field-priests, a band of the clanless, a snow-clan. Nobody arranged the whole of it. Every clan arranged the next.
"The kinrider just said dinner is served, so I'm ending the entry for today here."
So a foreign court that wants to cross Villtur deals with every circuit it crosses, one clan at a time, and each deal is honored by one clan and binds one clan. The court's envoy looks for the man who speaks for the land and there is no such man; he finds instead a chain of small deals that each end at a hill with a tree on it. The clans sell passage this way to anyone who asks. The ones who do not ask are the ones the Wyndwalken lost.
A clan is a claim, and the claim is a proof of survival, renewed every year in front of everyone.
"You bring the herd in fat and the young are loud and the beasts are picketed close to the sanctum, and everyone who rides in after you counts. You bring the herd in thin and everyone counts that too. Nobody says anything at the gathering. In spring your neighbor's circuit runs across your best grass and you find out what they counted."
The gathering at Veidrath is the one place every clan in Villtur can be seen at once, and the Gathering-Peace, which the Stillhands guarantee and every clan holds unbreakable, means it is the one place nothing can be done about what is seen. A clan that arrives short of beasts or short of young has shown it. A clan that arrives strong has shown that. The showing is the whole politics of the year, and the answer to it comes months later and hundreds of miles away, on the circuit, where a clan that has weakened finds its river-crossing taken by a clan that has not, and has no one to complain to, because the clans that honor Hinka take the cut the way the winter does. Some dying so that others may live is the land's own face, and the tribes leave it there.
The game runs on every instrument a court runs on.
Two clans whose circuits meet at the same ford every autumn are allies until one of them arrives at the gathering thin.
A marriage between two clans is a treaty, and the parents shake on it longer than the couple does.
A meeting on the open plain between two clans that had no reason to be there is a meeting, and everyone who hears of it reads it.
A raid on a clan's picket-line at the far end of its circuit, when its riders are three weeks out, is an argument made with the ground.
A clan that wants to know who is watching it arrives at the gathering thinner than it is, pitches loud anyway, and rides out in spring to see who comes.
Inside the Peace, two clan leaders with a claim on the same river-grass go into a ring of packed earth with a Stillhand at the edge and fight with the haft and the flat until one stays down and says so. The loser's clan rides around that grass next year.
"A courtier from the Thousand Kingdom would take a season to see that it is a court. He would then find nothing in it he did not know."
The one law of the game is the Gathering-Peace, and inside the Peace a dispute is settled by talk or by a bout. The priest at the ring's edge watches and does nothing. The Stillhands hold that some fight and some talk and both are fine so long as no blood runs in the streets. Nothing is written down. Nothing in Villtur is.
When a clan's proof lapses, when a winter or a sickness or a lost generation leaves it unable to hold its circuit, the circuit goes, and what is left of the clan goes too. The lone wolves are what remains: bands of the clanless, the last of a broken clan or the banished of a whole one, together by choice and apart by choice, some under a name they chose and most under none. They hold no grass and ride no circuit and are handed nothing, and they get people through anyway, for pay, across the ground between the circuits that no clan will grant.
"Yesternight there was a fight, three people left, now we are 12, 13 if I include myself. They tell me not to worry, I hope they are right, because these cold winds seem hungrier than those I know from the Air Monastery."
Some clans stopped. A Villtur city is a clan whose circuit ended where it stood: the wall is for the people and the herds graze outside it, so the city holds its pasture-ring by the same proof as any clan holds its grass, and what a rival takes from a city is its pasture and never the city. A held place and its pastures can be watched. A circuit across the open plain can only be ridden, and a clan that cannot be everywhere on its loop at once is claimed against at the far end. Stopping buys a claim that can be kept, and pays for it in reach: a city that wants more grass finds the grass already ridden by clans with deals and rivals of their own, and grows by negotiation or stops growing. That is why, in four centuries, no city in Villtur has become a country. Fenurra did, on ground nobody wanted.
"This city was built by nomads and you can feel it, somewhat see it maybe. I have seen houses and next to it spaces for tents, I overheard a worker said he got a new job and is giddy to move to a different quarter, it seems people overwhelmingly live where they work here. A change in employer means a change in location, not by law but by custom."
Aymuru is the one Zenerious rested in, and it was already a city with a delegation when he did. It stands where several circuits cross, and it stopped there because being findable was worth more than the loop: in a country where a clan is found by learning its circuit and riding to intercept it, a city is the one fixed address, the place strings are given and honored and a stranger can wait indoors. A few thousand live there, every people of the domain mixed. The clan's shape is the city's, transposed.
A clan leader's chosen close ride out with him by his choice and theirs. In the city the same word names a standing post: the guard at the gate and the escort on the road, a position that stopped moving.
Every household keeps one beside its house. Kin off the road pitch on it, and in the traveling season the household pitches on it itself, when part of the city rides out. A plot that has grown over is read by the neighbors, and they say so.
Quarters are work-quarters, and a household moves when its work does, by custom and never by law.
Ride-outs are planned and assigned: who goes, when back. A clan on the grass lets each rider decide at dawn.
"The city has been nice, they also have their own milk of the land, which I will taste tonight for the first time, they have told me it is a traveling drink. They don't consume it unless on the road."
The settled tier runs from clan-towns that are one clan stopped, near-pure in blood and circuit, to mixes like Aymuru, and the pull toward it is stronger every generation. Stopping makes the proof easier to keep. The deep clans know it, and their argument against the wall is the argument of people who can feel it losing, made to a goddess who has already begun to settle with her people.
"It's always a sight to behold when you sit on a hill and watch a circuit when you hear the thundering and not know where beast begins and man ends. There is a difference between centaurs and the others with their bond beasts. Where an orc seems to merge with theirs and a Lizardfolk and their bond beast extends each other. The centaur and their bond beast become the same on some level."
A Centaur clan on the move is a column of laden beasts with the people out in front of it. The Etxaber carry what a Centaur cannot: the tents, the gear, the young too small to run, and a Centaur clan keeps fewer of them than any other clan in Villtur, because its wealth is in legs. Beside each runner runs a lasterki, the beast a Centaur hunts with, and it runs beside her and never under her. On the grass the lasterki is long and lean and the loops are the longest in the country; in the snow it is heavy-coated, the runs are short and the waits are long; in the old conifer country it is short-legged for the trunks. The jungle holds few Centaur clans, because a runner cannot run in it.
Word runs on Centaur legs. A message crosses Villtur the way a traveler does, clan to clan, and the clans that carry it fastest are the ones that can be at the far end of their loop and back before another clan has struck camp. A Centaur clan that carries word is paid in the coin the country has, grass and strings, and an Ohrvindar rider with a message has crossed three circuits by the time the sender's own clan has saddled.
The Geldune. Villtur does not carry the fallen. A clan whose proof lapses loses its grass and nobody rides to help it, and that is the game and every clan plays it. The Centaur clans play it too, in every respect but one. When a leg breaks on the run, the run stops. The clan halts where she fell and stays, and the halt is the Geldune: the circuit broken for as long as it takes, the loop's timing lost, the grass at the far end left for whoever reaches it first. The one who stays beside her is the standing one, the rare Centaur who has learned to wait, and the crossing is done there on the loop by the clan, with no Stillhand within a hundred miles. Every clan in Villtur knows this about them. The game does not pause for it. A Centaur clan at its Geldune has lost grass for it, more than once, and does it anyway.
"We took the river-bend from the Long Loop the year they halted for a girl with a shattered foreleg. Nine days. We rode it and it was ours by the gathering. They knew. They would halt again tomorrow."
The slack is what buys the halt. A grass clan's loop is long because a clan that may have to stop for nine days needs nine days it can lose, and the running of word is what the slack is spent on in a year nobody falls.
The Centaur clans stop least of the three peoples. The ones who do stop are the ones who learned to wait, and a Centaur in Aymuru still rides out at dawn after whatever moved in the night and cannot make herself stop. Where the settle-pull is weakest in Villtur, it is weakest in a Centaur clan, and the deep-clan argument has its firmest ground there.
"I do not care where it ends. In the ring, at a table, on the grass in spring. It ends, and I sleep."
An Orc and her mount are one body. Where the Centaur's beast runs beside her, the Orc's is under her and the two move as one thing in the charge, and the beast is the vigross, bred by ground the way the lasterki is: long-boned on the grass, thick and short in the snow, and at the jungle's edge a low, broad animal that goes through what a runner cannot. The Orc clans ride the Basogur's fringe where the Centaur clans are few; the jungle itself is the Lizardfolk clans' ground.
The gathering is the one place on Talan where nothing can be finished, and for an Orc that is the unbearable place. The Gathering-Peace holds; nobody breaks it; and every open thing a clan brought in has to be carried around the rings for the length of the winter. The ring of packed earth is the shortest road out. An Orc does not care whether a thing ends in the ring or at a table in the Taptent, only that it ends, and the ring is simply the way that ends it fastest; a Lizardfolk at the same table waits for the moment to be ripe and strikes then. So the arena fills with Orc leaders and the Taptent's back tables with Lizardfolk, and the Stillhands, who hold that some fight and some talk, watch both.
A feud is an open thing, and the Orc clans carry more of them than anyone. An Orc clan's circuit is shaped by its feuds the way a Centaur's is shaped by its slack: the loop bends toward the clan it has business with and away from the one it has settled. A feud closes in the ring, or at a table, or by a marriage that moves a name, and the closing of one is generally the opening of the next, which the Orc clans know and do anyway.
The stop is the hardest closing there is. A wall is a thing finished, a city is a circuit ended, and the Orc clans stop most of the three peoples: the clan-towns that are one clan stopped are Orc-heavy more often than not, and the Moonglow at Veidrath, three generations stopped and building on a third plot, are an Orc clan. A settled Orc finds market-day carries something of a well-led charge, and the settle-pull, which is a rail story on the map, is an Orc story on the ground.
"The Iron Fangs took the bend the spring after the Loop halted. Good grass, and they rode it hard. We took the ford above the bend, which nobody wanted. In four years the bend floods and the ford does not. We will be there."
A Lizardfolk and her beast extend each other. The beast is neither ridden nor run beside; it is the reach the hunter lacks, and each ground supplies a different one. In the jungle it is the armiar, the great spider, its web the hunter's patience given legs and her senses spread across a hundred yards of canopy. On the grass it is the nadra, the serpent, the strike from stillness on ground with nowhere to hide. In the snow it is the hontz, the white owl, the silent watch over a field where nothing moves for days. The Lizardfolk clans are most numerous in the jungle and along its rivers, where the runners cannot run and the chargers cannot charge, and the river-clans on the Skoga are theirs.
The cut in Villtur is taken three ways. A thinned clan's best grass goes in spring to whoever is there first, and that is the Orcs' and the Centaurs' game, won by the charge and the run. The Lizardfolk clans watch it go and take the ground beside it: the ford above the bend, the slope that drains, the winter camp nobody rates. They have seen the river in four years' time and they will be there. The patient inherit Villtur slowly, and by the time anyone counts, the count is theirs.
At the gathering the Lizardfolk leaders keep the back tables of the Taptent. A matter is walked around for the length of the winter and struck once, at the moment that is ripe, in one sentence; if the sentence does not land, the matter is walked around again. The Orcs at the ring find this maddening; the Stillhands find it restful.
A Lizardfolk feud is silent, and it lasts. It is opened by nothing anyone outside the clan can point to, held for years without a raid, and the strike, when it comes, is the first anyone else hears of it. If the strike does not end it, the clan goes back to the stalk, and the next strike comes when the next moment is ripe. The Frogged Tribe's feud with the other Lizardfolk tribes is over the Skoga itself: the one river worth waiting a lifetime for, and each of them is waiting.
The Lizardfolk clans stop last and for good. A clan that decides to stop has taken a season over it and does not unstop, and the oldest stopped places in Villtur are theirs. Aymuru's founding clan was Lizardfolk, which is why the fixed address has stayed exactly what it decided to be and grown into nothing more.
From Villtur the god-city is the board. A clan rides in when its circuit brings it, takes what ground the Stillhands say is free, and where it pitches is read by every clan after it: next to whom, how near the sanctum, how near the market, how many fires, how loud the beasts are picketed. A city sends a delegation and keeps a gated quarter in the belt of stone. The clans that stopped at Veidrath itself have begun to answer Veidrath when asked their clan, and then to think, and then to give a clan name as well. The rest of the city, its three strata and its two governments that do not mesh, is written with the god-city.
Villtur has been one thing exactly as often as something has come for the land. The Golden Empire held two thirds of the continent for seven centuries and held none of Ehizahar, and left no record of a battle it lost there; what it found was a chain of small wars that each ended at a hill, and no one to make peace with. When the Corrupted God's spawn came north in the Dark Era the clans met them the same way. No call went out either time. A clan whose grass is taken by an outsider is at war already, alone; the clans whose circuits touch its grass come because the taking arrives at their own picket-line next; and the fire runs along the circuits until the thing that came is gone. The clans do not fight the outsider's cause. They ride against the imported claim: a writ, a charter, a fort, a right-of-way, anything that says the ground is held by a rule from outside the game. A rival clan taking your grass is the game. An outsider building on Hinka's land is a hand that will take more, so the clans take the head first.
The rail is the first thing to come for the land that the clans cannot ride against, because it was invited. The Northern line touches the domain at its settled edges, in towns that wanted it, and from there it has bent inward toward the railhead bid at Veidrath's edge one clan at a time, on strings: every stretch of it lies on grass some clan agreed to, and every bend is a clan that refused, or a city that took payment where the cheaper line ran through a clan that would not. The route is the political map of Villtur drawn by a surveyor who was answering to the ground the whole way.
"The line goes left at the Skoga crossing where right was three days shorter and a quarter the earthwork. I was asked to note the reason in the survey and I have noted it: the clan on the right bank said no."
The settled half of Villtur reads the rail as the road the settled world was always going to send, and the deep clans read it as a disease with a schedule, and the rail bends where the second reading holds and runs straight where the first does. The common enemy has ridden together against an empire and a god. Against a full belly nobody has found the horn to blow.
Every Villturian will tell you that when an enemy comes for the land itself, a horn sounds from Modurtre, the mountain with the three mother trees, and every clan on every circuit hears it and rides. Nobody alive has heard it. Nobody's grandmother did. The Empire was turned back all the same, and the clans hold that the horn sounded then, and that it will sound again when it is needed, and that the rail has not needed it yet.
The Etxaber. The Villtur mount: a beast that carries five or six adults or a household, and a clan's wealth is counted in them at the gathering. The city folk keep them too, grazing outside the walls. The bond-beasts, the smaller mounts the scouts and hunters ride and raise, differ by ground; a jungle clan, a snow clan, and a grass clan hunt with different animals, or different breeds of one, and the bond-beast trade at Veidrath sorts them by circuit.
Lurresna, milk of the land: the Etxaber's milk, fermented, and one drink with a different recipe everywhere. Every clan's is its own and secret; the Frogged Tribe's on the Skoga comes out fruity; Aymuru's is drunk only on the road; the field-priests call theirs Hinka's offering and it is spiced.
The strings are kept. There is no custom for giving them back, and a traveler who has been handed across Villtur carries every clan's colors afterward. Zenerious brought eleven sets home to the Air Monastery and the order still has them.
"It certainly made me sputter much to the enjoyment of my guides."
A Villturian will claim to place a clan's grass by the taste of its Lurresna, and to tell the year by the strength of it. Ask two and they will place the same cup on opposite sides of the river.
A Villturian has a given name, a hunt name if they have taken one, and a clan, and says all three as one thing: Orrun Whitepelt Snow Lions. Nothing is inherited. The clan half is what a person belongs to now; children take the clan and never a parent, and the half changes when the belonging does. The hunt name is the one part a person chooses, taken at the first hunt or after one worth naming, for the kill or for the ground, and set aside for a greater one.
Between the hunt name and the clan stands a word, or none. An ordinary rider says nothing. A kinrider, the leader's chosen close, says of: Bayar Redstag of Snow Lions. The leader says is, because the leader is the clan: Temor Longwinter is Snow Lions. The clanless say was, and a band of lone wolves is a row of them: Orrun Whitepelt was Snow Lions. Banishment is the clan saying was of you before you say it yourself.
A marriage between clans moves one name. Which of the two changes their clan half is the settlement read aloud at the wedding, and the clan that gained a name won the circuits. The stopped carry the place the way a clan carries its name: Lori Aymuru; a district that has half become Veidrath adds it after, Lori Moonglow, Veidrath. Standing-words go before the given name and are given by the clan, never taken: Grandmother, who teaches the young and is no kin to them; Rider; Kinrider; Leader.
"I saw them send the kids to the Moon glow tribe? district? next plot over. Where they are taught by Grandmother Lori as I have been told."
Given
Hunt (for the kill or the ground)
Clan bynames
Whole names, across the ladder
Fenurra is a Villtur country that finished becoming itself. It has a capital carved into the Scar, a Speaker's Mantle, a Bone Gong that calls a War Council, and a marriage treaty with a foreign empire, and it holds itself apart even from its tribal neighbors. It could grow because it grew on ground no circuit wanted: the crater is harsh and resource-poor in everything but the star-metals, and a power rising there took no clan's grass. On the map it is a name that appears suddenly inside the green. The strings are honored to its border, and beyond the border the Fenurrans do their own watching.
"I feel like being watched, I know I feel like that because they want me to know they are watching."
An Orc-heavy grass-clan, the one that took Zenerious's first deal at the Sagarri fair and carried him from the mountains to the hill with the tree. Their leader then was Trenbeom, who told him he would miss the mountains; their leader now is Ganbat Ironhorn, who does not care where a thing ends.
An Orc clan of the Basogur fringe, riding the low broad vigross through ground a runner cannot cross.
The grass-clan whose circuit runs from the hill to the Skoga. They think the Frogged Tribe are strange.
A Lizardfolk river-clan on the Skoga, at odds with the other Lizardfolk tribes. They float the river on timber and hunt the jungle's edge for days at a time. Their Lurresna is the fruity one.
A Lizardfolk clan of the jungle, hunting through the armiar. Nomin Threeriver sits for it at the Taptent's back tables.
A Lizardfolk grass-clan, hunting through the nadra, who took the ford above the bend the year the Iron Fangs took the bend.
A younger grass-clan, whose five riders sent ahead took the big central plot beside the market at the gathering Zenerious watched fill.
An Orc clan stopped at Veidrath three generations ago, holding three plots and building on the third. Grandmother Lori teaches its young and the Aymuru quarter's beside them; Bayar Moonglow married a daughter of Aymuru.
A lone wolf of the band that carried Zenerious through the north; the one who stepped out on the third day of the storm and heard the Snow Lions first. Banished from the clan Zenerious had watched pitch beside the market at Veidrath sixteen days earlier. The log does not know it.
A Centaur-heavy grass clan whose loop is the longest in the country; they carry word across the centre. The Snow Lions took their river-bend the year they halted nine days at a Geldune.
A Centaur-heavy snow clan of the north, whose byname is the Geldune in the Guild's tongue; the standing ones are commonest there.
A northern clan of the ice-country. Orrun, one of their riders, put the clans' position on the rail on the record at the gathering of 2531.
A Stillhand of the hunt, who goes out with the clans and speaks for none of them.
The consortium's surveyor on the Northern line's Villtur stretch, whose reports note each bend by the clan that caused it.
The whole of Zenerious's log, in order, from the Sagarri fair to the Scar. Ninety days, nine Handings, and one stretch alone. Open any day to read the entry as he wrote it.
The Lands of Villtur are colloquially known as the blank lands among my colleagues. Few dare to travel into it to map it out, most of them seem to not come back. I am currently located in Baratalda Country, the harvest fair recently convened in Sagarri, it was an interesting affair but hardly worth mentioning for geographic purposes. What was notable though was the presence of two Villtur clans. The more surprising thing was that I negotiated with Harahari Iron Fangs and made a deal of safe passage through their circuit and from then on through a few other clans until I reach Veidrath and from there I was promised safe passage to the harsh north all the way to the Sky scar of Fenurra. I doubt this endeavor will end fruitful but I can hope my log book survives.
We're on our way through the grass plains, we're close enough to the mountains. The leader told me we will be seeing them for a while and then after a week after they're gone I'll miss them. He said so with a laugh. The ride with the Etxaber is surprisingly comfortable They are big beasts easily able to carry 5 or six adults, or a family by themselves. they also have smaller mounts the scouts use. I'm not an anthropologist but I if I were one I assume I would have a lot to write about.
we're leaving the mountains behind and I already think I know what Trenbeom meant with I'll miss the mountains, as far as I can see in front of us I see rolling green, some hills. The evenings are interesting. They are teaching me a few of their traditions, yesterday they finally convinced me to try their signature drink, milk of the land they call it. I'm not quite sure what's in it, it certainly was alcoholic, fermented. They wouldn't tell me, they just said it's a secret and every clan ahs their own. It certainly made me sputter much to the enjoyment of my guides.
The Harahari Iron Fangs and I parted ways. We were at the edge of their circuit. They left me near a little hill, with a tree on it. I know I have my measurements, I know I could find my way back here thanks to them. I have to admit, I have no idea how the Villturians do it, by eye alone I wouldn't be able to distinguish one green rolling hill from the next. Now I sit on this hill I couldn't distinguish with a token in my hand, they bound three colored strings to it, told me the Vindrakar Hooves would accept it and bring me to Veidrath.
The Vindrakar Hooves are currently escorting me, I see the Basogur Jungle in the distance, it is impressive, even at this distance, the trees seem massive. Also either I am getting used to the milk of the land or theirs is just more drinkable. I hardly cough. Soon we will reach the river Skoga at the edge of the Jungle, there I will switch to what the call The Frogged Tribe. They will escort me down the river to the forest peak, the part of the jungle that just furthest into Villtur, from there my Travel will be alone for a bit, to Aymuru, a small city where I will rest before travelling with their delegation to Veidrath.
I am now traveling with the Frogged Tribe, we're floating on wooden constructs over the wide river. The Vindrakar Hooves have told me various stories and how weird and off the Frogged Tribe is. I do not see it, to me both seemed different but quite similar, different Traditions same roots perhaps. I see some leaving into the jungle disappearing for days to come back with what they hunted or foraged. Their milk tastes entirely different but reminiscent of the others, it's fruity, dare I say, I may develop a liking to it.
My time with them comes to an end, we have reached the peak of the bend, they tell me it's the closest point to Veidrath. I wished them farewell and started the solo part of my track. I hope the goddess Fisaya grants me her guiding winds.
I have never felt this alone. It's night time, I'm sitting under a tree with my hearthrune close by, the stars twinkling above. And I am truly alone. I hear the critters, I see the outlines of animals, but I haven't seen a person in two days. In the distance I can see the city Aymuru but knowing it's still two days off is what boggles my mind. How can you see so far, yet see so little? I think around midday I spotted a hunter in the distance, their colors were none of the tribes I recognize, or maybe it was a figment of my imagination, a way for my brain to do something except look at green rolling hills that sway in the wind.
It's a strange feeling sitting at a desk once more after over forty days of traveling through Villtur. Aymuru is a city and it is not a City, I have traveled Vindul, Brauogi and I have never been in a city quite like this. It's hard to describe, I have visited sleepy cities, busy cities, but this city was built by nomads and you can feel it, somewhat see it maybe. I haven't gotten too much of a look into it, I arrived in the afternoon and it evening. But I have seen houses and next to it spaces for tents, I overheard a worker said he got a new job and is giddy to move to a different quarter, it seems people overwhelmingly live where they work here. A change it employer means a change in location, not by law but by custom. These people are used to move around and do so happily.
The city has been nice, they also have their own milk of the land, which I will taste tonight for the first time, they have told me it is a traveling drink. They don't consume it unless on the road. It is interesting to see the similarities and the differences. We still travel on the road, people, mounts, the tents are just placed differently but the same basis of the power in the middle as the nomads exists here as well. The tents are more orderly placed along lines perhaps. Also the roles are more defined. In every clan before the people themselves simply decided if they wanted to ride out that day to hunt, to gather, to explore. Here it is planned and assigned. Who goes, when he should be back. The kinrider just said dinner is served, so I'm ending the entry for today here.
Every Divine City is special, every one unique. Though it is something else to see the divine city when the city is not there. Most are impressive, imposing, a sight you will never forget. Though I suppose neither will I forget these sights, I have reached Veidrath, but Veidrath has not arrived yet. I see open grass lands sitting between dirt roads, space waiting to be claimed by clans that will come in a month or two. Next to districts reminiscent of villages or towns, made to last, meant to stay. I'm still staying with the Aymurus, they tell me fifteen years ago the delegation stopped packing everything up and decided to stay and it grew from there, more people looking to stay, from Aymuru, from others. Still Aymurus, but half Veidrath as well. I saw them send the kids to the Moon glow tribe? district? next plot over. Where they are taught by Grandmother Lori as I have been told. Lunch I have taken with the moon glows, they have given me a small bottle of their Milk of the land and made me promise to hold it in the moon's shine before drinking it. They live here, fully, all year round, third generation now, they have staked claim to a third plot this year and have started building on it. They tell me the plots are first come first serve as long as they are free and since they live here, they are always first. In the afternoon I have walked the roads and circuits, I mentally mapped the spaces, the plots where a city grows for a single season before riding out again. There's different shapes, different sizes, distance to the center with temple and all of it waiting. A group of five hunters arrived from the Sarnakhar Ash Runners, I saw them approach the Stillhands, who instructed them which plots are still free, the Ash Runners took a big one, central, visible. The Stillhands told me only few are reserved and the one next to the Ash Runners is going to be a market. The Stillhand who walked me back said five riders sent ahead is a clan telling everyone it can spare five riders. She said the plot beside the market is the one every clan has to walk past to buy anything, and that they knew that when they took it.
Today I visited the temple, like the rest of Veidrath it is missing its host. The Lady Hinka is out on her hunting season, the remaining Stillhands explained. If I needed to petition her it would be best to come back when the grass lands are white or go out and hunt for the huntress herself. For Lunch I had a Yearspit, a local custom where they prepare little of all types of meat a clan has gotten over the year. Yearspit in hand I wandered the fields were a few clans had already found their way to Veidrath. I visited an arena and witnessed a bout between two clans leaders. A kinrider explained they were settling the circuits for next year. They fight until one of them surrenders or can't go on anymore, they try to avoid deaths, but sometimes it does happen, she tells me. My feet carried me on before the fight ended and they carried me to the Taptent next, it was rather empty, which was normal during these times but it also meant the waitress had ample time to tell me of the Taptent. It had started with a single person selling homebrew from his tent. People like it, it grew. It gained benches, then tables, then different alcohol, then food, then a roof for the benches, then more space and so on and so forth. Nowadays the Taptent is a grown location, it takes up vast amounts of space of which most lies unused for 9 months out of the year. But the other three months it's filled to the brim every night she assured me. I saw some people here and there and two groups, the clan leaders were in a heated discussion. A kinrider explained they were settling the circuits for next year. On my way home, I stumbled upon a wedding, an Aymuru woman was marrying a Bayar Moonglow the bride and groom to be looked happy, brimming. The father of the bride and the mother of the groom looked happier when they shook hands. A kinrider explained they were settling the circuits for the next generation.
after 5 days in Veidrath my travels continue on. Maybe staying that long might have been a mistake, I got used to a solid bed again. I am being escorted by a travelling cluster of priests, they are on their way to Modurtre. It's a spiritual journey they tell me. I think I understand that, on truly clear days you can see the mother trees for hundred of miles. Maybe I will one day journey their myself. The priests have their own version of milk of the land, they call it Hinka's offering, it is... Spicy. Spicy milk.
Two days ago, the priests and I split ways, they told me to wait in a cave for my next escort. I feel my hearthrune is hardly equipped for this coldness. The lone wolves found me, they are not a clan, but the opposite, clan less people. Each group is called lone wolves, some choose new names, most do not. Either their clans were ravaged, destroyed and they are few of the survivors if not the last one or they have been pushed out, banished from their original clan, for one reason or another. As they are together by choice, they also go apart by choice, yesternight there was a fight, three people left, now we are 12, 13 if I include myself. They tell me not to worry, I hope they are right, because these cold winds seem hungrier than those I know from the Air Monastery.
Things had gone bad when a snowstorm broke over us, it came in a flash and then you barely could see your own hand. The lone wolves hunkered down and we erected tents, no cave was close by, tents within snow walls. They were more efficient than I have ever seen. I helped out best I could, my fingers were freezing but we got it done, protected at least. The unofficial leader quickly made a rationing plan. Two days we were stuck, getting burried, with nothing but us and a snowstorm. One disappeared in the middle of the second night, I know not where, I don't think I will see her again. The storm started subsiding on the third day, when Chulun left to check we heard voices, it seems The Snow Lions had found us. It was a tense stand off for a while. The lone wolves were able to make a deal, they had given them what I had paid them and then some. I feel the Snow Lions accepted out of pity. They gave us enough provisions to get the rest of the way.
Fenurra, that's what it's called, these lands. Paradise I might call them, though I think I will regret writing that once the cold has been replaced by the volcanic warmth. The lone wolves and I had parted ways, I feel like being watched, I know I feel like that because they want me to know they are watching