Lord Zee
Ashh
Frettzo
Vec♦ The Notes of Marcus, the Pseudo-Paladin III
A family in Dusklander society is big, very big, and very unequal. They remind oneself perhaps of what one would call 'clans' and yet with the social expectations of noble houses. Families are dedicated to one craft, and, in general, the villages and small towns will have a family for each craft, with the exception of farming and similar occupations. To get into a craft, you marry or are adopted into the local house. It does help to keep a level of mobility, when the owner of the land and the workers are all cousins, well, they take care of each other, even if one will obviously get to wear fancier clothes than the more 'expandable' side of the house.
That is however an explanation given from afar, look deeper and the already complex system turns into an actual mess. For example, a house of fisherman would obviously rather have their own carpenters, so the house would start marrying and adopting in that direction, it became so widespread these people got a name, 'manyagjir', and it didn't take long for the government to crack down with rule after rule about the topic. Similarly, taking advantage of the right to divorce and re-marriage, the central core of the houses would start basically swapping partners on a regular basis, a manner to expand influence and maintain a group, as the first central house leaders started to die. Obviously, sometimes one will fall in love with people of incompatible crafts, and that in itself required a whole lot of exceptions to the rules and new rules.
And then there is the whole inter-regional government, the institutions, the researchers and natural philosophers. The military, the foreigners, the diplomats. The way these houses operate in the big cities, be it as a native or as a small lodge from a crafting centre opening up a branch.
I would not say the system does not work, it does, so far, but it is notably delicate.
--
Today I had quite a surprise, I have been assigned my own personal Magistrate, to carry my belongings and remind me of my schedules, she also acts as a pass to many locations that were before out of reach. The only issue: she is always around, with her creepy doll eyes and distant look. Llasara is her name, I think.
For a start, I asked her to take me to the closest one could call a market in Tsorovah.
She guided me straight to the central junction and religious plaza, indeed, the yelling and murmur were equal to a market, with house and village representatives setting up cooperation deals, lots of sailors, gondolas, cranes and crates, with an equal amount of magistrates and their subordinates ordering goods around, taking note of what came in and checking for contraband. From that, you could catch glimpses of all of the nation's riches, and indeed the sight of a shipment of spice arriving was interesting.
But I wanted more, something inspiring, overwhelming even. I wanted displays and people trying to sell me their displays. It surely must exist somewhere, because there is Dusklander artistry. It took a lot of effort to get my little paper skinned friend to finally get what I was looking after, and so, we departed the distribution centre.
"boutique"
Or something similar, to be honest, Llasara diction was weird and her tone too low. Anyway
Boutique, meaning excess, not excess as in excessive, decadent, but rather, 'excess goods'. The houses would often have way more resources in their hands than they needed, what to do with that? Well, if you are lucky, if you are from the central core of the families and houses or just blessed with talent, you get to use that excess to make whatever goods you want and distribute them in the boutique. And I mean distribute, not sell.
Dusklander art is therefore very practical in nature, tailors make outfits, carvers make furniture, smiths make jewellery, miners have their gems and hunters rare furs, fishermen have pearls and shells, and so on. Mosaics, statues, and poetry, I guess, are not to be seen, paintings only in patterns for the architecture of homes and in the pottery, other types of art. One gets these goods by being a 'good citizen, in other words, if in Eunomia one gets to wear gold for being the best at carving a profit in the markets, in Tsorovah one wears gold to show how much of a good pet to Dzallitsunya they are.
Jokes aside, it's a shame the Boutique is hard to access for foreigners. When I went there it was a foggy day, the turquoise patterns in the walls and pillars of buildings with frames of brass shone in a glorious but discreet fashion, as is the way of beauty in the dusklands, the streets were illuminated by the light of the houses of the richest and most powerful, passing through stained glass windows, the light would print the colourful patterns upon the street.
--
All words in the streets of Tsorovah were about Badja Kiri and their alchemists or about the war. Of course, with so many paladins already in the 13 I thought the way I could help was by researching the latest dusklander inventions in their prime college. So I asked Llasara to take me there, and to my surprise, she accepted.
But, the foolish girl actually took me in the complete opposite direction. I thought magistrates were supposed to never make mistakes like this, and yet, we went right into the mirror marches, in a completely different Node.
As far as it goes, the node truly changed a lot from the first reports we got from the companions of lady Benea herself. Tsillara is well known for its wine and silk, but it's the arid salt flats and the upper frozen lakes that are truly impressive.
A whole network of stone tunnels and aqueducts is shaping the region up, for both irrigation and to be used in mining operations, all originating from the frozen lakes and the ever-falling snow of the upper highlands. The black cotton sails of the dusklanders, often sought for ships, are here used for windmills connected to operate a crusher, creating massive force to pulverise the ice and maintain the water flow open. I cannot help but notice this technique could be imported quite easily to the Artack.
The simple operation of these devices was enough to bring others to live in the icy region, add to that the army down in the central region of this node further pushed the locals to really up their game as far as fishing goes. The icy lakes of the mirror marches are not lifeless, even in the past it was noted that creatures lurked beneath and ice fishing was common, now, however, the people were pushed to dive deeper.
The dusklanders like water, comes from their homeland being a swamp I guess. In the canals of Tsorovah it was not uncommon to see the youth swimming about, fishing, playing with pet otters and dogs, most undressed, some however carried satchels of the ever so-common black cotton tsillo, there they casually used it to collect things that had fallen down the river or pretty shells and rocks, many seemed to dive for minutes at a time. In the lake however this was no play time, it was professional. Groups of fifty men and women at times would gather up, pull out a magmatic gemstone, harpoons and chains, then a group of, what, two to four, would undress and jump into the cold water, taking the harpoons, seven minutes later they would resurface in a much worse state, so pale they made the other dusklanders look tanned. They would be quickly helped with blankets and the aura of the gemstones while the group of fifty would take the chains, pull them, and out came absurdly sized fishes, crabs and squids.
Llasara told me that not only did they do the fishing I saw, but many underwater structures were being built using these free divers, from nets to capture fishers to crucial structural parts of the previously mentioned ice crusher. She took the chance to ask me how much I knew about the divers of Node 12, but I really did not know much.
I asked her for an extra night to observe the locals, she seemed... annoyed. She noted that I really liked watching people dive since I had also spent so much time in Tsorovah observing it. I was more interested in the food, and in letting my poor legs get some rest after so many days of the journey, but her assumptions actually helped me old, because for once, she decided not to tag along, leaving me be while she went off to attend other matters.
This was my lucky break. I could have not got a visit to Badja Kiri, but, at the same day I was staying in a small ice fisher village, the Dusklanders were holding an army drill on their latest equipment, by the unusual lights off in the distance it seemed to include the so-called alchemical artefacts.
I could not skip the chance to gaze upon that, and so, wearing a cloak of bear fur and a cloak of thick tsillo, I went off into the cold night.
--
The first thing I saw after getting a good view of them atop a hill was their cannons. Small and of a silver colour, it seemed not to be operated by crystals, but by using some sort of ignitable powder that was then lit up by a match. It was louder and created a lot of smoke, but it seemed to work as far as throwing massive balls of metal around went. These were being tested en masse, and seemed to be doing well, as far as the cheering of the crowd went. At their command was a magistrate, holding some sort of device that reminded me of an astrolabe. In fact, all the squads were led by magistrates with similar equipment.
The other group that seemed cheerful were the crossbowman, if the cannons were notable for being smaller, these were notable for being longer, mostly metallic frames. The bolt seemed to be lever operated and moved with ease, somehow shining, yet when locked, it seemed to become tense as the shine faded, the bolt was then launched in full silence, hitting the targets with ferocity. There were similar experiments with similar devices but that acted like slingshots, these had lesser ranger and impact but seemed to fill a purpose.
One person was very happy later when her weapon worked, it was what at first I thought was a buckle shield in her arm, but it was sharp, hollow, and just before she threw it like a disk, the whole thing bloody caught up in a white flame. It seemed like she could carry at best three of these things, the user could not possibly be practical, and yet, even from a distance, it caught me by surprise as it lit up the dark cold night and fell upon the training dummies like a star.
There were normal archers and they seemed to mostly be testing fire arrows, but the last few salves were of an arrow that left a silvery fog in the air as they moved, from what I saw, they were intended to explode not too long after landing, it was a dry explosion that left low hanging fog around the impact. I say intended because most of the experiment failed, mostly midair, but one unlucky archer had it go off when they were adjusting it in their bow, I was seeing it from a distance, but I could see the effect it had on his arm and the side of his face, even from a distance I could see it, it was like petrification, it became lifeless, too solid and yet brittle... a terrible thing.
There was a break in testing after that, when it resumed, the archers were nowhere to be seen.
Some new people arrived, and I recognised their uniform as that of a city guard, the others seemed like normal soldiers. The guards used a whip that upon impact released sparks of light and had a loud crack noise, not that of a whip but closer to lightning strikes, the soldiers would test a similar spell, but this one on the shield, they took a guarding stance and struck it with a sword, causing a bloom of sparks and noise to be released forward, to where the enemy would be.
That was about it for this night, the field started to empty out a few magistrates talked with a human woman with a colourful pair of glasses, she was very bothered and kept looking eastward, as if waiting for something, or someone, to arrive. Telling others they needed to 'put their souls into it' or something like that.
Out of the cold, back at my lodgings, I can't help but feel underwhelmed. Dusklander technology seemed interesting at first but these results were beneath what I expected for what was supposed to be their own variation of magic. Alchemy seems like an art far too delicate and subtle to be useful in war, if useful in anything at all.
I decided to move from Node 8 to Node 3, they say there is a port city up there, though most of the node is an inhospitable mountain. Its right by the Artack and should make for a trip back home, which I might take, as my enthusiasm grows lower.
--
Alchemy is a wonder, it's truly absurd.
Today, I am at Kollore, the capital of Node 3. The lead-up to it was not pleasant or encouraging, cliffside route after cliffside route, through rope bridges and dry gravel expanses, with one area of meagre green terraces, with people who looked nothing like the typical dusklander, they looked tired, apparently, their work was to go up in the mines.
Not a typo, up. While there are mineral riches down mineshafts, most of the mining work in Node 3 is done by going up the impossibly tall mountain and working on exposed quarries or extracting mountain coral from the bizarre wilds up there. Yes, corals up in a mountain too, at least the fish are where they belong, up in the sky flying among the coral.
Apparently, even breathing is hard up there, and miners will go to lodges filled with plants and boiling water to get some fresh air. Llarasa reminded me of how much easier their lives, as well as the lives of the tunnel diggers would be if the rumours of breathing herbs from Eunomia were real.
But who cares about those, Kollore, the city itself, after so much bleakness, what I saw was stunning. It was a verdant paradise, a hanging garden nestled between the frozen wasters, mount insanity and the hell known as Artack. They that if Badja Kiri is the town of alchemistry, this is the town from alchemistry.
Before it was a sad little harbour, probably as disappointing as the terrace towns I crossed, but it became THE focus of the intellectual elite, all the best minds of engineering, botany, and alchemy not preoccupied with the war arrived here, and they were carving Eden from stone.
Carving is literal, as with acids and picks of metals I cannot properly describe they cut the mountain up at sharp angles, reinforcing it with massive stone bricks walls. Water is pumped up by windmills from underground reservoirs, passing through a sand and gravel field heated up by these massive, massive mirrors, all this high up in the mountain, the water then going down brass-like-metal pipes which spreads in a series of canals and waterfalls on the city, all the way down to the sea.
The mirrors will alert a reader to a fact, this land is not covered by the typical Dzallitsunya "blessing" of eternal dusk and eclipses, indeed, the sun shines upon this land, and to cope with that the dusklanders made the whole city hide under orchards, very few homes rise above the shade of the trees and most are somewhat underground or built into the mountain. This orchard also acts to trap the heat of the water vapours, giving an almost subtropical humid and hot feeling under the leaves, among houses of glass and garden after garden of vegetables and flowers. My magistrate attendant informed me that this heat came from the fact we were in the highest layer of the town, as we went lower, the climate within the leaves and glass would be colder.
The alchemists had provided not only the infrastructure for the city, but the very soil. The process is ongoing so I could see it in many stages, from weakening the stone with acids, salts and silver fumes, to building ditches of red, rich dirt, and from there slowly shaping up the land, transplanting entire trees and planting others, raising up cottages of glass and twisted, flexible wood. The water flow provides the working force for the sawmills, the grain mills, fabric looms and even pottery wheels, this isn't used for intense production, but rather, leaves the citizens with notably a lot more free time to just walk around, enjoying the gardens with their translucent parasols and turquoise and black silk dresses.
A family in Dusklander society is big, very big, and very unequal. They remind oneself perhaps of what one would call 'clans' and yet with the social expectations of noble houses. Families are dedicated to one craft, and, in general, the villages and small towns will have a family for each craft, with the exception of farming and similar occupations. To get into a craft, you marry or are adopted into the local house. It does help to keep a level of mobility, when the owner of the land and the workers are all cousins, well, they take care of each other, even if one will obviously get to wear fancier clothes than the more 'expandable' side of the house.
That is however an explanation given from afar, look deeper and the already complex system turns into an actual mess. For example, a house of fisherman would obviously rather have their own carpenters, so the house would start marrying and adopting in that direction, it became so widespread these people got a name, 'manyagjir', and it didn't take long for the government to crack down with rule after rule about the topic. Similarly, taking advantage of the right to divorce and re-marriage, the central core of the houses would start basically swapping partners on a regular basis, a manner to expand influence and maintain a group, as the first central house leaders started to die. Obviously, sometimes one will fall in love with people of incompatible crafts, and that in itself required a whole lot of exceptions to the rules and new rules.
And then there is the whole inter-regional government, the institutions, the researchers and natural philosophers. The military, the foreigners, the diplomats. The way these houses operate in the big cities, be it as a native or as a small lodge from a crafting centre opening up a branch.
I would not say the system does not work, it does, so far, but it is notably delicate.
--
Today I had quite a surprise, I have been assigned my own personal Magistrate, to carry my belongings and remind me of my schedules, she also acts as a pass to many locations that were before out of reach. The only issue: she is always around, with her creepy doll eyes and distant look. Llasara is her name, I think.
For a start, I asked her to take me to the closest one could call a market in Tsorovah.
She guided me straight to the central junction and religious plaza, indeed, the yelling and murmur were equal to a market, with house and village representatives setting up cooperation deals, lots of sailors, gondolas, cranes and crates, with an equal amount of magistrates and their subordinates ordering goods around, taking note of what came in and checking for contraband. From that, you could catch glimpses of all of the nation's riches, and indeed the sight of a shipment of spice arriving was interesting.
But I wanted more, something inspiring, overwhelming even. I wanted displays and people trying to sell me their displays. It surely must exist somewhere, because there is Dusklander artistry. It took a lot of effort to get my little paper skinned friend to finally get what I was looking after, and so, we departed the distribution centre.
"boutique"
Or something similar, to be honest, Llasara diction was weird and her tone too low. Anyway
Boutique, meaning excess, not excess as in excessive, decadent, but rather, 'excess goods'. The houses would often have way more resources in their hands than they needed, what to do with that? Well, if you are lucky, if you are from the central core of the families and houses or just blessed with talent, you get to use that excess to make whatever goods you want and distribute them in the boutique. And I mean distribute, not sell.
Dusklander art is therefore very practical in nature, tailors make outfits, carvers make furniture, smiths make jewellery, miners have their gems and hunters rare furs, fishermen have pearls and shells, and so on. Mosaics, statues, and poetry, I guess, are not to be seen, paintings only in patterns for the architecture of homes and in the pottery, other types of art. One gets these goods by being a 'good citizen, in other words, if in Eunomia one gets to wear gold for being the best at carving a profit in the markets, in Tsorovah one wears gold to show how much of a good pet to Dzallitsunya they are.
Jokes aside, it's a shame the Boutique is hard to access for foreigners. When I went there it was a foggy day, the turquoise patterns in the walls and pillars of buildings with frames of brass shone in a glorious but discreet fashion, as is the way of beauty in the dusklands, the streets were illuminated by the light of the houses of the richest and most powerful, passing through stained glass windows, the light would print the colourful patterns upon the street.
--
All words in the streets of Tsorovah were about Badja Kiri and their alchemists or about the war. Of course, with so many paladins already in the 13 I thought the way I could help was by researching the latest dusklander inventions in their prime college. So I asked Llasara to take me there, and to my surprise, she accepted.
But, the foolish girl actually took me in the complete opposite direction. I thought magistrates were supposed to never make mistakes like this, and yet, we went right into the mirror marches, in a completely different Node.
As far as it goes, the node truly changed a lot from the first reports we got from the companions of lady Benea herself. Tsillara is well known for its wine and silk, but it's the arid salt flats and the upper frozen lakes that are truly impressive.
A whole network of stone tunnels and aqueducts is shaping the region up, for both irrigation and to be used in mining operations, all originating from the frozen lakes and the ever-falling snow of the upper highlands. The black cotton sails of the dusklanders, often sought for ships, are here used for windmills connected to operate a crusher, creating massive force to pulverise the ice and maintain the water flow open. I cannot help but notice this technique could be imported quite easily to the Artack.
The simple operation of these devices was enough to bring others to live in the icy region, add to that the army down in the central region of this node further pushed the locals to really up their game as far as fishing goes. The icy lakes of the mirror marches are not lifeless, even in the past it was noted that creatures lurked beneath and ice fishing was common, now, however, the people were pushed to dive deeper.
The dusklanders like water, comes from their homeland being a swamp I guess. In the canals of Tsorovah it was not uncommon to see the youth swimming about, fishing, playing with pet otters and dogs, most undressed, some however carried satchels of the ever so-common black cotton tsillo, there they casually used it to collect things that had fallen down the river or pretty shells and rocks, many seemed to dive for minutes at a time. In the lake however this was no play time, it was professional. Groups of fifty men and women at times would gather up, pull out a magmatic gemstone, harpoons and chains, then a group of, what, two to four, would undress and jump into the cold water, taking the harpoons, seven minutes later they would resurface in a much worse state, so pale they made the other dusklanders look tanned. They would be quickly helped with blankets and the aura of the gemstones while the group of fifty would take the chains, pull them, and out came absurdly sized fishes, crabs and squids.
Llasara told me that not only did they do the fishing I saw, but many underwater structures were being built using these free divers, from nets to capture fishers to crucial structural parts of the previously mentioned ice crusher. She took the chance to ask me how much I knew about the divers of Node 12, but I really did not know much.
I asked her for an extra night to observe the locals, she seemed... annoyed. She noted that I really liked watching people dive since I had also spent so much time in Tsorovah observing it. I was more interested in the food, and in letting my poor legs get some rest after so many days of the journey, but her assumptions actually helped me old, because for once, she decided not to tag along, leaving me be while she went off to attend other matters.
This was my lucky break. I could have not got a visit to Badja Kiri, but, at the same day I was staying in a small ice fisher village, the Dusklanders were holding an army drill on their latest equipment, by the unusual lights off in the distance it seemed to include the so-called alchemical artefacts.
I could not skip the chance to gaze upon that, and so, wearing a cloak of bear fur and a cloak of thick tsillo, I went off into the cold night.
--
The first thing I saw after getting a good view of them atop a hill was their cannons. Small and of a silver colour, it seemed not to be operated by crystals, but by using some sort of ignitable powder that was then lit up by a match. It was louder and created a lot of smoke, but it seemed to work as far as throwing massive balls of metal around went. These were being tested en masse, and seemed to be doing well, as far as the cheering of the crowd went. At their command was a magistrate, holding some sort of device that reminded me of an astrolabe. In fact, all the squads were led by magistrates with similar equipment.
The other group that seemed cheerful were the crossbowman, if the cannons were notable for being smaller, these were notable for being longer, mostly metallic frames. The bolt seemed to be lever operated and moved with ease, somehow shining, yet when locked, it seemed to become tense as the shine faded, the bolt was then launched in full silence, hitting the targets with ferocity. There were similar experiments with similar devices but that acted like slingshots, these had lesser ranger and impact but seemed to fill a purpose.
One person was very happy later when her weapon worked, it was what at first I thought was a buckle shield in her arm, but it was sharp, hollow, and just before she threw it like a disk, the whole thing bloody caught up in a white flame. It seemed like she could carry at best three of these things, the user could not possibly be practical, and yet, even from a distance, it caught me by surprise as it lit up the dark cold night and fell upon the training dummies like a star.
There were normal archers and they seemed to mostly be testing fire arrows, but the last few salves were of an arrow that left a silvery fog in the air as they moved, from what I saw, they were intended to explode not too long after landing, it was a dry explosion that left low hanging fog around the impact. I say intended because most of the experiment failed, mostly midair, but one unlucky archer had it go off when they were adjusting it in their bow, I was seeing it from a distance, but I could see the effect it had on his arm and the side of his face, even from a distance I could see it, it was like petrification, it became lifeless, too solid and yet brittle... a terrible thing.
There was a break in testing after that, when it resumed, the archers were nowhere to be seen.
Some new people arrived, and I recognised their uniform as that of a city guard, the others seemed like normal soldiers. The guards used a whip that upon impact released sparks of light and had a loud crack noise, not that of a whip but closer to lightning strikes, the soldiers would test a similar spell, but this one on the shield, they took a guarding stance and struck it with a sword, causing a bloom of sparks and noise to be released forward, to where the enemy would be.
That was about it for this night, the field started to empty out a few magistrates talked with a human woman with a colourful pair of glasses, she was very bothered and kept looking eastward, as if waiting for something, or someone, to arrive. Telling others they needed to 'put their souls into it' or something like that.
Out of the cold, back at my lodgings, I can't help but feel underwhelmed. Dusklander technology seemed interesting at first but these results were beneath what I expected for what was supposed to be their own variation of magic. Alchemy seems like an art far too delicate and subtle to be useful in war, if useful in anything at all.
I decided to move from Node 8 to Node 3, they say there is a port city up there, though most of the node is an inhospitable mountain. Its right by the Artack and should make for a trip back home, which I might take, as my enthusiasm grows lower.
--
Alchemy is a wonder, it's truly absurd.
Today, I am at Kollore, the capital of Node 3. The lead-up to it was not pleasant or encouraging, cliffside route after cliffside route, through rope bridges and dry gravel expanses, with one area of meagre green terraces, with people who looked nothing like the typical dusklander, they looked tired, apparently, their work was to go up in the mines.
Not a typo, up. While there are mineral riches down mineshafts, most of the mining work in Node 3 is done by going up the impossibly tall mountain and working on exposed quarries or extracting mountain coral from the bizarre wilds up there. Yes, corals up in a mountain too, at least the fish are where they belong, up in the sky flying among the coral.
Apparently, even breathing is hard up there, and miners will go to lodges filled with plants and boiling water to get some fresh air. Llarasa reminded me of how much easier their lives, as well as the lives of the tunnel diggers would be if the rumours of breathing herbs from Eunomia were real.
But who cares about those, Kollore, the city itself, after so much bleakness, what I saw was stunning. It was a verdant paradise, a hanging garden nestled between the frozen wasters, mount insanity and the hell known as Artack. They that if Badja Kiri is the town of alchemistry, this is the town from alchemistry.
Before it was a sad little harbour, probably as disappointing as the terrace towns I crossed, but it became THE focus of the intellectual elite, all the best minds of engineering, botany, and alchemy not preoccupied with the war arrived here, and they were carving Eden from stone.
Carving is literal, as with acids and picks of metals I cannot properly describe they cut the mountain up at sharp angles, reinforcing it with massive stone bricks walls. Water is pumped up by windmills from underground reservoirs, passing through a sand and gravel field heated up by these massive, massive mirrors, all this high up in the mountain, the water then going down brass-like-metal pipes which spreads in a series of canals and waterfalls on the city, all the way down to the sea.
The mirrors will alert a reader to a fact, this land is not covered by the typical Dzallitsunya "blessing" of eternal dusk and eclipses, indeed, the sun shines upon this land, and to cope with that the dusklanders made the whole city hide under orchards, very few homes rise above the shade of the trees and most are somewhat underground or built into the mountain. This orchard also acts to trap the heat of the water vapours, giving an almost subtropical humid and hot feeling under the leaves, among houses of glass and garden after garden of vegetables and flowers. My magistrate attendant informed me that this heat came from the fact we were in the highest layer of the town, as we went lower, the climate within the leaves and glass would be colder.
The alchemists had provided not only the infrastructure for the city, but the very soil. The process is ongoing so I could see it in many stages, from weakening the stone with acids, salts and silver fumes, to building ditches of red, rich dirt, and from there slowly shaping up the land, transplanting entire trees and planting others, raising up cottages of glass and twisted, flexible wood. The water flow provides the working force for the sawmills, the grain mills, fabric looms and even pottery wheels, this isn't used for intense production, but rather, leaves the citizens with notably a lot more free time to just walk around, enjoying the gardens with their translucent parasols and turquoise and black silk dresses.
