Common Worlds

Around you, the steam settles as a staining frost. Muddy ground freezes quickly as you set to your saddles.  Moving out, you leave behind a strange crater in the ice, the only evidence of your battle with the sparking cloud.

Before curious guards or lunar patrols can ask embarrassing questions, you gather up your singed bits and pieces, provide some healing for singed zebras and hit the icy road.

Oshun has made this trip before, and always thought of this part of the trail as a pleasant jaunt along a predictable stream down past muddy Lake Salor. Now ice accretes along the banks of the river, every ford of a tributary is a gauntlet of hypothermic shock, and the going is slow because the beasts have terrible trouble with footing. With a hard day's travel through the Salor Vale, you pass the eastern portion of the Sleeping City Hills and the notable Rainbow Rock. On your other side lie the dark foothills of the Thogsarm hills.

You pass signs of separate troll attacks and a trollkin attacks on travellers, but there's nothing left of interest and no one to heal or even bury.

Then out onto the plains proper for the second half of the day. As night falls, you reach the ancient, broken slab or stone that once served as a bridge across the arroyo cut by the seasonal Adari River. Sor-eel the governor general of Prax has promised a new bridge here to improve trade, but the only sign of it are some defaced survey markers.

By coming up the eastern bank of the river you bypass the lunar toll here, and there's less of an examination of you and your goods by their mercenary guards. These are Sir Holburn's Axe Brothers, a unit hired on here to augment lunar troops. Many are from the far west and used to hard winters. They seem uninterested in bothering travelers who just want a place to camp for the night.

But across the river, things are very different. A full Imperial camp flies its pennons there, with many heavy wagons and precise, heavy watches. Banners of Sor-eel's family, the Eel-ariash rise above the largest tent and glow with their own light. Magic hangs heavy in the air in that direction, protecting the camp from any outside attack. Bats fly in the cold night air, and the sound of New Pelorian prayers rings out in the twilight, chanted by hundreds of soldiers. These are all heartlands troops, and most seem elite.

A bit of questioning reveals that this lunar convoy comes from Pavis, reached here near dark, and only just crossed the canyon in time to set their camp in the twilight. They moved slowly because the many wagons are heavy.

More later, but if someone wants to do something, chime in soon.