Asitha already hated mages. This was maybe not fair, most of them never cursed the world to die slowly, and suffer and corrupt on the way down. But it did kind of loom large.

Now she can add "those three threw me through a portal through, looked like at least five different places in succession, dumping me out on... wherever this is".

She lands sprawled, weapons still drawn but tucked inward to avoid slicing herself up. When she looks around...

Well, either she just got landed in the middle of Faerie, which might exist, or this is the most absurdly peaceful place she's ever seen. She sheathes her swords, tries to smile, and looks for someone who's noticed her arrival.

Several people have noticed her arrival and are reacting surprisingly calmly. 

The children are being quietly and determinedly rounded up, which is not an easy task as they all want to gawk.

One teenage girl took off running immediately, back up to the cluster of buildings, yelling "Visitor! Through a portal!"

She is being approached by a couple of people, one gentleman who is taking some kind of leather tool roll off his belt and looking at her carefully like she might be some kind of wounded wild animal, and one lady who is smiling widely and generally trying to put her at ease.

"Welcome to Foundhome, did you come through the Gate? Is there trouble coming?" asks the lady.

"And are you hurt at all?" adds the man.

There are also distinctly a few people who have picked up spears from the undergrowth in a stealthy fashion and are trying to look unthreatening but ready for that to change if necessary. 

Okay, these people speak the trade-tongue. That's... probably faeries. This does not look like it's the Cursed Empire and who else would speak Imperial?

"Uh, 'the Gate' sounds more intentional than this. A few outlaw mages sent me away, I don't think they were aiming anywhere but 'not bothering us'. I don't think they were spiteful enough to send anything chasing me, they didn't seem bloodsoaked."

Think, what do you have to do in a faerie story? Maybe she can wait and see?

"Hmm. If they opened the Gate there must have been a conjunction, which means something interesting is going to happen here." 'interesting' is definitely not being considered as a positive quality in this sentence. "Well, I'm Rhyssa, this is Davyd, and I expect Allegra will be along in a minute and be rather better at answering your questions. It doesn't look like they left the gate open so you might have a long walk back - if you don't know where you were sent, we're in Miaren."

Davyd seems almost disappointed that the surprise visitor isn't obviously injured, and starts to roll the tool roll up again. From a glance at it, the contents are small knives on varying length thin handles, a mirror on a stick, and several kinds of moss.

One of the other women steps closer. "I could have a quick look to see if there's a closed portal I can operate? Don't worry, I'm casting on the air, not on you." She waits for a moment to see whether she is going to startle the visitor by starting an incantation. 

Faeries, faeries... Don't tell lies? Be polite, by someone's standards of polite? Wait, friendly(?) mage, that should probably come first.

"I don't know enough about magic to understand that, ma'am, but casting on the air shouldn't trouble me. Thank you for the warning."

Then she turns back to the one who gave her name.

"Nice to meet you, Rhyssa, Davyd. I'm Asitha. I'm afraid I've never heard of Foundhome or Miaren, but I thank you for the welcome."

"Hmm. Does 'Navarr' mean anything to you? 'Anvil'? 'The Empire'? I suppose that one's a bit generic if you're in fact from very far away..."

The supposedly friendly mage starts waving her arms around as if drawing patterns in the air. "I examine the weave of magic, I follow the pattern, the pattern is everywhere, the pattern is here, I perceive the patten..." She repeats this a couple of times, then looks disappointed. "If there was a portal, it can't be opened from this side," she reports.

The girl who ran off comes back onto view escorting a middle aged lady with a burn scar on her left cheek, a thorn tattoo above her left eye, and a stylised fountain tattoo down her right cheek. The lady is using a thick quaterstaff which has silver veins and autumn leaves growing from it as a walking aid.

She also doesn't immediately appear to have any of the plant like properties the rest of the inhabitants have. 

"No, no, and, as you say, generic. The region I usually travel in is generally called the Cursed Empire. I think it was the Kalassian Empire before the curse? We're speaking the imperial trade tongue, as far as I know, but I haven't heard of anyone sending traders in or out, and you're," she gestures vaguely at the people, looking healthy and calm, "not looking at all cursed to me. Though I don't know much about the plant thing, perhaps you're all faeries and curses can't touch you."

The lady fetched from the village joins them.

"Hi there, I'm Allegra, and for my sins I'm vaguely in charge of this Steading. From what I just overheard, not actually a visitor from Anvil, somewhere more far-flung? Are you happy standing around out here or would you like someone to invite you in for tea?

You have not landed in a Realm of magic as far as we're aware, we just have a reputation for being a good place to be a Briar."

Okay, that's... probably good. Also confusing. But good.

"Would you mind explicitly confirming that you're not faeries? As I recall, they can't tell lies, and I am, actually, somewhat concerned about the idea. I'm content standing around, but I would be delighted to have tea."

(Asitha has had tea twice in her life, both times when meeting with the same client, who is probably the richest man in the Cursed Empire. These people don't even consider it special? Hells and torments, they must be rich.)

"We are not what we might call fairies, but it's not a very common term and people mean a lot of different things by it - we're humans, some Spring touched.

Unfortunately we can very much lie, although I don't tend to make a habit of it these days, far too confusing trying to remember what you said to who.

Hyly, can you fetch us some tea? And maybe a chair and a little table, I have the feeling we might be a while."

The enthusiastic runner who fetched Allegra looks at a couple of the other younger people, in what is clearly trying to look like a lot of people working around the stream and definitely not a crowd overhearing Allegra talking to the interesting visitor, and a couple of them head off with her back to the buildings. 

"Well, if you can lie, you're not the thing I was worried about," she says with a more genuine-looking smile, "And saying you can lie would be a lie. So probably I am just very, very far away. I've never heard of 'Spring touched' or 'Briars'."

"Hmm. You probably have different names for the magical realms? I know the Grendel do, although I can't remember what they call Spring. It's the realm of life, I suppose - but with all the negative as well as positive correlations, the state of nature, predation, decay, as well as healing, fertility, natural vigour?"

"...don't think we have a name for that at all. Or any idea that it exists. Maybe mages do, but they're... one in a thousand, probably, and insular. Most people will go a lifetime without seeing magic done or being affected by it, other than the curse. I'm very well-traveled and have seen a lot of strange situations, and even I've never seen anything like that."

"Ah, right. If you don't have much magic, it makes sense that there wouldn't be many lineaged people.

You've mentioned a curse a couple of times now. Would you mind if we checked you over to see what it's doing, if it's still active on you? I can't do it myself, but the Winter coven will be very excited to have an interesting curse to look at."

The three young people are on their way back, with two folding chairs, a little folding table, and two wooden cups of something warm.

"If it was completely gone, I'd probably be collapsing, there's a perverse blessing for violence, to try to make us awful to each other even as everything collapses. But - wait, hells, actually we should do that before anything else. I might be contagious, that's why everyone else stopped trading with us." 

"Okay. Shall we get a little way away from the stream, then? If it's going to be suddenly extra contagious that will definitely happen during the ritual and I'd rather it was at a nondescript patch of forest than my mana site.

Hyly, sorry for the change of plans, set these up for when we get back and send at least half a dozen of our Winter mages out back to find me?"

Allegra props up her staff in her elbow, accepts both cups of drink, and offers Asitha one. It is a green tea rather than a black tea and has no additions.

"What do you already know about the curse, so we can prepare appropriate precautions if possible?" 

Allegra seems to be taking this very calmly, but everyone else distinctly backed off when Asitha mentioned potential contagion.

"There's a few stories about how exactly it was created. Might be a death curse from a mage directly executed by the Empire, might be a coven of mages who wanted revenge on the Emperor for persecuting mages in general, but everyone agrees it was some kind of revenge. The effects are that ordinary bodily needs don't quite sustain us. Food doesn't fill you, water doesn't quench your thirst, sleep doesn't quite rest you. The only way to get them to work properly is blood. You can get along with freshly-killed livestock and either drinking the blood directly or rubbing it on your skin, but it takes a lot of livestock, and it has to be immediate and direct - wielding the blade that kills them yourself. Drawing blood from other humans - intelligent nonhumans are complicated - takes a lot less, and you don't have to kill them, but you can't take your own and if you don't extract it painfully you have to use it like animal blood, fresh and warm. If you murder someone, though, you're free of the curse entirely for several days, even if you don't touch their actual blood. And if you kill many people, it lasts even longer, and you stop needing sleep, food, or water at all. We call that being 'bloodsoaked'. Long-term bloodsoak makes you sort of feral, angry, destructive, and short-sighted. I haven't entirely avoided that, travelers aren't trusted to take many jobs other than violence, but I'm still relatively sane."

"Well, at least you've come to the right nation," deadpans Allegra, "We do blood magic and everyone else thinks we're feral already. As long as everyone can just stand in a circle and daub each other with their blood, we should be able to deal with it if it gets to us; that's pretty much what the Winter ritualists are about to do to investigate it."

She does start moving off at a tangent to the buildings, though, towards a less travelled part of the forest edge, and gestures that Asitha should follow.

"If we're very lucky it's lost its connection to whatever is sustaining it and it'll burn itself out in the standard curse duration of a year, which should give you enough warning without causing more grief for the rest of us."

She follows along.

"Well, you certainly know much more about magic here than anyone knows back- back there. I'm not that optimistic, it always feels like it's intelligent enough to spot people trying to find a cheat and twist itself to stop them, but I'm no mage or scholar. Still, hopefully it was laid down geographically rather than contagious, that's the other theory."

"It's not really a cheat, is it? It's just that we're a people who are used to sacrifice. It's kind of our thing. Everyone else tends to think it's us being awful to each other already, but... there are things that are important and if all it takes is a little blood, that's really not much."

Allegra goes a few steps into the trees, but not far enough that people won't be able to spot them on the way from the buildings.

"Do you have an example of a way it's twisted itself in the past?"

"There was something where someone tried snapping the spines of... I think it was pigs... and then bleeding them slowly, because they don't die quickly that way and someone had determined that flaying a horse alive was more helpful than killing it cleanly. But by the end of the month the benefit they expected just hadn't materialized, like the slow death only helped when it was painful. Not like its rules were changing while we looked, but that it was set up so that it didn't just demand blood or death, but suffering and sadism."

"Oh, right, that should be something we understand how to deal with - that's just It's Not A Proper Sacrifice, our magic does that too, sometimes."

A motley collection of Spring-touched individuals is making their way out of the buildings towards them, presumably the 'winter coven' that Hyly was rounding up.

"Okay, so how this is going to work is - I'm going to tell all but six of the coven to go away, they will argue about it for a while but I don't want this on more people than it needs to be on - they'll make a circle around you, and - how do you feel about getting their blood on you? They can do it without that, but apparently it's easier if they can draw the patterns on you, rather than just on each other. They'll be casting Wisdom of the Balanced Blade, it's a standard curse divination, should tell us where it comes from, what it does, if it has a natural duration, if there's something that can be done to break it early - and if anything will make it worse."

"I'm definitely not going to be precious about touching blood, they can go ahead. That all makes sense. Should I put aside the enchanted equipment while they work?"

"Your choice; it shouldn't interfere if it's anything like our magical equipment, if it's also cursed then it might be confusing to look at multiple curses at once, but they should be able to target you personally specifically rather than any of your items.

I'm going to step out and head them off a moment, I'll be back when I've successfully picked a ritual team."

Allegra heads back out of the forest and has a brief argument with the incoming people; they clearly all want to be part of the ritual and are happy to take any associated risks. It only takes a couple of minutes for her to dispatch enough of them back towards the buildings and come back with six.

"I'm actually going to stand well back during the ritual itself. This is Angie, Gysha, Caz, Leylyn, Juny, and Pylan," she points to each in turn, "and they'll take a couple of minutes to do the ritual, then either wave me back over if it's fine - or already too late - or explain the results to you and work out what to do if it's not."

"Hi," says Angie. "Apparently you're not squeamish?"

"I've been cursed all my life to need blood to sustain myself, I'm certainly not squeamish about this. Nice to meet you all, I'm Asitha."

"Ooh, that sounds like the one that happened to everyone in the Hall of Worlds that one time!" says Gysha excited.

"That was obligate cannibalism, and the urge went away when the act was completed," Allegra explains. "Anyway, I am going to get to safe ritual distance, wave me over when you're done, unless it's hugely unsafe for you to do so - in which case I suppose you're figuring out what to do next, I recommend leaving a written note and retreating if you're not sure."

Allegra makes to move off to 'safe ritual distance', which appears to be close enough to watch but not necessarily to make out everything that is said; the ritualists dutifully begin to loosely assemble in a circle around Asitha and draw small knives, which might look kind of threatening if you hadn't just been told they were going to draw their own blood.

She's a little skeptical, but she didn't set aside her armor, weapons, or most relevantly here the holdout talisman that can knock back everything around her to two yards distance. Also, only one of them moves like someone who knows what a serious fight is like, so she could probably win without help if they tried. She keeps a close eye on that one.

"Do you really need those out right next to me?"

"Ugh, we're going to have to start again, I've lost it," says Juny.

"It's kind of part of the ritual," replies Leylyn, "we could all bloodlet into a bowl instead if we really had to, but we haven't brought a bowl and it's a bit of a faff."

"I guess we can do the one where we sheathe them right after, if you don't mind us actually touching you rather than wiping the blades off?" offers Angie. "Allegra said she'd let you know what you were in for, but it looks like we didn't cover the details."

"If you can keep the blades well away from my throat, my face, and the vulnerable joints, and won't make any sudden moves, that's okay. Touching me with the wet blades, even the flats, would be substantially worse, I'd probably deck everyone in reach before I took a second to think."

"I'm glad we cleared that up before we got going!" exclaims Caz.

"Okay, so, let's take you through the actual script. Drawn blades won't come any closer to you than they've been, we'll use the variety where we sheathe them. Depending on personal preference, ritualists will open up a fingertip or the side of the hand or arm, get some blood on a finger, and paint on a very simple rune - if you don't want them on your face, are there any bits of clothing we should particularly avoid because of staining? There will be mildly ominous chanting. We'll dance a pattern around you, we can avoid touching you during that bit but some of us will probably get quite close. That should be enough, but we may repeat the first bit, I think we can get away with drawing the runes on each other that time - we'll re-form the circle before drawing knives again so you will have some warning." Angie smiles awkwardly. "Sorry, Winter magic is a bit Like That."

"Blood on my face is fine, it's weapons near it that's a threat, and I have not had the luxury of slowing down to let my brain have a say in how I react to threats. Ominous chanting and such is fine, everything I'm wearing has gotten bloodstains at least once-" Is that technically true of her underclothes? ...Probably, now that she thinks about it. "-so you don't need to worry about that."

"Excellent. Let's try that again, everyone," says Angie.

The circle becomes less ragged again; a look of concentration on each of the ritualists' faces as they draw their own blood, and carefully put the still-bloodied knives away; a low humming, and Angie states, "Irremais - the rune of Wisdom", steps forwards, and paints a two-stroke rune on Asitha's cheek with the wound on the side of her hand.

Assuming that goes well, each of the ritualists approach in turn - apparently Irremais is also the rune of Sacrifice, Punishment, the Blade, Bitterness and Experience.

Then they start a complex weaving dance around her, repeating their own phrase about Irremais, interspersed with "The curse shall reveal its secrets" and "Winter opens our eyes".

The end of the ritual appears to be the simultaneous action of grabbing notebooks and pencils from various pockets and bags, and frantic scribbling.

"We're just writing down what we found out," explains Angie briefly, "so we don't forget anything."

After a considerable quantity of scribbling, Angie waves Allegra back over.

"Good news, it's not contagious to us; it spreads to your children, and will stop doing that eventually but in, like, a really long time," Angie continues as Allegra walks back.

"That seems alright. Bad news is?"

The ritualists all summarise their insights at this point.

"It runs off doing bad stuff in order to get blood. The blood works in proportion to how bad it was to get it; lots of ways to be bad, but everything has to link back to some kind of suffering in the end."

"If you use more blood than you need, you'll get temporarily stronger and better, but first you'll lose the capacity for mercy and then for rational thought."

"The really bad news is that it's got some kind of labyrinth spirit attached - that's why it can last more than a year, and be clever about what it's doing. And it's got a power source that's, did anyone manage to write it down?"

"It's not one of the standard realms of magic, that's for sure. Unless it is, in a funny hat."

"Anyway, fixing the labyrinth spirit would sort it out, but, uh, it's now pretty old and pretty stuck in its ways."

Allegra looks particularly unimpressed by the idea of a 'labyrinth spirit'.

"Well, that mostly sounds like what you expected, other than for what's sustaining it?" she contributes. "We have - as an Empire - dealt with a rogue Labyrinth Spirit before, one called the Eater of Hope, but it... wasn't an easy process."

"Yeah, that sounds reasonably okay. A small number of people can do okay just personally killing their food, my parents' people do it. So I'll be fine here for a long while, probably, if you don't have the time to spare on ending it."

(Someone particularly insightful might notice a small hitch in her voice at 'my parents' people'. But only a small one, she's had years to get used to it.)

"And I'm not sure whether we really defeated the Eater of Hope or just chased it away, so I'm not sure we'd be able to break the curse on where you came from by acting on this end; it might be worth working towards it, just in case there is such a resolution, though.

So. Sorry for hustling you about; would you like some more tea? We eat a lot of preserved and imported food here, but there are deer in the forest, if you think hunting them would help. And fish a bit further upstream, although I don't know if they are complicated or cute enough to count. And we can have that nice sit down that we were about to have, and see what you'd like to do next."

"Sitting down would be good, now we've confirmed I don't need to be quarantined. Lead the way!"

As they walk, she continues offhand, "Deer and fish should be fine, that's what I did before I left home. I think that wasn't quite enough to ignore the curse, but it's enough that people stay basically healthy and don't worry much except about long-term exhausting the prey populations. Those forests are probably the healthiest place in the Cursed Empire."

"I will be extremely impressed if you manage to exhaust our deer population," replies Allegra. They get back to the small table and chairs set up by the stream; Allegra lays her staff in the grass and sits down. "And if you do you can always pop over to Sermersuaq, I hear they actually are having a bit of a mammoth overpopulation crisis because they keep casting Rivers of Life. Although the ongoing war might be a bit awkward."

"Huh. I might do that just for fun, honestly. If not for the trying to travel through a war part, at least."

"Sermersuaq's really big, there's plenty of it that is not actively at war at any one time, although I hear there are now three or four different forces fighting there depending on if you count the Hylje. It's also primarily ice and permafrost, although currently apparently it's incredibly pretty with all the burgeoning life. Bit cold for my tastes."

"Probably wouldn't bother me. What are they fighting over, who gets to be in charge? Actually, also, what's 'Rivers of Life'?"

"Mostly, who gets the natural resources. There's a mithril mine - I don't know if you have mithril, it's useful for lightweight weapons and armour, and big mana-focusing mirrors? And an ilium deposit as well. The Jotun poured in a few seasons ago and took the mithril mine when everyone was busy being distracted by the Druj and the Grendel, and the Thule have been sitting on the ilium deposit for a while now as part of the peace treaty we signed with them, so have showed up to defend their bit. All those are neighbouring majority-orc polities, all of them are terrible in one way or another although the Jotun probably the least.

Rivers of Life is a Spring ritual that is primarily for reducing casualties in a war, although how it does it is to make everything in the area supernaturally healthy and good at healing; which means that if you keep the place under it for, it must be over a year now, one casting lasts a season - then everything just grows out of control. It's relatively safe to do it in Sermersuaq because the natural state of the place is basically an icy wasteland, although don't let the Suaq catch you saying that; getting it anywhere near a Vallorn would be, uh, bad. Not that it's stopped us now and then, but it was still bad.

I have completely forgotten where I got to in my basic explanation of anything, did I even mention the Vallorn?"

"I don't think you've mentioned the Vallorn before. Or ilium, or orcs. Are orcs basically-civilized people, like humans and whatever Briars are? There's a few intelligent species back- in the Cursed Empire, but they're all magic-warped animal species that only interact with humans violently, and other than the ratmen I don't think any of them have progressed past stone tools."

"Yes, orcs are just people; they have a mild tendency to be a bit - fightier - than humans, and they generally hate being the only orc in the room, but individuals vary a lot. Briars are humans, just with a little bit of Spring magic attached; there are a whole set of those, Changelings for Summer, Cambion for Autumn, Draughir for Winter, Naga for Night, Merrow for Day. If someone's basically human shaped but with some extra bits, probably one of those, called 'lineaged' as a general term.

Orcs are a bit more different, they're just built heavier and with thicker skin, monochrome shades - young orcs tend to start out entirely coal black and old orcs end up bleached bone white, but in between there's often a bit of brown or yellow mottling involved.

Then there's heralds, which are actually creatures of the magical Realms, but often talk and are intelligent and all that - they generally have extremely weird perspectives on things, though, and can look like all kinds of bizarre things. I once saw one that was just a gigantic crab, some that were floating glowing jellyfish, an absolutely colossal spider; if it's incredibly bizarre and it talks then it's probably a herald.

Uh, illium. Illium is a bizarre metal that only occurs in rocks that have fallen out of the sky. It has all kinds of magical uses in small pieces, but its main one is to make magical effects last longer - if you want a permanent magical item, or ritual effect, that will generally require quite a bit of ilium.

And the Vallorn - it's essentially, malevolent terrain. Exudes a poisonous miasma, and if you're unfortunate enough to die in it, then it can take over and puppet your body; and instead of going on to the Labyrinth, as usual, you get trapped in there until someone destroys the body and lets you out. The Navarr, everyone with one of these Binding of Thorns tattoos," and she indicates the small tattoo of a thorny branch over her left eye, "are all sworn to fight it in some capacity - mostly in this Steading we're harvesting mana crystals and producing useful things for other people. The main way of fighting it is to walk the Trods - a set of magical pathways - which helps leech the Spring magic out of the Vallorn and makes it possible to eventually destroy it."

"Huh. As far as I know, no one who dies, back my way at least, is ever in a condition where they'll talk about what happens after. Is the Vallorn or its miasma easy to see from a distance?"

"Yes, usually; if you're in deep forest you might not notice the change in time, but one of the things we do as Navarr is put up warning signs and cut down clearings at the borders so it's easier to see - suspiciously dense forest behind a clear-cut area is likely to be hazardous.

Green mist, a dense humid feeling in the air, insects that are too large, and suddenly feeling ill for no apparent reason are the most reliable signs; if you get to the point where you can see moss-covered husks of people shambling around you have definitely gone too far. Occasionally it will reach out and attempt to spread to a nearby area, which will make the borders a bit more indistinct for a while.

It exists in fairly well defined regions; within the Empire at least, people you pass on the way towards one are likely to warn you about the local warning conventions and tell you about the known safe routes. The nearest one is over a hundred miles north of here; Miaren used to have one, but it's the only one we've ever defeated in full."

"Good for you! I've seen things a bit like it, I can guess how ugly it would probably get if you weren't fighting it."

"Yes, left to its own devices it'd basically eat the world, or at least this continent.

There are a few outside the Empire's borders, though. The Thule, for all their faults, do at least let us in to help contain theirs; the Druj keep trying to weaponise theirs, of course, but at least one of their powerful individuals has some kind of self preservation instinct and keeps it at bay with Winter rituals.

I'm most worried about the Axou one - they just avoid it, and it's clearly been growing unchecked for years as they've been too distracted by the Druj to handle it.

And if the Jotun keep Liathaven longer term, they don't really have the magic to deal with it, although we did dump a horrible Winter curse on the whole place which should hold it for a bit."

"You sure have a lot of people - groups? - maneuvering around each other. How do you keep them all straight?"

"Most people don't - they just don't leave the place they were born or where they end up working, and listen to the people in charge, or to a set of wild rumours that usually happen to keep them reasonably safe where they are.

I spent a while going to Anvil, and I've always been quite good at remembering a lot of information.

I'm not necessarily quite so good at sharing it in a sensible order, though! I'm sorry if it's all a bit overwhelming.

Maybe you should talk a bit about what you might want to do here, and I can keep it a bit more focused."

"By my standards, I'm well-traveled and have met all kinds of people. But I think they were all a lot more... local, limited... in what they cared about. Where the edges of the world are maybe ten miles square and a traveler like me is only good for dangerous jobs and maybe teaching them a folktale they hadn't heard."

"It makes sense that when you have the time and energy for things beyond survival, you'd care about a lot more. But it's intimidating."

"Navarr are generally a bit more likely to know what's going on because half our people spend their lives continually travelling, so there's regularly news from everywhere. And being part of the Empire means people are at least a bit interested and invested in how the whole thing is doing."

"I guess that would make sense. Probably five generations back our empire was the same way." Except her part. It's not even hers, she wishes this place wasn't woodlands so it didn't remind her so constantly.

"As for what I might want to do... I don't know. I'd like to not fight for a living for at least a few months, I've gotten good at it but that's not the same thing as liking it. I might sell some of the enchanted equipment if it's unusual here. Maybe if you have message carriers or something I could do that, it would be a shame to find this new part of the world and only see a little corner of it."

"Message carrying is definitely something the Navarr do, you could head out with the next Striding that pass through and they could show you how it's done around here. I expect your enchanted equipment is different to ours, magic items vary a lot; if you want to sell it I'd advise asking a Broker to help you get good value for it, I can recommend some names I trust that you can head into Seren and get in touch with, or who I could invite out here if you'd prefer.

If you're heading out of here you'll probably need to know a few things about the local religion in order to not offend anyone - everyone in Foundhome is pretty tolerant, whichever Striding you head out with might be less so, and places they pass through.

I'd like to write a few letters to people about the curse and see if we could get something going about finding the Labyrinth spirit responsible, but that wouldn't necessarily tie you down, you'd just need to pass through here - or wherever we end up coordinating - occasionally, for investigations."

"That sounds like a good plan. Talk to a professional in town - city? - and talk to the friendly travelers about message carrying, and maybe other things they do while moving around. Hmm, what else do 'Stridings' do?"

"Stridings are the main way that we weaken the Vallorn - walking out from a Vallorn along the Trods draws energy out of it and disperses it, extremely gradually. In the meantime the energy is actually quite useful, it makes you feel much less tired and rest a lot better than you'd expect from walking every day and camping in the wilds. Without being a sworn Navarr you won't help so much with that, but I'm sure you can make yourself useful and most Stridings are happy to take people along.

Because they move around so much they tend to get used for anything that needs to move around but not necessarily on a schedule, messages, news, library book swaps... Some of the ones that travel from the bigger Vallorn do a lot of checking signs and wardings, but one you pick up in Miaren probably does the Hercynia to the coast route, which is very civilised."

"Ah, that. Makes sense. I'm not likely to take any oath soon, but I'd be happy to help out."

"Yeah, don't rush into it. I expect people will try to sell you on it, but everyone knows it's a big commitment and prefers that people take it seriously.

You might want to stay here overnight so you can leave in the morning, but it does sound like you want to just head out towards Seren. I'm sure I can rustle up someone to go with you, but it's a fairly obvious route, follow whichever road looks bigger; the worst you're likely to find on the road between here and Seren is either a very lost wolf or a group of curious shouty Navarr who want to know what you're doing here in a more... enthusiastic way, who you can tell to go and bother me about it.

If you do head off, I'll either send a letter out chasing you if I have any updates on the curse thing, or you can swing back past here when the Striding you pick up returns to Seren? Oh, and I should probably ask you about religion - do you have any actual religious leanings that might be a problem, or I can just give you the summary and you can avoid getting into trouble?"

"Oh yes, I'm definitely not going to travel in an unfamiliar area for the first time starting out in the evening. Even along the road, that's just asking for trouble. I can make a camp overnight if that's most convenient."

"I'm not religious; it's not too common in my experience. Stories say gods left the world a thousand years ago, or maybe just stopped speaking to us. Though some people still pray."

"We can find you a spare bed if you don't mind sharing a house, or I think Cory still has his nice ridge tent he can set up?

Yeah, we don't do gods round here - some foreigners worship 'gods' but it always turns out that it's a ghost or an Eternal - or occasionally a labyrinth spirit.

I don't know if you have a concept of reincarnation, or what happens when you die? Our religion mostly revolves around that."

"Huh. No, not really. Most people believe in souls, there are ghosts and they often resemble the recently-dead. But no one's ever been able to get an answer from one, or from anywhere else, about why they come back or what happens to people who don't create ghosts, and they're never all that close to the person they resemble."

"Yeah, I think ghosts are mostly just echoes of the person etched into the area rather than the person themselves, although lots of people disagree and think it's really important to get them unstuck.

We know that we reincarnate because we can - with considerable difficulty - make a substance that lets a person see one of their past lives. And take a priest with them - I've guided one of those visions, I saw the fall of Terunael through the memories of a friend's soul. Because we can't make very much of it, it's hard to get solid data on anything, but the rest of the religion is built on that - how to come back faster, how to transcend the cycle eventually."

"Huh. I should try that vision thing. Eventually; I'm guessing it's expensive and it's certainly not urgent. We don't know of anything like that... though maybe we did before the curse made scholars prohibitively expensive, I probably wouldn't know."

"Good luck - I don't know how much the Bourse dose is going for nowadays... although actually, you might be able to convince some people that you're an interesting research subject - if you show up to Anvil, and tell them you're from another world convincingly enough...

Just don't be like the last stupid foreigner we let take it because they were an interesting research subject, pay attention to what your guide priest tells you about not screwing it up, it turns out you can in fact break your soul into fragments and it is _not_ pretty."

"I will keep that firmly in mind. Gods."

"Quite the opposite, really.

Anyway, what can we get you for the night? Dinner? Bed or tent?"

"Dinner and a bed would be great."

"Okay, let me take you up into the village and introduce you to Brynna, she's got a spare bed since her son moved out. I expect she'll have some stew on as well, or know who does if it's someone else's turn."

Allegra stands up, retrieves her stick and starts heading up the muddy path towards the buildings. They are quite small individually, densely packed in a rather haphazard arrangement, built with considerably more enthusiasm than skill out of mostly wood and mud, and there are a lot of curious young people trying to get a look at the stranger without getting in Allegra's way too much.

She smiles to the kids, and tries to tone down the 'this person is dangerous' that's usually baked into her body language even while empty-handed. She doesn't see many kids, usually, but they always cheer her up. Once or twice she sees one who's looking particularly closely at something and catches their eye to wink.

"How do these get built? They look kind of temporary, by my usual standards."

"Someone shows up, they want a house, they build a house. Or some people help them if they're a bit unsure about it. They're actually surprisingly robust, just made from local resources. I mean, they're no ancient stone Spires and they're not exactly made of weirwood, but they keep the rain off and the wind out and mostly don't fall down."

"Huh. I'd guess these would fall down in... a decade, maybe less. Unless you spend a couple weeks a year on it. Most places I've seen have framing with bigger logs or thick boards, and then the surfaces between are... woven, roughly, with some kind of dried-out plant, reeds or vines or thin branches, and then those are coated with something but it's more like gravel-clay than mud. Most people still live in houses their many-greats-grandparents built, well before the curse. More work upfront, but neighbors chip in."

"We haven't been here a decade yet! People do spend some time doing maintenance, and there is a woven layer in most of them, there's more clay than stones round here so the outside is normally just more clay layered on top...

Bigger logs and planks take more time to dry out properly and people tend to be in a hurry. Maybe in a few more years people will get bored of patching them and rebuild a bit sturdier, especially now we have a regular supply run set up and can order in materials we can't find lying around."

Brynna's house is a little bit less slapdash than many of the others; the door even has a fitted wooden frame rather than just a clay surround and reliance on opening inwards, and a nice ceramic chimney is cheerfully trailing fire smoke. Allegra uses her staff to knock.

"Oh, I guess that makes some sense. How long do you all expect to stay here?"

"No idea. I set this up expecting it to last out the rest of my life, but one thing I've learned over and over is - never to assume anything will last. I'll enjoy it while it's here, and if it doesn't stay put, I'll do something else."

That's a weird perspective; these people can all expect to die peacefully in their beds and be survived by enough generations that they don't bother guessing how many there will be. And still don't plan like there's a future?

That's rude to say out loud, though.

"Has that come up a lot? What happened?"

"Uh, a lot. Not here so much, maybe I'm just paranoid, but I've had - several phases of my life, let's say, and none of them have ended peacefully yet.

Probably won't be anything you need to worry about - I could recommend not joining an army, exploring any haunted caves, or falling in love, but I think people often do these things more successfully, so..."

"I have in fact done one of those things successfully. Also unsuccessfully, though at least I survived that time."

"I'm quite fond of surviving, some days I think it's what I'm best at."

The door opens to reveal an older lady than most of those out and about here.

"Oh, come on, come in, sorry to have kept you waiting! I just had to make sure that the smoke didn't get in the main room and the latch was playing up again.

You look new to the Steading, do you need a bed for the night or have you just come for the best stew in Foundhome?" says Brynna, shuffling back a bit and holding the door open. 

"It certainly beats the alternative."

"Bed for the night, thank you, though I wouldn't say no to stew. I've landed here by a magical accident, probably not staying long this visit though I'd guess I'll be back sooner or later."

"Magical accident, hmm? Davyd checked you over? Let me get you a bowl, I'm mostly keeping the middle door shut to keep the smoke out of this half of the house, so you can come through or I'll be back in a bit.."

Allegra smiles. "Shall I leave you to Brynna's hospitality, then?"

"Probably. Thank you for your help!"

Allegra nods at Asitha and heads off; Brynna goes to open the middle door and looks back for a moment to see if Asitha is following her through or whether she should get a bowl of stew and come back shortly.

She'll follow in, might as well see the kitchen.

"Thanks for taking me in. Everyone here's been very hospitable, it's a nice change."

"Well, it's kind of why we're here! Although I think most places in the Empire are hospitable if your lineage isn't too obvious. Here at Foundhome we've all shown up at some point needing that hospitality, so it's just fair to pass it on to others."

This house has two rooms; the front room that the door opened into had one bed, a small table, two chairs, shelves and a big old chest of drawers; this room has a much more lived in looking bed, a considerable yarn collection on the shelves, as well as the cooking fire with a big cauldron over it, a more comfortable looking chair liberally coated in woollen throws, and a larger table with a bronze basin full of water on one end.

"It's a big change from what I'm used to. No one back in the Cursed Empire has enough for themselves, let alone strangers, so hospitality is hard to come by."

Oh good, this doesn't look nearly as half-assed as the architecture.

"That's something our Empire is very good for; you do get some places where people are desperately poor, but mostly because they won't move somewhere they'd be better suited. Plenty of magic and following the Virtues generally lets us rally round and fix things up, even when a place does get cursed or invaded."

Brynna serves up a generous bowl of stew; plenty of venison, with pearl barley and a wide variety of root vegetables. The bowl and spoon provided are both wooden.

"You have really, enormously, more magic than I'm used to. I'd say nine people out of ten that I've met have gone their whole life without seeing a spell cast, and at least half have never seen anything that was enchanted, either. I've got a fair amount personally, but most of those were the life-price for several people, if not more."

"Ooh yes, that would make things a lot harder. Rituals to make the land productive are incredibly useful. Our magic tends not to actually be fuelled by deaths so much, although really big workings can - the Trods were created by the founders of our nation, Navarr and Thorn, and they died in the casting. That was probably part of a deal with an Eternal though, they can demand that kind of thing."

"Oh, not what I meant, sorry. There's definitely magic powered by deaths, the empire's curse is, but the life-prices I mean are payment. Save a dozen villagers from a marauding ogre, they pay me with an enchanted helmet that's been in the family generations; save a hundred, get paid with paired enchanted swords. ...I wonder if we could get like you, if we made peace with our kind of mages and tried to encourage more of them?"

"That does sound promising! Some of our neighbours are less keen on mages, and it doesn't seem to do them much good.

Your items are artefacts? We don't see many of those out here, not that it would mean much to me, I'm not really clever enough for the whole magic thing myself."

"They are! Mages live apart, mostly, there's bad blood on both sides. So if ordinary people see magic it's usually something like these, traded as a favor years ago when people weren't quite so hostile. Or some mage who's turned bandit when his family kicked him out, which sure doesn't help the bad blood, but what can you do, right?"

"You all seem much happier, if I ever get back hopefully I can bring a bunch of volunteers and see if we can't make that happiness contagious."

"I'm sure you'd get plenty of takers for an exciting quest to fix another area of the world, especially if you're dripping with artefacts! Probably more in Dawn or even Anvil than round here, we've already got plenty to fix at home."

"I'm hoping to travel a while first, so I'm sure I'll be able to ask there, too. I like exploring, it's how I left home and started fighting for pay in the first place."

"You'll be in good company, then. My old bones can't take wandering any more, but the Navarr are mostly wanderers by inclination and Imperial citizens in general tend towards the curious - although I suppose I would think that, I just don't get to see many that don't leave their villages!

Are you taking up with a Striding, or just heading off down the Trods and seeing where they take you?"

"Not going to properly join a Striding, at least at first, but hopefully travel with the next one coming through, maybe go alongside them for a while. Allegra suggested I might interest some scholars in Anvil, to see my reincarnations or to sell some of my enchanted gear or both. But I'm not making any big plans yet."

"Oh yes, if you have artefacts from distant lands, I'm sure you'd be swarmed by interested types trying to cast rituals on them to see what visions they hold! I hear the gathering's bigger than ever these days, so you might need some rather pointy elbows to get hold of true liao, even so.

If you're looking to travel with a Striding, you'll probably need to get to at least First Voice Glade, and by that point you might as well go all the way to Seren instead; we get a regular trade wagon but not a proper Striding very often at all, we're a bit off the beaten Trod out here."

"Is 'true liao' different from Bourse? I don't think I heard the name."

"The Bourse is, well, auctions and - big money. True liao is the thing - the holy substance, I should probably say! - that lets you see your own past lives. I think the Bourse auctions off a dose, which might be where you heard it?"

"Ah, yeah, I think what I heard was 'Bourse dose' and thought Bourse was the substance rather than the market. It must be a remarkable experience; there's nothing similar where I'm from."

"I've never been to Anvil myself, but from all I've heard it's quite impressive - especially as it's mostly tents amongst ruins! Nobody's allowed to build permanent buildings there, so four times a year the great and good of the Empire bring all their best campaign tents and field adornments, and then pack it all down when they leave. All that's left is the Gate, the Regio, the Senate and the Forge."

"Why not? Superstition? Magic?"

Maybe everyone in this empire has decided architecture is for wimps and only builds temporary housing. If so, she's a little disappointed in what this says about humans rich enough to stop worrying about survival.

"Tradition - and between you and me, I think the Civil Service planned it that way, to avoid the inevitable arguments... Lots of important people, not used to being told no, I wouldn't want to have to decide who got to build something near the various immovable bits, or in the centre, or how much land they got to use. It must be bad enough planning the encampments, but at least they don't have people arguing they need to pull down a perfectly good building to put something else up instead."

"Who has the energy to-? ...Non-cursed people, I guess. If you don't have to fight to survive, you can fight over... trivialities." 

Brynna laughs. "Fighting over trivialities is exactly what Anvil is all about! You should read some of the Judgements the Synod puts out. Why, there was one about the proper content of fruit salad..."

"Death and blood, maybe I shouldn't go to Anvil..."

"I mean, I wouldn't, but as a traveller from distant lands you're likely to raise a lot of interest, and there's nowhere you'll get a better price for an artefact - although do take a canny broker with you!" Brynna finishes off her own dinner. "There's more where that came from if you want another bowl, or it will only get better overnight."

"I'm fine for tonight, I don't eat much. I think I still probably should visit, I'm just looking forward to it much less."

"Oh, don't let an old lady put you off. By all reports there are plenty of good things there - after all, where else can an artist or a baker sell to every nation of the Empire at once?"

She starts to clear her bowl and spoon away, briefly scrubbing with some soap, rinsing out the bowl and pouring the dirty water into a bucket on the ground.

"Feel free to go to bed whenever you like, but do remember the bed's in the front room, so I can't guarantee there won't be visitors after some stew for a little while yet."

"I mean, I'm still going to go; I like exploring new places. And a tent city is still a city, which will be a new experience; we probably didn't have any left even in my parent's days. I'm probably going to go everywhere, eventually."

"Well, I suppose everyone has to have an Ambition. There's quite a lot of everywhere, though! And you should pass through Seren on the way anywhere else, that's a city, and probably then Sarvos or Tassato which are huge sprawling League cities... not that I've ever been much for cities myself, too many people and the whole place reeks of ox-dung no matter how much perfume the Leaguers try to cover it up with."

"Perhaps I will visit a city and decide that I never want to repeat the experience, and then only visit everywhere else. But there aren't even many particularly big towns left in my old Empire, so I'm looking forward to it."

"Oh, so where is it you came from? I'd kind of assumed Asavea or something, now that place is a cursed and dwindling empire but I think they've still got cities."

"Far enough away that I've never heard of anywhere anyone's mentioned. It's usually called 'the Cursed Empire'; I think it used to be the 'Kallasian Empire'. A few generations ago, some kind of revenge death curse got placed on everything, and nothing's held together beyond the local level. People need blood and death to live, or they get exhausted and sickly like they weren't getting enough to eat or drink, or to rest."

"Now, that does sound like something that a number of heroes might be interested in! Although if it's a fairly small place, probably not enough of them, there are enough problems here after all. I don't suppose you have any idea how many people might be involved?"

"Thousands, surely. Not millions. It'd be tricky, though; it's not contagious - we just checked this afternoon - but anyone who visits will be affected, and it probably won't lift when they leave. I'm going to have to go hunting regularly, here, it's still got its claws in me."

"Well, there's no shortage of deer in the forest, boars too if you like a challenge. I'd avoid mentioning it around any questing types, then; those Dawn types especially, I can just imagine the reports, they'd be certain they could overcome the bloodlust by sheer force of will and righteousness..."

"I mean, they can. It's only if you start committing multiple murders per week that you get bloodsoaked and start going crazy; I've been very careful to manage it so fighting off bandits doesn't overwhelm me. If you stick to animals, there's no compulsion to fight or even to kill animals. But you'll be too weak to fight, or to carry a pregnancy to term. I think a lot of women in the first generation or two resisted, and so they didn't have descendants."

"Not getting in at least one fight a week would be out of character for questing knights! Some of them do confine themselves to beasts - generally something magical or at least dire, though, and they wouldn't take being too weak to fight very well at all."

"Well, I'll try not to encourage them, especially not after someone works out how to get back. I'm pretty sure my being resistant was mostly luck of birth and circumstances, not willpower. The culture I was born into is healthier and I got a taste of mild bloodsoak without a chance to make it worse, so I could pull back."

"Well, I'm glad you've turned out sensible. I reckon you'll get on well with the Thorns."

"I hope so!"

"Well, I should get these washed up and then settle the fire down for the night. Anything else I can get you? I'm sure there's another set of needles around here if you're not tired yet and want something to occupy you."

"I'll probably not be tired until well after you. My needlework probably won't be much good, but I'd be happy to try."

Brynna produces half a scarf on a pair of chunky knitting needles. "Do you need teaching to knit? There's also always socks to darn if you'd rather."

"It's been a while since I've done much knitting, always on the road and too on guard to do something as I walk, and usually wearing tougher stuff than knits can make easily. Might be better to do darning."

Asitha receives a pile of sturdy wooden socks, plenty of wool and a big darning needle, and companionable fabric work fills the rest of the late evening.

The bed is surprisingly good compared to the general standard of workmanship on display, with linen sheets and woolen blankets, a featherbed on top of the firmer wool-filled mattress, and a sturdy wooden bedframe.

Everything is peaceful and quiet well into the morning.