Author's Preface
Subtle Elements of this world cycle constantly, and I refresh myself of them each and every day. Sometimes, some unexpected ones rise to prominence in a month or decade. I hope to keep track of the ones sitting so proudly in my thoughts in words shared with my readership. So you can all, as always, learn from someone as well spoken and well traveled as me.
~ V.R.
Delight you now in the fruits of my travels and research:
The Tenth Release of a Work of this Type, to be Penned Quickly With Whatever Details Become Most Relevant at the Time, Between Volumes of the Main Series
Accordian Annexes
The History
Though the islands of our world and their city-states seem to do an okay enough job at governance that civilization itself today stands, not everyone fits so neatly into accordian strata. They claim no city, nor Avaloch, sometimes not even a kingdom of ancestry. They do claim and island, but they divorce themselves from whatever settled government it has. These are the annexes of the Avaloch Accords, and only much more recently than the First or Second Accords were the annexed tribes even considered an issue for society to debate at all. The turning point came of the 193rd assembly of the Ilian Public Senate, in the Year Restriction 206. Senator Gaigluff Amater-Ayala from Eldoria Cay brought to the Senate's attention a clan of peoples gathered around the central lake of Eldoria's northeasternmost isle. They seemed to eat a diet of vegetables, nuts, and fish that they had no trouble sourcing where they were at. Consequently, it would seem they had little need to be looped into trade or owe any tax on mere existence. This was and is the obvious answer, but at the time, Amater-Ayala and several dozen sympathizers to his concern refused to see this solution. Eventually, however, a six month battle in the Senate made them tire and capitulate. To this date, it is unlikely the unfortunately popularly nicknamed Gaigluff Clan know there was a debate at all.
The Legacy
At the next Senate session, several more complaints were brought up, many of which by incumbents who had previously been Amater-Ayala's lackeys in complaints against the Gaigluff Clan. After a day of hot-headed uncertainty, all such complaints were shot down. The Senate rallied and settled around a resolution proposed by Kuipe Hollas of Vadd to respect the independence of the annexes but pursue their actions to the fullest extent of their islands' laws in conjunction with that of their nearest city. Every catalogued annex has a parent city it must, by law, report to of any doing involving accordian trade or other regulations. But, again, nobody bothered to tell them this in most cases, and it's not like they actually particularly care. The legacy of Gaigluff Amater-Ayala's Complaint is a legislative stalemate that matters not because it speaks on what is largely a non-issue as it concerns us accordian citizen-folk. But they're out there, and lonely people staffing the world's slowest offices are hypothetically patiently awaiting the day some annex somewhere gets caught doing sophisticated trade and has hell to pay. Taxes. Hell is taxes.
The Kingdom Claimants
Some annexes do claim the ancestry and even heraldry of one of the five kingdoms. Hollas proposed these be called the kingdom claimants, and that Avaloch would govern them according to the laws of their kingdoms at the time of Damiano Lyndrake's First Avaloch Council, Year Restriction Prior 36. These laws were, thankfully, well documented and sealed in the archive beneath the Accordion tower. Transcriptions of them exist and are, by Avaloch, required to be copied and preserved by every city governing body. It is remarkably likely that Hollas took inspiration from this peculiar traditions-oriented Avaloch law in order to draft the procedures by which our society deals with kingdom claimants, when necessary.
The True Annexes
Some annexes seem to exist ignostic to any laws or societal organization at Avaloch or otherwise. Most of these can easily trace their histories of not caring back long centuries or millennia before Damiano or even Lucius Octavius Lyndrake were born. Hollas's Resolution calls these the true annexes, living completely outside ilian culture and so divorced from the pieces of their history that matter most to their limited interactions with us.
The Church of Everyone
Verdantial Cousins Come To Visit
Eldath is a goddess first described in the history and tradition of Verdantia, though she acquired a lasting following almost everywhere not long after her word departed her old mainland. In part, one might blame the so-called Cousins she spawns in the households of her devote. These special people are birthed intended to be fostered into a holy mission and tradition of travel and good works. Though they are relatively politically inactive, they have always been instruments for peace and local prosperity everywhere they go. For most of the history of Eldathyn religion, this has been the state of things. Cousins build a local presence in the name of Eldath, centered at a temple they leave behind. Nowadays, there's less in the way of building temples for them to do, but they visit as emissaries all the same. They work with the clerics, lead rites and services, and then depart in search of their next call.
Reinventing The Matrimonial Wheel
As history became more tangled in its violent land and culture exchanges, there came a need to come to a number of inter-faith family solutions. How does an Ebonreacher Kostarran marry a Crystalisian Laknoite, and in what language? Though they never officially undertook orders to step up, the Church of Eldath became the organization to mediate this all. A blend of rumor and thousand year old legend seems to state that such a couple stumbled into the Eldath Devotee Chamber in Mallay. Divinely inspired to bridge the connection, a visiting Cousin simply married their rites as he married them under the Verdantial dialect of Eldath's own services, not seeing the issue. The couple blabbed about their curiously governed and ordained marriage, and soon Eldathyn clerics were flooded with requests for all manner of blended rites. Rather than hand down procedures from above, the Cousins got to work empowering their church to come to a solution for every visiting family individually. The process is slow, but somehow the church got the hang of it and their notoriety stuck.
An Accordian Church Made Official
Though they operate under their name and order as the Church of Eldath, they are technically regulated under the laws of public works rather than as a religion. This is avoid muddying their tradition or practice as they continue to provide their marriage, mediation, counseling, and last rites services to everyone. For the last three hundred or so years, they have been allotted some public resources by the Senate in order to provide what has accidentally become a necessary service for so many. In addition to setting this cultural neutral ground in a holy space, they are asked to be major public recordkeepers. Throughout their history, they have no strangers to the delicate and lasting keeping of knowledge. The Verdantial Library of Science and Commerce is, after all, was originally an Eldath project and still requires three of its six advisory heads to be Eldath clerics. Myself and my wife were married in the famous temple to Eldath in Mallay, and we entrust our family records and histories to Eldath's devotees. We have been lifelong advocates for the Senate to give Eldath's recordkeepers more resources and more control with less regulation or oversight. They are so decentralized as to become efficient, as if by magic. And they remain, as was that first, nameless Cousin's goal, merely devoted to helping Ilian families wherever they are at in love, life, lineage, and faith.
Early Accordian Migration
Money And Departure From Tradition
The ruling families of Verdantia have always been a mess. Each mainland city has its own monarchy, and throughout preaccordian history they bickered over and traded and annexed various colony cities and islands amongst themselves almost as violently as the other kingdoms aimed to capture those territories. Assassinations and marriages between the cities has only made this history more convoluted, but for these purposes I am recalling the story of a particular break from tradition involving a kobold by the name of Sylvie May Harmour. They were a wealthy investor in various small restaurants, helping poorer families get their home kitchens operational and ready to serve the public in exchange for several years of generous take once success kicked in. This model and many money opportunities it enabled made Harmour one of the wealthiest people of her time. So wealthy, in fact, that they were able to move to the mainland and buy their way into the Queen's palace at Fernholm, under a fabricated economic advisor title. Really, my wife thinks they caught whispers of peace talks involving the Aristocats and Lyndrakes and looked for the easiest available buy-in.
Sylvie Steps Up
After Vox was placed into power in Emberlyn and redoubled Avaloch's efforts to smooth over the unification of kingdoms, Sylvie Harmour felt an increasing pressure to pitch in for the people and perhaps at a cost to her. Before the Vox-Lyndrake Restriction, most of their time spent at Avaloch seemed to somehow greatly benefit her own self and status. It wasn't necessarily selfish to the point of being ontologically evil, but eyebrows were raised and Queen Aksthayala of Fernholm was under indirect scrutiny for it. She was, after all, the one who took large sums to herself in exchange for approving Sylvie's seat at Avaloch. The two fought and it seems were not on speaking terms after, but eventually Sylvie Harmour agreed to give up money to match that from Avaloch's orders to the kingdoms themselves for a new initiative in housing, exchange, and mobility. This did not put a huge dent in their overall wealth, but did earn them their keep at Avaloch until they died in Year Restriction 16.
The Initiative And Its Effects
The details were quite simple. Kingdoms were to pool money from their own coffers and from Harmour in equal share, to be distributed evenly among a pool of migrant applicant families in their populace. The money was to be used to buy them passage on a ship to another kingdom and help them find housing and establish new roots in a new place. Interestingly enough, not that many people were interested in applying, leaving those who did receive their cultural exchange subsidy extremely well off and in great circumstances to live the remainder of their days lavishly abroad. We remember the program as a success for this reason, but I caution you to remember carefully and consider the facts. Not many people used this program to move, and so a good chunk of the cultural exchange that brings us to the culture of today was not thanks to Harmour's reputation saver. Instead, it would take a couple of organic movements started by some ambitious and entrepreneurial farm-to-table chefs at Angelica some forty years later for that level of cultural mobility. And it was based on something more universal than exploiting money to maintain strange political power. It was based on a desire to share delicious food.
Ferri Aristocat And Calendars
A Once-Private Conversation
Queen Aristocat of Crystalis and King Damiano Lyndrake of Emberlyn were of course famous friends, bonding over the peace movement. But one of their larger unsung contributions to global peace and the modern panilian lifestyle for a traveler like myself or my wife is the Common Ilian Calendar System. Thanks to some less than ethical local journalism in Kannin, we know that Aristocat and Lyndrake did meet in secret there to discuss their grievances about how complicated and fractured the world around them. They strategized much of the peace movement to revolve around calls for peace from the throne of Emberlyn, and the ancient article I was lucky enough to have a wife who was invited into the archives to read confirms that Aristocat's particular grievances about needing to know every one of more than two dozen Crystalisian calendars was a topic of their discussion.
The First Accords
This conversation mostly went on hold for a number of decades, but Aristocat worked independently on her grievance for that time. During her trip to the First Council at Avaloch with the Crystalisian delegation, she did promise that Crystalis would make an attempt to unify their own calendars to make easier the idea of Crystalisian tourism or travel to foreigners. As with a great many other Avaloch promises, the people huffed their big sighs but adapted in due time.
The Plea
Damiano Lyndrake got the last word in the conversation in his plea for a shapelier world. He called for something like the modern CICS to include elements from all major world calendars. This included the four week months of Crystalis, the only thing most Crystalisian calendars had in common when they were blended together. He left, and his cousin accomplished nothing. But, in the wake of Lyndrake's call for it, Veritas Vox brought us the modern calendar with the Second Avaloch Accords.
Halcyon Heights And Drow Mafia
Drow Ancestry
Legends speak of an ancient drow meritocracy in the caves beneath the Halcyon mountains of Mainland Seraphora. My wife tends to believe they were highly technologically advanced, and I've no reason to doubt that. Many of the artworks we have seen under the surface there are huge, truly ancient, and completely drow in origin. But much of the details of that culture were lost to an annexation by the surface dwellers, as various parties of humans and halflings brought their wolf heraldry to projects to expand their own village of Strastha that would become Halcyon Heights beneath the mountains and into some caves they were working to chart for themselves. Little of the true nature of the contact and subsequent conflict is known to us, but evidence suggests that the drow population down there had to be truly massive to build what they did, even larger than the drow population today. So we can be sure the struggle was violent, and that the Seraphoran annexation of that great drow cave project to form the underdark district of Halcyon Heights was one of the bloodiest territory grabs of its type our history has ever seen.
First Khome First Served
The drow that remained were not likely so outwardly oppressed as merely powerless, rallying around a decaying way of life and organization with nobody left at the top to bring their people together. Rumors do speak of a woman by the name of Khommophet who would have been born no earlier than the Year Restriction Prior 11000. Her story represented the first successful attempt by the drow population in the annexed district to weasel its way into power, using violent threats and fast-talking to earn a seat as an advisor to the topside city government. The popular title of 'Khome' for drow civil servants of Halcyon Heights that lives on today is most certainly connected to the tale of Khommophet.
Drow Mafia
Khommophet's secret to success was the hint of narcissism that fueled her. She was not merely out to give her people a voice. She was determined to be that voice at any cost. Her earliest years on the ladder to power were spent at the throats of her kin, intimidating them beneath her and assembling their humble servitude to spread her secretive and violent influence. By the time she was almost to the top, she had assembled a sort of mafia collective of drow who tried and failed to earn their spot empowering the underdark voice in the Halcyon Heights government. They were scared of her, and that made them willing to risk getting caught making those in power scared of her, too. And after her death she had a daughter to keep up the tradition of making a handful of troublemakers do Khommophet's bidding and get things done despite the legal systems in place. While this structure eventually evaporated, the spirit of drow willing to band together under intimidation for the purposes of intimidation still lives on in various ways in Halcyon Heights and beyond to this day.
Prosperity And Migration
Khommophet's granddaughter was just as vicious as her daughter, but the great granddaughter to eventually lead that early mafia after granddaughter's passing was not as keen on keeping up her vicious image, even having a warm heart toward honest compromises. Another family, the Markots, were able to maneuver their way around and above her into the island-wide government after a lucky (not-so-lucky, if you'd ask my wife this timeline stinks of another puzzlepiece of Markot meddling) assassination in Seraphim's Reach, enabling them to put pressure on the city from above to allow Khommophet's great granddaughter to have a meaningful position of influence. Eventually, this earned her a position just below mayoral office. From there, she and the politically active Markots were able to secure the drow their rightful seat in the city their ancestors built half of, and they finally had what it took to keep that sort of influence stable. Consequently, drow mafia culture in Halcyon Heights fizzled out sometime before the Year Restriction Prior 9600 appointment of the first First Khome, Ajtinna. This came shortly after the Markots moved to Foler and a good number of the descendants of Khommophet tried to establish new peace within the family at Gimsgrumble. Even though history tells that Foler would eventually be taken by Verdantia and later Ebonreach, this early migration of influential drow families with a penchant for earning their kin a proper place in an unfamiliar society would prove vital to the story of the panilian drow we live amongst today.
The Island Fighting League
IFL Prehistory
History books like to sell their truths as black and white. In the Year Restriction 188, the great forge at Eylesborne suffered a great disaster and essentially ruined a city. The books will tell you that Bitaklemm stayed out of it and prospered. My wife, before we were married, accompanied me on an excursion to the island. We stowed away on a cargo vessel to Firkanthot, and not long after the first cargo ships to land at Foldikrete, mind. There we intended to hike in and help with the cleanup for a couple weeks and then relax in Bitaklemm before catching a ship to see my cousin who lived in Foldikrete at the time. Even though a number of years had passed, you could still feel the tragedy in the vibe of the place, and there was still so much to be done. It was completely disheartening, leaving us not so in the mood to relax at Bitaklemm. And relax we did not, for the city was overrun with young and petty thuggery on every corner. Our strong Ebonreacher and Verdantial accents at least gave us the chance to talk to some of them. They seemed to come from both Eylesborne and Firkanthot, and expressed a deep disdain for a city and people that could and should have done so much more.
From Rage To Cage
Still coming from a place of sadness and feeling displaced, these gangs were a bit unique in that they would usually rally around a strongest person, separate from a leader figure, to go and do crime or fight other gangs, rather, the chosen strong ones of those other gangs. Eventually, the forge resumed operations, tensions began to fade, and something else took over. Spectacle. People watched and betted on these fights, and soon enough these gangs gave up crime in favor of branding and running a good business around their champions. By the time the island had healed more fully, the spectacle of a fight was there to stay in its culture, commonplace even in the other two settlements. But this tradition is not quite the IFL of today. No, that would come of an entrepreneur of my own kin's descent. The league remembers him as Lyndyl Deathrage, but my wife is longtime friends with his granddaughter Amelia, who assures us the name has always been Deatherage. Branding? Anyhow. He started the Fighting Pit Palace, the first of many fighting pits that attempted to formalize a structure to these fights. Eventually, the struggle to get TKP on board to monetize the tradition on other islands brought about the inevitability of a unified rule set, organization, and sport. This was the founding of the IFL in the Year Restriction 395, as well as the pooling of funds to build The Arena and commission the Champion's Gloves for a grand prize.
How Fights Work
There are several leagues at the top above all other IFL Affiliate fighters, these being the Forge's Chosen Eight, Adamantine League, Steel League, and Iron League. After each season, the leagues are split in half to move up or down. The next year's Eight are chosen in a summer championship against the top eight from Adamantine, where the bottom eight of sixteen end up in Adamantine. Iron fighters may be trounced mid season by an Affiliate who was won at least ten matches. There is an ultimate rank for the top 72, the Eight plus Adamantine and Steel, and these are generally the household names in IFL fighters. Aside from that, the founding tenets and rules are very lax, designed to preserve and protect the spectacle while giving fighters their freedom to give it their creative all.
Branding And Growth
IFL became immediately popular among the minotaurs that settled in Firkanthot. Several early adopters rose to prominent positions on the IFL Board, and they brought their culture with them to draw upon for branding. Hiloth, Skialta, and Vantendosh were adopted as the gods of the IFL, representing strength, swiftness, and showmanship, respectively. This move to brand the IFL with gods was counterintuitive, but paid off. Hiloth, Skialta, and Vantendosh are a bit of an odd grouping. But IFL suddenly had the reach to target those with positive opinions of any one of the three. And what wonderful gods they are. I will say, it was my love of Vantendosh that brought me to enjoy IFL. But I would also like to wonder if it was my love of Vantendosh that brought him to IFL, for the minotaurs on Thao Atoll that delivered Vantendosh to the rest of their culture did so shortly after one of my trips there in my youth, in the Year Restriction 69. I am not taking credit, but I have also chosen to share this anecdote and certainly would not refuse credit.
Piracy
How Pirates Operate
Violently, of course, is how they operate. They carry weapons and make threats. My wife and I have had run-ins, and they make me exceptionally grateful for my prowess as a battlefield musician while my wife's wild magic and quickened spells make the whole event into a big disco kill party. Usually, though, they aim not to be too brutal. Murders and kidnappings happen. Everyone knows someone. But they are rare and for good reason. These days, ship encounters are everywhere and always. That includes your next chance at riches and the potential rescuers or avengers of those you have just gravely threatened or harmed. There are usually a few important independent leaders that have a few ships under their sword and sharing coffers with them, though pseudonyms are a way of life. Everyone probably knows a pirate who has met their seafaring overlord once, yet the overlords remain truly hidden to the world at large.
Preaccordian Piracy
Until Avaloch, each kingdom had its own pirating service. This was not a militarily supported colony and people transport mission. It was one tasked with weakening a foreign place in economy and in spirit so that the eventual invasion might be more effective. Though, they were all corrupt, hiring selfish thieves without much oversight. When they were formally disbanded by the United Kingdoms, they shrunk in numbers but basically kept on doing what they were doing. Without the backing of rank structure or central treasuries, they are likely much more chaotic and fluid in their leadership. But the family trees of pirate overlords of today most certainly can trace their roots to the thieving navies that once pretended to kneel before worldly heraldry.
Politics and Power Plays at Greatdow
The Earliest Known Government
Originally, Juliadull and Greatdow were built and governed independently. The former was a colony under the watchful eye of the Council of Lords and Laborers in Glitterfall, while the latter was a private venture on behalf of the estate of the leader Jopotsin of the church of Hiloth. Jopotsin, famously, lead the charge that liberated Stonesblood from Emberlyn somewhere around the Year Restriction Prior 8600, earning them notoriety and a sort of moderate wealth that Hiloth would not object to. The reasons their children and executor chose to devote such a large portion of what grew of that war wealth into the Greatdow project are lost to history. But we do know that by Year Restriction Prior 6380, the church of Hiloth was shrinking in popularity among the elven peoples of Crystalis. This eventually threw Greatdow into chaos that threatened the stability of Juliadull. In Year Restriction Prior 6377, the Lords and Laborers approved the use of force by King Lizletter to capture Greatdow under the control of Juliadull until something better could be established.
How A Temporary Solution Became Permanent
Unfortunately for the Lords and Laborers of Glitterfall, the King of Juliadull became an excellent and well-liked King of Gwilvenne for his efforts to restore peace to Greatdow. The entire island of Gwilvenne became a sort of annex that was now, as a whole, overseen by Glitterfall. Many campaigns were run to encourage Greatdow to desire a return to self-governance, but all failed. While the best of our historical efforts still leave little more than rumor, it is rumored that the Lord Hilben Pol Banneren ordered the assassination of Lizletter's successor, Lukdalthe, who died mysteriously and without a settled successor at only the age of fifty-nine. In the interim, two nephews fought for the throne. They settled to split the two major cities. Of course, the nephew given Juliadull founded Astronomie Juliadull and became King for it. The other nephew, now a duke by the terms of the sort of contest, would run Greatdow to true greatness out of spite for his losses. His legacy would have them outpace Juliadull in all but land footprint and population until the accords of Avaloch, in which locally favorable agricultural policy enabled Juliadull to take the reigns through the founding of a farm collective we now know as Fernsbarn, which, unlike today, was originally owned and controlled by the King of Juliadull.
Schools And Unity
Shortly After The Accords
From the time before Accords of Avaloch, most islands did not have a reliable model for schooling. Most children were schooled at home, and learned many trade skills and all of their world knowledge from their parents and home community by default. Crystalis were leaders in education, in the sense we can confirm all their islands and colony settlements had school systems in use. But even for the typical Crystalisian family proper schools were a mere supplement for homeschooling.
Proper Schooling For All
The world had spent several decades feeling the friction that came of a world of so many completely incompatible backgrounds of knowledge. The issue was never important at Avaloch until members of a generation that had never known the warring kingdoms came to power. They found their differences especially frustrating, so in the Year Restriction 76 called the council at Avaloch to unify and control public schools. They modeled their design for what island's school system must obey after richer (and mostly Crystalisian at that) islands like Gwilvenne. Education is all but compulsory, enabling our people to be literate in multiple languages, function in markets and when tax season comes, and appreciate art and established facts about the world and its mundane and magical properties.
An Education Without Reform
Children are also introduced to newer topics, at the mercy of what their teachers can gather from local researchers. An attempt to unify an approach to newer topics in Year Restriction 339 fizzled out, locked in place by the two polar opposite teams of weather researchers they brought in as experts. Myself and my wife were sorely disappointed the night it was announced that Avaloch gave up on this initiative. We wish the world could delight in new things originating in new places like we always do. On the bright side, however, this means we have had a roughly unchanging school system for plural generations of every race in modern society. The schools of Year Restriction 76 are a fact of life now. To observe children not in schools is considered very disturbingly preaccordian, and that is mostly thanks to the rule of a new generation to whom the idea of 'preaccordian' was savage, scary, distant, and unfamiliar.
The Seraphoran Military
Seraphim And Legitimate Rule
The tale of Seraphim, the first of our world's named leaders to rule not as a function of who or what came before him, is one most everyone will remember from their school days. He is often pointed to as the origin of the idea of legitimate rule, that a ruler has power only when the people actively stand behind the ideals of that ruler. Seraphim would go on to inspire a sort of fanaticism that, looking back, almost certainly outpaced his own claims to a legitimate rule.
The National Service
Of a Seraphim-crazed population came the need to protect the claims of their beloved leader. Unlike the roaming bands of loosely organized war companies competing for the approval of their mainlands and status to come with it found elsewhere, Seraphim organized a fighting force that thought of themselves as a true extension of their ruler's will and their kingdom's might. People were proud to join a force that were supported so formally, and so Seraphim quickly grew Seraphora's military might to an unprecedented size before the world stage.
A Great Fumble
Seraphim would quickly teach Seraphora the danger of putting all military resources behind one person. That person might not be a great military leader. Despite the feelings by his people at the time and the cultural memory of him, his performance and the history of Seraphora's influence tell a very clear story. Seraphim did not have what it took to lead Seraphora to dominance with military might. He assembled the world's greatest fighting force and accomplished nothing with it.
The Treapifffe
A Slow Start
The Treapifffe (commissioned Year Restriction 99) was originally a non-sailing vessel that spent many decades charting ocean currents more precisely, as it seemed that different ancestral kingdoms had different charts for inter-island currents and they were all quite a bit out of date. The New Ilian United Kingdoms would need to figure that out, but it would be a slow process. Unfortunately, funding was hard to get, and only their prototype ship was built. The project froze for a while, until Year Restriction 183 when a gnomish captain by the name of Whayn Moody successfully petitioned to refurbish the old relic and set out on its original mission. A vessel alone, their mission was going to take a very long time. About two thirds done, in Year Restriction 195, they hit a severe storm and lost twelve crew members of their complement of sixteen.
The Next Chapter
Whayn was one of the souls that perished in the accident, and the first mate and Moody's next of kin agreed the ship and mission were to be abandoned. However, the buyer at the Year Restriction 196 auction worked at Immerlabs. He gave up his position, earning a colleague a promotion in his absence, to buy the ship and upgrade it. He would add sails and some more modern safety features he had pioneered with LINC, and would resume the mission to chart the currents. Unfortunately for the buyer, Captain Tolson, some of the institutions running cargo and shipping routes banded together after the Treapifffe's storm incident, gathering enough data on currents to finish the project in just nineteen weeks from their panilian network of vessels. But Tolson still had a nice ship and a hired crew, and so he repurposed his mission to one concerning the tides, still able to use much of the same equipment and crew skills. He would have been a news story in pretty much everyone's consciousness, and when he was looking to upgrade his operation in Year Restriction 200, he turned back to his roots at Immerlabs to hire what he thought would be the best.
Yummy Logistics
Farm, Ferry, And Feast
Though the idiom "It takes farm & ferry to feast!" is said by grandmothers, adorable toddlers, and wine aunts we were sure we 'forgot' to invite the world over, seldom do we pause to take it so literally. There are countless people, by estimates I trust no fewer than eight million, whose job it is to make sure a large and complicated system works so that I can walk to the Yellow Brick Coffee without acknowledging any of it. There are farms on every island and ships that take their product to you. Thank a dock worker. Thank a farmer. I have no idea how the logistics works. Nobody does! There's too many people, places, and destinations. The times tables they use might as well be magic. But it is a beautiful, fragile system and one that works. So next time your relatives are caught saying it, I encourage you to take that time to reflect, speculate, and appreciate. Myself and my wife try to make time to do so during our every evening meal together. We live in a beautiful world because we made it so. Avaloch is surely the lasting, crowning achievement of the universe itself.
Farm To Ferry
Though the details are best left up to emerge from a working collective, I have been most everywhere that concerns this food shipping story and talked to the workers. It is fair to say I know more than most, and I am most happy to summarize what I do know for you. Most islands are set up with population centers and port infrastructure close together, and the farms are usually not far from any of that. Notable exceptions include Cheradeville, Firebringer, and everything happening on Pelray's Ban. For those islands where the ports are close to the farms, goods are managed pretty loosely and ships show up, shippers usually talking to the farmers themselves and modifying routes and time tables as best suits islands they are hired to cover goods transport to and from. The relationship between Ironklad and the Pel Collective gets more complicated. A good number of Pel farmers make regular trips out to deliver carts of their finest, but the vast majority there are making trips much more infrequently. Some, such as my wife's cousin Linda, venture out as infrequently as once every three years. These trips are interspersed from individual farming family to individual farming family, and a new load of essentially everything manages to make its way to the large port city every morning and every evening. The road is by far the most concerning bit of this journey, only somewhat well kept for a journey that, to many, is more than one hundred miles bogged down with the weight of their stock. Though many improvements have been made in the name of safety and efficiency, there's simply not a lot out there still. I surmise maybe there's a very big project worth quite a lot to the world in developing the roads from Pel to Ironklad. It simply makes sense.