Today, I’m going to take you past Barracheh’s expansive borders into some of the neighboring territories.
The Vardecian Isles lie off the empire’s northeast coast, an extensive archipelago. Vardecia is a series of fiefdoms that bend the knee to no one master; a series of autonomous demesnes united by shared culture and shared heritage. What sets them apart in particular is their interest in learning. This is where anyone who goes away to school goes away to school, and they push the bounds in such fields as alchemy, history, and medicine.
They’re a protectorate of the much older, much more powerful civilization next door, although to be clear: what they give is money, what they get is not being attacked. The Vardecians have always been surprisingly philosophical about the arrangement.
Much of the money comes right back, in the hands of wealthy Barrachites keen to fund the research at their great universities. The attitude may be changing, though, bowing under the pressure of external forces. At the center of a debate that’s redefining friends and enemies is the young woman Samrudan. She’s come here all the way from another world to lend assistance to a wizard.
A man with a dangerous plan and a reason to be resentful.
“SAMRUDAN: She wears strange and unfamiliar garb, a clout and cape-like shirt that conceals the arms but leaves the midriff bare, woven from some drab gray cloth. She has a bit of extra flesh on her thighs and belly, as if she never missed a meal, but her arms are muscular, shoulders slightly broader than a human woman’s typically are. Her skin is the hue of slate, lest you forget that we aren’t in our own world here. Her black hair is cut off at the chin, bangs describing a rule-perfect line across her brow, but the severity of the haircut is belied by her mouth. She has her eyes turned down as if she is trying to appear demure, but you could swear that she’s fighting to hold in a smile.”
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