The Nameless continued on his journey of discovery. Having the goal of looking in on a report of a disturbance in the northern latifundia he headed to investigate. Upon reaching the distant settlement he discovered that it was the very same location that he was tortured at and exalted in. He, having made it this far, only to discover that he knew the particulars of the situation decided that he should investigate anyways to determine what if anyone knows who he was and if they are looking for him.
Thus he begins. The head administrator, his assistant, the head guard and his assistant were all in the room taking part in the interrogation. Out side on lookout were two additional guards. All of these were killed before they could raise an alarm and thus the rest of the latifundia were able to sleep the entire night before they found the grisly scene. On his way out of the mining camp, the slave, Nameless, encountered a guard dog and dispatched it quietly. All this he knew except for the part about who cleaned up his mess and that the victims in their dying struggle had painted the walls with a number of bloody hand prints.
What he did not know was that there was an Immaculate Monk, who was Dragon Blooded, investigating the scene. There was also a slave hunter investigating the escape. Both concluded that a slave not prepared for the full winter of the north did not survive the winter, let alone cross the mountains that his tracks suggested. The mountains in question, whose foothills were like the Rockies, were like the tallest mountains on Earth.
Satisfied he headed back to the Capitol of the province, Dehenna. He found his new employers and then meticulously began to lay out his plans and the other men began to lay out their own objectives. The two objectives were at odds.
Aside: often a storyteller tries to figure out what his or her players will do and lays down plans accordingly, but at the same time the players are thinking in a different line or perhaps on the same line they take an unanticipated tangent. When this occurs the storyteller has two options, one pull out their hair and say they need to rethink the story, which is bad, or they can go with the flow and modify their plan on the fly. It helps to have several plans in your head so that you can modify one that matches their direction and to have a firm grasp of what the major players are willing to do in that region. I had both, plus a little something extra called patience and sidestepping.
The leader of the organization in Dehenna Yemudral, said the he needed to consult his own boss, the wealthy and conscientious Guild Factor who was funding this thrust of slave freedom in the North, Yanobu Chogee. The original plan called for the guild to finance the purchase of disruptive slaves from the Realm, and get them to a safe island where they could work off their debt as indentured servants, providing valuable resources for their owner. But The Nameless was more interested in freeing slaves and training them to raid and free more slaves from the Realm. (In Role-Playing games it is important to realize who is the most important role in the game, which is the player, so when there is story conflict of the greatest degree, the player wins; happy players continue to play, unhappy players walk, always).
So, The Nameless contrived to show the Dehenna branch of this private factor of the Guild exactly what he had in mind and how he would accomplish it. The leader hereabouts, had stated that he would have to okay any change of the short or longterm goals of the plan with the Factor himself. As such, the Nameless, proposed to give him a personal introduction to the lands which he was to operate, but had yet to see. The security in the Slave States was such that foreigners were permitted only as far as the first city.
The Nameless and his two charges headed inland after a day's journey Woodward (East) by a small galley. Upon landing the galley was beached and the mast removed to the underbrush not far away. If the Realm should discover the galley, it's crew would plead they lost their mast in a storm and were seeking repairs, if after a week, the party was not back they would leave and head back to Dehenna. Once on the ground the Nameless set up a fast pace through the wilderness, passing through the brush and forests slightly slower than if the way was paved with cut fieldstone blocks; slow for him, but he was leading to unExalted fellows.
The wilderness was a second home to him and he pushed them deep and fast giving them time to rest every hour for a tenth part of that hour. In that time he would quickly find refreshment close at hand weather it was potable water, spring leaks, over wintered wild vegetables or a fine brace of rabbits for a meal later on; the wild areas were a home and a larder both. After the first day, he reckoned that to make the largest impact on his fellows about his competency and skill, he would make for the furthest latifundia he knew of, the one that he had escaped from and the one he had just visited, a full and difficult weeks journey.
True to his plan he decided to match his plan with to additional hinderances, by ignoring the easier paths, the ready made roads and byways made by the Realm except when crossing them and by making for the settlement by the straightest possible route, ignoring streams and rivers, hill and fen, up and down foothills that exceeded four thousand meters in height. The first spur was meek compared to the last, covered in forests to its summit. The second's top was bare of trees and e third would have been a true mountain range if it were alone and not attached to glacier topped giants.
After a week, they reached tundra capped submits that rested above the last latifundia, a kilometer below. There he told them what they looked upon and that the easy of traveling here was an example of his skills. He told them that the mountains behind them to the untrained appeared unpenetratable, but to him he could cross them as easily as he journeyed to this place with them. He proposed that freed slaves could be taken to sanctuaries in verdant valleys on the other side that he had already scouted out. Any supplies that they could not make for themselves or steal from the Realm, could be brought in with little difficulty and little expense as he brought them here. Raiders could move between the various latifundia with ease, that their scattered nature while providing few options for escaped slaves also provided great opportunity for insurgent forces.
On the way back he skirted the edges of many settlements to prove his point. The province was set up with clusters of latifundia within difficult terrain far apart from others and the open space empty of any civilization. Following the Realm built roadways he showed them that traffic within the roads was minimal, that on average travel between the clusters was limited to no more than one or two messenger per day.
They arrived back in the city and The Nameless decided that he wanted to rescue slaves while the Yemudral went to discuss the possibility of his boss working with him and merging their interests to reach their goals. Nameless had three goals that he wished to attain while Yemudral was out of town. He wanted get an accurate map of the area, he wanted get an idea of how many languages were being used to segregate the slaves and he wanted to free slaves, but without letting the establishment know that he was doing so. He pondered this conundrum for a few minutes before moving into action.
None of the people in the foreign district had any information on the countryside as none of them were permitted beyond the walls into the rest of the city and beyond. The Nameless had only a few ideas where he might find a map, in the palace, but where, within the bureaucracy of the work areas in the rest of the city, but where were those places exactly and maybe the Jackal head quarters, reasoning that the jackals would have to know where to start looking for escaped slaves, and the Jackal HQ was a place he knew.
In the slave hunting center along with informal barracks for the Jackals there was a large map hanging on the wall. He could steal it he reasoned, but it was very large and would likely be conspicuous if it were to vanish as it was as large as a floor rug. He asked the bureaucrat present if there were smaller maps available, whichever there was not, so he asked for a copy to be made that he could use for himself. The next day he came back and tipped him a hit of mildly expensive drugs that he thought would be a good tip.
What the Nameless did not know was that the drug he tipped in was a low value drug for slave in that station, further the bureaucrat was not actually a slave, but a low level functionary of the Realm. Jackals are the slaves who hunt other slaves and the only slaves that can buy their freedom. They are illiterate other than the code that was created for them to understand the description of the slave they are hunting, which does not need to be very accurate as anyone they find in the wilderness is most likely an escaped slave. The writing beside the marks is in Low Realm, for the bureaucrats. The bureaucrats speak multiple languages so they are able to deal with the jackals who only understand their one language. The map was to help with new bureaucrats and new Jackals, each of the settlements has an address that is simple enough to be easily memorized by region, branch, cluster and settlement. All these things marked the Nameless as a person of interest to be looked into. But the most damning information was that the bureaucrat knew the jackal who The Nameless was impersonating.
Next The Nameless scouted out each of the local latifundia and searched through waste bins for a repot from each office in the settlements. After acquiring one report from each latifundia, he sought out the clerk who helped him learn to read. He dropped the small copy of the map of Dehenna Province down before him and asked him if he could enlarge it so that it might be more useful and added the stack of documents to the table. Each of the documents he had copied the address that was carved into each gate, on to the back of the document and he asked the Clerk, if he could identify the languages on each report. Using these reports he was able to assign languages to each latifundia on the map and he was able to determine which languages he would need to learn to make his operation work. The languages that he now knew in the Slave States were Realm Common, Waterspeak, Firespeak, Riverspeak and Woodspeak. Airspeak was the language of the regions around the States and thrust thought to be the language that an escaped slave was most likely to encounter, so it was not used and High Realm was the Language of the Dynasts. He and the Clerk also discovered scrawling in the margins of the reports of all the communications. In the ones written in Realm Common, the words seemed to be communication of news between origin of te report and the latifundia.
He then went back to the Jackal's HQ to find a list of recent escapees and selected one that had escaped from a latifundia that used Realm Common, the only one he could speak. In short order he was on the trail of the escaped slave and the Jackal that had got on his trail first. He caught up with the slave just as the Jackal was about to recapture him. The Nameless slew the Jackal expediently and began the process of weening him off his drug addiction and bringing him to a safe location. When he was finished and set the escaped slave up in a more secure location, he journeyed into the city again to see if any word had been received on the Guild Factor. There had been news and a proposed mission.
Yemudral then let The Nameless in on the current operations in the entire region. The Factor had set up posts in two of the remaining provinces, but no in the Province of Serrat, because initial forays were brutally rebuffed by Ragara Dinyacout a Dragon Blooded Dynast. Dinyacout had not only Sussed out the the nature of the Factor Chogee, but had implemented a brutal campaign of subjugating rebellious slaves within Serrat. He was so successful that the jackals were mostly without work in that province. Dinyacout was becoming known for this program and also for his archeological expeditions that he took into the wilds north of Serrat. It was said in certain circles that Dinyacout would take the most rebellious slaves of the past seasons on his diggs and when he returned with the fruits of his labour, the rebelliousness had been removed from the slaves; they came back changed. Any one that went with Dinyacout to find out where he was going or what he was doing disappeared.
Chogee desired that the Nameless track him to the location of the dig site to find out what he was doing and to report on him. Dinyacout was supposed to be leaving in just a fortnight, which did not leave much time for the Nameless to get to Serrat, to find him. Additionally, the transport he was taking encountered strong head winds making the trip slower than expected. The transport had to stop at the Town of Wallport and was not able to go further because of the weather, which meant that he was stymied, as he would have to travel by foot and get to Serrat in two days, the city was close to 200 kilometers away. Running through the woods, he made it to the city of Serrat.
At this point, The Nameless, has visited three of the capitols of the Slave States, Dehenna the smallest, Inhajal it's neighbour and Serrat. He has yet to see Amber Creek. He has also seen the Town of Wallport as well, which is the port town connected to the Great Northern City of Whitewall hundreds of kilometers north. He has already noticed a few differences. Wallport is much busier and much more open. Although it is called a town it is larger than Dehenna. The town sits upon a cliff and there are many large well constructed cranes that take goods from the quays and docks into the town the Harbour walls are massive and made of white marble and seem to be thousands of years old, but still imperishable. The walls protect the Harbour from wind and weather while the water they are built in is deep, deep beyond sight. On top of the cliff many of the buildings appear to be newer construction and yet thus appear to be run down when compared to the older construction. The wonder of the town though is the road that leads due north as straight as an arrow for nearly a thousand kilometers to the city of Whitewall. The road is paved with white marble and is warm to the touch, at night the lamp posts illuminate the way for its entire distance. The road is thousands of years old, but never needs maintenance, such we're the builders of the First Age; most of the town itself is part of that great wonder. From beneath the road, a giant illuvial pipe spews a gout of sewage from the very distant city all year long.
Foreign district is populated with foreigners and Realm citizens not from here exclusively. Most of them are traders from the Guild, the Realm and the rest are sailors from the Blue Fleet of the Realm, indeed most of them are from the Blue Fleet. Since no one is allowed in the country proper, all of the facilities that these people need are in this portion of e city. There are taverns and brothels. There are supply warehouses and there are ship repair facilities. There are individual residence compounds for the major players and there is a Realm Bureaucratic building, where any interactions with the province and the outside world occur. At no time are any foreigners allowed beyond the walls that surround this district.
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