The legal system of Freeport is, for the most part, relatively simple. This is not to say that its laws are simple, nor the disputes which surround them, but rather that it lacks complex systems of representatives or jurors which may be seen elsewhere. Instead, crimes are judged by groups of three Tribunes, appointed for life (or until retirement or revocation) by the Steering Council. Within these Tribunals, if all three are able to come to an initial agreement on the nature of the crime which took place and it's punishment, the issue is settled immediately. If not, than two members each take on the role of Accusing Tribune and Defending Tribune, with the roles of arguing against and in favor of the accused respectively. The third, generally the most senior, takes on the role of First Tribune and observes the proceedings before making the final judgement. Being offered the position of First Tribune is seen as a great sign of respect, and while disputes can sometimes arise when all three are of similar position, the role typically falls to more elderly Tribunes who have immense legal experience but may lack the vitality and stamina for the sometimes days-long public arguments that can define the other two positions.

As for the punishments these Tribunes hand down, there are three primary categories, along with a handful of exceptions.

The first category is those crimes punishable by death. This is generally used for those crimes involving violence, as well as particularly severe corruption or mismanagement by politicians and business leaders (a necessary measure to keep the lower classes happy and the upper classes behaving) and is a public spectacle, with the most common methods being beheading or, for more severe crimes, hanging. In the most heinous cases other methods may be chosen, with the most common case being punishments for piracy, which is viewed by Freeport as among the most worst deeds that can be performed. As such all members of pirate crews, as well as those found to be aiding in the commission of piracy, are automatically sentenced to execution by keel-hauling until dead. For those who may be unfamiliar, this consists of tying the criminal to a rope while aboard a large ship, throwing them overboard at one end, and dragging them underneath the ship along the protruding barnacle-covered keel for the several minutes it takes them to reach the other end. Should they survive this endeavor, it is repeated until they do not. Merchant captains often bid for the right to perform these executions in order to demonstrate their commitment to fighting piracy, or as a form of revenge for past damages suffered.

Second, for those crimes which don't warrant execution but still indicate an incompatibility with Freeport society, two forms of exile exist. More severe cases are exiled from the nation entirely, and a triangular notch it cut into their right ear to mark their status. For those who are deemed more capable of reform or merely intolerant of the density and rapid pace of city living, they are simply exiled from the city itself to the countryside, although the massive gap in standard of living and availability of services means this is no small punishment.

Lastly, for those who's crimes are simply deemed a consequence of insufficient education or lack of options, a limited form of forced labor exists, while also supporting the city's bureaucracy and pension systems. For this portion, it is necessary to explain Freeport's strong prohibitions on bonded labor in any form. Slavery, even as punishment for a crime or in as limited a form as systems of peasantdom, is strictly outlawed throughout Freeport, and both the city and surrounding fishing villages and freeholds have gained much of their non-fox non-bug population from escaped slaves. To this end, any use of labor as punishment for a crime must be both strictly non-manual and conceptualized as a form of education first and foremost. To this end two systems of punishment have been existed, to which accused are sentenced for a small number of years according to both demand and their particular skills and failings.

The first are those made to work as scribes, copying records and texts by hand with a more senior professional scribe checking their work, often in large groups. In doing so they learn and practice writing, and will often be able to gain jobs as paid scribes afterwards. Indeed, while higher levels of the bureaucracy often to to formally educated career bureaucrats, most of the lower ranks of scribes and bureaucrats are filled by those who have passed through this program, allowing them to attain a somewhat higher standard of living and much less physically demanding job than would otherwise be available.

The second group is what might be described as assistants or carers. They are assigned to those who have retired or been forced to after a number of years, as well as the spouses of those who have died in service to the city, as a part of their pension and perform various household tasks while being trained in proper etiquette and the management of the household. While granting less overt skills than scribing, more successful graduates of the program find themselves with the skills necessary to act as servants in any number of households and, for those lucky enough to be assigned to one sympathetic to their circumstances, a formal recommendation.

This second group opens itself to a number of abuses in both directions - those serving are unsupervised, while simultaneously a single lie from or tragic accident involving those to whom they've been assigned could result in them being deemed a failure and sentenced to exile or even death, but it is nonetheless mostly functional, and a far kinder system to both parties than the many foreign systems in which corporal punishment or forced hard labor are commonplace and to be a widow or too old to work is almost synonymous with poverty. This fact has, however, has resulted in several waves of controversial books, pamphlets, and plays depicting 'forbidden' relationships emerging during such punishments, spanning the entire spectrum from touching stories of forbidden love to outright abusive. While each wave has brought calls to restrict such material, the strict rules surrounding freedom of trade have prevented doing so.

These form the basis of most criminal sentences within Freeport, but in any complex society there must be exceptions. The details of the fines meted out by the Merchant Association won't be discussed in any detail, as they apply to businesses and other organizations rather than individuals, but one area of import in more conventional crimes is the handling of madness or other mental incapacity. While in mild cases they may warrant only a slight lessening of punishment, or exile to the countryside for those able to function in less exciting circumstances who would otherwise be punished in other ways. For those totally incapable of living a normal life a kind of mental asylum system exists in the form of a handful of villages dedicated to that purpose. While their walls do prevent the citizens from leaving, significant measures are taken to allow those suffering within a semblance of ordinary life - with the nonviolent able to travel freely or even practice safer and less intensive crafts and the violent confined to homes as ordinary as can be achieved without posing a danger - that such quiet and ordinary circumstances may allow them the return of their faculties. Food and water are provided by the government of Freeport for this purpose, while activities are provided periodically by various temples as a form of charity. While rarely successful at curing the condition, Freeport prides itself on providing this most basic accomodation to those suffering from such a disease, theorized by foremost city scholars to originate from a disordering of the senses (as shown by the induction of madness through sensory deprivation) and therefore potentially curable through a mild, ordinary, and consistent environment.

My chest heaved and my throat burned. The saliva in my mouth felt like shards of white hot glass. The sharp mixture of excitement and exhaustion prevented me from calming my breath and my ragged sips of air caught the attention of my chaperone, Thlima. 

Clattering mandibles spit out words resembling a sack of porcelain figures being swung through the air.

'You can take some moments here, to settle, Ceris.' What I have come to learn is the equivalent of a smile appeared on the huge crustacean's face. The loose, chitinous half-moon shaped lids beside his eyes flipped open and his solid black eyes grew wide.

'We will approach the viewing platform in a moment. You are one of few fortunate to watch our Aruaksi device bless this... rough land.' 

The last word was spit out with some venom. The land Thlima gestured towards with a jagged pincer was certainly not rough to my human eyes. Gentle fields lumbering up to the horizon, split with low stone walls and copses of huddled pines. A place to raise a family, I thought, if not for the enormous contraption installed in the centre. Close by us, overlooking the scene was a smattering of gaudy tents and a web of bustling market stalls.

As an ambassador to the Courts of Korsoi in the Wuavreni Mercantile League, I had seen many wonderful sights. Winged lizards trained like lapdogs, acrobats defying death on the crumbling rims of floating islands, a deep sea beast surfacing and being dragged to shore by a mob of tusked apes.

What I had been promised was a sight to dwarf them all. Something my patron, a Trade-Baron and top merchant in Korsoi, promised was worth more than a year's worth of profits.
I was to witness Terraforming.

The great clockwork mechanism, known as the Aruaksi Device, is a closely guarded and highly revered piece of ancient technology.

Resembling a fortress sized metal spider with a complex pyramid body, its legs burrow deep into the earth and the central section supports a crew of Magi trained in the esoteric rituals that have to take place to operate the machine. 

Thlima ushered me over to the viewing platform, offered me a reasonably expensive beverage and encouraged me to settle in for the spectacle alongside some other esteemed guests. We were all diplomats and merchants, I would imagine. 

The Charrid politicians of League are, as a rule, braggarts and we would be great candidates to spread word of this mystical contraptions terrific power. It also serves to send a very specific message to the nations and trading operations that we represent. 'This could be your land next.'

As the sun loomed low behind us, the ritual began.

Thlima and the other Charrid began to emit a low thrum, their mandibles rubbing the ridges that line their jaws and their chitinous thoraxes vibrating.

The Magi clambering around the Aruaksi Device itself looked like scurrying ants, tightening valves and turning complicated cog arrays. The machine began to rumble to life, spluttering a jagged plume of blue-black smoke into the sky. 

The Charrid shifted in tone, matching the hum that now echoed from the Device. Segments along each of the legs slid open and seemed to inhale the air surrounding them, a light from within somehow glowing both scalding hot and a numbing cold.

With a forceful rhythm, the segments of the legs slammed downwards, shattering the earth like glass and instantly draining all colour from the flora within a few metres of the device. A few seconds later, the process repeated and the drained patch surrounding the device spread by a few more metres. In a rhythm that reminded me of my earlier heaving breaths, this radius of decay ebbed outwards with each sickening crunch of the Aruaksi. 

A rushing sound came from within the central funnel, as if a monsoon was battering the inner walls trying to escape. The Magi clambered from the machine and fled, merchants and Charrid officials chattered excitedly. 

A heavy thunk sounded as a compartment on the Aruaksi body moved and grey water went thundering down the legs, deep into the soil. Dark specks fled from the hedgerows and tree copses. The wildlife nearby knew their time was up, the ground beneath them warping and groaning. 

I felt sick. I was once again unable to swallow my breaths in good time. There, not half a mile from where I sat with a cool drink, the land was deprived of all vigour. Thlima’s pincer dug into the guardrail of our viewing platform, her eyes locked on the spectacle. She was overcome with excitement.

A chorus of clunking metal and screeching gears shuddered through the sky as grass withered and dirt calcified into grey knuckles of stone. The groaning joists of the Aruaksi’s legs and thumping gouts of saltwater rose to a deafening pitch as trees shrivelled and plantlife melted, spreading across the now rocky earth as slimy algae. 

The Charrid celebrated, they feasted and danced as the fields turned to rocky pools of salt water. They gambled and laughed as gulls replaced sparrows and mice were chased out by eels and molluscs. Perfectly fertile for them, for their algae factories and seaweed farms. They too have to eat and their population has swelled in the last few generations so it is perhaps cruel of me to judge, but deep within my soul I am disturbed by the transformation. 

I can think of no kind words to describe the Aruaksi and its work to my masters. Defilement, corruption.

Previous Chapter: It Begins With a Betrayal

Chapter 2: Ill-Gotten Goods

A metal serving tray hurtled over Gareth’s head, missing him by mere inches. The tray crashed to the ground behind him and sent a large dark brown loaf of bread rolling across the stonework floor.

A tall man with golden blonde hair bore down on him and stabbed a finger hard into his chest. “How dare you even think for one second that you could serve me that burnt brick? It’s hardly fit for the pigs out in the sty!”

The man flung out an imperious hand and another a tray of pastries went skidding across the bench and clattered face down onto the floor.

With a huff, the man clapped the crumbs from his hands and tugged his tunic back into position. He once again looked like the very picture of the nobility he had been born into.

“Now, I expect you to fix this and redo all of this trash in time for supper. With this quality of work I know you don’t have any respect for yourself, but you had better have some respect for me if you know what’s what.

“I am a Knight of the Garden, the Seneschal of this castle, and brother of the Forever King. You will treat me as such, and that means I only eat bread that has been baked properly. Do you understand me, Gareth?”

“Yes.”

The knight glared at him, his foot tapping expectantly.

“Yes, Sir Kae,” Gareth corrected.

“Better,” the knight sneered.

With a snarl for Gareth and a glare for the rest of the cooks, Kae spun on his heels and swept out of the kitchens, making sure to slam the door behind him. The tension in the cookery evaporated the second he left and the other cooks and maids went back to laughing and joking as if nothing had happened.

Gareth wiped the spittle from his face and knelt down to pick up the food left in the stormy knight’s wake.

A portly man with grey curls spilling around his shoulders, knelt down next to Gareth and started helping him pick up the fallen pastries. “Oy, is it just me or is old Kae especially bad today?”

“Aye he’s in a right awful mood today, that’s for sure,” Gareth replied.

“Fine, fine, but that don’t mean he got to take it out on you though. He’s a right ass to everyone but he always goes out of his way to go after you,” Alvin muttered.

“It’s fine. I’m used to being Kae’s practice dummy. The man has always hated me.” Gareth arranged the salvageable pastries onto a tray. They couldn’t serve them to the nobles now, but that meant the cooks could eat them instead. He quietly tucked the ones too ruined to serve into the pocket of his apron where he had already stashed a small block of cheese.

“Thanks for the help, Alvin. Appreciate it.”

The older man got up with a groan. “Don’t mention it, Gar. Shame about that bread though. Now you’d best be starting a new one unless you want old Kae to come after you again.”

Gareth reached under the table and retrieved a second large loaf of bread. It had been baked to perfection with singed ears and a golden, blistered crust. He held it out to Alvin with a grin.

“A little birdie told me Kae would try something like this. I knew he’d come after me today no matter what I did so I just burned that one a little bit to give him something to chase after. ‘Kept this other one as a backup.”

Alvin stared at him slackjawed before a laugh bubbled out of him. “You sneaky goat! Now how’d you think of something like that? Your wife and her old demon look into the future for you?”

Gareth grimaced inwardly at the mention of Vivaine and Myradin. Alvin was his one friend in the castle and the one person who’s never given him any trouble because of his wife’s duties to the wizard, but that didn’t mean he didn’t think the same thing everyone else thought: that he was some cuckold to a demon.

He made himself put those thoughts aside. No point in worrying about what other people thought they knew about him and his wife, he had more important things to worry about today like gathering the rest of the supplies that they’d need for their journey.

“Enough of that, Alvin. Hey listen, can you finish plating my pastries for me? I need to head out for the rest of the day.”

“Are you serious, man? You’re going to just up and leave after Kae nearly decapitated you with a serving platter? What if he comes back with another word for you and you’re not here? I’ll not wake up tomorrow and find you hanging from the castle walls!”

“Calm yourself, man. Nothing like that will happen. Kae hardly ever comes down here in the first place. What are the odds he’ll come down here twice in one day? He’ll probably be too busy yelling at the castle cats for not catching enough mice this week.

“Half the castle is off on some quest, which means there’s half as many mouths to feed and half as much work for us. It’s only just midday and we’re practically done already. You know the other cooks wish I wasn’t here anyways.”

When the older man seemed reluctant, Gareth gave the older man a friendly shove on the shoulder.

“Oh come on, Al! It’s Vivaine’s birthday tomorrow. I just wanted to catch a rabbit so I could make her a stew for supper. Listen, if I manage to catch two, I’ll give you the other one.”

Alvin chewed at his lip. “Hmph fine, fine. Off you go then. Just don’t get caught. Lord knows I don’t want to train another mediocre baker.”

Gareth grinned and rushed over to his things. He unloaded the ruined pastries, the singed loaf of bread, and a half used block of cheese into a sack. He shed his apron and threw that on top to hide them.

The kitchens were built as a separate building from the rest of the castle and stood in a small glade next to the river about a hundred yards from the stables and the practice yard. That made it easier for the cooks to receive store shipments and to retrieve fresh water, all while reducing the risk of any potential fires from spreading from the kitchen into the castle main.

Gareth crossed the green with his satchel thrown over his shoulder and made his way across the practice yard. The crack-crack of dozens of wooden swords clattering against each other rang out over the field. While most of the knights and their older squires had left already, the pages were too young to be taken out on quests and had been left behind to continue their training.

Gareth paused and watched the pages train for a moment. When he was young he’d dreamt of being one of these boys. He wanted to learn to ride a horse and to duel and joust until he mastered every one of the chivalric arts one by one. He wanted to be chosen by the greatest knight in the land to be his squire and ultimately be knighted by him too. He wanted to go on grand adventures slaying monsters and saving damsels until the King recognized his bravery and offered him his place among the Knights of the Garden.

But instead he was put in the kitchens when he turned 8 and hadn’t left in almost thirty years. Apparently having a noble father didn’t automatically make you a noble. It just made you a bastard.

But at least he was a bastard with a quest.

He still couldn’t believe what Vivaine had talked him into. He had hardly ever stepped foot outside of Castle Carelon, let alone ventured halfway across the known world trying to track down Sir Dane. They’d start their journey by heading towards the Great Battlefield at Prenafal. Dane had left with his retinue on horseback so they had little chance of catching up to him before then, but they would have to leave their horses before descending the trunk of the Great Tree.

Vivaine reasoned that Dane and the other knights would be slowed down by having to fend off monsters and demons as they descended Prenafal. That would give them the time they needed to catch up to them. If all went according to the plan, they’d find him before he reached the foul hell known as Anwyn.

Anwyn, home of the Fomoria.

Everyone in Carelon knew the stories. Knights who had come back from fending off their invasions from Prenefal told tale after tale of the demon Fomoria. Stories about how bloodthirsty they are, now they tear you open so they can feast on your souls, how they were once men whose inner demons ate them up inside and out.

He hoped he wouldn’t need to if everything went according to their plan. Almost all of the Knights of the Garden left Carelon these past few days in hopes of completing the King’s Holy Quest. Nobody but the King and his knights know exactly what the quest entails, but he’d heard rumors that they were going down into the foul depths of Anwyn. And if that were the case, all he and Vivaine would have to do would be to let the knights do what they do best, and then follow in their wake after most of the Fomoria were killed. They would still be in danger from any stragglers though.

Shivers ran up Gareth’s spine at the thought of having to face one himself. He tried imagining any one of those pages or squires going up against a demon. He couldn’t. Or he could and it didn’t go the way he wanted it to. They were young but they actually had training in weapons and combat.

He on the other hand was a cook, not a knight or even a page. What chances did he stand?

The ridiculousness of this whole situation made a laugh bubble out from Gareth. All of this trouble, all of this danger, just to save one dog. A dog who snuck out of the kennels to come find him so many times that the kennel master gave up trying to stop him. A dog who stole food from his kitchen every morning and his wife’s shoes every night.

Orfeo, his and Vivaine’s dog.

A few paces ahead of him he spotted a lone practice sword lay discarded in the tall grass. He picked it up and hefted it in his hands. It was lighter than a real sword of course, but it was heavy enough that it could still do some damage. Part of the tip had been broken off so the blade ended in a jagged, splintered point.

Gareth turned back to the path back and hurried back to his hut with his stolen sword and food in hand.

Vivaine and Orfeo were waiting.

The lavender-striped tent covered in scalloped-shell frills near the Tree Charter is the business stall for the Temple of Love in the Traveling Market. It has several explicit wooden statues painted with bright colors and gilded with metal and jewels, depicting entwined gods of love. There are chairs, cushions, tables, and perches for a variety of body shapes available. While supplicants for a consort’s services can find a representative here, the actual Temple of Love and its bowers are in the Temple District of Fortaleza.

Working at a brothel is a legal, religious, and legitimate profession in Trezera, with consorts providing a variety of services beyond sex including oil massage, touch therapy, powder bathing, steam rooms, cold water bathing, voyeur pornography, toys, guided meditation, couples therapy, sex education, match-making, and companionship. As they are recognized by the law and do not rely on johns for their income, consorts have much more control over their clientele and business than in other regions.

Consorts are religiously dedicated to personal chastity and will not have penetrative sex with clients or others, although they do employ toys. This is to keep from losing consorts to pregnancy and childcare, and has the side-effect of avoiding the rapid spread of venereal disease. Consorts who wish to leave the service may do so at any time, but any consorts found to be with child or to have fathered a child loses consort status forever and owes great mita to their community.

Despite the protections in place, consorts are still often mistreated or even assaulted. Two brothels can be found in Fortaleza, and both send consorts to look for clients in the Tree District of the Traveling Market.

Take this hypothetical situation for example.

A lone Peri (small, green humanoid with dragon fly wings) is seen hanging around the outskirts of a medium sized settlement in your territory. Peri have a reputation for being mischievous and tricky. Some minor thefts are noticed, and after a few days, they are caught stealing from a larder.

The Peri immediately runs. Peri are small and fast, at only a foot tall and brought up in dense forests, they are hard to catch, and if you do lay hands on it, it can administer an electric shock that can kill small creatures and stun larger creatures, but they can only do this once. Peri also rely on glamours and geas, using minor mind magic to illusion themselves and influence others to make choices that will benefit them, though it is easy to overcome if the target is paying attention.

Can your local law enforcement catch the Peri? Will they pursue if it gets away? What happens if they do catch it? How could this interaction change the way things operate in the future?

Feces is one of the big, ugly problems of being alive and living in groups; when people are living in cities, it becomes an extremely big issue. If herded animals are involved, then their poop is also going to be a problem; they are one of the biggest reservoirs of water-borne illnesses and parasites that civilization has encountered. At the same time, it is also one of the biggest opportunities for nutrient recovery in the world, and is the most common general resource for bulk fertilizer production that people can get their hands on without guano, rock mining, or chemistry-and only one of those is even remotely feasible for this time period. That sends everyone back to handling dung, with the added extra step of the risk of disease.

The Aelish are no different; they die of waterborne illnesses and infected cuts just like anyone else-maybe with a bit more whining. Similarly, they need fertilizer just as much, and they will do a lot to get it. Both of these steer them towards handling poop, which all goes on the dungheap. By itself, a dungheap looks somewhat like a compost heap, but it smells much worse and steams with much greater intensity as the microbes within drive aerobic respiration. Each dungheap is a large pile of poop, tended to by the people surrounding it, or occasionally by a dedicated 'Soiler', who suffers this unpleasant job with little gusto. The bottom of a heap is lined with dense stone, and it has stone retaining walls to keep the daily takings in. This prevents the dung from leaking out, and allows for the dungheap to be continually turned. This turning ensures that the temperature of the dung will be above 145 F for multiple cycles, killing off weed seeds and diseases.

Needless to say, the Aelish do not know jack about this process. They don't even know what Farenheit is. All they know is that if the heat can kill the weed seeds, it can render the dung mostly safe to use.

After being left to 'ferment' down for a while, the dungheap's products have become more concentrated, and they can be efficiently used in fertilizers and soil amendments. For the sake of this post, soil amendments will use Colorado State University's definition as 'any material added to a soil to improve its physical properties for plant growth, such as water retention, permeability, water infiltration, drainage, aeration, and structure.' This does not include prioritize chemical factors per se, such as NPK availability, but instead supports the structure of the soil, allowing roots to move through it much more easily. Plants with places to go will do well.

And people with places to put their dung will do even better. This is the real benefit from opening of dung-heaps, removing it from the public and concentrating it in a place where it can be kept from exposure to everyone. Needless to say, collecting poop from animals and people takes significant organization-something that you can't do when chevaucees are twice a week events. Now that peace is on offer, the Aelish are able to set up these collection centers and deal with the poop problem. Things are still getting better.

In the centuries past, there have been many who have come and gone through the lands that now comprise Ayetho. Of these groups, the Foxfolk, now most often associated with the northern state of Freeport, have been one of these visitors to stay for the journey.

In Ayetho, the Foxfolk would see a mixed fate. Being mistaken for a unique form of normal fox by some Demani, portions of the Foxfolk population would occasionally be taken as pets or livestock to be kept, and eventually would be selectively bred outright by the Demani.

Over more than a millennium, these captive Foxfolk would develop into a unique domestic variety, and would come to have several breeds in some regions.

The primary breed to be found nearly in every Nest which houses them is best known for droopy ears, curled tails, and splotchy white and grey fur. These Foxfolk are typically shorter and more juvenile than their feral counterparts, having developed neoteny from the centuries of selective breeding. Likewise, there have been internal developments thanks to these externally selected traits. Primarily, traits which minimize aggression and exaggerate agreeability have been selected for, leading to a generally docile demeanor, though only when treated properly.

Some particular breeds also exist, particularly selected for specific traits to be exaggerated, such as fur length or color, more extreme neoteny, and even more potent lactation to be used for milk. However, the vast majority belong to the simple, husky-like common variety.

Despite their domestic status, these Foxfolk retain a strong sense of cultural identity, having preserved traditions the best they can orally while being shuffled from Nest to Nest and between different Demani owners.

The domestic Foxfolk have a matriarchal family structure, with the mother being the absolute authority, in no small part due to Demani influence and preference. While the mother is away assisting their owners on hunts and in farming, the father is expected to stay back and tend to any young who are grown enough to be weaned off the mother. The fathers often are also charged with guarding the livingquarters of their owners, though have little ability to defend against anything a Demani Soldier failed against.

Likewise, with the mother often away, the father is often responsible for the passing down of old tales from before domestication, though such stories have gone under significant Demani influence since then. Such stories as the tales of the Great Goddess, often to be conflated with the Nest’s Queen, or the Divine Daughter, are often heard by the younglings, with many less universal deities having lost so much importance to the point of irrelevance. In their stead, Demani deities have largely filled that void, and may be taught by the father or by their owners directly.

Within the last millennium, a substantial enough population of escaped domesticates have gathered that a true feral Foxfolk society has likewise formed in Ayetho.

These feral societies have reformed many of the societal features lost to domesticates, though some terminology has developed differently due to Demani influences remaining in their culture.

At the height of feral Foxfolk societies is the Nest, a misapplied title delegated to the highest political unit of their lands. These Nests are led by a singular Queen, who is a daughter of the previous Queen, though which daughter inherits the title is subject to the whims of the current Queen of a Nest.

A Foxfolk Nest is a highly centralized place, with strict organization of labor and rigorous recordkeeping having been inherited from their former Demani masters.

Likewise, the subdivisions of the Nest are a title one could call incorrect, being titled Clusters. Each Foxfolk Cluster is made up of a handful of Herds, families of Foxfolk, and are led by a Princess.

The Princess of a Cluster is typically a secondary daughter of the Queen, but may also be a notable Matron of one of its constituent Herds. The Princess is advised informally by representatives of all ages and runs of life from the Herds she leads.

Cluster management is less strict than at the Nest level, with the majority of writing being for personal endeavors or tallying harvests. Much of the Princess’s duties are ceremonial in nature, leading processions on the solstices and equinoxes in particular.

At the level of Herd, the family is led by the Matron, the eldest female in the family. The Matron is typically the grandmother of the youngest of the Herd, with other members including the parents, children, aunts, uncles, and cousins, reaching up to fifty members in a Herd at times.

In the Herd, the women once again take on the active roles of society, such as hunting and farming, while the men take on roles that one would typically expect of Demani Tsatsiu and other homemaking roles, being obligate househusbands to their wives, caring for the younglings and primary creators of feral Foxfolk arts.

The religion of the feral Foxfolk is much more diverse than that of the domesticates, having similar figures like the Great Goddess, but also others like the Blessed Demon, the Phantom King, the Shepherd of the Underworld, and a variety of nature spirits. All of these deities, unlike in domestic culture, are represented in sacred totems, carved depictions of the deities to which one is meant to worship or pray.

The settlements of a Herd similarly take much inspiration from the Demani. A Herd’s settlement is centred on a fortified storehouse, with several wings branching off of it in which cooking, living, and domestic works may go on. Around these storehouse complexes, a series of farms and earthworks may be made, with ditches and mounds acting as barriers in the absence of natural defenses as needed.

The final major group of Foxfolk in Ayetho are the wild Foxfolk, decendants of those who were never captured and bred by the Demani.

The wild Foxfolk form Clans, as their ancestors had, which are led by a Chieftain. The heir to the Chieftain is the son of his sister, as to ensure relatedness. Further, this prevents a total centralization of power, like is seen in feral Foxfolk settlements, and permits greater personal freedom.

With this freedom, the Chieftain has significantly less political power than the Queens of feral Nests, and take on a largely ceremonial role. The Chieftains largely act as mediators in inter-tribal conflicts and as religious leaders for certain events.

At the Tribal level, each Tribe is made up of a collection of Foxfolk Bands. Each Tribe is led by a council of men from each Band within the Tribe. These Councils may vary in exact powers and functions, but generally are lawmaking bodies for the Bands within the Tribe, and pass on their decisions and judgements orally.

Each Tribe may form either a central or dispersed settlement, with the Bands within the Tribe being closer or further from each other.

In central settlements, each Band will be no more than an hour walk from the next Band’s settlement, often in a ring, and divide the hunting and farming grounds by the median point between their living spaces.

In dispersed settlements, each Band is situated at the centre of their hunting and farming lands, with the distances between each Band being much further, often a day’s journey.

At the Band level, there is often limited to no true leadership, however the most prominant man of the Band will occasionally be an informal leader of the Band.

Each Band is a family unit, much like the feral Herds, and similarly rarely exceeds fifty members. Unlike Herds, however, the Bands are much more patriarchal, not only being led by the men, but also having the women taking on the role of housekeeping and child rearing found in most races besides Demani.

The men of a Band will hunt, forage, and farm as necessary, with agriculture being relatively rare, while the women will cook, clean, and tend to children, with different crafts being divided between more masculine and feminine roles depending on their nature.

Likewise, wild Foxfolk religion lacks the Demani influences that domestic and feral Foxfolk have, with many of the deities' genders being inverted. The wild Foxfolk worship beings such as the Great God, Phantom Queen, Divine Son, Blessed Crow, and further still, the Sky, Earth, and Sea Gods. The Sky and Earth in particular being the fathers of all earthly things, from the birds and trees to the Foxfolk and even Demani. The Demani in particular have been interpreted as Demons who punish those who have abandoned the Sky, and reward those blessed by it.

This brings great fortune to the final group of Foxfolk who reach Ayetho, the latecomers. Over the last millennium, there have been many instances of Foxfolk from Freeport wandering astray and getting lost off the coast of Ayetho, or within its lands outright. While here, Demani will occasionally spot them, and for reasons unknown to the Foxfolk, relocate them to the nearest known wild Foxfolk settlement.

Thanks to the belief the wild Foxfolk hold of Demons of Punishment and Blessing, the unceremoniously relocated Foxfolk of Freeport find themselves in religiously significant positions by pure happenstance, though rarely taking on a major role in the Clan as a whole.

And, as time goes on, it is not unlikely that more earnest relations between Freeport and Demani may properly develop. Perhaps, even, between the various Foxfolk of Ayetho and Freeport as well.

By all logic, the surface of Ukan-Agula should be something between a sparse taiga and a barren desert. The Driftmount hangs high in the open sky, battered constantly by winds and buried in snow for half the year. It receives only a few brief months of warmth. This is barely enough for lichen growth, not enough for any substantial forest growth. And yet, the Driftmount carries deep green highland woods, rolling grasslands and wildlands thick with life, as if the flying island has decided that the normal rules of the world do not seem to apply to it.

The strangeness of contrasting life and high air environments is not in the animals themselves. Walk through the Driftmount and you will see many recognizable beings. Pines, birches, oaks, ashes, all recognizable surface tree species. Foxes denning between root systems, rabbits threading through the undergrowth, squirrels chattering from the tree branches, deer and hogs rummaging through the berry shrubs and bushes. Nothing out of the ordinary compared to the surface-world, aside from minor adaptation differences such as constant gale-resistant heavier, stockier animals living on the open plains while small animals that lack such a body congregate in forested regions. Many outsiders cannot easily explain the reason behind such a lively environment.

The secret lies in a unique bio-system native to the Driftmount. The Audoi named it Owlyn Zylok, translated as Winterhearth.

Winterhearth is not a single organism. It is a collective name for a symbiotic mesh of a moss, a surface-algae and a fungus, all native to the Driftmount, interwoven together and essentially functioning as a single living system. It collectively colonizes the forest floors, dense undergrowth of bushes and anchors to root systems of vegetation. This is because Winterhearth alone struggles to root itself firmly enough to resist winds. So, it clings to the forests more, spreads thickly across the sheltered woods and thins across the open grasslands.

Alone, Winterhearth is an unremarkable mesh, but it keeps the forests and plants alive through the long Driftmount winter.

The exact science behind Winterhearth's ability remains mostly unknown. But Audoi observers and scholars have pieced together a broad life-cycle knowledge about it over many generations.

In summer, the surface elements of Winterhearth are at their most active. The deep purple moss and algae spread across the forest floor, catching any available light. Using the abundant summer light, it converts most of the intake nutrients into densely packed energy reserves within its subterranean network. Audoi jokingly refer to this phase as a feeding season similar to a mammal preparing for long winter hibernation.

Then the winter arrives and buries everything with snow. Below the surface, the subterranean fungi elements of Winterhearth take over the primary function. It begins to break down dead organic matter in the soil, such as fallen tree trunks, dead roots and long-buried leaves. It works on dead matter similar to earthworms, steadily and thoroughly decomposing while fueled by the energy reserves from the summer stockpile. This process generates a faint but persistent heat, just enough to sustain biological functions. Beneath the thick layer of snow, insulated from the freezing air above, this gentle warmth keeps the root systems alive throughout the winter.

So the plants and forests cheat the coldness of long winter months. Above ground, everything is mostly locked up. Frost seals the bark, ice hangs from the branches and nothing grows for months. But underground the root systems keep working. They absorb nutrients, aided by Winterhearth, and channel them into reserves. The roots grow slowly but denser and stronger, packed with sugar, starch and raw materials, swelling like a muscle under tension. Where lowland forests go dormant and wait for summer warmth to return, the Driftmount forests spend winter getting ready for summer.

When the snow finally recedes, something dramatic happens. An explosion of greenery. It happens fast enough to frighten someone who has never seen it. Trees that spent months loading themselves with energy expend it all in a matter of a few weeks. Trunks swell, branches shoot out and leaves erupt so thick and fast that the canopy seems to close overnight. A lowland tree might take a full growing season to put on the same greenery that a Driftmount oak gains before summer ends.

To observe the Driftmount shift from white silence to dense green highland in a span of a few weeks would feel, to most surface visitors, less like biology and more like magic at work.

The architect of this transformation is largely invisible during the winter. In winter, Winterhearth is a subterranean system. You do not see it. Walk through a Driftmount forest in deep winter and the ground gives way softly under your boots instead of the expected frozen solid. Kneel down, press your palm against the ground or an exposed root and you will feel a faint pulse of warmth coming up. The air near the ground smells strange, a layered scent of something decomposing and something sweet. And if you dig the ground, you might find darkened moss, golden amber threads of algae laced through the roots, the dark green fungal growth webbing everything together into one continuous thing.

For the Audoi, they do not find any of this remarkable. They grew up with warm earth underfoot in the dead of winter. To them, it is simply what forests feel like. The outsiders, stepping onto soft, warm earth while snow piles on the tree branches, would feel that something unusual is happening here.

Song Economics

Mita (Debt), Noleqio (Charter), and Contari (Song)

No Coins, No Moneys

Money has never seen much use among the skylands of Trezera, either among the harpies themselves or with their primary trade partners. It is one of the most disconcerting things visitors to the Traveling Market will notice; goods and services are given for a song, but no coin exchanges hands. Harpies say metal currency is too heavy and too rare on the skylands to be practical, even while wearing gold necklaces and brass leg bracers.

So why won’t they use common currency, and how does their system function? When the song is sung and services given, how do the harpies know they will be repaid in kind? What social structures and systems are in place that keep outsiders honest? Without money, how do they track expenditures, resources, or wealth?

To the harpies, this is simply the way things work. They’ve tried coins before, and they tell stories of being cheated and chained and starved by foreign interests. No one can chain you with a song, they say.

But how does it work?
Gift economics, sophisticated accounting, centralized markets, and a little magic.

Underlying Systems & History

Harpies come from a longstanding gift economy. Gift economies are common the world over in small communities, where family and neighbors rely on each other to survive. One person lends a hammer, another shares surplus grain, and all pitch in to build a house. Nobody expects immediate repayment for gifts or services, but all are continuously in debt to one other. The focus is on building social relationships, and there are strong incentives to be generous.

Gift economies break down when strangers can take from the community without repayment. To solve this problem, harpy merchants established networks of trusted trade partners, traveling the same routes over and over. These trade networks were often reinforced with marriage and family ties between harpies, and the symbolic exchange of community members with non-harpies. Dream pearls from the sea below were used to maintain these ties across great distances. Large stone carvings commemorated the trust between trade partners. These prototypical stones became the basis for the modern Charters. 

Unlike humans, harpies possess a syrinx, which allows them a much greater range in sound production. They are also more keyed into complex changes in pitch and tone. Using these natural advantages, the harpies developed a uniquely musical language and accounting system. Harmonies and motifs were adopted to encode complex economic information orally.

When the skylands were conquered a millennia ago, harpies came into contact with human money systems. Money was used to “buy” their skylands and force them into servitude. Harpy gift economies kept their people resilient against the rigors of colonial extraction, growing more nuanced under the pressure.

The Sphinxes return to power in Meridian and deployment of a centralized storehouse system revitalized the harpy gift networks. The Empire sought to starve out the fledgling nation through taxation and blockade, but that only made the new system spread faster as coin drained from local economies. The new economic model relied heavily on labor taxation, redistribution, and community credit models, forging the various harpy clans into a single nation and people. Paired with the longstanding principles of gift networks, the Meridian mita was born.

Mita: Duties

Trezera relies heavily on community storehouses for food and other public goods. Storehouses measure the total shared resources available for a community, with members of the community borrowing or being lent resources as needed based on the credit they’d earned through their own husbandry of the community resources; through their mita. 

Mita is an individual's debt to society. It's those things a person requires from a society to live, as well as what is required from a person as a result of living in that society.

Working any job puts society into your debt on your 'mita' account, while anything you take from society goes on your tab. Songs record both, while Charters unify all the songs into a single community register so that at any time anyone can check on the mita of anyone else. There is strong cultural momentum in adding more to society than you take.

The mita also requires a certain amount of labor for hard or difficult jobs that most people don't want to do, but which don't require much training, like field labor or dredging guano pits. The Charter allows the recorded members of a community to take turns at semi-random doing these types of work. Some people will do this work all the time because they don't mind, but most people will develop a craft, service skill, or trade that is considered more valuable to the community, and will get called in less often. Very skill intensive and valuable jobs, like a doctor, won't get called on for physical labor more than once a year or so.

Paying with a Song

Song-based exchange has several distinctions which separate it from a monetary exchange. The biggest is that songs act as a receipt or public record rather than acting as an intermediary of exchange.

Money as a physical token of exchange can be counted and accumulated. Money is said to have innate, fungible value. It has an issuer (usually local government) that harnesses its value and controls aspects of the economy. Accumulating money is requisite to participating in the market, and wealth hoarding is strongly incentivized.

Songs, in contrast, do not have the property of quantity. They cannot be accumulated and are valueless in a sense. They are not issued by a central authority, and they cannot be hoarded. Songs only exist when they are needed. They are lost if they are not shared, and they rely on active recognition and cooperative participation. Finally, (almost) everyone can sing, so they are automatically equipped for the market.

A song’s only exchange value is as a receipt of goods and services rendered. It facilitates a variety of exchanges including record keeping, time exchange, direct exchange, barter, swapping, gifting, and sharing. It places the focus on the goods needed and services rendered, rather than the medium used to exchange them. The true value of the song is trust-weighted social memory.

Paying with a song discourages static accumulation and promotes generosity. A wealthy person is one who gives generously and often, whose agreements are widely trusted and whose obligations are honored.

Songs establish a history of credit and exchange, formalizing gift networks. Because of the interpersonal nature of the songs, trust and longevity in trade is valued, i.e. long-term partners gain in value as they prove their worth. Trust in the system comes from the transparency of shared verification and community accounting. Unresolved debts create musical tension, with greater debts growing more obvious over time.

Contari

The word for the song contracts is contari, literally meaning “accounts”. 

Contari are highly formalized oral contracts or trade agreements. Contari in written form can be passed between non-harpies as a form of bank note or IOU, but harpies don't recognize the agreement unless it is formally sung, perhaps with accompaniment for those without a syrinx. Humans of the South who deal often with harpies will use specialized instruments like the double-necked saze, the microtonal kitare, or use a clavichord. Peoples of other lands and other music traditions are encouraged by harpies to add their own unique sound to the contari. 

An individual contara can contain detailed information about the participants and the history, quality, and quantity of the goods or services through the notes, timing, and tones as well as the words.

Contari can be negotiated by altering the song, though the song is not ratified until both parties sing in harmony. Contari are not necessarily pleasant to listen to like traditional music, as their primary purpose is record-keeping; but they often have a certain rhythm through repeated exchange.

In preliterate communities, all contari are sung before the local council of elders, and any unsettled debts are addressed every two years. With the introduction of writing and scribes, contari records are kept with the community storehouses and inscribed onto the Charters. 

Relatively recent (past 200 years) developments in charm magic capturing and recording sound with ccelimbar, as well as numerology, have allowed the contari to be embedded into the Charters, providing detailed and archived records of a region’s economic history. Through the song records, the credit histories of local participants can be preserved across a lifetime of dealings, and can be accessed by anyone in the community. Debate rages in the Public Forums on whether the Song Library is a model of transparency or an invasion of privacy.

So far, each Charter records only localized exchanges. Some believe it would be possible to network the Charters into each other using the dream pearls, but nobody has quite figured out how.

Sacred Charters

Charters can be understood as a form of currency, a community record, and a shrine for worship. They can be used to mark borders and are often valued treasures.

Historically, Charters were carved stone and could take many shapes, from totem poles and statues to wheels. In the modern era, noleqoi are made of adobe and filled with stones and sand. They are smooth tower structures roughly 5 meters tall and 3.15 meters at the base, narrowing to 3 meters at the top. The edges are rounded, and the top has a spherical hole a meter wide into which a gong is placed. The hole is plated with ccelimbar, and a brass gong is suspended in the middle like a speaker.  Charters are covered in writing, both in trennu and with any local language, and in addition often have images of important local plants, animals, and deities. Many are gilt with copper, jade, and other precious stones or metals.

When the Charter Song Library is accessed, the vibrations of the gong play back any song previously recorded.

There are currently over 17,206 individual noleqio throughout Trezera, with uncounted others scattered in distant lands along the circle of Sojourn. More than half of those are the newly standardized Charters built in the past 70 years.

A noleqio is covered in writing detailing the accords. The writing on a noleqio records past and present agreements, exchange rates, goods, terms of use, services, and credit history.

In their function as a shrine, Charters both represent and house the spirit of a local god of prosperity. Harpy traders look at how well a Charter has been cared for as a sign of how much the local community cares for its chartered trade agreements. A neglected noleqio might be a sign to pass over a community, while breaking a Charter literally erases the ties between peoples, and is almost always followed by war. General care of a noleqio includes cleaning, veneration, and even small offerings. 

Charters can be exchanged, and doing so strengthens the bonds between distant communities. The transfer of a noleqio’s caretaker renews the treaty or exchange agreement. Each new transfer is recorded in the Charter, with song-contracts recording the exchange as well. Transferring ownership of a noleqio transfers both the responsibility and the blessings of that prosperity god to the new owner. When Charters are given ceremonially they do not change location. Each change of ownership is accompanied by ceremony, with no group keeping charge of a noleqio for longer than twelve years at a time. 

Noleqoi are magically resonant and do in fact provide a small, generalized blessing of prosperity to communities based on the care given to them, but the effect is very small.

Tradehouse Networks & Foreigners

Tit-for-tat agreements work with foreign merchants and to establish new alliances, but eventually people are going to want to be able to buy things and sell things separated by time and distance and relationship. And what about labor and services, how are they represented in the economy? 

With foreigners and outsiders, harpies prefer to set up trading houses that understand Trezera economics and are willing to sing contari and care for noleqoi for an exclusive trading community. They can be very belligerent about it, as they associate monetary market exchange with liars, cheating, and subterfuge. Having a Charter basically means a community has agreed to use song economics in the same way having money means you've agreed to monetary economics.

Along the Sojourn, some villages will use aspects of the harpy system, but often do not or cannot adopt the system wholesale without severely disrupting their own local economies. Song economics are flexible enough to work with local customs, but a lack of currency is always a point of pride. 

Special harpy brokers will use the dream pearls of the South Sea to Dreamsing across long distances to arrange record value of goods and services on local Charters. The harpy brokers rely on close family ties and threat of exile to keep them honest.

Altogether, the harpy economic system coordinates large and small transactions through song, charter, and trade house. Mita is accrued and paid to the community, and value is measured in generosity. 

TERMS

• Ccelimbar (chel-im-bar) - alchemically treated, magically resonant amber used in a variety of applications
• Contara, Contari - song contracts
• Dream pearls - pearls from the same oyster allow people in different locations to share a dream. Through training in lucid dreaming, messages are able to be sent across distances.
• Mita (mee-tah) - debt and credit
• Noleqio, Noleqoi - Charters
• Qitare - microtonal guitar-style stringed instrument
• Saze - double-necked stringed instrument
• Trennu (tren-yu) - language of Trezera

INSPIRATIONS

Gift Economies

Incan Centralized Economics

Halawa

Community Exchange System

Rai Stones

Aelbaion has traditionally raised a lot of sheep, and these sheep produce a lot of wool. Just as traditionally as it has bred these sheep and sheared them, it has sold this wool. This has not always been an easy process; because different sheep produce different amounts of wool. In the past, agreements were usually made to move a number of sheep's worth of wool, but even saying 'large sheep' or 'good sheep' didn't make enough of a difference to solve the issue. Spats about the amount of wool being sold continued to flare up, sometimes turning into outright conflicts-and eventually at least one war between Trade Lords was fought over a wool trade dispute. However, the problem was not considered important enough for the Kingdom to get involved in, and so it stuck around until the 30 Year Peace kicked it into the limelight again.

Weights and measures are not easy to designate, decide upon, or make. This is because they need to work for everyone without causing too many problems. Two big categories of problems exist: technical and political. Technical problems are in the reproduction of accurate weights for a lot of users, and in ensuring that those weights are still accurate as they are used. Political problems involve someone inevitably losing power or money when things change. Aelbaion had to deal with both when dealing with this problem; and on top of that, it couldn't count on the office of the Crown to help it out every time. Luckily, the person who developed this solution was a genius, and he managed to utilize his death in a manner that stuck everyone else with the problem.

Dr. Savois was a full-time lawyer and a full-time barber who made his money in the wool trade. Being a barber in Aelbaion is not related to the professions that perform surgery at all, it is a sophisticated social role keeping people looking good. Savois had worked his way through law school, and had a reputation by all as being a nasty peasant and a sneaky gossip; this made him very well positioned to get into contract law and eavesdrop on others while working on their facial and body hair. After nearly getting belted on the graduation podium from law school, he fled to the coastal trade cities-but stayed within his network and got into the wool trade. Quickly, he realized that there was an opportunity to make a lot of money if he could introduce a settled weight system.

Initially, the bad Doctor was going to be very hard, because everyone would lose somehow if they were going to adopt his system. While he mastered the art of shaving a chin, and then publicly mastered the art of preparing facial hair, he idly thought about how such a system would work. It would need to be simple, easily employed, and without complication. It would also need to be something that wouldn't spark controversy when used, something that could slip in among the users and be taken up without too much care because of it's ease alone...but it would have his name attached to it. That would be a problem. Dr. Savois typically counted grains in his head to fall asleep if he wasn't passing out drunk from the guilt. He was convinced that he would need someone else to introduce this system-for it it would be associated with him, it would be rejected. But that person would have would have blackmail material on him! He would need someone so perfectly idiotic and clever that they could be putty in his hands. And so he searched....

But he didn't find anyone.

Then once upon a midnight dreary, as he pondered drunk and weary, Dr. Savois realized that he could use this weight system to launder his reputation. This would be extremely hard for him-the instinct to screw someone over was first nature-but he had no choice. The system he had devised was simple enough: at it's base, it used the weight of a cereal 'grains' which was already in use by other systems-the palace-gold and the physikers'. However, he would avoiding stepping on their toes by having his system apply only to wool-and if people wanted to, they could use it for non-medical, non-monetary dry goods. The unit of measurement that he cared about was the woolsack-which would allow him to speculate on what people were moving around. However, everyone would be expecting him to do that. And so Dr. Savois took the time to develop the intermediate weights as well.

They would need to be useful. The 'pound' of 6,992 grains was derived from enough grains to make a pound of flour. The 'stone', of 14 pounds, was the weight of a good foundation stone. A full 'woolsack' was 26 stone, and roughly the weight of what was already being moved into the . There were two smaller units: an 'ounce', of 1/16th of a pound (437 grains), and the 'part', consisting of 1/16th of an ounce (and 27 grains). He thought that these would be used by persons like chefs. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Dr. Savois had no sooner popularized the 'means and methods for the sure of measurement of wool' than he had the temerity to go and die by falling out of the window. This left the system in the lurch-and allowed everyone to think what they wanted of it.

What they didn't think of it, however, was that Dr. Savois was going to use that system of measurement to steal their money. Like other eccentrics with egos, Dr. Savois had willed his creation to the Crown, and the Crown took a look at it. What the underlings working for His Majesty determined that the system-now called the Long-Box measurement system, after the long boxes an entire weight set could be transported in-was acceptable for common use. The Crown took care not to endorse it, as that could upset the apple cart, but the Trade Lords, always looking to sell pieces of flotsam and jetsam that entered the Crown's house, did take well to it, and began to encourage it's use in their personal holdings. This helped to get it spread throughout the rest of Aelbaion. What it took for the LB system to work out was for it to be able to speak on it's own terms, not it's founders. Having a vacuum when it counted-and then having a series of sponsors right afterwards-put the system into full use.

Dr. Savois, it seemed, didn't succeed in laundering his reputation fully. But his work did.

Over the many centuries the Rockborn and Demani have interacted, there have been instances where the Rockborn have attacked or eaten Demani, and there have been instances where the Demani have attacked or eaten Rockborn.

The ultimate culmination of these interactions, perhaps, is the evolution of Demani fungiculture to involve Rockborn. Not as helpers, however, but as the crop itself. This has been most clearly demonstrated in five lineages of Rockborn that, as of modern day, exist only under Demani care in various nests.

The first of these varieties is cultivated for a mutation in its high silicate content in its stone shells, growing biological glass plates which Demani may use for windows and mosaics. This lineage is prevented from growing significant intelligence via the removal of higher thinking tissue, and by Rockborn standards would be a minor lineage for its fragile silicate structures.

The most valuable silicates, glasses, are produced from the lineage by intentional feeding of certain minerals including silicate rocks, volcanic ash, and limestone, while foodstuffs given to maintain the mycelial network of the lineage are kept as simple as possible to prevent contamination of the glass produced.

The second cultivated lineage is best known for its heavyset nature, forming tuberous growths inside its body which are very nutrient dense, thus desirable to Demani. This lineage does not greatly differ from any other minor Rockborn lineage beyond the nutrient sacs inside their bodies, but while in Demani captivity, are similarly prevented from producing brain tissue and regularly have the majority of their stone plating scraped off before it can grow to meaningful thicknesses, leaving only enough to maintain its core form.

The third cultivated lineage has over time adopted a unique trait when able to consume large quantities of leafy plant matter, kleptoplasty. These cultivated Rockborn, when intentionally fed leafy plant matter, will break down the cell walls of the plant, but preserve the chloroplasts, redirecting the chloroplasts away from their stomachs and into the numerous cerata which may grow from their backs, resembling a mossy rock once full of chloroplasts.

This lineage, because of the cerata, have very porous, thin stone plating, being nearly sessile in nature without Demani intervention. With Demani keeping this lineage fed, the Rockborn will spend nearly the entirety of their time lazily photosynthesizing with the kleptoplastic chloroplasts. The cerata will be regularly trimmed by the Demani for food and for the Rockborn’s health, with overgrowth of the cerata impeding its ability to properly photosynthesize.

The fourth lineage one would be forgiven for mistaking as the third, as it is a similarly green backed line of Rockborn. This lineage is known for not a kleptoplastic relationship with plants, but a symbiotic relationship. The Rockborn of this lineage have partnered with moss, not unlike lichens, and as such have adapted to live in such a way.

Being partial towards mosses, this lineage prefers humid, shaded areas away from direct rainfall, where the moss can be kept saturated while the Rockborn's stone plating remains safe from dissolving. Those of this lineage trade consumed nutrients for complex molecules and sugars produced by the moss, allowing a highly sedentary lifestyle, which Demani exploit.

Demani typically will harvest the moss from this lineage, but may further harvest the stone plating or mycelial flesh of the Rockborn in some instances.

The fifth and final lineage typically farmed by Demani are unique amongst the group for being closer to livestock or pets, rather than a crop like the other lineages that Demani have commandeered.

By Rockborn standards, this fifth lineage would be considered a “Major Lineage,” being of personable intelligence in almost all offspring and lacking significant physical defects which would hinder their survival in their native range. However, this has grown to change in their time under Demani care.

The fifth Rockborn lineage has over the centuries been selectively bred by Demani to better suit their needs, being selected to grow slower, grow brains sooner, be more passive, and to react better to Demani olfactory pheromones. Through the ages, these gradual changes have resulted in a diminutive Rockborn lineage which is far more amicable to socializing and much less likely to abruptly eat any small creature it finds without warning.

In this state, the fifth lineage has developed into a relatively common sight in the deeper portions of some Demani Nests, with the line of Rockborn growing slowly enough to be permitted inside the halls for several decades in the ideal conditions, before eventually getting large enough to finally be settled down for their final resting place outside the Nest itself, where like all long lived Rockborn, they die as they become entirely stationary, unable to properly feed or drink.

“I don’t understand why you have to go,” Nicola said plaintively. Luca’s little brother sat on the seaweed mattress, watching him sort through what would come with him, and what would stay.

“It’s a big opportunity, Nico,” Luca said, not turning. They’d had this conversation a dozen times already.

Ten years. Luca avoided thinking how much of Nicola’s life he would miss. How much of Tulu’s, and of little Mikalo, who was five now and would be fifteen when he returned. He wondered what it would be like to come back and see his brother and little sisters all grown up. His tail twitched in agitation, stirring the water. 

There was a  weight limit, and a lot of his wetfolk stuff wouldn’t have survived the dry upper altitudes of Sojourn anyways. Luca’s clothes were already in the net hamper. He’d be keeping an abalone pendant of his family’s pod, and a bag of seven pearls. “We’ll dream together every night,” Luca promised again.

“I know,” Nicola said, voice small. “I miss you already.”

Luca stopped packing to briefly give Nico a hug. “I know, big guy,” he said guiltily.

Nicola was only quiet for a minute before asking again, “Do you know what you’re going to be?” 

Luca grinned. “It’s a surprise. You know that.”

Luca knew exactly what he was going to be. 

“Awe,” Nico wailed in mock outrage, slapping wall with his tail. Then, more quietly, he asked, “Are you scared of the Change?”

“No,” Luca answered lightly. But his chest tightened. He wasn't scared of the change, but Luca was scared of what his family would say when he never changed back.

He remembered how strange it had been when his uncle Antonna had returned last year. He’d looked so much like their mom, but human. No scales or tail or gills. His feet were blocky, his fingers long, and his skin was pink and windburnt. Antonna had brought his human lifepartner Gariqe with him, and Luca’s mom had been so afraid that Antonna would stay human. She’d been almost rude to the poor man, until Antonna finally mentioned that Gariqe was making the Change with him.

Luca had asked each of them, at different times, the question that had pulled his mind like a riptide since he was young. 

“Do you want to stay human?” he'd asked his uncle Antonna.

Antonna still had the crinkly black hair then, and had carded a hand through it as they sat on the dock. He spoke slowly, working through his own answer. “It’s been a good experience, a good adventure. I’ll always be grateful. I’ve always loved exploring, it’s what made me volunteer for a Sojourn in the first place. It’s part of what drew me to Garic.” He shoved his stubby dryfolk feet into the water. “But I miss home. I always knew I was going to come back some day. I’m just lucky, I guess, that Garic would make this sacrifice to be with me.”

Antonna and Gariqe had stayed in the dryfolk village for two months, Sojourn slowly eclipsing the southern sky, before their time came, and they traveled up to Cuibo together. A week later Antonna was back to the fishy boy Luca’s mother remembered from ten years ago, and Gariqe had brand new coppery scales and a thick tail. 

Months passed. Gariqe was like a baby in some ways, learning how to move now his body was different, how to transition smoothly from air to water, how to navigate the reefs. But he was also very curious and open to new experiences. He was a little greedy and selfish, but that was normal of outsiders, and he tried his best to accustom himself to pesci ways.

One night, Luca heard Gariqe and Antonna shouting. In the morning, Antonna wouldn’t leave his room, and Gariqe was in the dryfolk village.

Luca found him, sitting at a dryfolk bar with an open glass of batora. He’d looked at Luca in consternation. “Your mother would kill me if she knew you were here.” 

“Then don’t tell her,” Luca had said, taking the stool next to him. He looked around at the other patrons, all humans. Some looked back, but most ignored them politely. “Uncle Antonna is worried.” 

“He knows where to find me,” Gariqe groused, looking at the batora between his now-webbed fingers. “He always finds me like this, you know. It’s how we first met. Me a mess, and him pulling me out of it.” He sipped the batora. Impressively, he only coughed a little. He must have been practicing. “Why are my gills on fire?”

“Gills are part of the insides,” Luca explained. “It’s like pouring alcohol on an open wound. My aunties usually eat fermented fish when they want to get drunk.”

“Fermented fish?” Gariqe said with some interest.

“Yeah,” Luca said. He pointed. “Why are you trying to drink that stuff anyways?” 

“I miss it,” Gariqe sighed. “That’s what we were fighting about, actually. I didn’t realize how hard this transition would be. Anton tried to warn me, but I thought I knew what I was going into.”

“Do you sometimes want to change back?” Luca's own casual tone rang like a stranger's voice in his ears.

“Go back to human?” Gariqe repeated.

He held one webbed hand to the lantern, watching the faint translucent glow between his fingers. “I haven't told you much about Aelbaion. It's a miserable place. I was miserable. Cold and grim and hungry. My whole family was... well, it's peaceful now, but it wasn't always. I didn’t have anyone and didn't need anyone, I thought. I’d thought, sneaking onto Sojourn, I’d tricked my way into the easy life.” He gave a short laugh. “The Sphinx disabused me of that notion pretty quickly. But then I made friends on Sojourn. I met Anton, someone I could rely on completely. And you, your siblings, Anton’s mom, all of you have treated me like family. How could I give that up?” Gariqe lowered his hand. “So, do I miss being human? Yeah, sometimes. But I’m not going to change back, if that means losing Anton.”

That had left Luca feeling both relieved and a little sad.

Now it was Luca’s turn to make the change. Luca would be representing their people, the pesci, for only the second cycle on Sojourn. This was a right they had fought for, still fought for in the Council of the Twelve on the skylands. Even now, pesci were only allowed to Sojourn if they took a different form for the journey. A precaution, some said, as the intense dryness, cold, and altitude would otherwise kill one of the fishfolk. Others said it was just to keep the pesci grounded. 

This was Luca’s chance to repay the mita. It was also a change he desperately wanted. Luca himself wasn’t quite sure what compelled him, but he knew that he needed a chance to be someone different for a while.

It didn’t take long before Luca joined his parents and sisters in the living room, Nicola sulkily slithering out of their shared room behind him. Nicola had been excited, months ago, to find out he’d be getting his own room, but he wasn’t excited now, when the hour to leave had arrived.

They made a quick supplication to Zepo, the local goddess of frogs and fishing, and then had a family hug before leaving. Everyone pretended not to notice the tears. Luca wasn’t sure if the tightness in his chest was homesickness or excitement.

Antonna and Gariqe and grandma and aunts and uncles and cousins all gave them presents and hugs and kisses at the village docks. Finally, they left their home in swampy Gionu, poling the reed gondola between the house stilts and mangrove trees of the village and towards the shadowed bulk of the island in the quiet darkness before dawn.

They made the shore just as the sun shimmered over the horizon. Luca was soon short-breathed as they trudged up the long road that zigzagged into the highlands of Ombreje. After listening to Tulu complain about her feet and picking up Mikalo to carry for a couple miles, Luca figured out pretty quickly why they hadn’t ever gone to Cuibo before, even though they lived practically beneath it. Altitude made distances deceptive.

It took a hot three hour walk to the harpy village and the hot air balloons, forty minutes waiting in line, and another forty minutes catching their breath and adjusting to the altitude before they landed on the harpy skyland Arpellona, in the square of Cuibo.

The capital was as crowded and loud, but not chaotic. Music soared up with the harpies at every stall and street corner. It was dry and cool, of course, but not unpleasant. Overhead, harpies flew along the skyroutes marked with windsock flags posted throughout the city. Despite the sheer volume of flyers, they flew in harmonized rhythm, like an elaborate dance. Luca had a hard time tearing his eyes away.

They passed through the crowded city and beyond, to the perfectly scooped-out Egg Valley, finally coming into sight of the Vale of the Sphinx. Luca couldn’t stop smiling.

This was it.

At last, they passed through the great double doors and into the inner sanctum, waiting their turn as the Sphinx sat, dwarfing the line of petitioners. Luca tried not to stare too openly at the oldest being in all creation. Although he reclined couchant, feet and wings tucked and tail idly swishing, the Eldest was still eye-level with his human and harpy visitors. His mane and fur were almost totally white and his wrinkled skin was a dark nut brown. His face was leathery like a dried prune, but his pale blue eyes still shone with lively intelligence. Shimmering blue robes pooled around him.

His face brightened when it was the pesci family to be ushured forward. They all bowed low, and the Sphinx nodded in turn.

“Ah, gentle pesci, welcome. It is not often that we see our finned siblings in the capital. How may I help?” His voice was gravely, and though it was nearly a whisper it echoed through the dark chambers.

Taking a deep breath, Luca stepped forward, ahead of his mother. "I seek the Change, Honored One. I will be joining Sojourn this cycle."

“Ah, you come seeking the Change," the old sphinx mused. "It has been a few centuries since last the pesci wished for the Change.”

Luca wondered if he should mention his uncle, but thought it would be rude to interrupt.

“You are to Sojourn in twelve weeks? You will join my youngest.” The Eldest looked far away for a moment, old pain on his face. “I do hold faith with her. In some ways she is the best of us. But we are only three, and I do worry.” He shook his head and returned to the present. “Be that as it may. What is your name, little pesca?”

“Luca Sireno, Honored One,” Luca answered.

“Very well, Luca Sireno. You may approach.”

Luca came forward and dropped to one knee, taking one offered finger of the clawed hand.
What the Eldest said next had the heavy familiarity of ceremony. “The Change is both a blessing and a burden of the People. It allows us to walk on four limbs, to swim with three, to fly or run with two. It opens our eyes to the lives of others. It grants us the ability to choose what we are. Take this gift.” 

The sphinx breathed in Luca’s face, warm and moist and smelling faintly of garlic and bacon. Where the breath touched Luca’s skin tingled with magic. “Be a bridge of understanding among the People. Be brave, little one.”

With that, the sphinx laboriously got to his feet, leathery wings flapping with the effort. “Now is the time to say goodbye,” The Eldest said, nodding to Luca’s waiting, silent family. “When next they see you, you will be reborn.”

Luca got up shakily as well and was engulfed by his family in a steady wave of teary-eyed hugs and admonitions. “We love you,” he heard over and over. “Come back to us,” they begged.

“I love you,” Luca said to each one. He hugged Nicola, and Tulu, and Mikalo, and his mom, and finally his dad.

"The Change doesn't change who your heart," His dad had whispered. "No matter what you become, you will always be ours."

Luca wondered if his father knew what was in his mind.

But then he was being led away by a human attendant through one door, while a harpy ushered his mother and father and sisters and brother back through another.

The hallway was dark and sloped downwards, lit only by the human attendant’s torch. It grew almost chilly underground in the stone heart of the Arpelonna. Soon they reached a softly illuminated cave where a glowing chrysalis the size of a tree pulsed amber and blood red light through the darkness. It reminded Luca of a heartbeat. With a start, he realized the light shimmered in time with his own heartbeat.

Or perhaps Luca’s heartbeat matched the rhythm of the chrysalis.

The Eldest was waiting at the base, even his great bulk dwarfed by the structure. “This is the Relic,” he said, gesturing one wing upwards. It looked to be smooth stone, but the Sphinx stuck a claw into it and cut a hole down to the ground as easily as a spear through fish. Bright light spilled out. The Eldest pulled one corner away like a tent flap.

“What do you wish to become, little one?” He rumbled.

To organize the city and keep it functioning properly, Freeport is divided into a number of districts with distinct purposes and functions, which can be organized into a few distinct categories.

The first are those which may be considered segments of the city center, the dense urban core around which the rest gathers. It is composed of the Docks, the High District, the Temple District, the Canal District, and the Merchant Quarter.

The Docks and the area surrounding them are the city's beating heart. In addition to their namesake, a large and impressive agglomeration of dockworks capable of hosting anything from large trade ships to fishing dinghies and ferries across the channel, most of the district is taken up by a mixture of warehouses for goods and provisions and shops and accommodations for dockworkers, sailors, and those captains wishing to sleep in a real bed without straying too far from their ships. Farther north, near the Canal District, smaller, generally cleaner docks cater mostly to small canal boats and pleasure craft to serve a small cluster of high-end shops which use their proximity to showcase newly imported goods, ingredients, and performers, while to the south where it meets the High District and the city's edge are an overgrown mess of fishing piers with the large commercial dockworks mostly in-between.

The High District is in the unusual position of being both the city's greatest feat of engineering and it's largest slum. Nearly a century ago, inspired both by premature predictions of the dominance of flight and a percieved need to increase the city's density, a number of floating boulders, fragments, and small islands were acquired and transported at great expense to what was previously the poorer half of the Artisan's Quarter before the abolishment of the previous Quarter system. Once there they were anchored in place by a complex series of ropes and supports, creating a patchwork "artificial surface" on which new buildings could be constructed, it's height and extent carefully chosen to meet a nearby hill overlooking the city. In addition to allowing buildings to reach new heights, being anchored at both the top and the bottom, it also allowed a needed upgrade to the city's water system. While a network of aqueducts did exist to draw water from nearby mountain springs, it had been implemented when the city was far smaller, and as it expanded the slack had increasingly been taken up by a mess of rain collectors and wells of widely varied sanitation and quality. With the construction of the High District, several new aqueducts were laid from springs and clear streams in the hills along the top, before passing through vertical pipes made from lead or masonry housed inside buildings stretching from the surface to the islands above. Once at the bottom the pressure made distribution to the other districts relatively simple, although it also made leaks a recurring problem. This also provides a form of fire protection - fire stations at the top of each pipe are able to divery the flow of water from inside to outside the pipe, quickly dousing the building below and it's neighbors and slowing or halting the spread of any fires.

While a novel and innovative concept for a city district, the predicted massive uptick in flight failed to materialize, and most residents found the lack of natural light, frequent dampness, and need to travel to and from home via an often-precarious network of ladders, nets, stairs, and bridges undesirable, and the district soon developed into the overgrown slum it is today. The families that spearheaded and funded the project quickly found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy, and while the layer of floating stones are an iconic symbol of the city the district below them is mostly known for housing cutpurses, scams, disreputable practitioners, and the headquarters of 7 of the city's 8 brotherhoods of rag-and-bone men.

The Temple District, a thin central strip that touches every other district in at least one location, was created to solve a particular problem. Religion in Freeport is both highly polytheistic and highly syncretic - finding a god to devote oneself too is a highly personal choice which young citizens are experiencing to make as part of their passage into adulthood, and nearly every god worshipped anywhere in the world is understood to be real in some capacity. Together with the city's focus on international trade, this led to there being a truly enormous number of temples and shrines declared throughout the city, many with only a handful of worshippers, to the point it began to present a genuine problem in terms of land usage. As one's chosen God also frequently intersects with their chosen career, this was exacerbated by many businesses devoting substantial space to their gods and declaring themselves temples which also provided other services, often using the pretense of religious rituals to skirt regulations in the process. This culminated in a scandal in which a temple/smithy was found to have evaded taxes by accepting raw material as donations then distributing the payment as alms, avoiding any record of an official purchase. In response when the new District system was established, formal temples were restricted to a defined area, kept relatively small but close enough to all other districts to allow regular worship, and new restrictions on business conducted by temples were implemented.

Nowadays the Temple District, in addition to being filled with its namesake, also acts as a convenient pedestrian corridor, it's streets well-maintained in large part out of a desire to welcome in new worshippers, and a form of entertainment, as priests and wise men and women debate philosophy and theology both out of a pure desire to understand the universe and, perhaps more often, to attract small donations from the gathered crowds. It's halls also collectively represent one of the largest bodies of scribew dedicated to the preservation and duplication of texts on theology and philosophy, including natural philosophy, which provides a supplementary source of income as scholars pay a fee to peruse their works.

The Canal District sits a short ways north of the docks, and is in many ways a city within the city. It's unclear how exactly it was started, with canals dug into the shore or artificial islands anchored on the shallow seabed, but both have proliferated over the ages and today the distinction is difficult to draw precisely, leaving a district composed of clusters of building separated by water and connected by a mixture of footbridges and small canal boats. The lack of ordinary roads suitable for carts makes living there somewhat more expensive, as do the costs of maintaining a suitable living space while in such intimate contact with the sea, but this has only made the modestly sized district more attractive for wealthier citizens, who's work, most often paperwork or less space- and material-intensive forms of artisanry if not providing services to the other residents, can be placed apart from the constant hustle and bustle of the city's heart. It has also proven a common location for vacation homes and secondary residences of wealthy businessmen from the Merchant's Quarter, with the close proximity to the docks (alongside a personally owned small boat and a messenger and observer to crew it) allowing them to maintain a close eye on new economic developments even as they enjoy their quiet seaside townhomes.

Lastly, the Merchant Quarter makes a notable break from the other districts in terms of both naming scheme and scale, being the only remnant of the ancient Quarter system to survive the multiple waves of districting reforms. Taking up much of the city's north and east, if the Docks are the center of business with Freeport, the Merchant Quarter is the center of business within it. It contains the residences and offices of nearly every notable merchant or well-off artisan, as well as the city's most reputable shops and largest markets. It's scale makes it impossible for the entirety of the district to live up this image, of course - indeed, the presence of most of the city's major breweries and distilleries, along with various brothels and gaming houses attracted by the wealth of its residents, has led to several streets becoming known for their ill repute - but it maintains its place as the area people picture when they consider Freeport in general, and, in possibly the most direct measure of economic activity available, the area most aggressively fought over when it comes time for the city's rag-and-bone men to renew their contracts.

While these comprise all the official districts of Freeport, there are also a few areas which must be mentioned while laying outside the official bounds of the city itself. To the south, adjacent to the High District, lay an area of slums just beyond the city's walls which supply many of the day laborers and other assorted spare bodies on which the city depends. Further out, roughly a day's travel by cart or carriage, lay a ring of minor cities and towns known collectively as the interstitium, providing an interface with the rest of the nation at which goods from the countryside are processed in manners which add insufficient value to afford them a place in the city itself, and in which industries too noxious for the city such as tanning may take place. And, of course, one must not forget Freeport's sister-city of the same name across the channel, legally part of the city but not part of any properly defined district, which provides a vital connection to the mainland through the frequent ferries and internal cargo vessels passing between the two.

It is only through the interactions of all these elements, the many freeholds and plantations outside them, and the nations further beyond, that the Freeport System, as it is so often known, may be maintained, and the glorious city-state maintained for future generations.

Anatomical influences

The Baaz are a species of large, humanoid avians with a unique physiology that deeply influences their communication style. Although they have almost-human faces, their lips are less mobile and less soft than those of humans, limiting their ability to produce certain labial sounds like “b,” “p,” “f,” and “v.” This is partially offset by a greater range of pitch that humans cannot match.

Sharp-eyed and highly observant, the Baaz naturally integrate visual cues into communication, supported by their highly dexterous long fingered hands. This anatomical structure has shaped a language system that is inherently bimodal, where approximately 70% of communication is vocal and 30% is gestural, blending sounds with physical expression to form a complete linguistic experience.

Blending Vocals with Gestures

In Baaz speech, vocals take on the heavy lifting for conveying the core components of language, such as nouns and adjectives. They also express tense and aspect through tonal inflections, with pitch and rhythm modifying meaning in nuanced ways.

This vocal stream, while dominant, is incomplete without the gestural layer. Gestures, often made using their dexterous hands or subtle wing movements, are responsible for carrying key grammatical elements like verbs, pronouns, prepositions, and adverbs. For example, while a Baaz might vocalize “sky” and “dark,” they would simultaneously gesture “we” and “fly across” to complete the idea. Spoken and gestural elements are not optional but form a complementary system, meaning neither can fully express the intended message in isolation.

Interwoven Writing Script

To capture their dual-modality language in written form, the Baaz developed a bimodal script composed of two distinct but integrated alphabets. The first is a phonic alphabet designed to transcribe the spoken aspects of their language, handling nouns, adjectives, and tonal markers. The second is a gestural alphabet crafted to represent the gesture-based vocabulary, including verbs, prepositions, pronouns, and adverbs.

These two alphabets are written seamlessly within the same sentence structure, resulting in hybrid texts where both types of symbols follow a linear flow. Readers “switch modes” naturally as they move through a sentence, much like how they would during speech and gesture. This dual script allows the Baaz to fully represent both vocal and gestural components of their language on paper, reflecting the unique rhythm of their communication.

Cultural Implications

Amongst the Baaz, communication requires complete attention. Therefore, Baaz often begin with a whistle when initiating dialogue. When one Baaz talks, the others stay absolutely still and focus on the speaker, waiting for them to finish before even nodding their agreement. The only worse mannerism than talking over the speaker is to turn your eyes away from one who is talking. Thus, even when bowing, they expect their subordinates to maintain eye contact.

The Baazian language also varies slightly across regions and situations. For example, in formal settings, words are more enunciated and the gestures are more elaborate. Meanwhile in informal settings, words tend to be shorter and gestures less pronounced, relying on both visual and vocal shorthand as well as trusting the listener to fill in the blanks for skipped words and gestures.

Integration with other races

For most humans, keeping up with Baazian speech would be a very difficult task, especially since many of the gestures are too quick for humans to fully register in rapid succession. This is precisely why the Kaw found great success as the administrative arm for Baaz nobility.

The Kaw are also avians blessed with similar perceptive powers but also completely human faces and unhindered speech. Thus, while their own language is fully vocal, they can learn the languages of the humans and the Baaz.

There are three main languages in Cheelia: Baazian, Kawese and the Common Tongue (language of the humans). The Kaw are usually fluent in all three.

Their efforts have allowed the ruling Baaz to keep their own language as the official language of the nation, but this has also led the exclusion of humans from most government positions despite the abolishment of segregation laws.

The Saur-kin are not like the small-folk, and while many strides have been made since the Aether born first introduced to the small-folk as truly awakened beings on the same level as our own it has become our responsibility to help those who may choose to visit the Rexdom.

The Saur-kin are three races or species that present in three different forms due to the power of the All-Egg. Each form has a vital role to play, and to understand the Saur-kin, you must first understand the forms even more than understanding the different species.

The Titans are those who take the form of the ancestors; they remain unchanged since they were first awakened. The Petra Titans have a wingspan on average of 30 feet long, and when they stand on the ground, they stand 10 to 12 feet tall. Their massive weight means they often do not leave the Rexdom as they cannot soar for miles like the ancestors once did, but it does allow them to support the weight of the Aether born who can ride them to and from the islands in the sky. The Rax Titan resembles that of a what some little folk call a therapod standing much shorter than the Petra at 6 ft on average but boasts an impressive 18 to 23 feet long with powerful muscles and sharp claw on each foot the Rax are formidable. They will similarly also allow themselves to be ridden but it is not as often common as like with the Petra. The Rax Titan has taken up the role of being the primary food providers for the Rexdom, being the largest producers of animal products, maintaining large herds of Plains Bison to feed all but the Volk Titans. Which brings us to the Volk the most imposing of all the Titans an imposing 35 feet long at average and a fully stretched out height of 12 feet the can remain eye to eye with even the largest Petra. Large, they require a lot of food, and as being the only Saur-kin that can only eat plant matter, they are rarely in one spot for too long unless a town can support their dietary requirements. Beyond the role they serve in the moving goods and acting as trade caravans, many Volk Titans are the lore keepers and are well respected for their long memories. When visiting it is important to understand we do not expect you to learn our language and while the Titans understand common, they are unable to speak it so it is best if you wish to converse with a Titan to seek a Stalwart or Aether born’s assistance.

The Stalwarts are what the small-folk would call the in between the Petra stalwarts stand shorter than their Titan siblings at seven feet tall but are much lighter and agile then them. While they have lost the wing membranes the retain the sharp articulated claws used to hold on to sheer surfaces. For this reason the Stalwart Petra feel just at home clutching to the side of a cliff as any small-folk would be in a town. A crest and pointed chin sets them apart from the other Stalwarts and the prominence and vibrancy of the crest being an indicator of gender. The Rax Stalwart stand a bit taller then their Titan counterpart averaging closer to 6’ 6’’ there most distinctive feature is the digitigrade legs and sharp sickle claw while their hands end in three fingers and a thumb. Feather adorn their body with males able to grown and cut them akin to a small-folk’s beard. They primarily serve in ranching, traditional agriculture or as the small standing defensive force. Finally the Volk who tower over the other Stalwarts at 8’ with thick pillar legs and heavy builds they are the primary builders and manual labors of the Rexdom unlike the Titan form they favor a sedentary life and are most often found in cities.

Among the Aether born there is little difference between the species appearing most often like the small-folk. They retain the eyes of the others sharp and with a nictitating membrane. Many small-folk can find them confusing as despite their similarity to them they lack what we understand to be mammalian sexual traits making them hard to gender a concept we still struggle with understanding why it would matter if not their mate.

Another strange feature of the Saur-kin we have come to find is the way we reproduce when it becomes time for hatching season any Saur-kin family who wishes for a child must migrate to the All-Egg where their new egg will be laid and nurtured by its light. While we can only mate within our forms the offspring can be born of any form.

An excerpt from “The Small-Folk’s Guide to the Rexdom,” narrated by the Volk Titan Theragon to his son, the Volk Aether Born Thera.