Species and PeoplesChapter the Second

The canyon dwarves built their towns into the cliffs and mesas of the red canyon country eight hundred years ago, and tied their rune-craft to water and stone.

Like all dwarves they see well in poor light, in a windowless cliff room as easily as under the sun (Night Vision).

Their streets are ladders and hand-holds, and they climb before they can read (Scale Sheer Surface).

Their country gives little water and less shade, and they bear heat and thirst that would put a newcomer on the ground (Dry-Country).

A hundred and twenty years ago the southern crown planted missions and garrisons among them and forbade the cutting of runes.

Forty-five years ago they rose as one, drove the crown out for twelve years and relit the rune-forges. The crown came back, but on terms, and the forges stay lit behind closed doors.

They call the Worldsoul the Deep, and go to war with maul, warhammer and great axe.

The shore dwarves live beside the inland seas, waters so wide that the far shore cannot be seen. They have worked the lake copper since before the elves kept count, and they were the first to cut a rune into metal. Every runewright on the continent works in a craft that began with them.

Like all dwarves they see well in poor light, in a mine gallery or under a winter sky (Night Vision).

They grow up around the copper, and can judge a piece of metal by its colour, its weight and its ring (Copper-Wise).

The great waters are cold in every season and the weather comes off them without warning, and the shore dwarves work through wet and cold that would send others indoors (Lake-Hardened).

They call the Worldsoul the Deep. In war they carry the maul, the warhammer and the great axe, and wear mail and plate of their own making.

The deep forest that covers the eastern third of the continent belongs to the forest elves.

Three hundred and fifty years ago five of their nations ended their wars with one another and founded the League under a single law.

Like all elves they see well in poor light, and the forest floor at dusk is no hindrance to them (Night Vision).

They are raised in the woods and move through them without leaving much sign (Rover).

They are also raised in the League, where a matter is settled by speaking in the proper order and the proper form, and where a careless word can cost a nation its hearing (Etiquette).

The League fought the long Pelt Wars for the fur country, then made the Great Peace with thirty other nations and declared itself neutral between the crowns. It is now being pressed to choose a side.

Its warriors carry the longbow, the spear and the war club, and wear armour of wooden slats.

West of the great river the grass goes on for weeks, and it belongs to the plains elves.

They are the wealthiest people on the continent, and no one has done better out of trade with the newcomers. Forty-five years ago the loosed herds of the southern ranches spread north, and the plains elves became the finest riders anywhere; a child there is put on a horse almost as soon as it can sit (Saddle-Born).

Horses and hides go out, and silver, cloth and steel come back. A plains elf of any standing wears a tailored coat, drinks from glass, and has taken up the newcomers' manners along with their goods: the bow, the toast, the calling card, and the habit of settling honour with steel.

Like all elves they see well in poor light, and a night ride under the stars is nothing to them (Night Vision). The open country teaches its own skill, and they can pick out a rider, a herd or a thread of smoke at distances others would call empty sky (Open-Sky Eyes).

They fight from the saddle with lance, shortbow and sabre. They call the old tuskers elders and will not hunt them, and their Keepers still have an older word of their own for working the Worldsoul, the Under-Song.

The river elves are the twilight elves, and they call themselves river people.

They were once the greatest people on the continent, with cities of raised earth joined by water along the great river and its tributaries. Five hundred and fifty years ago the cities emptied within a single lifetime, and nobody outside the clans knows why. The mounds still stand, and the river people will not live near them, land at them or say what happened there.

Their descendants are the boat-clans, who trade, carry, smuggle and move on, and who never settle.

Like all elves they see well by starlight and lantern-glow, which suits a people who do much of their travelling and most of their business after dark (Night Vision).

A child of the clans can swim before walking and handle a boat before either is expected of them (River-Born). Every one of them also grows up knowing theng are things the clan does not say, and learns young how to turn a question aside or deny it flatly (Clan Silence). Ask about the old cities and the talk turns to something else; ask twice and the boat is gone by morning.

They keep knives, light crossbows and hidden blades close, and have no patience for the antiquarians who dig their mounds. Their Keepers have an older word of their own for working the Worldsoul, the Braiding, and they do not explain that either.

The halflings came across the ocean with the humans, and eighty-five years ago they founded their homesteads on a promise of fair dealing. They bought their land instead of taking it, and they mean to be left alone on it.

They are small, quiet and plainly dressed, and bigger folk have a habit of not noticing that one is in the room (Overlooked).

They do not bend easily: a halfling who has decided a thing is wrong will not be argued, bullied or ordered into it (Stubborn).

They are farmers first, raised to the field, the orchard and the byre, and can get a living out of ground that others would walk past (Homestead-Raised).

They keep a magic of their own, of bread, fire, threshold and field, which they call the Hearth. Those who hunger for the Worldsoul overlook it, and those who want the Worldsoul ended rarely think it worth burning.

They carry the sling, the staff and the hatchet.

The charter colonies landed on the eastern shore a hundred and thirty years ago, planted under royal charters to grow cash crops for the home market. They have been spreading west ever since.

A colonist clears land, builds, farms, trades and stands a turn in the militia, and is expected to manage all of it without being taught twice (Adaptable).

Every town drills its men with the musket, because the frontier has burned before (Rapid Reload).

Everything a colonist owns rests on paper: a charter, a deed, a survey line, and most of them can argue a boundary as well as they can plough one (Charter-Wise).

The colonies want the Worldsoul gone. Their sects preach against it, and seventy-five years ago their witchfinders hanged dozens for working it, most of them their own settlers.

Their surveyors are now moving into the river valley that everyone expects the next war to start in.

The merchant company bought an island harbour a hundred and ten years ago and will sell to anyone. It lost the harbour to the charter colonies forty years later, kept its counting houses and its contacts, and has traded on under another flag ever since.

Company people are factors, clerks, ship's officers and agents, posted wherever there is a profit and expected to learn the local business on arrival (Adaptable).

They are raised to the bargain, and few leave a table with the worse half of it (Dealmaker).

For eighty years the home governments have ruled that colonial goods may travel only in their own ships to their own ports, and the company has made a second trade of getting cargo and papers past those laws (Free Trader).

The company has no quarrel with the Worldsoul. It wants to own it, and pays surveyors to map where it runs strong.

The river traders founded a post on the northern river a hundred and twenty years ago and have been sending their young men inland ever since, to live and trade among the peoples they buy from.

They are few, they are spread across half a continent, and each of them has to be boatman, hunter, trader and soldier by turns (Adaptable).

They travel by river and portage through country with no roads, and learn early to keep their bearings in it (Orientation).

They winter in the villages of the nations, learn the languages and marry into the families, and they are received in places where other newcomers are turned away (Among the Nations).

They would rather use the Worldsoul than end it. Twenty years ago they built a chain of forts down the great river to join their northern and southern holdings, and their soldiers are now moving into the same valley as the colonial surveyors.

Thirty years ago word spread through the old world that the magic of the old stories was real across the ocean. The seekers are the people who believed it and came.

They arrive by the shipload from every nation of the old world, answer to no crown or company, and find work wherever they land (Adaptable).

They grew up of the stories, and many can put a name to a working or a creature they have never seen before (Tale-Wise).

They came to learn, and they will ask anyone who might teach them, as often and as humbly as it takes (Willing Pupil).

Nothing made with the Worldsoul survives the voyage home, so a seeker who finds what they came for has to stay.

The nations are wary of them, the crown and the colonies think them fools or heretics, and the traders and the company see customers.

The southern crown came first. Its ships reached the southern islands a hundred and ninety years ago looking for a trade route, and within a generation its soldiers had toppled the rich kingdoms of the far south and shipped home their silver. The silver piece it mints is now the coin of the whole continent.

Its people are soldiers, priests, ranchers and officials, far from home and used to turning a hand to whatever the day needs (Adaptable).

They still go to war in breastplate and helmet with greatsword, halberd and mace, and they wear that weight as if it were a coat (Sturdy).

When the first Worldsoul-wrought treasures arrived across the ocean as dead metal, the crown declared the Worldsoul a deceit and ordered it rooted out, and its subjects are raised on a creed that expects them to refuse what it forbids (Creed-Bound).

The crown holds the canyon country by garrison and mission, lost it once, and has not forgotten.