Nexus Fantasy: At the Crossroads of the Earth

[Phorcys]

In the West it is said Karkor is the end of the world; in the East it is said of Cet, last of the great river cities before the trackless wastes turn to endless dust and death. Only the boldest, wealthiest and most seasoned travellers dare travail the Old Road further, and even they set out in great caravan trains laden with provisions and arms, or else with allies among the nomad tribes to guide them. For what sanctuaries can be found in the eldritch lands beyond are few and thousands of miles between. The Old Road will lead you through lifeless deserts of frost and ash, past the bleached skeletons of the cities that hoped to tame them; over howling mountains stalked by ghouls, and the treacherous passes where their savage clans lair; finally onto star-touched plateaus where the air is thin, where the chill seeps into the soul and drives men mad.

Only desperation, greed or the hunger for knowledge could drive men any further. Few that cross above the clouds return, and most that do have turned back, wild-eyed, battered and broken. Fortunes and minds spent alike. But those who persevere even then - those who put faith in the ravings of wandering oracles and the fables peddled by lore-merchants - they will find the twisted paths that reach the bounds of Manifest.





An ill omened dread grips the heart as those bleak walls hove over the horizon. But none that have made it this far can forego warmth or water. Neither can you. You are among the thousands from every nation of man that pass under the merciful shadow of Manifest each year, the transient population of merchants and mercenaries that far outnumbers the benighted few who call it home - and it is their clamouring babel of tongues that will greet you. Through the dust and the smoke you can see that the city itself is small. Barely a hovel by the reckoning of your homeland. Its buildings are featureless piles of sandstone and mudbrick, from the meanest slave barracks to the manses of the greatest tollmasters and waterlords. On the Old Road, you may have heard it said, nothing is built to last, for nothing does. So far vaster than the bounds of the meagre walls is the sea that surrounds them, a sea of rugged caravans, silken pavilions and yurts stretched from bone and skin, a mad profusion of life sprawling across the dead plateau.

Dustharbour, some call it, the bazaar the end of the world, the place where horselords barter furs and wyrmbone for gunpowder and southern matchlocks, and slavers atop gilded palanquins ply the spices and silks of the Golden Cities for the exotic chattel of the Occident. Mercenary bands test the steel and pride of their homelands in raucous blood sports, to the wails and jeers of bidding crowds, as itinerant preachers from every great faith - alongside the shamans and seers of a thousand nameless ones - traffic in prognostications for the winners. Or your own fortune on the journeys ahead - or at your destination - or years from now if you ever return home. Whatever you desire, for a price there are crystal balls, tarots, star-charts or auguries that promise to divine it. Peddlers accost you with native trinkets and charms, selling the protection of gods and spirits and sorceries. Barefoot prophets grab at your reins or batter at your caravan's hatches, babbling mad revelations and portents of doom. Among them surely slink thieves and cutthroats, and there are no laws to protect you here in Manifest. Only your own hired guards - if you can trust them that much.

Amidst the tumult of commerce in a hundred languages, the silent black-veiled widow-priests come bearing the most valuable currency of all. Water. They always know the word in your native tongue. Pay the city's cult their rightful tariffs, and they will draw for you from the Sacred Well. Some say it is the panacea, others that it afflicts a wasting death as often as it cures. Some claim it is the piss of devils, others swear is the blood of the gods. But if you have come to Manifest - cold and sick and weary and thirsty - then you have little choice, whatever the truth.

Drink, and enter.

[Xah]

In the twelfth year of the reign of King Jugen III, puissant monarch of Mycorria, lord of all Helvetica, and Grand Burgomaster of Richtenlug, decreed that henceforth, Mycorria shall no longer be quiet, and hidden from the world and instead exercise its true calling as bright bringers of the truth to the world at large. Diplomats and traders shall be sent forth, to bring enlightenment to the masses, and wealth to Mycorria. This is in accordance to the Tenets and the Words of the Prophet.

It all sounded good on paper, a specific piece of paper in fact; the roll of vellum in a leather tube, bound and sealed with the King's own sigil, wrapped in oilskin and tucked away in Erik's personal knapsack. When he'd received the command that he was one of the Kingdoms new diplomat-traders, Erik von Felsenbaum was elated. Years of careful political machinations, delicate avoidance of the risks in Submission, and a few bridges burnt in his progress to the top and Erik was now the second to the Sub-Underburgomaster of the Richenlug District of Oak Heath, the most prestigious part of the city. Someone was obviously pleased with his work, or at least, that's what Erik thought, until he found out he was to travel the almost nine thousand kilometres north to the mystical sounding city of 'Manifest'.

Nine thousand kilometres! It felt like the end of the world. Even by horse it would take the best part of a year to get there. All of his careful political manoeuvrings would be for naught; by the time he got there, spent some time spreading word of the wonders of Mycorria, managed to obtain some decent trade goods to return with, and come all the way back, he'd be forgotten. A minor footnote in history. That Gustav Freytag would probably become Underburgomaster, and Gustav had no love for the Von Felsenbaums. Erik's political career would be over.

Then... it all got a bit weird. Erik was called to the Temple, which in itself was a bit unusual outside of Submission. At first there was a moment's panic. The years of carefully crafting excuses to avoid the frankly dangerous practice of Submission had been discovered. He was being Taken Away as punishment! The panic faded almost instantly - no one cared about his lack of piety. This wasn't rural Slitimelia where adherence to the faith was a matter of life and death. This was Richenlug, where money and politics ruled, not the wild-eyed priests, who definitely consumed far too many mushrooms.

At the Temple, Erik was met by the high priest and introduced to the rest of the diplomatic entourage. He'd been granted the rather impressive title of High Ambassador of the Mission to Manifest for Mycorria, which alleviated his chagrin at being sent so far from home for so long. Coming along with him was a couple of merchants, whose names Erik almost instantly forgot, a number of servants to carry the collection of goods to trade (and, Erik presumed, to look after the pack-animals), two soldiers who were there ostensibly to protect the group, and a strange hooded figure whom the high priest introduced as Duidhugh, a representative of the faith. Duidhugh was a tall fellow, totally wrapped in white fabric with only his strange, yellow eyes visible and dry, rasping voice. Aside from this strange one, the rest seemed amicable enough, and Erik accepted his companions with good grace.

Then, instead of being taken to the stables, the group followed the high priest down, under the temple. This clearly mystified everyone but Duidhugh but then... there was nothing. Erik remembered entering a large chamber, and then, here they were, in a cave. Hazy memories began to surface; yes, they'd travelled for many months, yes, the lands were dull and un-interesting, yes, they'd lost the horses crossing a river a few weeks ago, and then they'd rested in this cave before the final day's travel to Manifest. This all clearly made sense, but Erik felt... uneasy. The empty bottles of something clearly alcoholic must be to blame.

Exiting the cave and Erik took a sharp breath; the sun was far too bright, the air too thin, the dust was ever-present and choking. Quite how they managed to travel so far and only lose the horses was quite the accomplishment. Wrapping a cloth around his mouth and nose, Erik led the party down from the cave, back onto the main road, and off towards the distant gleam that promised to be Manifest.

---

Duidhugh nodded, taking up the rear. The humans accepted the shift with their usual mental gymnastics. Unbeknown to them, what should have been a nine month journey across grasslands and desert had been an eight week journey through tunnels, deep under the Alpian Mountains, courtesy of the Conocybians. Pushing its unease away, and trusting in the Melleans, Duidhugh pulled its wrappings tighter, hoping that the time away from blessed Underdark and the mycellium would not be as bad as it feared. If an alternative to blood sacrifice was to be found, it would be found here.

[Phorcys]

The Mycorrian party trudged their way slowly across the dust-whipped plateau, shielding their eyes from the glare of a sun grown unnaturally close, and the stars that somehow still shined through the brightness of day. It could have been twilight or morning or noon, somehow von Felsenbaum couldn't tell. All he knew was that looking up was dizzying and painful. He heard Manifest before he saw it, greeted by the raucous babel of the city's thousand tongues. And it was the cries of anger and anguish that carried farthest over the dustwinds.

Slowly, the outer sprawl emerged into view. The rugged outskirts, where new arrivals clustered around pavilions of ragged, weather-beaten canvas and primitive huts made from skins and felt. A scene like a demented fairground, thronging with more foreigners and strangeness than von Felsenbaum had ever seen in his life. There were dour, scowling, sallow-faced men in high boots and fur-hooded caftans, riding squat shaggy horses bareback, with exotic long-barreled firelocks slung over their shoulders. They argued in a language like the braying of their steeds with jewel-masked men in lamellar whose grins were full of filed onyx and jade instead of teeth. There were caravans pulled not by camels or horses but great monstrous yaks with dozens of gnarled horns, and great slithering stonewyrms from the cold deserts - creatures von Felsenbaum would have heard of only in children's tales and the ravings of foreign beggars. There were men of his clime from the West, too, but rendered almost unrecognisable by their long journeys, so wind-scarred and weathered they looked more like lepers or the scalled than ordinary men. They greeted his stares with expressions of plaintive shock.

Indeed von Felsenbaum realised many strange eyes were staring their way. "Mycorrite..." a deep voice slurred in an alien accent, "what power guided you unscathed?" It was one of the jade-toothed men approaching through the throng, this one bare-headed, and Felsenbaum realised with a shock that the man's skull was deformed into almost conical shape. "You come from the Occident. My master would bestow great rewards upon the guide who leads our journeymen through the ghoul wastes in such a condition".

"Westerling!" a turbaned man with black tattooed eyes and skin the colour of charcoal was borne towards them on a carven palanquin, carried by a train of faceless men - bodies plastered in white ash, their eyes put out and their lips sewn shut. "Their master is far" he spoke in an unnaturally clear, accentless Mcyorrian. "Mine dwells within the walls. I offer shelter in the manse of a great prince of the Road. Your thirst is his thirst, if you will speak with him. Came you by air? Is your ship moored near? What know you of the sky?"

As he spoke von Felsenbaum suddenly noticed the black-veiled figures standing still and silent amidst the crowds behind. They each carried an earthenware jug.

[Xah]

Erik had never seen anything like this. Mycorria was, to put it mildly, culturally homogenous. The most unusual person he'd ever seen was a visitor from the rural south of his own nation who had a slightly rustic accent. Well, yes, there was Duidhugh, he was a strange fellow, but even still. Erik's companions were no less amazed either, eyes wide at the spectacle on show, although the two merchants' eyes gleamed with unrestrained greed at the trading opportunities on offer.

The heat was unbearable. The sounds overwhelming. The smells waves of alternating mouth-watering and nauseating. The very air a miasma of strangeness. Why ever did he agree to come on this trip. There was nothing here for him. Nothing.

"We, ah, lost our horses about a week ago," Erik stammered in reply to the jade-toothed man. "A terrible accident." He struggled to recall the details, but failed, his brain smudging over the gaps with forgetfulness. "We're all lucky to be alive to be honest." He tried a smile, but it probably came across badly as he tried so vary hard not to stare at the man's head. "The whole trip was a bit of a blur to be honest. Horrible, yes."

He moved on, eager to find something familiar, something to align his expectations on, but failed. Everything was so alien. So different! His ears twitched at the sound of his own language, spoken clearly. He turned with a genuine smile on his face that faltered when he caught sight of those eyes. And that skin. By the Prophet. Is everything here so strange?

"The sky?" Erik replied, confused. He looked up, squinting. "No. We came by road." He gestured vaguely back in the direction he guessed they came from. "Lots of walking." He glanced at the rest of his group. The merchants nodded at the offer of drinks, the servants opinions didn't matter and Duidhugh was just standing there, weirdly unmolested. "Shelter would be appreciated, thank you. Lead on my good friend, you speak our tongue very well, I must say."

---

As the one called Erik talked to the black one, Duidhugh kept its wrappings close. Passage through the UnderDark was perhaps badly thought out, given the state of those who had genuinely travelled by road. They had not considered the level of the rigors of the desert crossing. The group was far too conspicuous in their relatively unscathed appearance. No matter. It is too late now. Resisting the urge to push its feet into the sandy earth beneath, to attempt contact with the blessed mycellium, Duidhugh's attention was caught by the figures with the jugs. They should not have come. But the blood sacrifice cannot continue.

[Kyoki Chudoku]

It had been eight years ago that Sakaj Akray had heard the rumours in earnest. Legends of a settlement between the high peaks of the Orient, between mountains so high that from there the sky could be touched. It had seemed but a hopeless grasp at myth at the time, but more and more souls reported similar stories to the monasteries. And in time, he had decided that rumours could only remain rumours for so long. If that land would truly touch the sky, then Sakaj would lead a pilgrimage of brothers to the east to behold it with their own eyes, reach the Heavens with their own hands.

The Administration had been unwilling to approve such a dangerous venture, as was inevitable. The bureaucrats feared that the cost would be unworthwhile. That the journey would prove too dangerous. That to chase rumours was not a wise decision. For months Sakaj had received their convoluted messages and opaque refusals. It had come to the point where he considered leading the expedition without official support- but a miracle of the ether had blessed him in the end. By accepting a cartographer’s party on their mission, they would receive transport past the Showl by airship, carrying them as far as was reasonable beside the clouds. And so it was that the expedition began.

And within a week the craft had ventured into the clouds of a great storm, and the merciless winds had torn the airship apart. Many of the Administration’s witnesses were slain in the resulting crash, and several brothers lost their lives or legs to the incident also. Nonetheless, Sakaj retained his purity of vision. Though the loss weighed upon him, the rituals of guilt-cleansing and the mantras of self-obliteration saw the Dhalin persevere. And so it was that the surviving airmen were drafted into their mission, and the journey carried on.

Sakaj had beheld the many worlds of Srama in his travels. The mountain peaks from east to west, the northern swamps and the grand lake-cities. In his forty-eight years he had beheld it all as he wandered from monastery to monastery, village to village. But never had he witnessed anything as exotic and unique as he had upon the Long Journey. At a place called Karkor the pilgrimage had exchanged recovered ornaments and trinkets for a caravan of lump-backed horses. Even their mounts had not saved them from the scars of the desolate wastelands. Every day it felt as if they withered in body, and even the trances of rejuvenation would only serve so well. It felt as if they had aged a decade longer than their years over the course of mere months.

And even that was far from the end to their troubles. The wastes left them parched, hungry, only their dogmatic discipline and strict rationing preserving their lives in the harshness of the Old Road. One night, raiders had descended upon them, scarring two apprentices and leaving deep wounds in some of their beasts of burden. By the time they were repelled the Sramese had grown weary, exhausted, utterly fatigued. But every step they took now was that much closer to their destination. That much closer to the promised peaks and the power to walk above the clouds on solid ground. So onward they pushed, onward and onwards until at last...

They arrive.

A motley assortment of souls, riding on beasts unfamiliar to their own. At the vanguard and the rear are the Dhalin warrior-monks, most having forgone their armour by now save for Sakaj himself, whose crimson brigandine still adorns his chest. Riding beside them are their apprentices, responsible for the menial burdens of the expedition, attending to their mentors. In the centre of the group are the dismal remains of the cartography party, ceremonial robes weathered and torn and covered by improvised cloth fashioned during the many nights. Among them lay the surviving airmen, including an airborne mechanist, bearing a flag formed from a cut-off support strut and the surviving fragments of the stormbreaker’s banner.

After so many days, so many hardships, the sky feels finally within reach...

[Phorcys]

At von Felsenbaum's acceptance of shelter the jade-toothed man hissed. "He would be a fool who trusted this eunuch-chattel" he slurred in his guttural mangling of Mycorrian. "This devil-creature serves the cult. Behold their works, Mycorrite. My master does not reduce his loyal servants to such a state" he gestured with disgust at the blinded, tongue-cut carrier-slaves who cringed under the coal-skinned man's palanquin.

"Loryat bacheh bazi!" the coal-black man with tattooed eyes bellowed a curse or threat in some nameless creole, and with a grudging snarl the man with a grin of jade and onyx backed away - though his hand hovered over the jagged-edged obsidian blade at his side. Then the black man spoke in a different tongue, full of strange clicking and exhalations, and wordlessly the blinded slaves that carried his palanquin prostrated themselves on trembling limbs, lowering him to the ground.

"The greater fool to trust these agents of a distant throne" the coal-black man warned, and for all his strange manner of speech he pronounced Erik's tongue so flawlessly he could think him his countrymen but for everything else. "Think you your fortunes shall last a day outside the walls, with so little and so few? In shackles on the auction block shall starwane find you, unless you take my master's mark."

Erik realised that a watchful crowd was forming around them, and that the black-veiled figures he had spied amongst the throngs were approaching. They each proffered the jugs they carried.

"By Womb and Well shall I anoint you in the sacred waters. Your thirst is my master's, if you will drink".