The first Akrite captain I ever served under here in Shayard told me about this grand muster they’d done at the Ward, a few years before I joined up. Over two days, they caught scores of Xaos-lovers trying to cross back into Shayard—more than we’ve ever seen in all my time on the border. The captain said they dragged them all to Brecksands for Harrowing.
(Core gameworld map found here)
One technique I’ve thoroughly enjoyed in ΧoR to date has been the seeding of details across the story that might bloom in the future (or point towards deeper extant worldbuilding that isn’t strictly necessary for the plot), so today I’ll be briefly covering one such seed that I haven’t seen much discussion of past cascat’s initial observations, prior to the Stormwright demo. To date, there hasn’t been a clean way to sneak this into any of my posts, so it’s getting its own dedicated one here.
Brecksands is most likely a Wardhouse: “fortifications somewhere along the inside of each Ward, where the blood is spent to sustain the Change.” In the text alone, the presence of a Harrower in a place, as far as we know, otherwise unsuited for dense human habitation — and the implied Theurgic presence to use it on short notice — points towards this possibility. But ever since Cerlota described Dry Wells as a Wardhouse, it’s seemed abundantly clear that the other places of interest marked with the same symbol ( 』) are the same.
Mlazyc Vale, Snowblights, the Bonewatch, Wreckers’ Point, Sescia Crag: they’re all found along the Wards. Okhsai has a slightly different shape (resembling more of a mountain to me), but under this framework would likely be fuel for the Floating Palace in Aekos. Consequently, these locations likely hold secrets about Wardwork and mountain-flying that our prospective rebels — along with the Halassurq Empire, watching from a distance — would be interested in discovering (not to mention the perks of denying the Thaumatarchy access, even for just a brief moment, while securing its resources for revolution).
And Brecksands in particular is significant for being in our backyard, so to speak, as the place our influence is inadvertently tracing an arc around, from Sojourn to Irduin to Grand Shayard. We’re unlikely to see Brecksands this game: we would’ve crossed back over the Ward well north of it, but an outpost of the Thaumatarchy in the heart of that barren, desolate, depopulated land seems uniquely suited to suffer from whatever chaos erupts in the Southriding after we get there.
Supply, after all, seems like the ideal way to threaten Brecksands: its isolation is a double-edged blade.
Finally, there’s an open question of how much Cerlota knows or suspects. She merely said that “The precise Wardhouse locations are not known to many”: this does not mean that the precise Wardhouse locations are not known to her.
Now, something completely different, albeit late:
In between the various conversations we can have upon first settling down in Sojourn for the winter (sojchatchoice), we return to the conversation hub each time with a “Next, you spend time getting to know:” — while this works fine as a narrative tool, it would be neat if each was prefaced by a brief anecdote (just one or two sentences, probably) about something ordinary happening on the training grounds with the Sojourners. Four or so in total, one per tick.
This could spice up the hub text while further communicating the passage of time after each conversation. They would be palate cleansers after each conversation, reorienting the reader to the training grounds and smoothing the transition between the end of one talk and the beginning of another. It’s also an opportunity to get a taste of what everyday Sojourners are like and to add a macabre weight to their story. These are the people who’ll be on the front lines — these are the people likely to die when the Theurges come, no matter if it’s Herne or Jerrin leading them.
It’s a little thing, one that doesn’t have any mechanical impact or alter the grand story in any way: but I think it’d be well worth it in enhancing the feel of the story.