“Why? I mean, I know some places are in trouble. I have a first village for him to go to that needs food. Um…Rheirgest, and it’s not far. But if you’re helping pay for it, we can do—”
Normen didn’t laugh at the joke, but he was ready for the journey. It would be two days from Celum—an ‘easy’ delivery. The village of Rheirgest was one of the first letters that Erin had read. The girl had asked for wheat or Yellats, even, for her Christmas present.
The village called Rheirgest had survived the first day and a half of the winter storm and the Snow Golem assaults very well. The Snow Golems had attacked here, too. But Rheirgest, at least, knew how to hold them off.
The village called Rheirgest had survived the first day and a half of the winter storm and the Snow Golem assaults very well. The Snow Golems had attacked here, too. But Rheirgest, at least, knew how to hold them off.
It wasn’t that hard to cross, and you could do it with one hand on the ropes the entire time. But for a Golem or less-nimble monster, it was easy to plummet to your death. Children of Rheirgest would run across it without fear.
They were a hardy village at the edge of the north in a pocket of the mountains. Like Yoldenites, in their way. Though Rheirgest would have resented the comparison. They didn’t have a funny accent or weird helmets.
Like many such places, they made a living on a natural resource no one else was willing to mine. Instead of magicore, which Yoldenites mined, Rheirgest exported bones.
Rheirgest had a complicated history with [Necromancers]. They remembered a time when [Necromancers] had come here and paid well for samples of the ivory, or tried—without effect—to raise the skeleton.
It was supposed to be a lively, cheerful little village. Nevermind that Celum thought Rheirgest was full of weirdos—they bought the ivory. Times were harder of late. Drakes didn’t like ivory as much after the Antinium Wars, and now all the older folk were worried about Dwarves.
That was Rheirgest, a city that most citizens of Celum, including Wailant, only knew as a place on the map. It kept to itself for safety as much as anything, and only Lord Deilan El or someone who wanted to know where their ivory came from ever bothered to investigate.
Then they conveniently forgot and harbored no suspicions because they needed nice ivory, damn it. Rheirgest ivory on the handle of your Marksman’s Automatic Reloading Crossbow, Mk. IV from the House of El had to be good, embossed with inlays, and have no faults or the Noelictus [Hunters] would throw a fit. Poor quality ivory cracked or couldn’t take the heat treatments or…
None of this reached Rheirgest. It was humble, but did well enough for itself. It should have been a fun winter, with the scrying orb. It should have been…until a stranger had come calling.
He had been friendly, at first, and no one had paid attention to him. Rheirgest got all kinds of visitors, and the half-Elf might have been a temporary guest like the folk who didn’t quite like the law.
