"Most people don't - they just don't leave the place they were born or where they end up working, and listen to the people in charge, or to a set of wild rumours that usually happen to keep them reasonably safe where they are.

I spent a while going to Anvil, and I've always been quite good at remembering a lot of information.

I'm not necessarily quite so good at sharing it in a sensible order, though! I'm sorry if it's all a bit overwhelming.

Maybe you should talk a bit about what you might want to do here, and I can keep it a bit more focused."

"By my standards, I'm well-traveled and have met all kinds of people. But I think they were all a lot more... local, limited... in what they cared about. Where the edges of the world are maybe ten miles square and a traveler like me is only good for dangerous jobs and maybe teaching them a folktale they hadn't heard."

"It makes sense that when you have the time and energy for things beyond survival, you'd care about a lot more. But it's intimidating."

"Navarr are generally a bit more likely to know what's going on because half our people spend their lives continually travelling, so there's regularly news from everywhere. And being part of the Empire means people are at least a bit interested and invested in how the whole thing is doing."

"I guess that would make sense. Probably five generations back our empire was the same way." Except her part. It's not even hers, she wishes this place wasn't woodlands so it didn't remind her so constantly.

"As for what I might want to do... I don't know. I'd like to not fight for a living for at least a few months, I've gotten good at it but that's not the same thing as liking it. I might sell some of the enchanted equipment if it's unusual here. Maybe if you have message carriers or something I could do that, it would be a shame to find this new part of the world and only see a little corner of it."

"Message carrying is definitely something the Navarr do, you could head out with the next Striding that pass through and they could show you how it's done around here. I expect your enchanted equipment is different to ours, magic items vary a lot; if you want to sell it I'd advise asking a Broker to help you get good value for it, I can recommend some names I trust that you can head into Seren and get in touch with, or who I could invite out here if you'd prefer.

If you're heading out of here you'll probably need to know a few things about the local religion in order to not offend anyone - everyone in Foundhome is pretty tolerant, whichever Striding you head out with might be less so, and places they pass through.

I'd like to write a few letters to people about the curse and see if we could get something going about finding the Labyrinth spirit responsible, but that wouldn't necessarily tie you down, you'd just need to pass through here - or wherever we end up coordinating - occasionally, for investigations."

"That sounds like a good plan. Talk to a professional in town - city? - and talk to the friendly travelers about message carrying, and maybe other things they do while moving around. Hmm, what else do 'Stridings' do?"

"Stridings are the main way that we weaken the Vallorn - walking out from a Vallorn along the Trods draws energy out of it and disperses it, extremely gradually. In the meantime the energy is actually quite useful, it makes you feel much less tired and rest a lot better than you'd expect from walking every day and camping in the wilds. Without being a sworn Navarr you won't help so much with that, but I'm sure you can make yourself useful and most Stridings are happy to take people along.

Because they move around so much they tend to get used for anything that needs to move around but not necessarily on a schedule, messages, news, library book swaps... Some of the ones that travel from the bigger Vallorn do a lot of checking signs and wardings, but one you pick up in Miaren probably does the Hercynia to the coast route, which is very civilised."

"Ah, that. Makes sense. I'm not likely to take any oath soon, but I'd be happy to help out."

"Yeah, don't rush into it. I expect people will try to sell you on it, but everyone knows it's a big commitment and prefers that people take it seriously.

You might want to stay here overnight so you can leave in the morning, but it does sound like you want to just head out towards Seren. I'm sure I can rustle up someone to go with you, but it's a fairly obvious route, follow whichever road looks bigger; the worst you're likely to find on the road between here and Seren is either a very lost wolf or a group of curious shouty Navarr who want to know what you're doing here in a more... enthusiastic way, who you can tell to go and bother me about it.

If you do head off, I'll either send a letter out chasing you if I have any updates on the curse thing, or you can swing back past here when the Striding you pick up returns to Seren? Oh, and I should probably ask you about religion - do you have any actual religious leanings that might be a problem, or I can just give you the summary and you can avoid getting into trouble?"

"Oh yes, I'm definitely not going to travel in an unfamiliar area for the first time starting out in the evening. Even along the road, that's just asking for trouble. I can make a camp overnight if that's most convenient."

"I'm not religious; it's not too common in my experience. Stories say gods left the world a thousand years ago, or maybe just stopped speaking to us. Though some people still pray."

"We can find you a spare bed if you don't mind sharing a house, or I think Cory still has his nice ridge tent he can set up?

Yeah, we don't do gods round here - some foreigners worship 'gods' but it always turns out that it's a ghost or an Eternal - or occasionally a labyrinth spirit.

I don't know if you have a concept of reincarnation, or what happens when you die? Our religion mostly revolves around that."

"Huh. No, not really. Most people believe in souls, there are ghosts and they often resemble the recently-dead. But no one's ever been able to get an answer from one, or from anywhere else, about why they come back or what happens to people who don't create ghosts, and they're never all that close to the person they resemble."

"Yeah, I think ghosts are mostly just echoes of the person etched into the area rather than the person themselves, although lots of people disagree and think it's really important to get them unstuck.

We know that we reincarnate because we can - with considerable difficulty - make a substance that lets a person see one of their past lives. And take a priest with them - I've guided one of those visions, I saw the fall of Terunael through the memories of a friend's soul. Because we can't make very much of it, it's hard to get solid data on anything, but the rest of the religion is built on that - how to come back faster, how to transcend the cycle eventually."

"Huh. I should try that vision thing. Eventually; I'm guessing it's expensive and it's certainly not urgent. We don't know of anything like that... though maybe we did before the curse made scholars prohibitively expensive, I probably wouldn't know."

"Good luck - I don't know how much the Bourse dose is going for nowadays... although actually, you might be able to convince some people that you're an interesting research subject - if you show up to Anvil, and tell them you're from another world convincingly enough...

Just don't be like the last stupid foreigner we let take it because they were an interesting research subject, pay attention to what your guide priest tells you about not screwing it up, it turns out you can in fact break your soul into fragments and it is _not_ pretty."

"I will keep that firmly in mind. Gods."

"Quite the opposite, really.

Anyway, what can we get you for the night? Dinner? Bed or tent?"

"Dinner and a bed would be great."

"Okay, let me take you up into the village and introduce you to Brynna, she's got a spare bed since her son moved out. I expect she'll have some stew on as well, or know who does if it's someone else's turn."

Allegra stands up, retrieves her stick and starts heading up the muddy path towards the buildings. They are quite small individually, densely packed in a rather haphazard arrangement, built with considerably more enthusiasm than skill out of mostly wood and mud, and there are a lot of curious young people trying to get a look at the stranger without getting in Allegra's way too much.

She smiles to the kids, and tries to tone down the 'this person is dangerous' that's usually baked into her body language even while empty-handed. She doesn't see many kids, usually, but they always cheer her up. Once or twice she sees one who's looking particularly closely at something and catches their eye to wink.

"How do these get built? They look kind of temporary, by my usual standards."

"Someone shows up, they want a house, they build a house. Or some people help them if they're a bit unsure about it. They're actually surprisingly robust, just made from local resources. I mean, they're no ancient stone Spires and they're not exactly made of weirwood, but they keep the rain off and the wind out and mostly don't fall down."

"Huh. I'd guess these would fall down in... a decade, maybe less. Unless you spend a couple weeks a year on it. Most places I've seen have framing with bigger logs or thick boards, and then the surfaces between are... woven, roughly, with some kind of dried-out plant, reeds or vines or thin branches, and then those are coated with something but it's more like gravel-clay than mud. Most people still live in houses their many-greats-grandparents built, well before the curse. More work upfront, but neighbors chip in."

"We haven't been here a decade yet! People do spend some time doing maintenance, and there is a woven layer in most of them, there's more clay than stones round here so the outside is normally just more clay layered on top...

Bigger logs and planks take more time to dry out properly and people tend to be in a hurry. Maybe in a few more years people will get bored of patching them and rebuild a bit sturdier, especially now we have a regular supply run set up and can order in materials we can't find lying around."

Brynna's house is a little bit less slapdash than many of the others; the door even has a fitted wooden frame rather than just a clay surround and reliance on opening inwards, and a nice ceramic chimney is cheerfully trailing fire smoke. Allegra uses her staff to knock.

"Oh, I guess that makes some sense. How long do you all expect to stay here?"

"No idea. I set this up expecting it to last out the rest of my life, but one thing I've learned over and over is - never to assume anything will last. I'll enjoy it while it's here, and if it doesn't stay put, I'll do something else."