Hey anon, once again a very good question! So many great questions today, I love it!

Honestly, no. The City of Iron loathes Mages, they gladly send them to their deaths whenever they find them. They wouldn’t dare to risk their own image if they recruited actual Mages to do the Mage hunting. Besides, the idea of putting a mage “in charge” of anything, doesn’t sit right with the Ministers.

But just between you and me, I heard rumors that Iron doesn’t always kill the Mages they capture. A little birdie told me that they preform all kinds of experiments on Mages for all sorts of sick reason. I don’t know if it’s true, but it sure does sound like something the City of Iron would cook up. 

A very good question, dear anon. There isn’t any, at some point there was, there was even a government, but as soon as the City of Iron and the City of Wheats started to occupy the desert, that all disappeared. Now the soldiers enforce the law, and the authority people have to answer to are those who caught them. Depending on the crime, the punishment from each city might be very different. Iron is a lot harsher when it comes to stealing (from them), while Wheats considers murder a more serious crime. 

Hey anon,

You are completely right, I don’t think I’ve specified where the Valley is anywhere on the pages. However, I did think about it a lot, and being a huge history nerd, I thought the Valley would be most fitting to be in the Cradle of Civilization, better known as Mesopotamia (according to historians the first civilization in the world). It was bordered in the north by the Zagros mountains and in the south by the Arabian Plateau. For better reference, the Mesopotamian region corresponds to modern-Iraq mostly, but also falls over parts of Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Mesopotamia wasn’t just one civilization, but a collection of cultures throughout the region that shared values (Gods, writing, attitude towards women). Basically it’s the place where the first cities emerged.

The civilizations were swept away in the final conquest of the area by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century CE, and the fertile land is no more due to over-use and climate change. 

But in our little verse, at the end of the world, Pandora’s Valley became the last fertile land in the world. A little poetic right? Humanity at its end settling there were civilization began?