At your earliest opportunity, return to these lands. Proceed to my estates near Mirsvr with greatest haste, and I shall join you there to discuss our work.
You may not have heard the most recent news from the eastern quarters. Following a failed attempt to prevent the Valdjini company from succumbing to the pressures of agitation, an insurrection has seized control of an industrial district of Otvev. The blame for this has been placed solely on the Temar Company; though traitors within our ranks contributed to our mission's failure, Valdjini cowardice allowed the cancer of agitation to grow and fester.
In the aftermath of this debacle, Otvev and Vilv have cancelled their municipal contracts with us. Our routes to the East have been dogged by attacks, seemingly from free traders. I suspect the Valdjini and Eltjini may be the originators of these aggressions, either through employing proxies or disguising their own vessels. As well as these cowardly acts unbecoming of civilized trade, many believe the Valdjini and Eltjini Commissions are close to declaring outright open war upon the Company, with the backing of Vilv, Otvev, and many of the smaller companies. Public opinion among the groundsfolk has turned against us in these cities, though our support in Mirsvr and Zhikav remains steadier.
These events have caused significant disruptions to our TransOlyen and Hoitani offices β as well being unable to supply our Depots adequately, investors are beginning to doubt the security of the enterprises carried out in those regions, and their wavering confidence compounds our difficulties in addressing the material causes of their concerns.
Upon your arrival at my estate, I request that you begin to outfit the Fasaathi with whatever you may require for an extended cruise in the TransOlyen region. Supplies have been procured and my staff have been instructed to assist you to their greatest extent. I have arranged a line of credit to purchase any further necessary material from the city. Latest intelligence and reports will be made available to you; begin planning your operations. If I am not present I will join you at my earliest convenience to furnish you with further details and instructions.
Our investment in you was not insignificant, and we expect it will continue to deliver.
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In entering the service of the Company, any Abheski possessed of the virtues we exalt above others β these being leadership, initiative, clarity of thought, and financial acumen β may become successful and the very envy of their fellows. Further, with proper training and discipline these virtues may be cultivated and promoted; so that in the training of cadets, the Companies do their utmost for the benefit of these young officers, and thereby the benefit of the Abheski nation.
To truly benefit the nation, we must first understand who we Abheski are; a nation of diverse parts, no doubt, but possessed of a common history.
We came to these lands from abroad β it is not known where exactly from. Some believe that one of the distant lands of Ycairn is the place of our origin, but most agree that we came from another world. Traditional belief across much of the continent holds that we came from the Sun itself, but others believe our origin is from Fasaath, or Kombyeny, or another point within the night sky.
We Abheski are an industrious, creative, and innovative people. Having tamed patches of the wild expanse of the lands, building towns and farms and trading posts, the most successful and prosperous of our ancestors founded the five great cities β Zhikav, Vilv, Otvev, Mirsvr, and Lansk.
Though we live alongside other peoples, we hold ourselves apart. The Abheski have distinguished ourselves twice by mastery over the skies β first, in building the mighty towers that soar over our cities. Some of these towers are centuries old, and stand strong to this day, the least of them stretching higher than fifty people. In the last few generations, our supremacy over the air was proven again in being the first nation to recreate the science of powered flight; our ships, lifted by mighty dvint, broke us free from the shackles of the land.
Trade is the blood of the Abheski culture. Spread across this harsh and hostile continent, ever taming the ancient forests and defending against the great beasts, our trade is what makes the Abheski prosper above all other people; and the Companies are the pinnacle of Abheski trade. Not restricted to one province, we can deal in goods from across the known world. Not bound to the paths of the rivers and coastlines, we can go anywhere our airships can carry us. Abheski goods are prized from the tents of the Anshessi to the outposts of Hoitan, and if an Ebwari baron wants to exchange letters or goods with a Nalmyan chief, it is most probable that an Abheski vessel will carry their intercourse.
There are other practices that mark us as a peculiar peoples among our neighbours. All nations have their own calendar of celebrations and holidays, and the most important of ours is The Yearsrise festival. Though we differ on which precise day this takes places, Abheski always celebrate the end and beginning of the year around the time of winter solstice. Other peoples reckon the year differently: the Erthani begin at the spring equinox, and the Ebwari count from the height of summer. Other nations practice more curious calendars yet.
Our other important festivals are the First Feast, which in ancestral times celebrated the first hunt after each winter; and the late summer Meetday, where the harvest traditionally begins and the year's differences and disagreements are put aside.
Each city and town observe their Founding Dates. These may variously remember the day the first settlers began to build their new homes, or the day the first Spire was finally completed, but always are celebrated with great revels and public entertainments.
Though we are all Abheski, we may have slight differences in our speech. The rapid speech of a city-dweller may sound different to the calmer pace of a settler from the deep forest; the clipped vowels of Otvev are readily distinguished from the rounder syllables of Zhikav; the plain words of the groundsfolk contrast with the florid oratory of the wealthy classes. All these however are still Abheski, and can readily talk to one another; just try to understand the harsh Hoitani or the singing cadences of the Ebwari to hear how truly different language can sound.
Extract from A Child's Primer and History of the Abheski, published by the Temar Company Press
Please send a vessel and a detachment of troops with greatest haste; the situation here is dire.
The weavers and the potters have cast down their tools and joined together in defiance of all authority. They proclaim solidarity with the agitation in your cities. Thus our production has ground to a halt. Need I remind you the prosperity these products bring to you and the Company? My textiles are highly-sought in Zhikav; I attended a gala in Otvev where I was served soup in my own dishes. Is this partnership to be repaid now in treachery?
I have facilitated your Abheski practices in this land. When my father balked at adopting your methods of business, I replaced him and in doing so our mutual prosperity has increased manyfold.
Now your Abheski business has brought your Abheski troubles to my operation. By my native customs, this cannot be borne. By your customs I have adopted, this cannot be borne! As an esteemed partner in commerce, as a shareholder, I insist upon your aid. The contribution of my efforts to the company's fortunes are no lesser than those of many a Spires-born merchant or business agent. I demand the treatment due to me in protecting my interests and those of the Company.
Attempting to use my own forces to quell this agitation nearly triggered a mutiny. Desertion has since reduced the numbers of my force to a scant handful. We are rendered unable to impose order upon the workers. Our factories yet stand but my stockhouses, left unprotected, have been looted and burned. Let not this outrage go unpunished!
A detachment of Marines and the batteries of a vessel shall be sufficient to crush this uprising. Our commerce can resume with greatest haste once we have excised the agitationist elements from the population.
Reproduction of letter found pinned to remains of Mae Den Aawjen by crew of patrol vessel Cloud Ice. Company Assets under Mae Den's stewardship have not yet been recovered.
Laugh all you want, youngsters, but this eye of mine is the last remaining eye in this Company who saw the Basking Maw and lived to tell the tale. They try and tell you it's only a story, something the elder hands use to scare the fresh blood. But those scriveners and scribblers in the towers haven't seen not a hundredth of what us old airmen have seen, and I've seen enough to tell you I've not seen a hundredth of the mysteries that are abroad in these skies.
I was no older than most of you β I say I was good deal younger than many, for in those days they took us in young. This was before the Temar Company ever flew a vessel, I was taken as a junior hand on a freight-runner out of Zhikav. We used to ply all along the Ussin Belt and beyond into the wilds, bring goods to the Abheski and any other folk that would trade with us, places the Erthani or the caravans couldn't reach.
Well, I'd not been on the crew half a year when we got a contract to fly way out West, where few Abheski ever traded, but this one town was hacking out a living in the shadow of a smoking mountain β oh yes, those are real too, even the scribblers in their offices won't tell you otherwise. They were convinced they'd find gold, picking away at the ground like some godless Anshessi beneath this smoking brute of a mountain β it smoked and spewed all year long, a great dirty crag rearing into the air, not like those slumbering hills in TransOlyen that spit once in a lifetime!
We'd flown far beyond the routes any of you have ever taken, and twice as far again, before we found this tired little camp. We spent barely a day there before turning and coming back again. Our navigator, senseless drunk on what must have been all the brandy those poor miners had stored away, led us straight into the smoke plume from the burning mountain and we got turned every way, blind to all compasses and charts. One and all the crew coughed and spluttered and retched the sick atmoshpere, until the lookout recovered enough to sound the alarm β another vessel, her signals bright and guiding us from the smoke. We gathered ourselves enough to fly towards them to safety β and never was a greater mistake made in all the history of flight.
It's just as you've heard it described β if not worse, for no uncle scaring his nephews or master scolding his charges could truly tell the horrific sight of the Basking Maw. A hull as black as night, somehow sucking your eye to it. Though it was full noon, the sky all around was darker for its presence. Bristling with ragged and fierce batteries, gaping holes promising destruction no lesser than the mouth of that smoking mountain. Its dvint leaving an oily wake in the sky, hanging clear behind it as though untouched by current or cloud.
We turned and fled as fast as any vessel I've ever crewed, and I've crewed them all! The Basking Maw hung behind us all the way, never straining though we pushed our vessel for all it was worth. Jettisoning all the cargo, packing in our few batteries, every prayer every aviator could offer, and yet the Basking Maw hung astern, never falling a handsbreadth further behind no matter what speed we set.
Four days and four nights we raced ahead of the evil craft; not a hand among us slept a minute in all that time, and that, at last, was what brought our downfall. The captain ordered us to ride the edge of a storm, hoping we could lose our pursuers, but the exhausted crew could not match the violence of the winds, and we lost control, tossed asunder, pulled into the heart of the storm and finally cast into the valley below.
Those of us who survived huddled in the cabins and the hold, gripping our pikes and axes lest Grey Baurin and his crew descend to snatch us away, the storm raging without all the while.
And Grey Baurin never came. Whether the Basking Maw was finally put away by the storm, or the deaths of half the crew satisfied their thirst for violence, who can ever tell? When the storm blew over in another half a day, the Basking Maw was no longer in our wake.
After burning the captain and the hands, and burying the navigator and damning him as a fool, we picked ourselves up and began the long flight back to Zhikav. Most of the crew never signed on again, and didn't fly another day in their lives. The vessel was scrapped the following year and as for myself, I've never ventured further west than the Lenla since.
And yet, the east, the east has its own share of horrors and wonders. I could tell you about the time I lived among the Urselk of Hoitan for a season... but you'll have to buy me another drink.
An Account of the Orator Yethara
Her Falsehoods and her Crimes
The Orator known as Yethara has preaches across the Abhesk, from Zhikav to her alleged home city of Vilv. In her wake, agitation and strife has bubbled forth to disrupt the peace and prosperity of these great cities. But who is this agitator?
Yethara claims to be from Vilv, yet the authors, possessed of no small familiarity with that great city, have not found any there who knew of her, neither in her youth nor as fellow workers.
She preaches of justice and freedom for the workers and groundsfolk, but what does she know of labour, and working conditions? In all her speeches she never tells what her trade was before she set out to crash Abheski society.
The authors of this pamphlet can reveal that Yethara, far from being a humble Vilvan worker questing for justice for her fellow groundsfolk, is in fact a hypocrite, a subtle infiltrator fomenting agitation to disrupt the trade of the Cities and the great Companies that have made the Abheski a prosperous nation.
Yethara was born indeed to a Vilvan mother, but by an Erthani father. She was raised on a stinking vessel of that nomadic nation, learning from the cradle not of industry and toil and honest trade, but of treachery, mendacious dealings, and jealousy. Having spent the greater portion of her years aboard barges, she donned the guise of an Abheski only well into adulthood, and then only to pursue a plan of sabotage and dissent.
In her tour of preaching her agitations to the groundsfolk, she travels not by airship. The sky, beloved of all Abheski, is not her path. All true Abheski, undeceived by the glamour of dissent, recognise her beliefs as dangerous; understanding this, she sticks to the ground and the waterways, knowing she will not be challenged but instead receive aid from the disaffected and the hostile nations who share in her jealousy. Upon the sovereign decks of Erthani vessels, she is shielded from the bailiffs and constables and marines. In the deep forests, she is hidden from the sight of those vessels that protect our communities .
We wrote of the strife to be found in the wake of this orator. When she spoke in Lansk, she provoked a riot against the bailiffs, wherein dozens were killed. In Mirsvr, a mob stormed the Lesyan Tower and slaughtered another score of innocents. In Otvev, a fire claimed a Company Depot, though the docks and the Erthani fields were spared any such disaster.
It is clear to all that Yethara is not a mere orator, preaching a creed of justice. The inescapable conclusion is that Yethara is a vile conspirator. Whether she is among the leaders of the agitators attempting to bring our nation to ruin, it cannot be said, but she is certainly the most visible figure and the most dangerous.
Don't let this Agitator destroy us!
Protect your family, protect your prosperity: If you know of agitation or conspiracy, tell your bailiffs, and tell your bosses.
Pamphlet anonymously distributed ahead of a labour rally in Mirsvr.
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I write to you with urgent news. Your husband and Mapnir are fled from Otvev. I cannot commit to paper where β he said you would know the place of sanctuary and he will await you there.
I do not know how much Enklan has told you of the dire situation here. The bailiffs, their numbers swollen with auxiliaries and bolstered by patrols of Company troops, have been ruthlessly eliminating any hint of protest or discontent among the people. Daily we hear of another raid or reprisal, and the courts swell with groundsfolk accused of sedition or other crimes, to be sold off for servitude in depots or in distant colonies. The broadsheets, when they are circulated, no longer tell us what passes in the other cities β just banal tales of local society and local trade.
I expect and fear the situation to be much the same in Zhikav, and I can only hope that you are safe. Do not trouble yourself to reply β I cannot promise I will remain free to accept your letter, or that communication between the cities shall be possible much longer. Simply do everything in your power to reach Enklan and Mapnir.
I must tell you how they came to flee the city. A brutish raid was carried out upon our district, the evening before the last market day. The bailiffs, backed by a complement of sullen Temari marines, swept through the building, claiming to search for a gang of youths who had daubed slogans in support of the Nomadeers upon the barracks-wall. Such slogans appear daily now; though we have scuffles and brawls we yet have no strikes or mutinies of our own, the chatter upon Otvev's walls foretells it may happen soon. In the course of this raid, Velina, she who lived upon the second floor, was dragged forth from her rooms, as the bailiffs claimed to have discovered a concealed printing-press in her apartments.
Enklan, witness to these proceedings, remonstrated with the bailiffs, protesting in cordial terms that Velina was as like to conceal a gun-battery or a tamed arvix in her apartments as a printing-press β where, indeed, could she hide it mean rooms such as ours! The bailiff officer took great offense to this interference in his lawful duties, and attempted to arrest Enklan in turn β gentle, kind Enklan! Never a strikeist nor a mutineer, not even in his idle thoughts, and yet arrested now for speaking on behalf of an innocent neighbour.
Mapnir and I followed them as they took the prisoners out of the building β where the bailiff's party was set upon by a gang of youths, perhaps those they had originally sought. When the bailiff leading Enklan in chains was struck by a cobblestone, he slipped his bonds in the tumult, and escaped back through the building into the yards beyond, taking Mapnir with him. He bade me to gather some possessions from your apartments and meet him below his shop one hour later, where gave me instructions to write you this letter. I know not the means of his escape from the city, nor his destination, but only that he has fled to a place of refuge known to you both.
I fear that we may not meet again; I doubt your return to Otvev will be soon. I wish you only safety and security, Servi, safety and security for all three of you. May these troubled times of ours soon be over.
Your friend and neighbour,
Niruna
Letter intercepted in the possession of known Erthani agent. The author has been arrested and is awaiting secondary interrogation.
Our people arrived here when the forests were still young, child. We made our home here, and made this land ours, and we have forgotten where we sailed from. Some say we left from a cruel kingdom far to the East of Hoitan. Some say we came from frozen Triir, far away in the south. Others believe we sailed from Fasaath, or from beyond the stars... all we remember is we fled from a great and terrible disaster.
A hundred families set off in a mighty seaship, the greatest vessel anyone had ever seen! Half the forests of the Vikol would not be enough timber to build this mighty vessel. Away we sailed to safety, but the journey was a long and dangerous one!
Our ship was sucked into a great whirlpool, and we were tossed and shaken. But our ship did not break, and we were brave!
A great wave carried us out again, and a mighty waterspout threw us into the air! But our ship did not break, and we were brave!
We landed with a crash, and the waters closed over our ship. But our ship did not break, and we were brave!
After a hundred nights we came to this land, to beautiful Abhesk. The mighty ship sailed up the river and where we stopped, we founded the first city of Mirsvr. From its masts and timbers we built the first Spires. We felled the great trees of the Abhesk and built the first ships of the air, and we learned to fly.
We sailed out across the sky, over this beautiful land that we would make our own. All the Great Cities of the North were founded by us. From Otvev to Zhikav we took this land and built our Spires.
The monsters of the deep forests and the jagged mountains could not scare us β our ships flew above them, and we were brave!
Cruel Anshessi chiefs and cunning Erthani cheats could not trick us β our ships flew above them, and we were brave!
Long frozen winters and great storms could not stop us β above it all our ships flew, and we always were brave!
And so Abhesk, the greatest land on Ycairm, became ours.
Late events suggest that the smaller settlements in the Northern regions are under ever greater threats from attack and isolation.
Recently returned traders and patrols travelling the Mirsvr β Zhikav route bring reports of terrible events at the town of Smatvr, a remote settlement of a few dozen souls lying off a tributary of the main trading corridor. Discovered by a Temari patrol vessel responding to accounts of distressed messages received by regional freetraders, this outlying town was recently utterly demolished by an assault of unknown beasts.
Investigation by the officers of the vessel β the Aspire β determined a likely course of events, as follows:
While a freetrader was stopped at Smatvr, presumably on routine business, the attack began. At least three creatures emerged from the thick forest to the west of the town β the west being the direction with the least clearance between the town's walls and the treeline. Several citizens managed to retreat within the walls β those who did not were quickly killed by the assaulting creatures.
Despite the full defenses being raised against the attack, the creatures quickly destroyed part of the fortifications and gained entry to the town proper. Those townsfolk who had not sought shelter underground were crushed in their attempt to fight against the invasion. Several attempted to flee aboard the freetrader's vessel, which turned its batteries upon the attackers. The vessel was quickly brought down, and crashed into several buildings, starting a fire.
The remaining townsfolk, hiding in their own cellars or in the vault below the central warehouse, were not spared. Those that did not perish in the fire were killed by the creatures digging into their refuges and brutally killing every citizen of Smatvr.
The determination of the officers of the Aspire, based on their observations of the site, the spoor of the beasts, and the apparent intelligence and cruelty demonstrated in their assault, was that this attack was carried out by at least three Arvix. Arvix have never before been known to venture so far south, nor to seek out human settlements outside their native ranges. The freetrader was named as Captain Felin Krastba, an itinerant merchant of the vessel Sweet Fog, a veteran visitor to the towns of this region and well-known and well-loved in those parts.
Should this be a portent of future assaults by the violent creatures of the deep interior, the lives and the trades of Abhesk people are in grave danger. Between increased attacks, harsher climates, and the subversion of our trade and morals by other nations, life in the hinterlands is becoming more precarious. The cities cannot sustain themselves without the labours of the outlying towns, and it is apparent the lesser towns may no longer be able to sustain themselves simply on their own industry. To preserve the security of Abheski, whether on the frontiers or in the Spires, the routes plied by freetraders should be bought by the Companies, who can leverage their greater resources and expertise to better secure both life and cargo.
