compiled from survivors · authorship uncertain

A Traveler’s Advice

The roads are not safe. This page assumes you are taking them anyway.

On the black river. Do not drink from it, do not camp within sight of it, and above all do not follow it north to see where it begins. Following it north is walking backward toward the moment the world broke. The few who have done it came back, and were not the same people who left.

On the north. You will feel the border before you see it: a pressure, a silence, a sense of something declining to let the outside in. The lands beyond are beautiful the way a painting is beautiful. If that beauty begins to make you homesick for a home you never had, leave. The Choir’s hospitality is real, and it is not for you.

On the east. Be polite. Be brief. Do not remark on the masks. The Court honors its agreements to the letter, so mind the letter. If a courtier tells you a road is closed, the road is closed; the East explains nothing, and has, in three thousand years, issued exactly one warning to outsiders. Heed that one especially.

On the south. There is no advice for the south. There is only distance, and the keeping of it.

On the center. Rotate out. Whatever your errand in the Wasteland, set a day to leave before you arrive, and keep it. The center does not attack the spirit. It waits for the spirit to lie down on its own.

On company. Travel with people who tell you the truth. The continent has enough of the other kind.