The Kingdom of Aythirmok
“One stands before us in Durance. Speak thy name and testament.”
The question you hear the most is how we can stand the cold. It’s true, you can freeze to death if you aren’t careful. Only the foolhardy are out during the peak of winter during a storm, or brave the wilds without ample provision. But it’s almost an old friend, the cold. You get accustomed to the silences in the dead of winter, of places so still that even one doesn’t even need a Gift to hear spirits talking on the wind. Our lodges are built for it, our holds can stand the worst of it, and there are far worse things than waiting out a storm by a hearth. Better than the spring, for certain, as we’re reminded all too often. Because as bad as the cold can be, we’re always warmed by one simple fact:
The armies of the dead freeze in the cold.
“Salt and steel guard us well, ere the dead march from hell.”
Life in Aythirmok is in tension with those two facts, then. We can’t sow on frozen ground, and that same thaw means the dead may come. It’s a real pickle. Everyone always hopes it won’t be this spring- the scouts are always watching, we ask spirits for predictions of dubious use. But we always need to be prepared as if it will. The southern barriers to the Deadlands have been rebuilt on every incursion, and those without a Gift do their best, but you always know it’s counterproductive to even try melees to stall them, as much as the berserkers wish to be unleashed. Some bites and you just grow their numbers, and you can hardly count on them to stay dead even if you drop them, however much the dead are begging you to help end their torment. But what choice do we have, really? It isn’t as if only we would starve if we give up the thawed grazelands, they’d be eating each other in the cities of Salvation or Tenebrum without our shipments before too long.
That’s also the answer to ‘why would anyone live in a land that is attacked by armies of the dead every few years’, too. Hardly any choice. Best farmlands in all of the continent after a thaw, a number of the richest mines, and that’s more than enough for some. For most though, it’s home, and someone has got to do it, and some day we’ll end the Deadlands for good and all.
Some day.
“Winter is the kind season.”
We’ve held our own for the better part of a thousand years. Some Harvests are far worse than others, mind. We face down the greatest Affliction in all the world, and the spirits have long been in our allies in this. Maybe not as helpful or easy to understand as you might hope, but still, we’ll take what we can get. Now don’t get me wrong, it would be nice if we knew why we had to have a geas, or if they even made a little bit of sense. What does never refusing a drink if offered, or you can never eat with a stone fork, or any of these have to do with anything?
Spirits, as a rule, are very odd. But some help is better than none.
