House Caergard was either led by or heavily dominated by an undead presence or spirits working their wills unwanted in the lands of the living. Elves loathed undead, and so Erendyl had little to do with the highlanders in general, which I thought was a pretty poor move. Their proud warriors needed someone to serve who actually recognized their value.

My grandfather's House of Bulgarov was led by a master vampire and necromancer, and had been for generations. Naturally Erendyl loathed them, and did not know why the humans put up with his existence at all.

House Tilian's Freir, the immigrant 'fire-bloods', considered themselves the first real civilization in this area, loudly talking over the elves contesting such things… and naturally ignoring the existence of the Tomb of Lady Firerose on their own Prince's estate. So, they didn't like elves in general, as 'first here, so it's all supposed to be ours' was one of the foundations of the Children of the Flame, basically their own national home-grown group of human supremacists and Fire enthusiasts.

The Prince of House Argencal was of pure Delphan blood, descended from original stock, and basically a spy for the Empire of Delpha. While he was neutral to elves as a whole, especially as both elven Houses were his neighbors, he was basically a traitor waiting to happen when the Delphans gave him the order, and so again the Sidhe had basically little to do with them.

Their counterparts from Siricil in House Nerocuori of Fuireze weren't much better, treacherous and opportunistic at the best of times, and active plotters and poisoners much of the rest. Doing the kind of things we'd seen was just part and parcel of being a mage of Fuireze, and if you weren't very morally flexible, you tended to wind up betrayed and dead sooner rather than later… like the mother and father and uncles and siblings of the current Prince, Guilimani, a schemer if ever there was one.

And now to the litany of human nobles Erendyl wasn't going to want to deal with was added House Grafburg and Prince von Jaggenfel.

Life just got better and better.

The remaining options were the House of former Tukhman wizards and illusionists, Lhamsa, who always had their own agenda dealing with their countrymen, and mighty House Verdain, whose Prince was the Immortal Thaum who was basically screwing over all mortals and magic upon this world, in the end… and whose Principality was infested with werewolves and other lycanthropes, also unpalatable to elves.

Just, ugh. If the gammathauma wasn't so very important, the elves would have and should have left some time ago. The reality of the situation was that having an exit off the world might be as necessary as having a way just to get out of the country to a more hospitable territory.

Well, that was basically what the options further to the North were all about, in the end. We were scouting out territory in Eislas for a reason.

Prince Drakkar was Aligned with Hell, didn't know it, and wouldn't believe it or care if I told him. He probably had his own humanocentric racism as an accomplished archmage and wouldn't even acknowledge the fact his loyalty to Zanzyr didn't really mean squat in the metaphysical world, and certainly didn't justify him acting like a total douche to non-Casters.

Egads, what a country. How it had not spiraled down into an Entropic nightmare could only be set at the foot of Thaum, who had to be doing something to keep it from falling.

Maybe that was the entire purpose of the Great School, bringing in new and eager blood to offset the complete lack of morals in the country's ruling structure otherwise, giving it an energy, ambition, and hope to offset the continuous downward spiral of the place.

No clerics and no religions meant lack of a moral center, and the Brotherhood of Thaum's monks were in no way an acceptable substitute on that end, even if Thaum Himself was actually giving them marching orders.

All stuff to balance and think about and do things with as time and manpower warranted. Darkmoor was going to give us a massive amount of that as we slowly moved a colony into our timeline from their doomed one.

---

This Shire town, called Tikasso after some long-dead hyn hero, was on a trade road that eventually led to Seven-Town, the capital of the country and its major port at the core of the Heartshire, the breadbasket and central shire of the nation. My intended course would go through many of the Shire's towns, as establishing a Lived-Line was about where you could go absolutely, distance along the Lived-Line wasn't actually relevant. Teleportation used distance between two points, the Lived-Line was for ease and accuracy. Just because you wandered all over the map didn't use up Teleportation range/miles.

Hillshire formed the northwestern wall of the country, basically comprising most of the border with Federyn, although the mountains and hills thereof were nifloid infested and hotly contested, with much of the mining wealth of the Shires in them. Northshire formed the rest of the Federyn border, extending into the Ruugh Mountains, and with Eastshire established the rest of the border with Warsherz there. Completing the circle to Seven-Town, Seashire encircled the Small Gulf, with multiple smaller ports and islands dotting it home to most of the Shire's fleet… and a rather large number of its infamous pirate crews.

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Westshire basically filled the southwest corner of the country and the rest of the border with Federyn and the Chelphryggi Swamp, and held another couple smaller ports there for those who didn't want to pull in at Rhodos by the swamp.

Those kidnapped naturally weren't from Sevens, being concentrated in West, Hill, North, and Eastshires… so, away from the sea and central Shires, for the most part.

So, the course I was making was an inefficient looping back and forth, going down into Westshire, along the coast and into Sevens, then heading north through Treeshire and back into Hill and Northshire again, then down into Eastshire before crossing over into Warsherz there.

Yeah, it added on a good hundred miles to my travels, but that was like three, four hours travel time, and still skipped some Shire towns of decent size… which could be added in at the leisure of everyone here. I couldn't handle ALL the Lived-Lining, right?

----

Thus our windy course was set, on what turned out to be a rainy and blustery day. It was miserable for non-wizards, of course, but Mass Resist Rain took care of all the wet for everyone and we just zipped along. There were still farms everywhere, quaint villages and storybook settlements, cute bridges over small streams and rivers, well-tended fields, groves, and gardens, and if it was done in smaller than human-size, well, it only showcased what life should be like.

Two of the militia of Tikasso had volunteered to serve as guides and spokesmen so we wouldn't have troubles, rather eagerly judging by their expressions. Nita was up on top of Duum, soaring around through the sky and hollering down whenever he swooped low enough for her, clearly having the time of her life. Norgos was standing on a Disk next to the Mick, a pair of glasses in place as the wind blew past him, the rain didn't touch him, and we zipped along as fast as a galloping horse without any problems whatsoever.

Down and across Aleford in only an hour astonished the heck out of the hyn, especially in bad weather like this. That was basically a whole day's travel on ponyback for a decent rider!

We paused just long enough to pick up some local brews and pipe-weed, and then headed southeast along the main road to Walkagar, Westshire's main port, where we stopped for lunch, tooled around the town, picked up more local versions of pipe-weed on the advice of our guides, and then headed east along the road toward Ashton and Sevens, arriving in the latter in the early afternoon.

This was a big city and trade port, with a large number of non-hyn working here. There was of course nothing for it but to go exploring, our guides having only been there once or twice themselves and also eager to revisit friends, connections, prior stomping grounds, and see what had changed.

---

"Buck, Guy, you look like you've been busy."

The Federyn human rake and the hyn adventurer did indeed look a bit travel-worn. They'd been zipping in and out of Mirror Portals all day, taking advantage of Buck knowing the Shires to skip having to travel all the paths between them. While being able to Teleport was something both of them desired to acquire, they had work to do, and the Shires was a place to do it.

"We ran into Master Nightswift in Tinderpot, as you thought might happen. He's spreading word about you and what might be happening, Lady Edge," Oswald Brandybuck said, far more grimly than he might have otherwise.

"You never mentioned what was happening with these before, Buck," I noted to him. "How long have these kidnapping and disappearances been going on?"

He flushed slightly. "In truth, my Lady, it fell to the back of my head after I saw how well you led and treated us. I had to be reminded that a lot of Zanzyrans are incredibly arrogant and entitled bastards, and remember all the stories of my youth." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "The raids started soon after the civil wars in Zanzyr back then, when they chased out the dwarves, their so-called Troubled Years before they officially set up the wizards-only as nobles. They didn't accuse us of spreading the plagues, but we were more resistant to them as a people than most of the humans, and we naturally didn't have any mages or spellcasters to stop them once they all made themselves noble and started looking for things to experiment on."

"So, a good hundred and fifty years this has been going on." I was not impressed much. "And because wizards and home ground, you don't want to take the fight to them and provoke a war with Zanzyr, so the best you can hope for is that a Master intercepts them or you can chase them off on your own… which just defers the problem to someone else, later, and encourages them to pick off the weak."

He nodded shortly. "That's the right of it, Lady Edge. They don't see us as opponents, they see us as potential creatures to carry out their vile tests on!"

"And it is known your Masters lose their magic outside the Shires, so they are mocked and disrespected by the Wizards who can Teleport away freely." I weighed things down in my head, looking around at the busy town which, if a tad more free-wheeling and aggressive than most of the countryside, was still largely Yellow in the Auras of those who lived here.

This city, and these people, were Good people, regardless of their races, although the Neutrals were more prevalent among the non-hyn, especially the sailors coming through, buying hyn produce to feed the hungry masses of Siricil.

"You have some way to stop all this, Lady Edge?" Guy asked slowly, a wolvish smile on his face. While he'd lost none of his desire for gold, he had tempered it with an acute awareness of what that gold could do, and what exactly he was going to use his gold for. He was also very protective of his hyn buddy and partner in hijinks, and the idea of being captured and used for wizard-testing by immoral Zanzyrans was like the exact opposite of the Erendyl elves and myself that he had dealt with. He was tolerant of the students I was taking with me because I also chose those Good of heart, I wasn't going to be misled about such stuff, but the tropes about Zanzyran mages existed because so many of them were absolutely true in their amorality.

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