The Peoples of the Concord

Men are the youngest of the peoples of AetheriaAetheriaThe Ember of the Aether: the world. and the most numerous, and they have the gift of the young: they pick things up quickly. A human squire will learn in a season what a dwarf apprentice learns in three, and forget it in a year, and learn something else. The elves find this exhausting to watch.

They came over the sea from a land the sea took, and they carry that loss in them without speaking of it. It shows in their restlessness, and in their love of building things on hills. Men will take up any calling at all, which the other peoples regard as a sign either of great adaptability or of having no traditions worth keeping, depending on who is asking and how much they have had to drink.

The dwarves are the children of OrunOrunKindler of fire and stone. He sleeps curled around the fire under the mountains., born warm against his fire, and they are as hard to knock over as the mountain they came out of. The StonegateStonegateThe dwarven quarter of Highcrest, given to the kingless dwarves after the Burning. quarter of HighcrestHighcrestThe city on the crest above Greenmeadow, seat of the Crown and of a thousand guild halls. has a saying that a dwarf at full height is three feet of stubbornness and one of beard, and the beard is also stubborn.

Since the BurningBurningIgnaroth’s passage up through Hammerdeep, twelve years before the Crown. they have been a people without a kingdom, keeping their one unbroken oath: that a dwarf will one day relight the hearth of HammerdeepHammerdeepThe dwarves’ kingdom of nine halls under Frostspire, burned in a night. with clean fire. They join the guilds for that, though they will not say so.

No dwarf is a druid, for nothing green grows under stone and the dwarves do not trust what they cannot dig. No dwarf is a rogue: a dwarf who sneaks is a dwarf who lies, and Hammerdeep has a word for that, which is goblin. And no dwarf will be a hexer, for to lay a curse is to break an oath on another’s behalf, and the dwarves have had enough of broken oaths for one history.

The elves woke first, by their own account, under the eaves of WhisperwoodWhisperwoodThe first forest, where the elves woke and the trees gossip., and they have been listening ever since. Their senses are the keenest of any people: an elf will hear the drawing of a breath that comes before a dragon’s fire, or see the shape of a spell on the floor before it is finished, a moment before anyone else. In the guilds that moment is worth a great deal.

They are a people in mourning. VaelmereVaelmereThe elves’ city of a hundred white towers in the sea, drowned in a single night. drowned more than four thousand years ago, and to an elf that is not long, and some of those who walk the streets of HighcrestHighcrestThe city on the crest above Greenmeadow, seat of the Crown and of a thousand guild halls. today were born in the white towers. Their Queen lives in a house of mirrors and will not come out.

Elves do not take up the warrior’s calling. Their war is the bow and the spell, and to them the heavy blade is a dwarvish grief they have no wish to share. They will not be necromancers, for the drowned dead of Vaelmere are holy to them and they will not have the dead disturbed. And they will not be tinkers, holding that what is made should grow, and that a thing made of gears can only ever wear out.

The gnomes left HammerdeepHammerdeepThe dwarves’ kingdom of nine halls under Frostspire, burned in a night. over a pump, as is told, and went up into the high places to count the stars. They built the Starfall ObservatoryStarfall ObservatoryThe gnomes’ observatory on the highest peak, where something fell out of the sky and stayed., and the Gearwright Foundry on the cliffs of the StormreachStormreachThe highlands under a veil of storms that has not lifted in nine hundred years., and most of the clever things in HighcrestHighcrestThe city on the crest above Greenmeadow, seat of the Crown and of a thousand guild halls. that are not on fire. They are small and very quick, and they have an excellent instinct, refined over many generations of workshop accidents, for being out of the fire first.

Gnomes are never druids, for they distrust anything that cannot be explained with a diagram, and the forest will not hold still to be drawn. Nor are they paladins. A paladin’s strength is faith in a light they cannot see; and the gnomes, who built the largest lens in AetheriaAetheriaThe Ember of the Aether: the world. and have looked very hard at the sky through it, know exactly what is out there, and it is not a light.

The orcs once ruled the grass plains of the east, before the Blight turned them into the AshfenAshfenOnce the orcs’ grassland, now marsh, since the moonwell soured.. They are a people who lost their land to a calamity in the sky, fought three wars for another, and signed the ConcordConcord of HighcrestThe pact of 412 YC that made every people who signed it free folk of the realm. in their own blood with the air of a people doing the realm a considerable favour. They hit harder than anyone else and heal harder too, for the orcs do everything on the warpath, including the mending.

There are no orc priests. The orcs pray to their ancestors and to the earth, through the drum and the shaman’s smoke, and they hold that the Church of the LampsChurch of the LampsThe faith of the Kindlers in Highcrest, whose priests pray to Seren and Maelis. prays to a sky that let their grasslands rot. They are polite about it, by orcish standards.

The trolls woke in the far south where OrunOrunKindler of fire and stone. He sleeps curled around the fire under the mountains.’s fire breaks the sea, and they love heat and hate hurry, save in battle. In battle they have the juju: the old power of the island spirits, which comes back to them faster than to any other people, so that a troll’s greatest stroke is ready again while the rest of the raid is still waiting on theirs.

No troll is a paladin, for a paladin swears an oath to the Crown’s light, and the trolls signed the ConcordConcord of HighcrestThe pact of 412 YC that made every people who signed it free folk of the realm. with their fingers crossed and have never pretended otherwise. No troll is a tinker either. The trolls have tried gears; they find that the juju gets into them, and then the gears start making decisions.

The UnquietUnquietThe dead of the Grey Tithe who woke with their own minds and broke the Lich-Captain at the Leechwater. are the dead of the Grey TitheGrey TitheThe plague of 389 YC that took one in five, and raised many of them again. who woke with their own minds, and refused the Lich-Captain, and broke his army at the LeechwaterLeechwaterThe ford where the Unquiet broke the Lich-Captain’s army in 391 YC. ford. They are citizens of the ConcordConcord of HighcrestThe pact of 412 YC that made every people who signed it free folk of the realm. since the year 431, though there are still innkeepers in HighcrestHighcrestThe city on the crest above Greenmeadow, seat of the Crown and of a thousand guild halls. who will not serve them, chiefly because they do not order anything.

Death has given them a coldness of heart that serves well in a guild. They do not panic, and they do not sulk; a wipe that would leave a living warrior despairing in a tavern leaves one of the Unquiet merely annoyed. They are steady, and they are patient, and they have, as they will tell you, all the time in the world.

The Unquiet cannot be paladins, for the light burns them. Nor can they be druids, for green things wither at their touch, which they find very sad, and which is why so many of them keep gardens of stone.

The minotaurs came down from the high heaths of the StormreachStormreachThe highlands under a veil of storms that has not lifted in nine hundred years. to sign the ConcordConcord of HighcrestThe pact of 412 YC that made every people who signed it free folk of the realm. and found the lowlands too warm, too crowded, and too full of doorways built for somebody else. Most went back. Those who stayed are among the most sought-after recruits in HighcrestHighcrestThe city on the crest above Greenmeadow, seat of the Crown and of a thousand guild halls., for a minotaur has the endurance of the high wind they grew up in: they are harder to kill than almost anyone and hit almost as hard as an orc, and they will stand in a doorway for as long as is needed, if the doorway is wide enough.

It was the minotaur shamans who understood first that the eye in the sky was looking for them, and their clans who held the StormspireStormspireThe citadel on the Stormreach cliffs where the callers hold the endless storm. with VeyraVeyraHigh Stormcaller of the Stormspire, who raised the veil of storms over the Stormreach. when the veil of storms was called.

Minotaurs are not rogues, for there is nowhere a minotaur can hide. They are not mages, for the arcane arts require fine and patient work with the fingers, and minotaur fingers are neither. And they are not tinkers, for the same reason, and also because of an incident with a gnomish clock which neither people will discuss.

Goblins have been under GreenmeadowGreenmeadowRolling hills, farms, and an alarming number of boars. Every guild starts here. since before anyone can remember, and they have been charging rent for it since the first ship landed. They are the merchants and moneylenders of the realm, and its smugglers and fences, and the quickest people in AetheriaAetheriaThe Ember of the Aether: the world. to find the value in anything, especially anything that belongs to somebody else. A goblin who goes out to farm the wilds comes back with more gold than anyone else who went, and an explanation.

There are no goblin druids or paladins, for neither calling pays. There are no goblin necromancers either. The goblins tried it, once, in the early days of the UnquietUnquietThe dead of the Grey Tithe who woke with their own minds and broke the Lich-Captain at the Leechwater., and gave it up when it turned out that the dead will not pay rent and cannot be evicted.

Every goblin in Aetheria reveres VeskVeskThe Laughing, who sang out of time: weeds, weather, cats and luck. The goblins revere him. the Laughing, and claims to know where he went.

The TidekinTidekinThe dream-born of the Corsair Reaches, children of Thal’s sleep before it soured. are the dream-born, the children of ThalThalKindler of the sea, asleep in the southern trench. A splinter of the Hollow sours his dreams.’s sleep before it soured. They live in the Corsair ReachesCorsair ReachesThe sea beyond the sea, on no mainland chart, reached only by a guild’s own ship., beyond the sea that the ferries cross, and are seldom seen ashore until a guild has sailed out to them and earned their notice. They are born on decks and in the surf, and they are never seasick, and no sailor alive is better at the sheets or at the pumps.

The Tidekin remember the DrowningDrowningThe night the Lullaby stopped and Vaelmere sank, about 3,200 years before the Crown., though not as the elves do. They remember the night the LullabyLullabyThe endless hymn that kept the Dreamer asleep, until it was stopped mid-verse. stopped and their father turned over in his sleep; and they know better than any other people what the Dreamer in the DeepXal'zarithThe dream that dreams itself: Thal’s sleep, soured by the Hollow. Woken in the Abyssal Sanctum. is, and how near to waking. They will not speak his name aloud.

They take up no druid’s calling, for the Tidekin hold that the land is not theirs to tend. Nor will they be paladins. The light the paladins serve is SerenSerenThe Watcher. She set the stars as watchfires on the walls of the world, and alone stayed in the sky.’s, and the Tidekin say that Seren left their father alone in the dark with a splinter in him, and that they have not forgiven her.