1 The “Philosopher’s Stone,” as it was colloquially known, was a thin spear of rock off the coast of Godsgrave, surrounded by unforgiving reefs and drake-infested deeps. Atop the stone sat an abyssal keep, carved from the rock, it was said, by Niah herself. Into this pit, Godsgrave poured any criminal not deserving of outright execution. The prison overflowed with brigands and thieves, and the underpaid Administratii seemed almost entirely unconcerned with provisioning, medical care, or ensuring convicts were released in a timely fashion.
A one-year term could easily stretch into three or five before the prison’s clerks would get around to processing the required paperwork. As such, most prisoners spent much of their time thinking deep thoughts about injustice, the nature of criminality, and how that pair of boots they stole wasn’t really worth the five years of life they paid for it. Hence the nickname “Philosopher’s Stone.”
Owing to the overcrowding, the Itreyan Senate had devised an ingenious and entertaining method of population control known as “the Descent,” held during truedark Carnivalé every three years. However, an unexplained “incident” during the most recent Descent—also the night of the Truedark Massacre—saw large portions of the Philosopher’s Stone destroyed, and the spire itself partially collapsed. It has been abandoned ever since; a hollow, lean-to shell, supposedly haunted by the ghosts of the hundreds murdered within, the horrors of their deaths embedded in the stone for all eternity.
Boo!
2 Blacksteel, also known as “ironfoe,” was a wondrous metal created by the Ashkahi sorcerii before the fall of the empire. Black as truedark, the metal never grew dull or rusted, and was capable of being sharpened to an impossible edge. Ashkahi smiths were said to slice their anvils in half with a completed blacksteel blade to prove it worthy—a practice heartily endorsed by the Ashkahi Anvilmaker’s Guild.
One famous tale speaks of a thief named Tariq who stole a blacksteel blade belonging to an Ashkahi prince. In his haste to flee the scene of his crime, the thief dropped the blade, which cut through the floor and down into the earth. The flood of fire released from the worldwound burned down the entire city. Death by immolation became the punishment for thievery in Ashkah thereafter—no matter the offense, be it the smallest loaf or the crown jewels themselves, any thief caught in Ashkah would be tied to a stone pillar and set ablaze.
Some people just ruin it for everybody, don’t they?
Chapter 8: Salvation
1 More balls than brains, gentlefriends. More balls than brains.
2 It refused, though sadly, they danced all the same.
3 The Rose River is possessed of the greatest misnomer in all the Itreyan Republic, and perhaps, all creation. Its stench is so awful that, when offered the choice between drowning in the Rose or being castrated and crucified, the Niahan heretic Don Anton Bosconi was famously quoted as asking his confessors, “Would you like to borrow a knife, gentlefriends?”
4 Goldwine is an Itreyan whiskey, so named for the vast fields of corn in the midlands from which it is distilled. Several familia are renowned for their recipes, most notably the Valente and Albari.
The rivalry between the two families has boiled from bad blood to outright bloodshed on more than one occasion, the most famous of which, the War of Twelve Casks, lasted four truedarks and claimed no less than thirty-two lives. Declared an official Vendetta—that is, a bloodfeud sanctioned by the Holy Church of Aa—the conflict was so named because, amid the slaughter and arson that embodied it, only twelve casks of Albari whiskey survived to see distribution throughout the Republic.
Bottles of “Twelve Cask” are thus exceedingly rare and astonishingly expensive—a single bottle has been known to fetch over forty thousand golden tossers at auction. When the summer villa of Senator Ari Giancarli was set alight by two clumsy servants, Giancarli reportedly charged back into the blazing home no less than three times—to save his wife, his son, and his two bottles of Twelve Cask.
Rumors that he saved the bottles first are, of course, gross character slurs concocted by political rivals, and have absolutely no basis in fact.
(He saved them second.)
5 One of the old man’s favorite tests early in Mia’s apprenticeship was a game he called “Ironpriest,” in which he and the girl would see who could last the longest without speaking. Though Mia at first thought it a game to test her patience and resolve, in later years, Mercurio confessed he only invented the game to get some peace and quiet around the store.
His most infamous test, however, came about in Mia’s twelfth year. During a particularly freezing wintersdeep, the old man instructed the girl to wait on the rooftops opposite the Grand Chapel of Tsana for a messenger wearing red gloves, and follow the lad wherever he went. The matter, he told her, was of “dire import.”
The messenger, of course, was one of Mercurio’s many agents in the city. He was traveling nowhere of import—dire or otherwise—merely meant to lead Mia on a merry chase in the freezing cold and eventually back to the curio store. However, unbeknownst to Mercurio, the boy was hit by a runaway horse on his way to the temple district, and, thus, never arrived.
Mia remained on the rooftops despite the awful cold (only one sun resides in the sky during Godsgrave winters, and the chill is long and bitter). As the snows began to fall, she refused to move lest she miss her mark. When Mia hadn’t arrived by next morning, Mercurio grew worried, retracing the messenger’s assigned path until he at last arrived atop the temple district roof. There he found his apprentice, almost hypothermic, shivering uncontrollably, eyes still locked on the Chapel of Tsana. When the old man asked why in the Mother’s name Mia had stayed on the roof when she was in danger of freezing to death, the twelve-year-old simply replied, “You said it was important.”
Not without her charm, as I said.
6 Astonishingly, remarkably, impossibly incorrect.
Chapter 9: Dark
1 As you can imagine, gentlefriend, methods by which the suns can be kept at bay in a land where the bastard things almost never set are considered of no small import. Master bedrooms in the Republic are often built in basements, and guests at more well-to-do taverna will pay extra for rooms without windows. Dreamsickness—a malady acquired from lack of deep sleep—is an increasingly problematic ailment, and although Aa’s ministry burned him as a heretic, in the Visionaries’ Row of the Iron Collegium’s grand foyer, you can still find a statue of Don Augustine D’Antello, inventor of the triple-ply curtain.
2 In fact, there were three languages spoken beneath the suns that Chronicler Aelius had no knowledge of.
The first, a tongue spoken by a mountain clan in the Eastern Divide who’d never had contact with outsiders that didn’t end in a spit roast.
The second, a peculiar dialect of old Liisian, spoken exclusively by an apocalypse cult in Elai known as the Waiting Ones (their congregation numbered exactly six, one of whom was a dog named Rolf but who was referred to by his fellows as “the Yellow Prince”).
And last, the language of cats. O, yes, cats speak, gentlefriend, doubt it not—if you own more than one and can’t see them at this particular moment, chances are they’re off in a corner somewhere lamenting the fact that their owner seems to spend all their time reading silly books rather than paying them the attention they so richly deserve.
Chapter 10: Song
1 Although they were, as it happens, exceptional. Falalalalaaaaaaa.
2 Not entirely true. Some of the books in the great library of Liis are very clever indeed.
3 Mia would lap these particular steps hundreds of times over the course of her stay in the Red Church. She would count the steps every time. And though she never spoke of it to anyone, and though she was not entirely surprised by the fact, the number of steps changed each and every time she ran them.
Chapter 11: Remade