Morganatic
Kinetically-Interlinked Nirnian Multi-User Exoform
'Kinei Muna, Trade-Speaker for Clan Enylin, dispatched as part of the colonist fleet, sir. I think your father was trying to provide you with representation from as many clans as possible; with Ysgramori warriors, you've got sword-arms covered, but it was suggested that you might otherwise be lacking in traders, quartermasters, &c.'
She pronounces the abbreviation strangely, her voice turning on a dime and clipping the syllable off. Another Enyli eccentricity, surely.
'As to our sources of information, well, there are a few indications that we're dealing with a diverse lot here. Scouts and traders from Enylin haven't made anything like as ambitious a journey as the one across the Sea of Ghosts, but we've still explored some of the southern islands and peninsulas of Atmora, and we've seen … things. Unliving metallic leviathans crawling through the deep water off Thrihnukagigur Point, with brass-clad figures crawling across them. Bodies float ashore every now and then - badly decayed, but with strange armour, weapons, and skin. Brass usually, gold and bone occasionally. Besides, there are a few of us,'
She taps her head significantly.
'Scattered between the Enyli and Selidi with something of a gift for prognostication, divination, prophetic dreams, you know the sort of thing. Our Lord the White Strake gives us clouded visions of future past and present, and every so often we can dredge something useful from them - razor-edged beings made from snow, brass constructs with artificial souls, and three-headed beings of gold. We've spotted the first of those three, and, given everything else we know, I have every confidence that we'll see the others.
I tell you all this in confidence, you understand - I know that witches tend to arouse suspicion in our culture, but I believe that you and the other commanders need every tool that's available to you. Speaking of which, I'd be glad to have you come along with us, sir, with one condition - let me do my thing. There's more of an art to trading than there might seem at first, and it's not always readily comprehensible to outsiders. Still sure you want to come too?'
With Yngol in tow or not, Kinei will assemble her caravan. She carries enough to fund a normal trade route on her person, but this is no normal trade route - she has no idea what these spirits, beasts, or demons are interested in, and compile a caravan order that will cover all her bases, will be likely to appeal to whatever ialien consciusness she's having to trade with. Small, fiddly, pretty things are always a good bet - she orders a few thousand stahlrim beads and pieces of jewelery into a crate, hoping to impress these other races with their skill in steel-ice-working. No weapons, armour - not yet, at any rate. It would be a good idea to keep some things back. A few books, illustrated sagas from Atmora, works of culture - even if they can't read them, they would at least serve as a good indication that the colonists came from a sophisticated, well-developed culture of their own, and help cement respect for them. Food? No, they'd doubtless have more of it than the Atmorans did. But alchemical ingredients - now those might be useful as trade goods, especially if the offered new combinations and formulae unknown to this new land. She orders a dozen bales of ingredients - with a heavy focus on Atmoran native plants not found in Merath, like Jazbay Grapes and Jarrin Root - loaded onto the caravan. A few miscellaneous, assorted 'stocking fillers' - gold and silver work, scrimshaw horker ivory, other dregs from Enyli craft-markets - completes the caravan, and she heads off, south east, towards where her prognostications have told her that the realms of the golden ones, the brass ones, and the snow ones intersect.
The party travels through a dead land of heavy, sapping cold, where not a single living thing dwells. There's some evidence of vegetation - long-withered trees jut from the endless expanse of talus and scree - but it's long-dead, perfectly preserved in this frigid desert where not even snow wets the ground. Shivering and huddling against the bone-numbing chill, the caravan travels on up into increasingly high and craggy ground, the rocks whittled into strange and unnatural shapes by the razor-winds - and then stops. Eyes bulging wide with terror, Kinei dodges back behind a rock, panting, trying with one hand to still her jingling wares and with the other to wave the others back. Once everyone's hunkered down, she creeps over to Yngol.
'There's someone - something out there! A giant person, thirty foot high, knife-ears, its pattern practically lit up in weird aetherial patterns like I've never seen before. It's herding what look like giant cattle, but horned! What do we do, sir? I can't say I want to get into a fight here, and whatever sort of beast it is, it's clearly sapient, and can channel magicka in a way that implies culture and civilisation.'
She pronounces the abbreviation strangely, her voice turning on a dime and clipping the syllable off. Another Enyli eccentricity, surely.
'As to our sources of information, well, there are a few indications that we're dealing with a diverse lot here. Scouts and traders from Enylin haven't made anything like as ambitious a journey as the one across the Sea of Ghosts, but we've still explored some of the southern islands and peninsulas of Atmora, and we've seen … things. Unliving metallic leviathans crawling through the deep water off Thrihnukagigur Point, with brass-clad figures crawling across them. Bodies float ashore every now and then - badly decayed, but with strange armour, weapons, and skin. Brass usually, gold and bone occasionally. Besides, there are a few of us,'
She taps her head significantly.
'Scattered between the Enyli and Selidi with something of a gift for prognostication, divination, prophetic dreams, you know the sort of thing. Our Lord the White Strake gives us clouded visions of future past and present, and every so often we can dredge something useful from them - razor-edged beings made from snow, brass constructs with artificial souls, and three-headed beings of gold. We've spotted the first of those three, and, given everything else we know, I have every confidence that we'll see the others.
I tell you all this in confidence, you understand - I know that witches tend to arouse suspicion in our culture, but I believe that you and the other commanders need every tool that's available to you. Speaking of which, I'd be glad to have you come along with us, sir, with one condition - let me do my thing. There's more of an art to trading than there might seem at first, and it's not always readily comprehensible to outsiders. Still sure you want to come too?'
With Yngol in tow or not, Kinei will assemble her caravan. She carries enough to fund a normal trade route on her person, but this is no normal trade route - she has no idea what these spirits, beasts, or demons are interested in, and compile a caravan order that will cover all her bases, will be likely to appeal to whatever ialien consciusness she's having to trade with. Small, fiddly, pretty things are always a good bet - she orders a few thousand stahlrim beads and pieces of jewelery into a crate, hoping to impress these other races with their skill in steel-ice-working. No weapons, armour - not yet, at any rate. It would be a good idea to keep some things back. A few books, illustrated sagas from Atmora, works of culture - even if they can't read them, they would at least serve as a good indication that the colonists came from a sophisticated, well-developed culture of their own, and help cement respect for them. Food? No, they'd doubtless have more of it than the Atmorans did. But alchemical ingredients - now those might be useful as trade goods, especially if the offered new combinations and formulae unknown to this new land. She orders a dozen bales of ingredients - with a heavy focus on Atmoran native plants not found in Merath, like Jazbay Grapes and Jarrin Root - loaded onto the caravan. A few miscellaneous, assorted 'stocking fillers' - gold and silver work, scrimshaw horker ivory, other dregs from Enyli craft-markets - completes the caravan, and she heads off, south east, towards where her prognostications have told her that the realms of the golden ones, the brass ones, and the snow ones intersect.
The party travels through a dead land of heavy, sapping cold, where not a single living thing dwells. There's some evidence of vegetation - long-withered trees jut from the endless expanse of talus and scree - but it's long-dead, perfectly preserved in this frigid desert where not even snow wets the ground. Shivering and huddling against the bone-numbing chill, the caravan travels on up into increasingly high and craggy ground, the rocks whittled into strange and unnatural shapes by the razor-winds - and then stops. Eyes bulging wide with terror, Kinei dodges back behind a rock, panting, trying with one hand to still her jingling wares and with the other to wave the others back. Once everyone's hunkered down, she creeps over to Yngol.
'There's someone - something out there! A giant person, thirty foot high, knife-ears, its pattern practically lit up in weird aetherial patterns like I've never seen before. It's herding what look like giant cattle, but horned! What do we do, sir? I can't say I want to get into a fight here, and whatever sort of beast it is, it's clearly sapient, and can channel magicka in a way that implies culture and civilisation.'
