Beyond the Western Deep

Before I share the prose story this week (as we still recover from the whole “doing a convention” thing and subsequently return to our busy early Fall workloads) I wanted to offer a tremendous THANK YOU to everyone who came by our table at Rose City Comic Con. It’s been two years since our last convention–the Rose City back in 2019, funnily enough!–and Rachel and I hadn’t done a show together since 2018 in San Diego!

It was wild to be back at a show with Rachel, but even though it’d been a while, we didn’t have any issues getting the table set up, remembering the comic pitch, all that stuff came back like riding a bike. We had a great time meeting all the readers new and old who came by, and I was especially moved by readers who had heard of the comic but had never met us in person. One person even remarked how she read Beyond the Western Deep all the time as a kid–which had me realizing that… yeah, we’ve been doing this for a while!

We’re actually coming up on TEN YEARS since our first page went live on December 13, 2011. I have no idea what we’re going to do for it, but that’ll be shortly after Emerald City Comic Con so hopefully at least we can celebrate a wonderful return to convention life :)

Anyway, without further ado, here is this week’s prose story–the first part of a longer story that I’ll be saving for a future week, once again written by the rather sassy felis Scholar who penned this treatise on the Sentinels of the Spire!

Enjoy!

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Part One

If your exposure to canid culture was handled exclusively through military-approved inter-kingdom dispatches and whatever military-approved books were exported to Sunsgrove, Navran, and Kishar, you might be forgiven for thinking that the canid are some kind of monolithic culture that collectively detests their ermehn neighbors to the north.

I will admit, before even taking my first steps into Aisling, I had already assumed nothing but the worst. I figured the moment I crossed the border into the canid-ruled kingdom, I would be forced to bite my tongue at the perversion of history their military spews forth on a regular basis. 

Not for nothing, but under normal circumstances, that last sentence alone would likely be enough to prosecute me under canid sedition laws. However, seeing as this is an internal Scholar-exclusive dispatch for the Spire’s own records, I feel little need to mince my words for my own protection. 

Let’s just hope this scroll doesn’t accidentally slip outside the Spire.

Generals Clovis and Tosch, the two most powerful officers in the canid military, have made no secret of their desire to rewrite history in the canid peoples’ favor. They openly call our historical records false, conventional memory flawed, and common sense anything but. Even our Sunsgrovian brethren to the west have crystal clear memories of the canid feigning weakness to bolster their alliance with the other kingdoms so they could overthrow the ermehn and capture their land.

Which of course was canid land to begin with. Except it was only canid land because they stole it from the ermehn before, and the ermehn stole it back.

To be clear, we have no concrete idea how far back this cyclical warfare goes. What we do know is that following the last major conflict, the canid, led by one General Oslo (the same who slew the ermehn warlord, Sratha, in open combat and mounted his head on a pike) resolved to never allow the ermehn the opportunity to grow in power ever again. The canid extended their reach beyond simple border towns and garrisons and dug roots deep into the landscape of Aisling. They pushed for addendums to the Treaty of Cenolau that would have made it illegal for the ermehn to own land or property anywhere in the Four Kingdoms, made it legal to execute any ermehn found below the Deltrada Line, and protected any canid from local laws in the pursuit of ermehn or ermehn sympathizers outside the Northern Wastes.

Thank the Vale our forebears had the common sense to push back on all these measures. Unfortunately, the canid propaganda machine had already decided that regardless of what officially made it into the treaty, these extreme additions would be treated as fact nonetheless.

Try as we might to remind the canid military that wishing for these hard-line addendums does not make them so, still they send their agents into neighboring kingdoms to harass ermehn citizens, in some cases killing them in cold blood. To avoid the political storm that would inevitably follow the perpetrator’s arrest, kingdoms cover up these crimes by simply exiling them rather than resorting to execution or imprisonment. The canid military and its collective might is simply too much to contest, and to antagonize them could result in catastrophe.

Of course, this is all with regard to the military hierarchy of Aisling–the public face of their leading generals and feckless royal line. What of the canid people? How do those everyday citizens just leading their lives within the canid kingdom perceive the ermehn question?

Well, to find out, I took a trip northwest. Because I was looking for some honest opinions from everyday folks, I made sure to leave the Scholar robes at home and instead opted for some Aisling-produced linens to help me blend in with the locals a little better. While I’m personally more partial to vulpin-spun linen (I know, just call me a traitor and get it over with) there is no doubt that there are several clothiers throughout Aisling that reach true artisan status. 

I’m talking about linens now, but that’s not to say I’m off track. Quite the contrary, this is all part of the story.

The best way to experience another culture without feeling like an interloper (or worse, a tourist) is to have a local helping you along the way. I arranged for passage across the Aderyn Mountains and into Aisling with a trade caravan that had arrived a month prior stuffed to the gills with canid-produced linens, and was now heading back to its home with a variety of new felis-produced tools and clothing samples, hopefully to help inform and produce the next season’s fashions.

Being a connoisseur of linen (among other things), I was able to strike up conversation almost immediately and befriended the troupe of canid artisans–a middle-aged pair preparing their young daughter to take over the family business in the coming years.

I did not broach the topic of the ermehn for several days, for the first week or so of the journey can be rather harrowing and I didn’t want to risk making my new hosts uneasy. The route most travelers take when leaving Gair for Aisling is rather different from travel literally anywhere else, requiring a northward jaunt up the eastern side of the Aderyn Mountains for several days before cutting through the unfortunately named Keening Pass (which most locals just call the “Aisling Way” to avoid calling it by its actual name). The Aisling Way is a series of rocky switchbacks and narrow mountain roads that can take several days to cross under the best of circumstances.

While the mountain trek is dangerous, it is actually several days’ quicker than crossing through the Kishar Col, the bustling trade route that passes through the Aderyn Mountains just west of Gair and brings in goods via the Tarys River that flows in from the northwest (and makes return journeys from Aisling so much easier).

If you do travel to Aisling via the Kishar Col, you spend a large portion of your time stuck behind dozens of other trade caravans, all headed to Navran, Sunsgrove, or anywhere in between. Once you’ve spent a few days moving just slow enough to fool your mind into thinking you’re not moving at all, you wind up needing to restock and resupply at one of the several smaller trading outposts that sit north of the river, over the water and a few days away from Cenolau. Then you cut a long path around the treacherous Eastern Deep and by then, you’re realizing you might as well have “gone Aisling Way” and saved yourself the time and trouble.

The Eastern Deep is, of course, the reason why one cannot make a straight shot toward Aisling the way they might Lutra or Nessa. Truly the only acceptable passage into the Eastern Deep comes from the easterly route into Terria, where traders skirt Lake Verodun’s eastern shore before the Vale Crossing takes caravans into the Western Deep.

Years and years of trade (and the incredibly watchful eyes of Terria’s storied scouts) have kept that particular passage free of danger for quite some time. But the idea of cutting north through the entirety of the Eastern Deep to reach Aisling is a preposterous and frankly deadly undertaking that is only recommended to the foolhardy or suicidal.

Oh, a fun piece of trivia: the “Vale River” was actually named as the result of a miscommunication on the part of felis cartographers. The tamian people called it “Tesque’s Tail” or just “Tail River”, named for its many small offshoots that look from the treetops like bristles on a tamian’s tail. The cartographer’s associate who was capturing this information must have been thinking about the felis “Vale”–our destined place of eternal solitude–when writing this down, or perhaps he was hard of hearing? Either way, he insisted the name of the river was “Vale” and the name was set, much to the chagrin of the tamian. I imagine the misheard name stuck only because the tamian have named so many things after Tesque that they have begun to lose track of them, and it was nice to have a river with a different name.

All right, now I am indeed well and truly off track. Back to the caravan.

I had waited until after we’d cleared the Aisling Way before I began to pepper in the occasional reference to the ermehn here and there. At first I asked about the most recent military dispatches that arrived in Gair, which elicited a few grunts from my hosts. The canid military sends regular updates throughout the Four Kingdoms to “update” citizens far afield on the regular goings-on back in Arklow. Of course the true intention of these missives is to remind everyone else that the canid military’s reach extends far beyond its borders and into every kingdom.

Emboldened by hosts’ outwardly dismissive reaction to their kingdom’s policies, I soon felt comfortable enough to ask outright if they had any opinion on “the ongoing ermehn situation.”

The daughter, a headstrong young adult mostly raised on the roads between kingdoms, answered immediately, without any consideration of the consequences: “it’s a terrible thing, ain’t it? Those poor creatures living in squalor like they do.”

I was shocked by the bluntness, but even then found it compounded by the father’s follow-up: “Yes, and then we go into their home and kill ‘em. How can the Brothers be surprised the ermehn are willing to risk their lives to escape into the Four Kingdoms?”

The Brothers, yes–that would be the colloquial name for Clovis and Tosch. While they themselves were not royalty, the power they commanded over the canid army effectively meant it. King Janus could be overthrown in a day if the Brothers wished it.

It was the mother who nervously looked over her shoulder at the endlessly stretching road behind us, as if expecting a canid patrol to be looming over her every word. In Aisling of course, the canid military reigned supreme, its eyes and ears everywhere. But there on the road? There were no ears to spy–leastways not as far as we could tell.

“My grandmum helped an ermehn family across the border once,” she said in a hushed tone. “Was forty, maybe fifty years ago? Found all five of ‘em in a grain cart, seeking shelter from a storm.”

The daughter picked up the story, clearly having heard it before. “Could’ve turned ‘em in, but just didn’t feel right. I don’t know anyone who’s ever turned in an ermehn fleeing to the Kingdoms.”

The father was quick to step in. “I mean, there’ve been a few bandits on the roads, but it’s more than just ermehn doin’ that. Feel like I’ve lost as many shards to tamian or felis bandits as ermehn ones. And they still don’t fleece me as bad as the tax collectors at the Kishar border, aye?”

The mother offered up a toothy grin. “Aye, they need the money for those Scholar-types in their big tower. Probably spend it all on paper and quills!”

“And ink!” The daughter chortled. “I hear they import oak galls all the way from Sunsgrove for their ink!” The trio turned toward me expectantly. They did not know I was a Scholar of the Spire, but I was a felis, and all felis were expected to know such things.

“I…have heard that,” I said, as hesitantly as I could muster. I wanted to go into detail about how the oak galls–the result of special Sunsgrovian wasps laying their larvae inside oak trees–resulted in just the right shade of black that we prefer, kept its color even in sunlight, and dried quickly without running. I wanted to talk about how charcoal ink, what the Scholars had used for generations prior, was objectively awful and just didn’t feel right as you laid it down on the parchment.

I wanted to talk about all that…but decided it was perhaps best to keep my mouth shut. After all, my anonymity was my best asset in maintaining some semblance of casual conversation.

It would be a few more days to the border of Aisling, and of course farther still before we made it to the capital city, but already I felt like what awaited me there would shake the foundations of my long-held preconceptions.

That was exciting, of course! The belief among many is that we Scholars must always be right–something not helped by the Sentinels and their rather excessive doctrine.

But no, in truth, the goal of a Scholar is to be proven wrong so that we may find the truth. As the saying goes: “The Vale is hidden by convenient lies.” In other words, just because something is easy to accept doesn’t mean it’s true–and if it’s not true, our order has little use of it.

As our wagon lumbered on down the well-worn path, I dared a smile of my own. I felt like I would be confronted with some very hard-to-believe truths when I got to Arklow.

I was genuinely excited.