JustinPosada

The scenic route to the rookery is comprised of a slow degradation of quality in both architecture and civil hygiene. The nearer we get, the more damp it becomes; a direct result of being parallel to the riverside trade docks. The confetti that had been so plentiful in the mid and uptowns is lesser here. The few pieces that had haphazardly found their way cling to the moist walls and trampled pavement, the wetness washing their colors away and leaving them dull and pastel in nature. Myrrine, having taken point, one handedly unfurls the paper with the mission details, her eyes bouncing back and forth between it and the marked addresses on structures that we pass. She slows her horse and looks back at the lot of us shadowing her. She motions to her left with a tilt of her head. “That one there,” she says. I look at the building. A feeble two story housing unit plagued with excessive wood rot and a slanted pergola above the front steps. The windows are fogged

We approach Shiozh on horseback through the misty western ends of The Rolling Lows. The roads leading to town are mudridden, and we’ve passed a good three carriagers or so that were either bogged in the mud or repairing their wheels. I had no envy for travelers taking to the hills by wheel. It was always either raining or snowing, and if they weren’t familiar with the arching roads of the Lows, they were doomed. The tallgrass expanses that blanket these lands are dulled in color for the season: an almost gray blue under the sunless slate tinged skies and wet frigid air. They stretch for miles on end, to where the mountains of High Maw on the horizon meet them, ebbing and flowing on the whimsy of the north winds. The nearer they are to the mountains, the more frostbitten they become, blending into the steely ice capped crags with a precise pallet that only nature could muster. Few and far between you would come across small villages or single farms along The