Home / House Wavir / Arriving in Balic
Arriving in Balic
Five minutes of reading now saves you an afternoon at the gate.
At the gate
At your first gate on the continent, and only the first, a clerk will ask, "What's your business?" It's the only interview you'll sit all trip, so answer all of it. You'll declare five things:
- Your business: why you're on Aerun.
- Your goods: anything you've brought to sell.
- Your metals: every ounce, buckles included.
- Your material components: anything a spell could be made from.
- Your exit city: the port you'll leave Aerun from.
After that, every gate simply checks the registry. It's one registry shared by every city, so your paperwork is always one step ahead of you.
Pick your exit port carefully
The fifth answer is the one visitors most often get wrong. Your bond follows your declaration, not you. Whatever the gate holds for you waits at the city you named. Change your plans halfway round the continent, and your sword and spell pouch will be waiting patiently on the wrong coast.
Changes are possible (a Guild factor, a fee, and a wait while the paperwork crosses the continent), but it's much cheaper to plan your route before you reach the table.
The scale: metal for water
All your metal (weapons, armor, buckles) is weighed, logged, and carried under Guild bond to your exit city, where you get it back on the way out. In exchange, the gate fills your water skins: water for metal, weight for weight, at the rate posted beside the scale that day.
Visitors from the north tend to grumble about this until about day three on the Ring Road, when it starts to look like the best deal on the continent.
The wax: your components
Material components are sealed in wax and logged in triplicate: one copy for the gate, one for the Guild, and one for you. They travel under bond to your exit city and wait for you there. Think of it as a coat check for your spells.
Aerunites take this seriously, so don't call it confiscation. Nothing is lost. It's simply handed back at the far end.
Nothing is taken. Everything is held. You leave the continent exactly as armed as you came to it.
The table: your coin
Your gold doesn't have to travel to your exit city at all. Change it at the gate table for local coin, at a rate a Reckoner sets and another Reckoner checks. It's honest, and it doesn't haggle.
| You put down | You pick up |
|---|---|
| 1 gold piece | 1 ceramic |
| 1 silver piece | 1 bone |
| 1 platinum piece | 1 obsidian, the black glass and the top coin on the continent |
Two house rules: be straight with the table, because every city shares the registry; and keep spellcasting off the streets, because casting in town with undeclared components is a serious offense here.
The heat, and the white hours
Aerun sits right on the equator, with the sun straight overhead. Midday on the Ring Road tops 120 degrees in the shade, and there isn't any shade.
So Aerun works in two shifts: busy mornings and lively evenings, with the white hours in between, when the cities close their shutters and everybody rests. Anything still moving in the open at noon is a lizard or a tourist who skipped this page.
The white hours are also contract time. Deals are read, revised, and signed while nobody can be traveling away from them, and the Reckoners do their best work between the noon bells.
Water is counted here, not poured. You'll be asked how much you're carrying before anyone asks your name. Locals consider this small talk.
Why nobody wears steel
Steel isn't banned, it's just impractical. Out here a breastplate at noon is a frying pan, and nobody can carry steel and enough water both. Aerunites wear bone, chitin, horn, hide, and good obsidian: light, cool, and cheap to replace. Show up in steel and everyone will know you're rich, foreign, and new. That's fine! Head straight for the scale.
Who runs Aerun
Three powers, and that's all you need to remember.
- The king in the south. Jak, the Administrator, keeps a Spáhus in every city: the "seeing-house" of his Spásistren, part guard house and part embassy. Nothing is worshipped there; most people just call it Jak's watch-house. They watch; they don't rule. (Your guide reaches you over Jak's Aura network.)
- The seven families. Merchant houses run the seven cities outright: Wavir in Balic, Tsalaxa in Draj, Inika in Gulg, Shom in Nibenay, M'ke in Raam, Vordon in Tyr, and Stel in Urik. There are no crowns on Aerun. A crown is an asset you can't sell.
- The Caravan Guild. No house, no city, no boss. The Guild's argosies haul everything on the Ring Road, and its skimmers are the only way across the silt. The Guild carries everyone. See The Caravan Guild.
Things you'll notice
- Disputes go to the arena. When two houses can't settle something on paper, they send champions into the arena, and the winning house takes the stakes. Every city has an arena, the bouts are the biggest show in town, and yes, you can bet. (Balic's is in the Arena Precinct.)
- There are no jails. A jail is a warehouse that eats, as Aerunites will tell you. Every sentence is served in the pits or in the arena, so mind the house rules above and keep your trip a spectator sport.
- There are no temples. "Where other lands raise temples, Aerun raises schools." The five Great Schools train the mind, and a School master is the most respected person in any city.
- Magic isn't popular. Ask any kid what made the gray interior and they'll tell you: wizards did. Keep your spellbook in your bag.
- Everyone has a wild talent. Nearly everyone born on Aerun has some small trick of the mind. Don't play cards with an Aerunite until you've watched them play.
- Blue eyes mean Spice. Heavy use of the Spice, the desert's ultimate luxury, turns the eyes a deep, even blue. It's the surest sign of serious money on the continent.
- Balic pays wages. Most cities don't: the other six run on slave labor and will walk you through the economics without blinking. The Guild crews free too, so there are no slaves aboard an argosy.
Where next
Now go see the city: Balic.