by Dorromee Ado, Grand Scholar, the Central Guilds, Tarnath
Dorromee Ado, Grand Scholar, the Central Guilds, Tarnath
Kalkix 53, SP~5,021
The Sojourners are a kind of meta-division within the GERC, a group that blends a touch of scout and cartographer with a dash of masochistic derring-do. They recruit from all other disciplines, Guilds, and fields of research so that they can effectively investigate all types of phenomena.
The Sojourners are named for exploration, and they use a variety of approaches. This can mean mapping out the continent, or accompanying other researchers to Strange & Far Away Lands. It sometimes means plumbing the depths of Ethem’s lung (one of the many “organs” that are responsible for natural phenomena across the hibernating creature that is our planet), going into the woods to find out who made that horse the size of a barn, or inspecting the strange Sorcerous qualities that seem to be embedded in the laws in Naldrin.
It is in large part because of the Sojourners that maps exist of the oceanic spines, vast tracts of turbulent Six-State Energetic “storms” that span unbroken from south to north in the oceans on either side of Tamarra. These spines have been Tamarra’s barriers to the known world for millennia, as they prevent any ships or other vehicles from passing them. The Sojourners constructed Energetic dampening vessels that allowed them to ride the (extraordinarily dangerous) outskirts of the western and eastern spines over the course of about one month.
The information that the Sojourners collected on the Energetic signatures contained within the spines are not a matter of public record, but they did release maps of the spines’ back-and-forth wendings as part of their public cartographic archives. Many people on Tamarra considered the spines the borders of the worlds, and why wouldn’t they have? But everything changed when the Nulentians attacked. This invasion of an unknown race from the seas to the east made a lot of people question their conception of what the world was – and that is a story for another day.
The head of the Sojourners is Lihanu, a heolas Mystic/Umbrist whose name translates to “The Half-Lit Moon.” While hsur* ageless heolas face would never show it, Lihanu is supposedly quite old – perhaps over 100 – and has traveled to a distant northern plateau beyond the Icy Wastes, a place known as Ethem’s plexus. Few have traveled to the plexus, but it is rumored to be a place where Tamarra meets with eight other continents. If true, this might allow for travel to other parts of the world without having to circumvent the spines.
* The gender-neutral pronoun used for heola.