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“Maybe I’m just being selfish here,” you said, “But if there’s gonna be a war anywhere- and honestly, I’d be fine if there wasn’t one- it ought to be towards the west. The Utopians had been messing around too much for too long, and Vitelia’s all broken up against itself anyways. So why not crush them, since they’re such a problem, and they’re so easy to get rid of? All they’ve done since the Grossreich was formed was seethe over there and get their asses kicked whenever they got uppity. May as well put the lid on them for good.”
“Not an uncommon sentiment,” Winnifred said, “But yes, even Alexander decided against conquering them. Whether it was out of respect for their culture or the difficulty of purging it, or perhaps that he wished for the properity of western trade to not be diminished during times without the Iceforth, he never made clear. Perhaps he was simply not fond of the climate, or of being near a potential edge of the world, as was the continuous source of good and bad fortune both for the Vitelians themselves.”
“Well, if I were Kaiser Henrik, I’d know where to steer different from where my ancestor did.” You made an inviting gesture. “Now, I said what I thought, now you say yours.”
“Hm.” Winnifred raised her eyebrows, not particularly certain herself, but it turned out to be for different reasons. “It will be west, but not towards Vitelia, I think.”
“Huh?” You had to think about what else there was. Not Zhantao, certainly, with the Iceforth blowing. “What, northwest? What’s even up there? A bunch of gulf hicks whose neighbors beat on them for fun? Are the Altskeggi hiding a huge pile of gold while they’re freezing their asses off in their fjords?”
She shook her head. “They have been unimportant for much of this century’s history. However. In recent times,” Winnifred began to tell you, “There’ve been breakthroughs in observation of certain forces. Incrementally small things that give us glimpses into how Velekam lives and breathes, how it turns in Aether. In a time where we thought the world all but charted, there will be a new age of exploration. That is what lies to the northwest, that so many are so interested in. The lost methods of the Inferno Mass, for example, the terror of the Emrean War’s twilight. The Fealinnese were looking into such things, and their secret projects have been recently uncovered. Strange investigations that have been made into Vynmark, as well, with the Caelussian Federation sparking their current troubles with Naukland over something so seemingly worthless as control over a country they already had profitable trade with, to further the aims of a puppet made up of malformed cultists.”
