Some­thing crashed in the night.

Eloise scowled. Half past two in the morn­ing. Anoth­er crash from down­stairs, then sev­er­al echo­ing clangs, like a ket­tle dropped down steps. A muf­fled rum­ble of rau­cous ado­les­cent chortling.

Eloise tore away her bed­clothes, stomped for the door, night­gown flap­ping.

She stamped bare­foot down the pan­eled stair­case, set foot on the cold hall­way tile. Light flick­ered under the kitchen door. Muf­fled laugh­ter came from with­in. Laugh­ter, and some ani­mal snuf­fling. Eloise scowled. She seized the knob and pushed through.

“Sagle, what in the Lord’s good name is…” She trailed off. Con­fu­sion deep­ened the lines of her face. She rubbed her eyes, gaw­ped at what had become of the kitchen.

At the kitchen table, strewn with cut­lery, plates, and jarred goods, sat two boys in their lat­er teenage years, mop-head­ed and still dressed in their coats, scarves, and boots. It was not the boys that drew Eloise’s stare, how­ev­er, but the three crea­tures seat­ed with them.

They resem­bled a trio of small men uncon­vinc­ing­ly dressed as large otters, or per­haps thin bears. Four-foot glossy-black beasts with elbow-y arms and nim­ble fin­gers capped in stout claws. One was, at that moment, pass­ing a green and most­ly emp­ty bot­tle to Sagle, snuf­fling. Anoth­er drunk­en­ly lapped salt peanuts from a jar with an obscene­ly long pink tongue. The third was ges­tur­ing com­pli­cat­ed­ly to the first, clawed fin­gers twist­ing intri­cate shapes in air. It grunt­ed for empha­sis, seem­ing to indi­cate that it had noticed Eloise’s appear­ance.

“What?” sput­tered Eloise. “Sagle! What are those?” She ges­tured, night­gown cuffs flap­ping.

“Ah, Mum,” drawled the pim­ply Sagle, drunk­en­ly. “Meet my new friends!” He pat­ted the near­est crea­ture on its nar­row back. The fur­ry per­son­age turned, flared his nose, and per­formed some com­pli­cat­ed series of ges­tures at Eloise, cul­mi­nat­ing with a stuck-out tongue and a salu­ta­to­ry touch of its head, as if tip­ping a cap.

“Friends? These are ani­mals.” Eloise swept for­ward, shoo­ing. “Out, out! Out of my kitchen, you bad­gers!”

“Mas­ter Eloise, please!” slurred the oth­er boy, stand­ing and rais­ing his dirty hands. “They are not bad­gers. They are trav­el­ing gen­tle­men!” He ges­tured at crea­tures, who had tak­en up cloth bags, exot­i­cal­ly embroi­dered, and seemed sheep­ish­ly ready to leave. All five sets of eyes, two human and three brown-gold and watery, eyed the woman. “Look, they have lug­gage. They are gen­tle­men.”

“Since when do gen­tle­men have fur? And where have they trav­eled from?” Eloise huffed, cross­ing her arms. “At that, where did you find them?”

“They are vis­i­tors from the sea, Mum,” urged Sagle. “We met them at the docks. They came in a very nice square boat.”

“Square boat? Pah! Trav­el­ers. Not trav­el­ers, then.  Drunk­en for­eign­ers!”

“No, no,” Sagle’s friend shook his head, smil­ing. “They’re not vagrants. Not at all.” He grinned. “And they were not drunk until we took them to the Eagle.”

At this, there was a crash. Eloise flinched. A ceram­ic crock rolled into view. Yet anoth­er crea­ture emerged, stag­ger­ing quadrupedal from the larder with a pint of bock. He crawled up on a stool and yanked off the cork with a con­fi­dent pop. One of his fel­lows ges­tured, claws flick­ing, and offered a bowl to be filled. They drank, mess­i­ly, ges­tur­ing between gulps and frothy snort­ing.

“How many of them are there?” exclaimed Eloise.

“Just these,” Sagle said. “The oth­ers went off with oth­er crowds. They’re very pop­u­lar.”

“I sim­ply can’t imag­ine how,” grum­bled Eloise, she glared at the rapid­ly grow­ing mess of spilled drink.

“Oh, it’s sim­ple. They’re rich.”

“R-rich?”

“Yes. Very.”

“Rich in what? Acorns?”

Sagle pat­ted the crea­ture beside him, who turned com­pan­ion­ably, blink­ing. “Show us one of those gem­stones, good man,” he said, and dug out a sil­ver pen­ny, to illus­trate. The fur­ry per­son made a wag­gle of sticky claws and, clum­si­ly, opened the draw­string of his exot­ic pouch. Eloise gog­gled at what glit­tered inside.

An emer­ald the size of a grape clacked on the table­top. All the fur­ry crea­tures began ges­tur­ing, con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly.

“That’s a-”

“See? They’re rich.”

“Oh.” Eloise’s tone changed. She stepped for­ward, plucked up the gem­stone. The bear-otter crea­tures seemed not to mind. It twin­kled, crys­tal clear, save for shin­ing gold inclu­sions. “They,” said Eloise, weigh­ing it in her hand. “They would­n’t be seek­ing lodg­ings, would they?”

Pied­mont stood on the embassy steps, umbrel­la in hand. Chilly spring­time driz­zle lent a grey shine to the impe­r­i­al con­crete grandeur of Gov­er­nance Lane.

Beside him stood an offi­cial in a navy suit and a black silk sash: The offi­cial mark of a Crown Par­lia­men­tar­i­an. Under her umbrel­la, held by a uni­formed aide beside, she bore a look of prim antic­i­pa­tion. Her fin­gers twitched. Com­pli­cat­ed ges­tures.

Pied­mont broached a smile. “I’d, uh, like to thank you again for arrang­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty, Sir.”

She glanced at him. “Wal­lace, you know my posi­tion. Thank the envoys. They hold an… eager­ness that out­weighs my cau­tion.” She pursed her lips,  main­tained an eye on the street. It was block­ad­ed by mount­ed, dec­o­ra­tive­ly steel-encrust­ed offi­cers, armed and state­ly. “As do you.”

“They are sim­ply as inter­est­ed in us as we are in them. Do you dis­trust that?”

“Not as much.”

“Then why your cau­tion?”

“Whether their curios­i­ty is inno­cent or not, human­i­ty’s cer­tain­ly isn’t. You recall what became of their first diplo­mat­ic mis­sion?”

“Yes,” said Pied­mont, weari­ly. “The Alagórans put them in a zoo.”

“Thus my hes­i­tance.”

“You dis­trust their lack of dis­trust.”

“I am con­cerned by it. Con­cerned for them, and about them: After being robbed and treat­ed as beasts, they come again to the shores of our world with open arms? Trust­ing only that a mis­sion to the North might prove friend­lier than to the South? Con­cerned, yes. And cau­tious.”

“Do you think they are deceiv­ing us?”

“No, not as much as that.”

“Then sure­ly, this is a chance to prove our Firl­ish excep­tion­al­ism.” Pied­mont enclosed Firl­ish excep­tion­al­ism with a par­o­d­ic tone.

The MP shut her eyes briefly. “That is what I am try­ing to con­vince my col­leagues of. They, how­ev­er, are tempt­ed by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of imme­di­ate trade. Which I dis­cour­age, giv­en our lack of con­crete infor­ma­tion.”

“Tempt­ed by all those flow­ing gem­stones.”

“Yes, which the bears seem equal­ly will­ing to spend.” She pinched her nose, winc­ing. “The envoys, rather.”

“Do they look like bears, to you?” said Pied­mont.

“For­give my lapse, Wal­lace. I know they are not ani­mals.”

“I know you know.” He smiled. “I was mere­ly going to put in that I believe they’re more like otters. Rather adorable.”

“Their appear­ance is indeed dis­arm­ing.” The MP smirked briefly. She glanced past Pied­mont, eyes flit­ting past the mount­ed guards and dec­o­rat­ed rows of state build­ings. To the ornate, shut gate and stat­ued arch­es at the lane’s end, wet with rain. Idly, she mas­saged her palms, run­ning her fin­gers through a mimed series of ges­tures, briefly touched the pate of her pinned hair. She repeat­ed the sequence.

“Sign lan­guage com­ing on well?” said Pied­mont, notic­ing.

“Well enough,” she said, weari­ly, quit ges­tur­ing. “I will be able to greet them. Dunne will han­dle the rest.”

“Your trans­la­tor.”

“Yes. Alas, the sign is anoth­er obsta­cle to my aims. She is good, and has learned remark­ably fast, but these folk are… already so alien. Their lan­guage even more so. I feel my words will not take hold, regard­less of her skill. Some­times, I can­not tell if their igno­rance is hon­est, due our clum­si­ness, or will­ful.” She turned to Pied­mont, briefly. “Even a room­ful of älves would be eas­i­er, I’m sure you’d agree.”

“It would.” He smiled.

Down the lane, a drone of high­land pipes roared to life, herald­ing the pro­ces­sion’s arrival. A clat­ter of horse­shoes gained. The gates creaked wide, admit­ting a glossy black car­riage and an escort of tow­er­ing cav­al­ry. They bore cer­e­mo­ni­al par­ti­zans dan­gling with tas­seled lamps; swing­ing, glow­ing blue and dif­fuse in the driz­zle. The MP straight­ened. Pied­mon­t’s eyes bright­ened. They watched the sway­ing lamps near down the vast, offi­cious lane.

“You mean to cau­tion, them, I sup­pose?” said Pied­mont, loud, over the pipes.

“I do. If we are to avoid anoth­er trav­es­ty, I must con­vince them to wran­gle up their roam­ing ’emis­saries’ at once. They can explore our cities in time. But for now, they only put them­selves at risk. They will be exploit­ed if things con­tin­ue as they are.”

The car­riage neared. Foot­men emerged from the embassy with a stepped mount­ing block and placed it beneath the car­riage door as the wheels stilled. Fur­ry, indis­tinct shapes shift­ed behind the fogged, small win­dows. From the car­riage dis­mount­ed a red-cuffed sergeant at arms, who, grip­ping the dec­o­rat­ed door, announced: “The hon­or­able del­e­gates from far Tefelk.” All bowed as the del­e­gates emerged.

They descend­ed, ten­ta­tive­ly, like otters from an ocean grot­to. Four of them, pick­ing their way, shroud­ed by foot­men’s umbrel­las, down to the wet flags. Some wore a smat­ter­ing of Firl­ish clothes—small pinned hats, waist­coats, and gloves—and all clutched embroi­dered cloth-of-gold bags. They stood, some bipedal, oth­ers with but a sin­gle paw raised, flick­ing away water, appear­ing for all the world like a lot of con­fused, cos­tumed mar­mots.

Behind exit­ed the fly­away Dunne, who, acquir­ing the del­e­gates’ atten­tion and direct­ing it towards the MP, made intro­duc­tions.

Rapt, Pied­mont watched the offi­cial’s signed greet­ing, which fin­ished with a touch of the pate. He did so as well, smil­ing. The del­e­gates returned the ges­ture some­what absent­ly.

“Gen­tle­men, if you would fol­low me,” she smiled, sign­ing the same.

The del­e­gates burst with activ­i­ty. Snuf­fling, sign­ing, tug­ging the tired Dun­ne’s trouser leg for atten­tion, they fol­lowed up the embassy steps.

Back down the lane echoed the hoof­beats of a sin­gle rid­er. The MP, con­sumed in help­ing Dunne with the fum­bling, pos­si­bly drunk­en, fur­ry del­e­gates over the tall steps, did not notice.

Pied­mont frowned. He broke from the lot at a brisk pace to inter­cept the rid­er. He stopped on the road and motioned for her as she, rain-drenched, reined to a halt near­by the idling cav­al­ry. The rid­er was an embassy attaché. She dis­mount­ed and thrust a wet-spot­ted let­ter at Pied­mont, speak­ing. “Urgent, from the Port Author­i­ty.”

Pied­mont tore it open, read. His face slack­ened, then hard­ened. His heels clat­tered up the embassy steps, then stopped, stum­bling, to walk beside the hen­pecked MP. “From the port author­i­ty,” he indi­cat­ed the let­ter. The MP frowned, glanc­ing irri­tat­ed­ly away from the clam­or­ing del­e­gates. “Ships are launch­ing for Tefelk,” sum­ma­rized Pied­mont. “With Tefelkan nav­i­ga­tors aboard.”

“No,” mouthed the MP. She stopped, glanced at the crea­tures, who con­tin­ued on with­out her, deep in con­ver­sa­tion with flus­tered Dunne. She frowned, lip curled.

Pied­mont gog­gled at her. “So they have giv­en them­selves away? Are they so incau­tious?”

“Worse. I believe they are des­per­ate.” She stepped as if to rejoin them.

“Wait,” said Pied­mont, hur­ried­ly. “Des­per­ate for what? What haven’t you men­tioned?”

She looked back at him. “They are more like us than you know, Wal­lace.”

Pied­mont blinked at her. “How? They’re not in a posi­tion to loot our world. We are, for theirs.”

Fast, she spoke, glanc­ing back at the depart­ing entourage. “That’s because we sus­pect their world is ruined, Wal­lace. And they assume ours is not.”

Beck­on­ing for her umbrel­la, she spoke once more before depart­ing. 

“They are not fool­ish ani­mals, but hope­less ones.”

In the mild autumn of 3.444, aliens land­ed on the balmy shore of penin­su­lar Alagór. Aliens in boxy arks with sails bat­tened like webbed fin­gers. Fur­ry, wet-eyed, long-tongued crea­tures, rem­i­nis­cent of otters or long-bod­ied bears. Most­ly starved, they fell upon the cypress-scent­ed olive towns in an excit­ed gag­gle, dri­ven to root and scav­enge like the ani­mals they so resem­bled. And in lit­tle time, they encoun­tered Lit­toran civ­i­liza­tion. *

The for­tu­nate were allowed to trade. Trade great, inex­plic­a­ble paw­fulls of gem­stones brought with them on their arks in bags of gold thread for mea­ger sup­per. Silent­ly, clum­si­ly, they trad­ed, for the aliens spoke not words but queer ges­tures unrec­og­nized by the Alagóran coun­try­folk as any­thing more intel­li­gent than the paw­ing and groom­ing of cats. The trade pro­ceed­ed only briefly; only as long as the alien bear-things could be extort­ed of their gems, whose val­ue they seemed not to under­stand.

The mis­for­tu­nate met sor­row­ful ends. The lucky among them were caught, robbed, and caged in nation­al zoos, where they lived as mis­er­able spec­i­mens of anoth­er world a short while before expir­ing. The unlucky were, appear­ing to sim­ple humankind as mere beasts, sim­ply shot as curi­ous game.

Those few that remained gath­ered what goods they could aboard two arks and struck off again across the track­less sea.

To this day, there remain alien arks of for­eign tim­ber molder­ing on the shores of Alagór. The few schol­ars to have ana­lyzed them found writ­ings there. Scrolls, that, once deci­phered over many ardu­ous years of trans­la­tion, told of a once-proud and art­ful peo­ple. A mute species reduced to des­per­ate indi­gence by a dis­as­ter of their own cre­ation, dri­ven to find a new home on the shores of oth­er worlds. Refugees come from a won­drous ruin of a land.

A land the trans­la­tors named Tefelk. **

The present day

For long years, schol­ars, explor­ers, and banks Coast­wide sought eager­ly alien, gem-rich Tefelk. As the arks fad­ed from pub­lic mem­o­ry, as most for­got what fore­bod­ing words they deci­phered from the Tefelka­n’s scrolls, the rich and the greed­some sought Tefelk.

And, after half a decade of fruit­less spec­u­la­tion and lost expe­di­tions past the seas of the world, the Tefelka­ns returned.

In the spring of 3.449, they came upon the docks of cold and drea­ry Fir­lund. Again weary, again starved. Again with their stom­achs hol­low and the lus­tre fad­ed from their silken otters’-fur, they plunged into North­ern cities with a gus­to to trade, eat, and social­ize undi­min­ished by the fail­ures and hor­ror of half a decade ago.

And the North­ern­ers, them­selves a strange and often fur­ry lot, hailed them as for­eign gen­tle­men. Hailed them with a wor­ri­some­ly unin­hib­it­ed con­vivi­al­i­ty. Unmit­i­gat­ed by cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic, and anatom­i­cal bar­ri­ers, they took the Tefelka­ns among them, and as guides quick­ly found com­mon­al­i­ty in sim­ple uni­ties: Food. Strong drink. Music. Lots of each. Enjoyed while part­ing the aliens all the while from their glit­ter­ing, high-carat mon­ey. It was a wel­come made warm, doubt­less due to those gem­stones which flowed aplen­ty from the new­com­er’s cloth-of-gold purs­es.

And even as they were sub­tly robbed, the Tefelka­ns pur­sued their explo­ration with fer­vor. Inter­est­ed less in the estab­lish­ment of cogent com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but more with the expan­sion of their fur­ry emis­saries expe­ri­ence into all facets of North­ern soci­ety. They were there to explore, to inves­ti­gate. To sur­vey new lands.

Only after two months of explo­rative carous­ing, after mul­ti­ple emis­saries’ deaths and sev­er­al arks sud­den­ly depart­ed again from Firl­ish shores, did the Tefelka­ns make any attempt at for­mal, diplo­mat­ic rela­tions. They began to coop­er­ate with Crown Acad­e­my lin­guists’ attempts at decod­ing their curi­ous sign lan­guage.

As dia­logues with Tefelkan del­e­gates grew fruit­ful, sev­er­al points of infor­ma­tion became clear. First, the Tefelka­ns owned some opaque rea­son for their near­ly-sui­ci­dal explo­ration, a rea­son they either will­ing­ly or inno­cent­ly refused to dis­close. Sec­ond, the del­e­gates’ fore­most goal was to obtain pos­si­bly retroac­tive per­mis­sion to land sev­er­al more waves of arks. Third, they enquired cease­less­ly about oth­er Coastal ter­ri­to­ries and nations, seem­ing­ly in an attempt to recruit more allies and friend­ly land­ing zones.

For all three points, the Firls could gain no elab­o­rate detail from the Tefelkan del­e­gates, who reli­ably lapsed into a sort of faux good-natured inep­ti­tude when ques­tioned fur­ther.

The Firl­ish Crown held no trust for this ruse. Giv­en knowl­edge of the omi­nous scrolls left by the first, failed wave of arks, Firl­ish diplo­mat­ic pol­i­cy set­tled on a sort of polite stale­mate: Pend­ing fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion, they would host the Tefelka­n’s indef­i­nite­ly, but would sanc­tion nei­ther fur­ther refugee land­ings nor facil­i­tate intro­duc­tions to allied nations.

This ulti­ma­tum was made under the good-faith guise of pro­tect­ing the Tefelka­ns from neigh­bor­ing nations, whose com­par­a­tive greed the Firls empha­sized to no end.

greed

Faced with an intran­si­gent and cau­tious Crown, the Tefelka­ns made new allies: Banks, trade com­mis­sions, and pri­vate investors.

They sold the price­less route to leg­endary Tefelk to any and all who could promise trans­port to and from that vaunt­ed land of sup­posed rich­es. The gave up their world, seem­ing­ly with­out care for the like­ly influ­ence of vora­cious, eager­ly-colo­nial pow­ers. They cared only for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of escape for their coun­try­men left behind.

Now, count­less expe­di­tions launch for Tefelk, bear­ing with them fur­ry alien nav­i­ga­tors strange­ly eager to betray their hid­den world.

the truth

Only the Tefelka­ns know the whole truth.

They are alto­geth­er more like Lit­toran folk than they let on. In their fur­ry heads, they are aware of their nec­es­sary decep­tion, of their will­ful cam­ou­flage of idio­cy and ali­en­ness.

They pro­ceed with their nigh self-destruc­tive explo­ration, for they are utter­ly des­per­ate. They are the faith­ful few, cho­sen by a wan­ing civ­i­liza­tion and sent, expend­ing pre­cious dwin­dling resources, to acquire, by any means, deliv­er­ance.

For Tefelk—wondrous, gem-filled Tefelk—is a ruin.

A world destroyed. Burnt to near noth­ing. Adrift between wilder worlds by the same means and in the same fash­ion as the Coast was in antique days by the Ancient Nôr. Hence, the poor bear-like Tefelka­ns are more like mankind than mankind yet knows.

And, thus far, they have suc­ceed­ed. They have lured ships by the dozens along the hid­den ocean­ic gaps between worlds. Lured ships’ that will find not a land of plen­ty ripe for exploita­tion, but a bare­ly-extant wreck of coast­line and a starv­ing pop­u­lace clung to a dying, van­ish­ing land.

notes

The con­cept of Tefelk is one I have kicked around for quite a while (and it is, main­ly, a con­cept; one I will con­tin­ue to edit and tweak.) Sad­ly, it’s one I won’t be able to sub­ject my play­ers to, as they will have read it here in due time.

It’s sort of a con­tin­u­a­tion of the idea of a negadun­geon (nega-expe­di­tion?) Play­ers may be lured to Tefelk either by greed, or by a moral imper­a­tive to pre­vent ram­pant colo­nial greed. Either way, as they find more info, it will become increas­ing­ly clear that noth­ing good will ever come of con­tact with Tefelk. It’s a trap:

• Going to the ruined world itself just nets you a year-long voy­age to a dwin­dling hellscape, with hor­ri­fy­ing­ly lit­tle pos­si­bil­i­ty of mak­ing it back to the Coast.
• Extort­ing the des­per­ate Tefelka­ns amounts to has­ten­ing the extinc­tion of a sapi­ent race.
• Deal­ing with the Tefelka­ns will lead to them reveal­ing exis­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous tech­nol­o­gy (the likes of which the Ancient Nor almost wrecked the world with.) The Tefelka­ns realise their mis­take, of course, but human­i­ty has too much hubris not to make the same mis­takes twice.

Some­thing will end up hor­ri­ble or moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble, at the end. Enjoy.

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Con­sid­er becom­ing a sup­port­er of Incunab­u­li on Patre­on.

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