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Remote settlements are found all over the fringes of the civilized parts of the Greater Continent. Short duration mining towns, long duration villages; and of course the remote farming communities near dragon eeries which keep most of us(and the dragons) fed. Many of these can be quite difficult to reach. In Agras, a network of skilled bush pilots can get you just about anywhere. On the northern side of the High Mountains, things are a bit more challenging. Little aviation coupled with the low state of technological development in the remote provinces make your prospects very dim. The Biswon River is the artery of the region.
- Aren, Her People and Places
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Chapter 27:
Gau
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#27.1 – Saturday, the 9th day of the 11th month…
The town of Gau had exactly three businesses: the Porters* who ran the caravan, the hotel which doubled as housing for much of the population, and a fashionable restaurant called ‘Eats’.
Among Scarlet’s many eclectic interests, she liked to read about micro-states. There were hundreds of them dotted around the Greater Continent, with Gau numbered among them. Accessible only by river, it should technically be part of The Citadel†(considered a sovereign nation), but sat too far away to receive any services. That made Gau an island unto itself, with Eats clearly the center of town life. A bustling establishment that did a little of everything: restaurant, ice cream parlor, gift shop, and general store. In addition to serving meals at tables and a counter, the singular grizzled old woman who ran the place operated a market out of her store room.
Scarlet found the state of decay fascinating. She could see the remnants of a glassed-in atrium and tinted windows to block the desert sun. Most of the glass pains broke long ago, replaced by yellowing cardboard or dusty, wind-beaten bits of salvaged wood. Now, only an eight-seat counter and four tables served patrons, and much of the interior converted to retail space or just walls of aging boxes. It seemed feasible, in Scarlet’s mind, that the place had once been a respectable establishment.
Having experienced quite enough disappointment for the day, Scarlet swaggered right up to the counter, sat herself down, and waited to draw the attention of the wrinkled matron.
The woman, who was dressed in a faded apron over worn clothes, narrowed her eyes and squinted at Scarlet. Her posture stiffened and she pulled back a bit. “You’re new in town,” she remarked, a definite statement and not a question. “Here visitin’ family ‘rr somp’in?”
“I’m on my way to the Citadel,” Scarlet replied, giving the woman a bright smile.
The woman regarded her again with uncertainty. “Tain’t no one goes to the Citadel.”
“The Porters Caravan do,” Scarlet replied. “I booked passage online!”
The old woman rolled her eyes and nodded.
“Kin ay’ git you an’thin?” she asked.
“Could I see a menu?” Scarlet replied.
“Menu!” the old woman laughed. “Menu round these parts is dictated by what’s in the back. Supply barges be few’n far ‘etween. Lunch today is macaroni and cheese made with powdered milk and fruit cocktail on the side. Fruit’s expired ‘bout a month, but them tin’ll keep for years after the label say they gone off.”
“I… will have that,” Scarlet said.
Food, it seemed; while not a problem, would be neither fresh nor particularly interesting. But Scarlet told herself she could cope; she was on an adventure after all.
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* #27.2 *
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Scarlet proceeded to enjoy a lunch of cheesy goodness washed down with a side of fruit punch made from concentrate. Being a latchkey kid, She was no stranger to instant food. Her mother often lectured the family on the importance of fresh, home-cooked meals, usually during the approximately once a week the family ate a fresh, home-cooked meal. So it came as no surprise to Scarlet when the food served at Eats proved to taste pretty good after all.
She balked when Gretta, whom she’d still been referring to as ‘the old woman’ charged her seventeen wingbeats for the meal, but calmed down a little when Gretta explained the high costs of bringing supplies up the river, and Scarlet realized that, in all likelihood, at that price Gretta barely broke even.
Scarlet spent the afternoon sitting at the counter, reading her book and making small talk while Gretta flitted about, attending to her myriad of duties.
For an early dinner, Scarlet enjoyed tinned meats, dried onions, powdered eggs, and powdered cheese, which tasted lovely once mixed with water and appropriately fried.
Afterwards, she left to explore the town.
She checked in at Porters and had to explain to the dispatcher that, in point of fact, no, she had not booked passage ‘as a joke’ or ‘by mistake’. Once she’d convinced them of her seriousness, they told her what day the caravan expected to leave and when to be at the yard. She politely informed them of her rather sizable baggage, and the dispatcher agreed to send an employee down with a hand truck.
After that, Scarlet made a complete circuit of Gau, and got depressed with pretty much every foot of it. Naomi built Gau around about N.D. Eighty*, in Conri Jusenkyou’s lifetime. To modernize The Citadel, they needed a rail-link to the river.
Sometime since then, and Scarlet spent quite a lot time trying to figure out how best to phrase it in her field notes, the place really went to shit.
“No photonic-reactors,” Scarlet whispered into her voice recorder. “And just one gas station. The only working vehicles are the trucks belonging to the Porters Caravan.” She knew she didn’t need to be making notes about this desolate place, but telling the story of Gau made Scarlet feel like a real archeologist.
“Lot’s of abandoned and rusting cars,” Scarlet mumbled into the little digital device in her hand. “Demonstrates that, at least at one time, this was a thriving community. But aside from Porters, Eats, and the hotel; the only real industry is squatting in dilapidated houses and eking out enough to feed yourself by selling handicrafts to the riverboat passengers.”
Fearful someone might hear her rather unkind words, Scarlet elected to make the rest of her notes in her head. The roads, she discovered, were paved. But decades of desert sand had blown in and no one had the sense to remove it. A few inches of fine beige powder covered the cracked and crumbling asphalt, with cement curbs popping out here and there. The few houses that were still occupied were little more than shanties; their exact level of amenities determined by the resourcefulness of the home owner.
Scarlet observed hardly any utilities to speak of. Porters operated a large electrical generator which supplied power to their headquarters, the hotel, Eats, and a handful of homes. A sputtering, wheezing pump drew water from the river and filled a tower near Porters. Gravity then supplied water to anyone clever enough to keep their above-ground pipes maintained. There were remnants of what had once been a filtration system at the base of the tower, but this clearly no longer functioned.
Near the river the moist ground supported vegetation, but a few hundred yards inland the green gave way to desert. Walking a little ways out into this, Scarlet could find the occasional brick chimney or the edge of a slab coming out of the sand, and from these got a sense that the town at had once been about ten times it’s current size.
The largest building, besides Porter’s warehouse complex, was the ruins of the old train station. Scarlet explored this in earnest, hoping to find something to tell the story of how Gau came to be in such a dilapidated state. But she found nothing to speak off, guessing the place had been picked clean by scavengers. The roof looked long gone, caved in and rotted away, while here and there Scarlet found signs of walls being knocked down and the bricks hauled off. Whether for a decade or a century, it didn’t seem anyone spared a thought for this place in a long time.
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#27.3 – Monday, the 18th day of the 11th month…
Her nine days in Gau felt a lot like a prison sentence. Not really horrible, but keeping up-beat remained a challenge. On day five, one supply boat came, and Scarlet got the chance to enjoy a(very expensive) meal of fresh vegetables and meat.
At Eats, Scarlet saw very little sign of refrigeration. There had once been a walk-in freezer, but it seemed this broke down ages ago; and besides there wasn’t the electricity to run it. Gretta had one working ice machine, and a soft ice-cream maker. These were the extent of cold things. Winter on the Plains of Blood and Salt was mild, but that didn’t make it not a desert. Scarlet imagined the summers here were by no means pleasant.
There were no children in Gau. The total population? Just forty-seven, give or take a few sand rats who lived like hermits further up or down the river. The bulk of the population worked for Porters and lived at the hotel.
The rest of the month, the Porters employees worked the docks, though as Scarlet quickly grew to understand, this did not mean doing much. Gau was an incredibly boring slum; and while the caravan traveled year-round, the majority of the employees worked only seasonally. They had lives and sometimes families living in better communities down river, and would work three or six month stretches in this dismal place, counting every talon and every second until they could leave.
Only the Porters Dispatcher and Caravan Master lived here full-time, and were paid enough to have semi-decent accommodations. Still, the complete lack of amenities and high cost of everything would have taken its toll.
On her second to last night in Gau, Scarlet slept in her clothes. The last night, she didn’t sleep at all. After pacing and laying atop the bed for hours, she began preparing to leave at three in the morning. She took a final, very short shower(having been informed that the amenities along the caravan route could best be described as ‘spartin’), and tried to steel herself as best she could. Her bags were all packed, she’d triple checked the room for anything left behind, and spent the last hour waiting for the Porters employee who would come for her bags.
His name was Lance. He was dreamy. But Scarlet banished the thought from her head. She couldn’t be with a boy that much older than her, plus this one didn’t seem too bright. As he helped her load her bags onto a hand-truck, Lance told Scarlet about how he’d discovered the secret to good living, which Scarlet could best summarize as ‘lazyness’.
He monologued his entire life-story to Scarlet while carrying her bags to the caravan station, explaining that his three greatest passions were hunting, off-roading, and fishing. The Porters let him do two of the three and get paid for it(Scarlet had to guess “fishing” didn’t net him a paycheck), and still only kept him busy a few days out of every month. He spent the rest of his time on his four-by-four or out on the river.
“Even if gas is… crazy freaking expensive out here,” Lance said.
Perhaps ‘lazy’ wasn’t the most apt description; the young man certainly worked hard; he just worked hard at playing hard. In a strange way, Scarlet could relate; given the choice, she’d spend all day long on her passions if she could. Scarlet had to admit she envied him a little. He’d been living here for three years and seemed to have life all figured out.
The rest of the caravan crew were not quite as excited to meet her, Scarlet suspected because they were unhappy about having a passenger.
“I didn’t even know we still offered passenger service,” Lance told her.
“I paid for it on a website,” Scarlet felt a little dumb, given that her understanding of The Internet largely held that it to be a place of spells and fairies.
“The way I hear it, when the rail line shut down, they weren’t even running a passenger car,” Lance said. “But they still had a ticket counter and everything. My guess is the new owners of the company set up the web site, not knowing no one ever goes there anymore.”
“So, wait… then how does…?” Scarlet gestured at the caravan and all the supplies being loaded up. Giant bags of salt, crop seeds, glass jars, big spools of rope, more things than she could possibly list.
“I done a hundred of these, never once seen anyone from the Citadel,” Lance told her. “We make our run, drop the goods in a shelter at the base of the mountain. Then we load up the exports and take them back. I want to hike up to the gate, but we’re never there more than two hours.”
The caravan master, a barrel-chested chap known only as “Stu”, spent a solid fifteen minutes lecturing Scarlet on how the desert made no allowances and took no prisoners, and how, even though she’d paid her fare, she would still be expected to work, just like any other member of “HIS caravan”. Lance stood behind him and made funny faces the entire time. Scarlet didn’t hear much of Stu’s lecture; mostly she concentrated on not laughing.
Desert caravan trucks were monsters. Large transit vehicles weren’t seen in Arindell Proper, which used a light rail system to move goods around the city. Scarlet only ever saw vehicles like these on vacation, and the ones employed by Porters were something else. Scarlet could best describe it as the unholy union of a monster truck and a tractor trailer. Huge wheels, enormous front grills. They hand-painted each truck in the fleet with al elaborate motif, and decorated the cabs to look like a dragon’s head. On the doors a series of slash marks, rendered like claw scratches, tallied the number of runs each truck had completed.
The caravan would consist of twelve vehicles total: nine tractor-trucks each hauling two trailers, a fuel tanker, plus lead and follow cars. These were highly ruggedized vehicles themselves; the lead car would scout the road ahead for any problems while the follow car hung back in case of a break down. They weren’t there to assist, they were there to defend; or so the armed guards and fifty-caliber machine guns indicated.
Then came the nests. Situated high on the first and last trucks(since they weren’t going under any over-passes), each nest held scarily large mounted weapons and observers equipped with powerful binoculars. Being a bit of a military fan-girl, Scarlet tried to decide if they really were large guns or small cannons.
Stu went on to explain how the trucks would already be rolling by first-light, and would stop only once at mid-day to re-fuel and check oil levels. If the roads were favorable, they hoped to reach the first camp before sun-down.
“So if ya have to ‘go’, go NOW!” Stu commanded.
Since Porters had no passenger vehicles, Stu assigned Scarlet to ride in the cab of one of the massive trucks. She met the driver, a black-skinned Sindallese fellow named Ren Sato. He looked like he’d been roughly made from sun-hardened leather, but he was quick with a bright smile and a joke. When Stu knocked on his door, he welcomed Scarlet to the cab of his truck.
Even though she was tired from staying awake all night, Scarlet felt eager to get underway.
“Want to help me set up the rig?” Stu asked.
“Scarlet nodded excitedly,” Scarlet said. “Sorry. When I’m really tired I accidently say my actions. Yes, I would love to help!”
Stu handed Scarlet a tire gauge and showed her how to use it.
“Temperatures and pressures,” Stu said. “We have to check the oil all over the rig, look for any signs of leaks.”
“Is an oil leak bad?”
“In that you could die from one, yes.”
Just after the sun crested the distant mountains to the east, the caravan rumbled to life and set off.
Almost immediately, Scarlet felt a lump in her stomach. She’d meant to read, thinking that riding in a large truck would be not so much different from a train. But these trucks were former military models built for the Trans-Draconic Federation NavyP. They were designed to conquer the toughest terrain; not to give passengers a smooth ride.
“You sure got the yawns, half-pint,” Sato said. “You want to take the bed in the cabin?” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder.
As if on cue, at least three of the trucks eighteen wheels rolled over a large rock and jostled Scarlet in her seat. “I don’t think so. Shaking a bit too much for me; I’d rather have a window.”
“Well, ain’t much else to do,” Sato leaned forward and peered past the hood of his truck, trying to get a feel for the vehicle hundreds of yards ahead of them. “How about you clue me in as to how you find yourself in my cab?”
“Uhhh… ok, so, I really like to read,” Scarlet began.
After Scarlet brought Sato up to speed on her life’s story, he responded in kind. Sato, it turned out, was quite the traveling man. He’d run away from home at fourteen, and made the perilous overland journey from Sun’s Beacon to Korrinth. While the dragons of fearsome Demi Flight were now long extinct, the region they once ruled remained a dangerous and uninhabited place.
He’d spent his teen years in Sindall# where he’d apprenticed in ceramics, but found he didn’t much care for the bohemian lifestyle of artistic expression and bare survival that worked for the people of the outlands.
Going further north into Korrinth, he traveled by hitch-hiking on trucks and fell in love with the industry. By lying about his age, he got to start driving at seventeen. Now an experienced and skilled operator, Sato left Korrinth**(who’s trucking industry he said was dominated by a handful of large companies that paid poverty wages and recycled truckers like aluminum cans), Sato re-located to the Agras Plains at the age of twenty-two; though this time he could afford a plane ticket.
Working on the Agras Plains††, he quickly rose to the elite ranks of the long-haul truckers. He’d bought and sold several of his own rigs, ran a small company for a time, and even worked in wrecking and rescue on the treacherous roads of the Barrier Range++.
Around that time he started to develop an interest in long-range supply lines, operating ruggedized vehicles and delivering to extremely remote places. He told Scarlet how, while AtayaPP had a year-round barge route to the city of Arindell, large chunks of the country could only be accessed by driving over frozen lakes in winter. There were a few remote oil and gas exploration sites out there, but by and large the native Atayans relied on elite and daring drivers to bring in enough supplies each winter to keep them safe.
But after too many close calls on the frozen lakes, Sato took the Porters job, going into a sort of semi-retirement working six months on and six off. Finding he no longer liked the cold, he spent winters at Gau which were mild and cool, and where he could still drive long caravan trips; and summers in Sun’s Beacon where he led a heavy wrecker crew and worked when he pleased.
He’d married and had a few children, divorced, and still kept up with them. Over all, the man liked his life and had few regrets.
Scarlet, in turn, quickly found herself pouring out her soul to the old man(grandfatherly figures, it seemed, came into her life on a regular basis). She told him of her deep passion for history, her expedition, and eventually of her humiliations and victories in Arindell. Without crying for a change, she related the story of being dragged up the mountain, beaten, and tied to a post.
Sato, who had made friends with more than one dragon during his days, agreed that the situation should rightfully have terrified her, but quickly pointed out dragons do not, in point of fact, accept human sacrifices.
Anymore.
“Old fellow named Akkozz, big scary black black-earth dragon who liked to fly low and panic motorists,” Sato recalled. “Spelled it out for me a few years back: bad for the brand, he said. Sure, most flights with human populations demand tribute, and the banking industry is not above calling for it, but they didn’t want businesses trying to feed temp workers to them to get out of late payments.”
“Well, I know that NOW,” Scarlet huffed. “But I mean, come on, all the dragonology books go on and on about it.”
“Just because the banks don’t want businesses feeding them temps, doesn’t mean many don’t still try.”
A bit before high noon, the caravan came to a stop. They’d done well fuel-wise, but one of the trucks seemed to be extra thirsty and Stu the Caravan Master decided they would stop early to top everyone off and fit a reserve-tank.
After helping Sato check the thousand and one little things a truck needed checking, they waited around outside the vehicle and Scarlet took the opportunity to stretch her legs.
She made note of Sato taking measurements with a sextant, compass, and watch, and then observed as he went over to Stu and had a brief argument. While the Caravan master looked mad(der than usual), he yelled to the crew.
“Lunch on the road! We are wheels-rolling in five!”
Once the mighty engines had gotten under way again, Scarlet inquired about the incident.
“Checking our progress,” Sato explained. “Turns out we were about an hour behind where we should have been. If we’d stopped for a meal, we’d be rolling into camp an hour after sunset.”
“Ah,” Scarlet nodded, fiddling with Sato’s sextant. “I thought you guys had odometers and maps and stuff?”
“The odometer isn’t that reliable on a trip like this,” Sato gestured. “You’ve got rocks, jars, wheel-slippage, remember it’s based on how many times the wheel turns, not gyroscopics. And it’s a mechanical element, so it doesn’t take too kindly to rough terrain.”
“So how does this work?” Scarlet asked, holding up tool. “I thought these things were used by boats and stuff. Not, well, pardon the expression: land-boats.”
Sato rolled down Scarlet’s window.
“Stick your head out there and take a look at five o’clock,” he instructed.
“It’s a little after noon,” Scarlet replied helpfully.
Sato smirked at her, then pointed. “Twelve o’clock, three o’clock, six o’clock, nine o’clock,” he said, pointing in each direction. “Lean out the window a little and look at five o’clock.”
Scarlet did as instructed and spotted something strange glowing above the horizon, almost like a second sun.
“High Mountain,” Sato confirmed. “It’s so tall you can see it from nearly everywhere on the continent, unless you’re at an angle where another mountain is blocking it. Closer on you have to check at night, but out here you can sight on it by day.”
He pointed to the sextant in Scarlet’s lap. “See the white bit on the end there? That’s called an artificial horizon. You use that in the sighting. Take a compass heading off the sun and another off High Mountain, measure the distance between the two, and check the time. You can then use a little geometry to figure out exactly where you are.
“Gets even easier at night, where you can use guide-stars to get even more precise points. You can use those to identify other mountain peeks and then you really start to close in”
“I… may have failed Remedial Math,” Scarlet said. “Twice.”
“People have been navigating the Greater Continent this way since the Mage Wars,” Sato informed her. “Sit back and listen a bit, and I’m gonna teach you everything you need to know, and I guarantee you’ll remember it forever.”
Over the next few hours, Scarlet absorbed more math than she had in seven and a half years of compulsory education.
Using a series of mental tricks, mnemonic devices, and entertaining rhythms, Sato could do very complicated geometry in his head. The kind of things most people would need a graphing calculator and several sheets of paper to accomplish.
The real trick, he explained, was being able to keep the map in your head, to visualize your place on it in relation to the guide stars, the position of the sun, and of course High Mountain.
“In many ways, you’re lucky,” Sato explained. “Living in the mountain’s shadow, you can always have an easy time finding your way home.”
“I don’t know if I’ll always live there,” Scarlet commented.
“You will,” Sato assured her. “You are inexorably bound to the place. You’ll go on many journeys, but you will always return to the city by the mountain.”
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