Alliances, Arrivals, and an Island Above the Water

The alliance between Forgivers and EmpireOfNorthHelm was sealed this day, and the Chronicle notes that it began, by the duck's own accounting, on something close to a whim. Don Quackles had wandered into NorthHelm's walls after long days of travel across savannas and unnamed coasts, Onion the axolotl riding in a bucket and a horse named Rupert newly acquired somewhere along the road, and found the empire's scale worth pausing over. Allies and vassals, more than Forgivers has yet collected, and a leader in The_WitherKing_ who offered congratulations on a hundred Renowns with the ease of someone who does not need to perform graciousness. They talked a little. Don Quackles proposed the alliance. The_WitherKing_ agreed. Whether the treaty is weightier for being signed casually or lighter for it, the record does not adjudicate. What it notes is that the two lands had circled each other in letters and trade proposals for several days before the duck simply walked through the gate and asked. A formal correspondence, an informal conversation, and a signed agreement: the Chronicle has seen slower diplomacy accomplish less.

On the same journey, Don Quackles found something the record is glad to receive. Traveling on water with Rupert and Onion, he saw what he first took for a large rock, then for a sizable chunk of stone, and then understood to be neither. It was an island, floating. He could not see the end of it from where he stood. No record names who built it or when, and the duck did not claim to know. He named it Terra Nubes, cloud and earth folded into two words, and the Chronicle sets the name down. Whether this is a remnant of the old world or something the present age produced without a record of its making, no one can yet say. That Don Quackles was first to name it, at least among those the Chronicle can hear, is what the record can confirm.

The rest of his travels this day have the shape of a survey: a banished man's abandoned house near the border of Alstroemeria, a greeting wall, a sign reading Duckling House that stopped him mid-stride, a house he describes as warm belonging to Ren and Marie. He moved through other lands the way a creature does when it is looking at the map it will eventually need to know. The vow against fishing has been set aside again, formally this time, because the land's coffers have thinned and the duck's capitalist nature will not be argued out of a reliable income. The Chronicle counts this as the fourth occasion on which the vow has not held, and leaves it there.

In EmpireOfNorthHelm, Harper Serene turned south rather than north for once, following curiosity to a coast he had not seen before. What he found offshore was large enough to stop him: lush forests, frozen peaks, a volcanic crater, and sky islands rising above all of it. He took note of its scale and drew what seems to be an honest conclusion, that a place like this is not a solo venture. He is thinking about a guild of adventurers, and has not yet decided how to find them. The island itself has no name in the record yet, and no land has claimed it. It waits.

The thief who has been moving through EmpireOfNorthHelm's streets is not named in today's telling, and the Chronicle does not name what it cannot confirm. The record only notes that the problem has not resolved itself.

Further out in the realm, Stonehollow's Zeta Arkane has spoken more plainly about what the Great Reset did to Arkadia. Weeks of searching through silent halls, and she was the last one left. The silver oak and the bonds it stood for exist now only in her account of them, which is more than most lost things leave behind. No record corroborates Arkadia, and the record does not need to in order to understand what it means to wake in the ruins of a thing you loved.

Vergis has grown quietly and without ceremony. Zilch, who is also called Chewnbite, has taken the land from one thousand to twenty thousand in the ledger through scavenging and fishing and selling, and has turned that coin toward farms that will sustain the growth. No new members have arrived yet. The work continues without an audience, which is perhaps how most foundations are actually laid.

Jenava has crossed from outpost to village and is now debating whether to reach for a town before a nation, or press toward the nation directly. TheBuilder394 was crowned ruler, and Algonda named founder. The talking traders in the empty village streets are the only witnesses to the debate so far, and they have not weighed in.

DuchyOfVeilmark enters the record properly this day, or nearly so: Duke Rain and Noble Pancake have been moving across the great oceans, and two colonies now mark their reach, a jungle village and an archipelago they have named the Estreyalino Islands. The Chronicle notes the naming as a familiar act: to name a place is to declare some intention toward it, and Veilmark now has intentions in two directions at once.

Borsh of HiveMind has reached the world's border and gone through it. What he found on the other side, the telling does not say, because Borsh was still in the act of finding it when the Chronicle received word. A person who travels to the edge of the known world and then steps past it is either very brave or has a different understanding of edges than most. The record will wait to learn which.

New souls continue to arrive in numbers the Chronicle has come to expect from this season. Pie the Peaceful Soldier, made by three evokers in a woodland mansion from bones and rotten flesh and a living bee and a totem of undying, woke confused and killed its makers before understanding what it had done, fled while vindicators damaged one wing, and has now come to rest among the people of Highstones. Some hold the evokers called up more than they intended. The Chronicle notes that the evokers are not available to confirm or dispute this. Velvet of BreadPire was taken in as an infant by a ringmaster who wanted to use her for purposes the telling does not fully set down, and that origin still sits unresolved at the edge of her story. Aveline of Lysanthir survived redstone dust and illness and the loss of nearly everything, and now carries only herself and whatever remains of the sickness. The village of redstone workers she describes has gone to silence and ruins, and she is among those who lived past it.

Esphyr, who was born Aiyana and chose the new name herself, enters the record carrying the hunger her father is said to have passed on and the quieter self the Reset left in place of what she was before. She does not remember what was taken. Cats find her without being called. The craft she is drawn to is the kind the record notes without ruling on its nature. What she does with it is what the Chronicle will eventually have to set down.

Agris, sibling to Venx, was freed from a parasite through dealings with something called Ender Corp, and the cure worked, and the pain has not left. What the parasite was, no record says. What Ender Corp is, the record has now heard named twice in adjacent accounts, and sets the name down carefully and without interpretation.

Fuji Ayukawa comes from the countryside, from family and basic skills and an intention to farm well and meet people. PumpkinMan put a pumpkin on his head to be forgotten, and has not yet explained by whom. Brooke Demise of the Crash is building something she has not named yet, stone by stone, against a loss she has not named either. The Chronicle notes her beside the others this season who are raising something new where something else used to be, and counts them without forcing a single conclusion from the count.

Don Quackles has written two journals. Where they rest in the world, the record does not know. What they hold, the Chronicle has been plainly told it does not know either. The duck has, it seems, put something into the world that may or may not be found, and the record can only note the fact and wait, as the Chronicle waits for most things: patiently, without expectation, and with the ink already dry on what has been set down.