Beyond The Inner Wards
There was a secret place, deep in the Floran wood, where the trees rang with laughter and time did not seem to move. A place where spring burst anew every day, and the flowers whispered secrets if a girl had the heart to hear.
Welcome, Sara.
A place where a tenth-grade girl was greeted by attendants who grew flowers behind their ears and let the tiny pixies play through their hair.
Like they were waiting just for her.
You have seen much of our Garden these last months, Sara. Its good and its ill.
And a woman, waiting beside a lily pond, waiting for her.
It is a young Garden, fragile in blooming, and there are those who hunger to rule its boughs.
Sara sat, legs tucked beneath her, and listened to the woman singing words she had known in the cradle. Words of home…and words of here.
It will only blossom with tender care.
A fairy alighted upon her knee, slender and fey like a doll she had owned as a child.
No. Exactly the same. Like the doll she had lost one morning at Disney World had traveled all this way to wait for her.
Would you like to see where this fragile rose upon a savage sea might sail?
She thought of Ishikawa and Fang, fighting for their lives against those masked men.
Fighting for her life.
While all she could do was watch.
“Do you remember me?” the pixie asked. “It’s been a long time. And no time at all. I’ve been waiting such a long never for this ever.”
The Rose Queen Liliana waited for her.
For her wish.
“I…I want to go home,” Sara admitted. “To see my mom and my dad and my stupid brothers.”
The flowers shuddered with the unspoken word: But…
“But I think…Ishikawa…and Fang…and Tia…and Rynn…need my help now.”
I don’t want to be a burden anymore.
The pixie raised her tiny hand.
Sara raised her own.
And suddenly, Sara remembered what she had never known all along.
Stray beyond the comfort of your warded home.
Throw yourself against the elements.
Witness a land of storms and beauty.
The inner wards delineate civilization. Everything beyond their stabilizing ring is the frontier. This frontier is known as the outer wards and guarded by the stones of the same.
Here storms are stronger; travel harder; and all the amenities of civilization far away.
Despite these dangers, however, the outer wards represent a free horizon of opportunity and treasure.
The border wards
The outermost wards, known as “lonely wards”, are towering pillars of stone. While the inner wards are a delicate network of interweaving energy, the outer wards are raw conduits of power meant to arch across hundreds of kilometers. Simple and sturdy, these wards endure for centuries.
Lonely wards are dangerous to approach. Many exist cloaked in perpetual elemental storms, and their crackling energy is an attractive home for powerful creatures.
The Crown does not seem to mind. These storms and creatures make the lonely wards difficult to meddle with!
These wards cannot be replaced directly. Instead, a new lonely ward is raised along the path of the ley line and left to absorb the powerful currents. Soon the standing stone spawns its own storm and joins the network.
The geomantic teams that raise the lonely wards are grizzled veterans of the storms. They have no patience for inner ward brats playing around in such dangerous locations; nevertheless, these salty experts are a rare source of valuable help when so far from home.