The train ride was okay. There was something peaceful about watching the landscape and wildlife slowly go by while safely seated in a heavily-armored train. The outside of the train might have looked like someone had taken several massive slabs of steel, linked them together, added more steel, some wheels, and some fletcher-cannons onto them, before setting the train on tracks. However, the inside was quite cozy and comfortable.

Also, the meals they served during that three-day journey weren't half-bad. There was only a single close call, where we had to stop because a bunch of steel-tusk elephants had wandered onto the tracks. The issue was quickly settled when the mercenaries that the train station had hired to run security during its trips went out and shooed the elephants away. Once the elephants had been shooed away, the train resumed its journey through the wastes and wilds.

Overall, it was a pleasant trip. Normally, the wilderness and wastelands that made up the majority of the shattered world made the setting of rails untenable and all but impossible. However, in those areas where the bloody-minded rulers of the land managed to get it done, a good train ride could be just as good, if not better, than travelling by airship.

We arrived at the Birch Grove station after the third day of travelling. My first impression of the Tree of Passionate Verdance’s headquarters was that it was all very….elven. Stereotypical elven. There were trees everywhere and plenty of greenery. Most of the buildings were either wooden and brick, or they seemed to have been created by cajoling the trees and the earth into taking the desired shapes. While there were clear signs of human influence everywhere from the neat and orderly vistas. The straight streets, and the numerous vehicles and pedestrians. It still very much looked like a forest.

Which made me wonder if Jack and I were fated to just spend our lives wandering from forest to forest for all eternity.

“Woah, this place very much deserves its name...Passionate Verdance, huh? Well, they better be passionate about it, if they’re gonna make everything green like this,” said Jack.

“Heh, I guess so,” I said. Agreeing because the first impression that the place gave, really “was” a bit much.

Later, Birch Grove started to grow on us. First, we checked-in, at the Tree of Passionate Verdance’s Central Administrative Office. A building that also served as Birch Grove’s city. Then we wandered around a bit and discovered that there was a lot more than just shades of green and brown in this place. Birch Grove was a colorful place that was almost as big as, if not bigger than Five-Fire city had been. Birch Grove was practically a small country onto itself, and the only thing that separated it from other city-states and small nations was the fact that everyone wore the same primarily green, brown, and black martial uniforms, with a few affectations tossed in here and there for individuality.

The uniform itself took multiple forms, ranging from simple martial-gi type outfits with vests that were colored to show the rank of the wearer, to comfortable robes, to ornate dresses and similar traditional garments of the sort that you’d see in noble courts and martial artist communities. For the most part, there was a dramatic departure from the so-called “western” aesthetic that was so prevalent in old-world fashion and the modern secular world. Though, one still got the sense that one was looking at a kind of old-fashioned, colonial-era military uniform, from a lot of the people that passed on the streets.

Jack and I got a couple of these uniforms when we checked-in, at Birch Grove’s Central Administrative Building. The first couple of uniforms apparently came free to each member of the sect. We naturally got more of this free swag because we were joining as Junior-Elders rather than just as disciples. I decided I’d make more. After studying the uniforms that we’d been given, I figured that I could easily replace the default uniforms with ones made with higher-quality materials, given better treatments, and given enchantments, to increase their defensive power and overall utility.

Besides the extra uniforms, Jack and I got extra TPV merits. A type of credit that the sect gave its members to *cough* avoid having to pay them in spiritual-crystals which were more valuable, and also encourage competition and extra effort from those of the lower ranks. Despite being elders, we still got paid in merits as well, but it honestly wasn’t that bad because things of real worth could be purchased with those merits. Also, to be fair to the sect, actual spirit-crystals, spirit-pills, and the like were given to the sect's members for free as part of the monthly resource disbursements.

Beyond the extra resources and uniforms, the sect also provided us a place to stay. A very nice place to stay in fact. It didn’t look like much at first glance, it was just this empty plot of land on a craggy little hill. Then we found out that not only did we get the land on the hill, but we’d also been given the land surrounding the hill. In total, the sect had just sort of thrown 12800 acres, or 20 square miles, of land at us, to do with as we pleased, and it was ours so long as we were members of the sect. We’d basically just been given a very tiny city to do whatever wanted with.

Thus, all in all, though it was still too early to say that the sect itself, and the people that made up and ran the sect, didn’t suck, and wouldn’t suck, in terms of benefits, we weren’t regretting our decision to come out here at all.