Silence hung between Harms and me, as we were moving to the back of the orcish column, Sakgu falling in with my group, to make sure we would be alright. And to report what was said, I had no doubt of that. The silence stretched out, not a companionable silence, where no words were needed to fill the void between people but an awkward one, getting thicker with each second it lasted. Part of me wondered if it would congeal into a physical substance at some point, dense enough to stop us from moving. Maybe that was the key to create Eternal Ice, reaching peak-density awkwardness, a level where the pure social ineptitude was enough to freeze spacetime itself.

“So, how do you know Morgana here?” Sakgu asked, her voice breaking the silence, shattering it into pieces that drifted away on the wind. She was addressing Harms, causing him to instantly blurt out his thoughts, without taking the time to formulate a Mundus-appropriate answer.

“Everyone knows her! She was Titania!” he exclaimed, now making Sakgu blink, not quite sure how to react to the outburst.

Pushing away the earlier awkwardness, drawing on a sliver of Ice-Astral Power to adapt a cold, utterly serene, mien, I looked at Harms, noticing the human beneath the orcish Avatar.

“That was another life, another world. Here, I am Morgana, nothing more, nothing less.” I explained, my voice calm, without any excitement. It made me realise that I had fully shed the strange attachment that had remained to my old Character, that nagging, prodding thorn in my side that made me want to scratch everything regarding Craft of War until they bled, just a little. To irritate them, as the thorn irritated me.

“But…” he began, a raised eyebrow of mine silencing him, before I focus on Sakgu, to explain things in terms that a native of Mundus could accept.

“Mundus is merely the latest world we Travellers have visited. In a different world, at a different time, there was a being known as Titania, a quite powerful being at that, famous of her mastery of Light-Magic, using it to create barriers shielding her allies and to confound her foes, bending their vision just a little, to play with distances and perspective.” I explained, before focusing back on Harms.

“But, as I said, that was in a different world, in a different time. What matters, and what you should judge me by, is the here, the now, my actions in this World. Let the past remain where it is, without dredging up its memories.” I added, getting a nod from him.

“So, if you don’t want to be measured by your past in a different world, what should we judge you by?” Sakgu asked, causing Harms to regain momentum.

“Tales of her actions have been spread far and wide amongst Travellers. She’s a powerful sorceress, bending Ice and Wind to her will, using it to crush the life out of her foes.” he enthused, sounding a little like an advertisement. It made me wonder if he was as socially awkward as I was, at times planning out sentences long before they would ever be used, trying to make them sound perfect, causing them to sound a little stilted or out of place.

“I do admit to having some powers, even if I will keep the extent of them to myself. Your leader learned some of it when she tested me earlier.” I added, trying to make myself sound a little aloof, without getting dragged into his awkwardness. It was a lot easier on Mundus, which I was grateful for. Maybe because I wasn’t feeling like I was myself, that I was acting, being a character in a play.

“I see.” Sakgu admitted, even if her face told a different story. Luckily, Adra inserted herself into the conversation at that point, gently probing Harms, and Sakgu to some extent, for information on their clan. It allowed me to mentally sit back, listening and going over the earlier events again.

What I learned about the ‘Bright Hollow’-Clan was quite interesting, especially their clan-structure. It was quite unlike what other fantasy-stories had made common-sense about orcs, depicting them as warlike, brutish and oppressive, even if there seemed to be a strong martial aspect to their culture. The leadership of their clan was split in two, with a Matriarch leading the Clan during times of peace and a Warchief taking care of military matters. .

Curiously, the decision to go to war was left to the Matriarch, whose position was also passed down hereditarily, from mother to daughter, whereas the Warchief was appointed in a mixture of ritual combat and election.

To make things even more interesting was that the Matriarch, obviously, had to be female but the Warchief could be, and sometimes was, female, albeit not often. That had to do with the simple fact that the combat-part of the appointment was unarmed, purely physical and while there were exceptions like Sigmir, females with powerful bodies even amongst their species, they were generally a rarity amongst mammalian species. When I asked about the reason for purely physical combat, I was told that including someone like Warleader Firebringer would make things far too dangerous, that a contest of unarmed combat could cause serious harm if people weren’t willing to give up but with a Shaman like the Firebringer? The losses would be unacceptable.

Hearing the title of Shaman lured me even deeper into the conversation, more information on a different spellcaster was always welcome. It turned out that, if the leadership-structure split between a Matriarch and a Warchief wasn’t confusing enough already, they had a third branch, so to speak. Those were the Shamans, a council of mostly elders, all with magical powers and a connection to Nature and the Spirits of their Ancestors. They were advising both the Matriarch and supporting the Warchief with their magic, at times even leading warriors into battle, as was the case with Dura Firebringer.

Sadly, when it came to the actual effects of their magic, to say nothing of the mechanisms used to achieve those effects, neither Sakgu nor Harms could help me, they simply didn’t know a lot. Sakgu knew that Dura was able to use fire to strike her foes, often with explosive might, but had never seen those attacks personally, having only second-hand knowledge of them. It seemed that Dura had been travelling the world for the last few years, learning abroad while gaining in power before returning to the clan after a time as a Journeywoman, to claim the full title of Shaman. It seemed that such a journey was quite common for the more promising members of the clan, others, such as Sakgu, even if she didn’t say it out loud, remained behind, providing the rank-and-file of the Clan’s forces.

It seemed quite similar to the system used by the dwarves, where some of their members were travelling to gain experience and levels before retiring to the Hold once they had meaningful power.

But then, the system made sense, to gain any real power you had to seek out opportunities, risk your life in pursuit of them and bear the scars of both failure and success. On the other hand, I wondered how a hereditary position could work out, why would a powerful member of a society bow to some weakling, just for their heritage? Especially someone who had repeatedly risked their life, staring death in the face with bared teeth, enduring pain and misery, just to gain the power they had, why bend the knee?

It wasn’t just the Orcish Clans that made me wonder, I had read on the Forum that the humans had an Empire, with nobility and everything, working on a hereditary system. The only thing I could imagine was that the nobility of the Human Empire was keeping control of information and important locations, such as Dungeons. Tobiuno had hinted at such, and his rapid rise in level added to the idea that the Human Nobles simply used controlled dungeons, most likely grouping with prepared, loyal followers, to rapidly rise in power.

Which brought me back to the orcish clan, how could they have something similar? I doubted that each and every clan had control over a dungeon, not unless there were many more of them than I thought. Sadly, it wasn’t something I could simply come out and ask, not without being terribly impolite. And I already had enough trouble with that, given my Outsider-Trait.

That thought caused me to stumble, the outsider-trait. What if there was something similar, some sort of Noble-Trait, that automatically made those born beneath them want to submit? But then, would questioning it cause them to realise? Would showing someone my Outsider-Trait cause them to question their initial animosity towards me?

How would I feel, if I realised that the first impression I had about someone was due to outside influence?

What if it wasn’t the first impression but the whole society, the whole way of life?

It was a scary thought, especially the second one, and I decided to keep it between Lenore and myself, at least for now.