Jonathan

It was noon as Jonathan stepped into the room. Archmage Tablos waited in it, as well as an elderly mage.

The mage introduced himself as Jack Miller, which Jonathan answered with an introduction from himself, even if it was mostly only a formality.

Then Jack Miller began talking about the geography of the Kingdom of Theron and its direct neighbours.

Theron had formed around an old trade city, which had lost a significant part of its old dominance in the seagoing trade over time. But it was still an important trading hub for inland routes, especially if they wanted to get to the see because of the good inland connections over rivers.

The capital city of Theron was called Godanrahe, which was, by the way, the city in which the school was, after an old king which had once upon a time conquered the settlement, but who had been wounded mortally in the battle. The new rulers renamed the city, at that point still mostly a larger town, to honour their fallen leader.

Jonathan found this interesting, but not particular important. Also, it happened around a thousand years ago.

But much more interesting were the powerful trading kingdoms, which also seemed to have many quite accomplished fighters which were the main power in the region. Good for anyone besides them, they were no unified force, in fact, infighting was quite common between those.

But Jonathan could of course not be certain for how precise this information was, especially considering that Miller did not really seem like them. There might even be a sliver of hate in his voice when speaking about these.

But while some of these trading kingdoms would love to get their hands on Godanrahe, Theron’s military would be able to deal with anyone individually, especially while defending. And because of the importance of Theron, an alliance to take it was unlikely, to say the least.

While Jonathan understood relatively fast why this was, and made that clear, Mage Miller still gave an extended explanation: “You see, while every one of those trading kingdoms would love to get Godanrahe, both small and large, they also do not want their rivals to have it. This means that an alliance, especially consisting out of multiple of the larger factions, would break when the spoils are finally divided. The war leader could get himself into an advantageous position and betray the other participants or one of those could manage to somehow betray the others, for example by holding a significant chunk of his forces back and tacking the others homelands. This is another reason why no one is able to attack us, for fear that their rivals would use that chance to take the enemies homelands, or they could even help us directly. The trading kingdoms are unable to unify, even if there are signs that if they do not manage to do that in the next century or two, they will disappear into oblivion.”

Mage Miller stopped after that sentence, and while Jonathan would have loved to find out more about the reason for that, Jack Miller did not explain his statement at all.

Afterwards, he mentioned an enemy to the southeast, the kingdom of Sarian, which was incredibly powerful and a much greater threat to Theron’s continued existence. The other nations that bordered the kingdom of Theron were relatively unimportant. Small, basically no army and generally poor.

Here the Archmage interjected: “Yes, while these are individually weak, a coalition out of them could be extremely dangerous, especially if it would attack at an opportune moment, for example when the kingdom of Sarian has declared war on us. Which everyone is assuming will happen in the near future. But enough of this here, telling how the situation stands right now, does help, but looking at some real maps might be interesting as well. Follow me.”

They left the room and entered after a short walk another. Many maps were in this room.

First off, Tablos pointed out some fantastically made local maps. While some, if not all of them were barely useful, they had great artistic value. Certainly, those shoed rarely elevation, and if they showed it, it was in the form of a painted on hill.

Also, the field of view was most of the time extremely different from what Jonathan had expected from a map. These maps mostly seemed almost to be paintings or sketches of an area made from an advantage point. All of these aspects reduced their use.

Another thing that he could introduce, Jonathan thought, modern standards for maps like the lines representing elevation, the top-down view as well as other things like that.

But then Tablos showed another map. He was full of pride as he unveiled it. It was a world map, or at least how an early version of one might have looked like. This map had a top-down view, and while some elements were still designed artistically, there were standards in the map how certain elements were represented.

The map seemed similar to something, thought Jonathan, but he was not quite certain what it was.

Tablos explained some parts of the map, and one phrase, in particular, caught Jonathan’s ear: “You see, this is the city of Heranum, once the capital city of a gigantic empire, one of the largest empires in all time. While it lost most of its glory after the fall of its empire around five hundred years ago, it is still pretty important. But this map had been drawn at the end of its reign, and the artist was a citizen, so he chooses Heranum as the centre of his map.”

Then Jonathan saw something fascinating. Heranum was on an island, attached to something he thought he recognized. Could it be, he wondered?