“Oftentimes, Life could be stranger than Fiction.” - Old folk saying.

The mercantile caravan Aideen and Celia took on their journey south from Alfheim was a peculiar one, to say the least.

Most caravans – or merchant groups for that matter – tend to be primarily composed of people from one nation, the nation where they were based, typically. With the often high tensions and fluctuating political relationship between nations, it was risky for merchant groups to base themselves in multiple nations, as it risked grievous loss of assets in times of war.

As such, to see a caravan co-owned by a collaboration of mercantile groups from both Alfheim and the Kingdom Down Under was an oddity to say the least. Much more so when they learned of the group’s history of cooperation, which surprisingly already spanned over a century by then. It was truly a case of strange bedfellows.

What the merchant in charge of the caravan – an elderly elven man – told her was that the former Gumaghal kingdom happened to be in a period of good relations with their dwarven neighbors to the south when the elves from the forest ran them over. When the revolution took place a couple centuries later, some of the dwarves that used to trade with the kingdom were still around and active, and upon hearing the changes up north, sought to re-establish contact.

The caravan’s leader was a younger sibling to the elf who had been master to the family of traders that used to work with the dwarves. The siblings had found interest in the tales the family had told, and when the dwarven emissary came, quickly came to a mutual understanding for trade and profit with them. They were all too aware that they lacked the know-how to run and support a nation on their own, so establishing friendly relationships with their neighbors was paramount to Alfheim at the time.

They were amongst the pioneers of the movement that turned Alfheim into the bustling, prosperous trade city it became, and the cooperation with the dwarves who sought out their old trading partners only to find new ones continued to the present day, their bond stronger than ever. With how both elves and dwarves were long-lived, they generally placed far more importance in words and agreements they gave, which was a desirable thing for both parties, as they had learned how often shorter-lived races would break their word for the sake of temporary, short term advantages.

That similarity in viewpoints, more than anything, helped forge the friendly relationship between the elves of Alfheim and the dwarves from the Kingdom Down Under.

At least in matters of trade, that was. There were far more differences than similarities between the two people, but circumstances made it so that the dwarves to the south couldn’t help but to see the revolution in Alfheim in anything but a positive light. Stories of elven raids were extremely commonplace after all, and suddenly finding themselves bordered by precisely the subject of those stories after centuries of having others as buffer between them had driven the dwarves to high alert for a while.

Another member of the caravan – an elderly dwarf who served as their head accountant – corroborated the old elf’s stories. He happened to be working for the dwarven side of the collaboration during the early days when they first made contact with Alfheim, and still worked the same routes to the present day, having fallen in love with the lifestyle and the elven city where he had spent a good portion of the last two centuries.

Other than the two elders, most of the caravan’s members were half-elven hybrids from Alfheim, with a couple full-blooded elves directing things as senior guards and drivers. Apparently it was the norm for their companies to have crew from one city visit the other for several months before they took the trip back to their own city, to foster a greater sense of friendship and unity.

Although they said it was to their respective cities, the actual dwarven Kingdom Down Under itself was still off-limits to foreigners, who were generally only allowed to travel the portions of their land above ground. It kept the underground kingdom of the dwarves a mystery to just about anyone not a dwarf, even if they had been more relaxed in policy of late.

In the past foreigners would not even be allowed in the kingdom’s territory, regardless of whether it was the aboveground or underground sections. The dwarven kingdom was self-sufficient when it came to food and other needs of sustenance, so they had not needed much in terms of trade either, which was why they maintained their isolation for so long.

Ironically it was the prosperity of Knallzog to their west, a nation founded by a group of dwarves who felt that their people were limiting themselves by their isolationist tendencies and broke off over a millennium ago, that forced them to alter those policies. The far more open policies of Knallzog allowed them to build their kingdom from scratch to prosperity in a few dwarven generations, which forced even the hardliners in the Kingdom Down Under to admit the merits of trade and relations with their neighbors.

That shift in policy happened roughly half a millennium ago, long before Aideen was born, but in time to coincide with the final century of the Gumaghal kingdom. From there history simply took its course, one that caused some strange bedfellows to some. In a way, everything that happened in eastern Alcidea was interconnected to one another.

It was the prosperity from trade with the dwarves that made the elves conquer Gumaghal and took the land as their own, wishing to replicate that same prosperity for themselves. As a result, that led to the revolution that splintered the elves two centuries later, and that in turn allowed a resumption of trade with the dwarves which caused a replication of the prosperity the elves had first sought.

Life made for the creation of strange bedfellows, but it also clearly appreciated a good dose of irony.