“The only thing that awaits a ruler who was only able to rule in war or in peace is woe.” - Saying attributed to Argoffi el-Hassid, Second Caliph of the Hassid Caliphate.

After another two weeks spent in Al-Hassid under the hospitality of the House of Nasrilemaz, Aideen and the rest of the group – now numbering five since Áine and Rhys joined them – continued their travel. Unlike previously, however, where Eilonwy mostly hid her identity with cloak and hood, she traveled out in the open, her long, pointed ears out for all to see.

Previously Eilonwy hid her identity because it would be less attention-grabbing for a hooded tall person to be walking around compared to an elf doing so. On the other hand, with the three siblings together, their height would make it really eye-catching if they walked together, much less while hooded and cloaked. Such a sight pretty much screamed “suspicious”, so instead Aideen just told them to do away with the hoods and cloaks and openly travel as they were.

Three elves who were clearly siblings or otherwise related traveling together might be rather attention-grabbing, but at least it was nowhere near as suspicious as if they had done so while hiding under hoods and cloaks. While relatively rare, elves and people of elven descent were still seen from time to time in the northern regions.

There were always some young elves who left their home groves out of curiosity for the wider world, after all, and many people also had difficulty telling an elf apart from a hybrid of elven descent that still had heavy elven heritage.

Between the Hassid Caliphate in the center of the Northern Region and Oajib or Assadun in the southern reaches of the region existed a good dozen or so smaller nations. Some of those nations were remnants of once stronger nations that had since fallen to others, some even falling to the Caliphate itself. Others were nations that broke off from other nations in that region, while a few were recently founded nations created by refugees who staked out their claims in barren, unwanted land after the Caliphate’s example.

The relationship between the Caliphate and these nations varied. Some whose ancestors had bad blood with the Caliphate held neutral to hostile relations, while most of the rest were on the friendly side, as they were pragmatic enough to know that there wasn’t much good in offending the strongest nation in their vicinity for no good reason.

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Aideen and the rest of her group traversed these lands as part of a convoy from the House of Nasrilemaz instead of going about on their own, partly because there was little need for them to collect information on their own this time. The House of Nasrilemaz pretty much formed the hub of the Lichdom’s intelligence network in the north, and all the agents from the smaller countries around it reported to them by default.

As such, they were already well-supplied with all the intelligence they could ask for of the region around the Caliphate and the Caliphate itself. In fact, their presence in the northern region was a somewhat open secret, at least to the higher-ups in the Caliphate. Supposedly the Caliphate’s founders themselves received support from the Bone Lord during their hardest days early on, and had maintained a friendly relationship with the Lichdom ever since.

And the Caliphate had indeed maintained a neutral yet friendly stance on the Lichdom throughout its existence as far as Aideen was aware of it. Even during the mess when unliving first started to appear, the Caliphate helped collect those in the Northern Regions to allow agents from the Lichdom to rescue them easier.

The geographical distance between the Caliphate in the north and the Lichdom in the south likely played a role to that friendship, especially with the inhospitable desert between them, but the way their respective leaders come from long-lived races that tend to adopt long-term views likely also helped. While being of the long-lived race does not cure one of shortsightedness – history was abound with such examples – it definitely helped reduce its occurrence when it comes to making decisions that would affect nations, at least.

Some of the small nations they visited were peaceful, while others were filled with strife and conflict. Regardless of their situation, though, the people fighting in said nations rife with conflict did not dare to so much as lay a finger on the House’s convoy. They knew that to do so would likely incite the wrath of the Caliphate, as the House was one of the Caliphate’s officially recognized trading houses that was empowered to perform large-scale international trade on its behalf.

Of course, even if they dared, they would have likely failed anyway, as the House had not skimped on guards either. Their guards were home-grown and well-trained people, loyal to the House first and to the Caliphate second. The force of several hundred guards that accompanied the large convoy could likely turn away a mob of conscripts ten times their size, Aideen wagered.

Other than that, what the convoy did in their stops depended a lot on the state of the nation they stopped in as well. Most of the convoy carried foodstuff, preserved meats, cheeses, and the like that could be transported easily and would fetch a good price in nations that were less self-sufficient with their food supplies.

A single wagon positioned near the center of the convoy, just behind the wagon where Aideen’s group traveled, carries more luxurious items, like decorative glassware and items made out of precious metals and gems. Those items were mostly traded in the more prosperous cities of the nations with good civic order, as those were the ones who could afford them to begin with.

Just like that, they traveled through the region south of the Caliphate with the convoy for three months or so, a leisurely trip around the area where the group could go about relaxedly without having to arrange for their own travel or shelter. The convoy brought them all the way to the Assadun Emirate, east of the Oajib Sultanate, which was their last stop for the mission as a whole.