"Despite having traveled practically every corner of Ur-Teros, the continent where I was born and raised, I had not suspected that my views were still narrow and constricted, and that there was so much more in the world to see.

My first trip to Alcidea, amongst people who were foreign yet at the same time, not, opened my eyes to the vastness of the world. People might look different, yet they remain people all the same, and nothing, despite what some despots and racists have claimed, would ever change that." - From the diaries of Aideen deVreys, the Silver Maiden.

Aboard the ship, Aideen truly felt like a foreigner for the first time in her life. Even in her youth, where she visited the many different nations of Ur-Teros, she had previously learned of them. Spoke their language fluently, even, so that it had been less of a culture shock.

It was not the case with the ship from Knallzog. While the local Caracanese traders seemed familiar enough with the ship, she herself stood out like a fish out of the water amongst the ship's crew and other Knallzog natives.

Perhaps her never having visited the northern port towns for long was partly to blame, as well as the way the dwarves mostly stayed in their ships at port and did most of their trading via intermediaries.

The dwarves of Knallzog were unlike the local dwarves of Ur-Teros. They were visibly bulkier, with their physiques on average easily matching the bulkiest of the Ur-Teros dwarves and only bested by a few.

They also kept their beards long, very long to the point that she wondered about the practicality of such beards. These dwarves kept their beards all the way down their bellies, if not down to their waists, and decorated it heavily with braids, rings, clasps, and other various trinkets. In contrast the dwarves she knew usually kept a shorter cut, down to their chest at most.

Most jarring for her however, was the difference in skin tones. Where most dwarves in her homeland had pale to light brown shades of skin much like the majority of the inhabitants of Ur-Teros, those from Knallzog had shades that varied from a deep brown to an almost charcoal black. The latter was especially odd to look at with their light-colored hair and beard, though if she thought about it, the look wasn't so different to the desert nomads she knew of, just more so.

Other than when they spoke common or Caracanese to the passengers, they also spoke amongst themselves in a language Aideen had never heard of before. It had some similarities with the language of her hometown, but also consisted of many long words that were often spoken far too quickly for her to catch.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

With her pale skin, she stood out more than she liked, and thought to herself that she should take a moment to darken her skin to blend better once they landed. Fortunately, for her present situation, it proved to be beneficial, as it presented herself as an obvious foreigner.

After some chats with the ship's second mate - and a few local delicacies from the south to ply him further - she got him to agree to teach her of their local tongue. Her claims of curiosity had not seemed out of place, given her apparent youth and the "first trip abroad" atmosphere around her.

She proved a quick study. The travel time between Caracan to Meergant in Knallzog was not long, merely a week by ship, but in that week Aideen learned enough of the local language to be able to converse reasonably in it, something that apparently delighted the dwarf who taught her.

As the ship disembarked at the busy port, Aideen saw the continent of Alcidea for the first time in her life. The lively city was full of people, of various races though the majority were dwarves, not unexpected given that it was a dwarven territory.

Other than the therians, most Alcideans shared that darker skin tones the dwarves of Knallzog exhibited. The orcs and goblin leaned to darker shades of green or brown skins, while even the few elves she saw, who tended to be pale-skinned, were at least somewhat tanned here.

The presence of the elves was another thing that surprised her. Apparently, the Alcidean elves occupied most of the north-eastern corner of the continent. They used to be little different than the elves of her homeland, but they faced an internal revolution roughly a century ago.

Their own youths had rebelled against the old traditions, and won. The elves of the time had already been split into those that dwelled the plains, considered lower castes, and forest dwellers, who were the rulers of the tribes.

Those that dwelled the plains had kept many slaves from other races to work the fertile plains for them. After decades and centuries of contact with other races, barriers broke down. Hybrid half-elven children become common in the plains.

It was the insistence of the older, ruling castes to treat those half-breeds as slaves that resulted in the revolt. The revolution swept across the plains, and engulfed the forests, resulting in the old rulers dethroned, with the young generation taking over.

They had quickly negotiated peace with their neighbors, all too aware of their domain's weakness after such an internal war, and from there, the elves began to proliferate over the continent. Where a century ago they were bogeyman figures in stories meant to scare children to sleep, they were not not an uncommon presence in many nations, as their traders and merchants ranged far and wide, and often settled down elsewhere.

After she disembarked from the ship, Aideen rented a room for a night at a cheap inn near the docks. There, in the privacy of her room, she combined her own magic and a couple alchemical substances to darken the shade of her skin. Something she had learned long ago while working with the Death's Hand.

When she left her room the next day, she no longer stood out as much. Her pale skin tone was replaced by a healthy tan. The concoctions she used, combined with her magic maintaining the effect, meant that her simple disguise would last months before she had to renew it, and she strolled out of the inn and further into the city.