“Perhaps it was part of the curiosity of people’s nature that draws us into the unknown, that attracted us with the potential of sights unseen and wonders unfound. Many people had ventured boldly into the beyond, where no civilized man had gone before, perhaps because of these very charms.

Not many of those men or women returned.” - Boreas Vidaz, former explorer most renowned for his three-month expedition to the Forest of Despair, one of the few that successfully returned from it.

Aideen and Celia had not overstayed their welcome in the Imperial City, and they left around the time Lise also departed for her home province, roughly a week and a half after their incidental meeting. The stay at the capital had its benefits too, though, as Aideen used that chance to refill both her and Celia’s wardrobes a bit, as she made use of the skilled seamstresses present in the inner districts.

When they departed from the city, both women still looked like travelers on the go, but they looked like well-to-do ones who could afford clothes that were not only made out of good materials, but also had light enchantments to help against wear and tear on it. The neater, better quality clothes actually allowed them easier entry to other cities along their way, as the guards likely took them for noble daughters out on a stroll.

From the Imperial City the two of them went north and west, towards the Oiloma Viscounty, directly north of the Careopa Marquisate that they visited on their way in. The smaller viscounty was a prosperous one, partly due to the gold mined that dotted the mountains near its northern borders, which incidentally also rendered it safer than most to raids and predation from the north.

There was not much for Aideen and Celia to do other than to enjoy themselves while they visited the viscounty, and for Aideen to buy a more recent map of the surrounding area. As Oiloma was one of the northernmost provinces of the Empire, their map of the northern reaches were more detailed compared to many, even if their scouts had not managed to go much further than most either.

To collect maps like those was one of Aideen’s primary purposes in her foray into the Empire. She was after all uncertain on when she might return to make her dream of creating the city a reality, so while the information of the surrounding nations she got might be of little use, maps of the surrounding areas were likely to remain useful, if only for the knowledge of the terrain they offered.

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At the moment, she had plenty of maps from Posuin and Knallzog, courtesy of the border duchies and Ginnie, and passable ones from the Holy Kingdom and Ezram. Most of the maps were of the more rudimentary sorts of course, as detailed maps were generally reserved only for the military instead of being available to the public.

Even so, what she already had - together with her own notes and scribblings from her decades-long venture into the Forest itself - gave her a relatively complete topographical map of the Forest of Despair and its surrounding areas. That alone was most helpful, as it helped her identify the easiest approach to the forest itself, directly from the south, through the wastelands between Knallzog and Posuin.

From Oiloma, Aideen and Celia continue their trek towards the north-west to the Moruil Barony, a smaller province that had grown in size recently, due to scooping up the north-eastern parts of Lavinja as payment for debts owed. The barony itself was populated by people of a more rugged sort that reminded Aideen a lot of the people from the border duchies in Posuin.

It was understandable, as their domain was located right on the northern border of the Empire itself, and since their lands were richer than the neighboring County of Lavinja, they proved a more desirable target for the raids that happened on occasion. The people there were armed all the time, even the youngsters, hardened by decades of life on the frontiers.

From them, Aideen also fished for information about the “barbarians” that inhabited the northern plains. In truth, the identity of those so-called barbarians were just nomadic orcish and goblin tribes, not far different from the tribes that inhabited the Western Isles further west of the Elmaiya Empire in Ur-Teros. Naturally, due to the lack of contact and communication, there was no relation between the Clangeddin Empire and said nomads, other than the occasional raid they mounted on the border regions in hard times.

If one only listened to how the locals described those raiders, they might fall under the impression that to the far north were nothing more than tribes of man-eating savages who delighted in cruelty and bloodshed. The sort of nightmares parents used to scare their disobedient children to bed or to make them eat the food they dislike.

Even Celia had rarely heard little different, though since she lived a bit further south and not right by the border, the tales were less frequently told, and villages like hers never saw such raids firsthand. Clearly the local populace had little love for their northern neighbors, yet the Empire had not expanded further northwards either.

The reason thereof was mostly that of practicality. While the northern prairies were good land, they were not worthwhile enough to attempt to wrest from the tribes that called the place home. From the history books she had read, apparently the tribes, while normally contentious and often fought each other, would unite as one against outside incursions, and their combined force was something to be reckoned with.

Despite the well-meant warnings from the locals, Aideen and Celia slipped from town one day, after they had properly stocked up for a long journey, and headed for the north. Their destination was precisely the northern plains, where Aideen hoped she might be able to contact - and if possible, build a relationship - with the tribes that inhabited the area. Their contact with humans had been next to nonexistent out of raids so far, and they had not expected a too friendly welcome, yet Aideen hoped that the Orcs of Alcidea would have a close enough language to their southern cousins that she could communicate with them.