S3E27: A Nightly Occurrence

Summary: You do not give yourself enough credit - it was your work in deriving the shared principle between both pencil and eraser that made this possible. I suspect the alchemists and smith-enchanters who worked on Reaching Scrolls before never saw the value of the humble pencil, so you really showed those pen pushers. Travelling is a little tiresome, so I will tell you everything I know of the Sleidlar, and once this paragraph is done I will go back to watching Alberado pass slowly along our larboard. Of the five peoples of the plains, the Sleidlar are by all accounts the most constrained, living only along the edges of the ice. People who have heard of them at all usually regard them as rustic reindeer-herders, but accounts from those who have visited their lands suggest that they lead lives well adapted to travel along the borders of the ice. In particular they have taken to taming and breeding many types of beast to help them in their work, from tiny mice and ferrets who help find and protect food caches up to vast shaggy-haired creatures claimed to eat whole trees and haul their larger buildings across the ice. The stories are both sparse and somewhat outlandish - for some reason those most disposed to distant travel seem equally disposed to completely making up their accounts of the far world - but they are consistent in describing the Sliding People as shaping the creatures around them to their need, which leads me to suggest they have some art or mastery in that direction.. This journey is arduous in the extreme. A steady wind blows out of the south, bringing cold and relentless damp even at this time of the year, and forcing us to tack endlessly, so progress remains very slow. I hope that your travels are more interesting. -Saf