Report of Initial Contact with the Sunlit Landsdwellers, cont.

To the Expedition Services,

Fourth Report, Second Day of Contact

I pray for patience and Luck's favor - I was not trained for this. I will slay the great spiders up here that are pitiful compared to the ones we hunt. I will defend our primitive and simple outposts that embarass me to know they were built at my orders. Nearly everything up here is beyond my training.

The Lands Beyond the Cavern Mouths we were sent to explore are still a strange place, and inhabited. These inhabitants are many and they are tall peoples, who have strange words we do not have in this place. Thankfully, they've had the foresight to bring someone who could make us understand them - and better yet it was someone who uses magic, so we do not need to spend time trying to teach our language to them and vice versa. I reported and requisitioned before - we should have considered a mage for the expedition.

Spiders and Dwarf by Myself, G.Art, Lyraine

If we had to, we would have, but it's become clear misunderstandings would ensue from the gaps in vocabulary. We've taken to using their words for things only found up here, though in writing this report we may have to be creative in our efforts. They've taken to calling us people, but themselves as "elves," "humans," and "orcs." I suspect they believe our word for people is our word for ... well, people who are from underground and are shorter than the "elves," "humans," and "orcs" who tower above us, some nearly twice as tall as myself. They've struggled to say our word for people, twisting it into "Dwarves," and I have no doubt we've mangled their words in similar ways.

We've determined these lands to be called the "Sunlit Lands" because they are lit by the "sun" - their moving source of light, unlike our roads and cities lit by our rivers. The "sun" seems to be a large distant gem holding light within its facets. It moves across the "sky" - the eternal ceiling - by an unseen current as it rises in the "morning" and falls at "night" behind the mountains. We were told not to look directly at it - Arthik had marred visions of blue-green orbs wherever he looked for sometime after, ever the contrarian that he is. At "night" there were far away sparkling crystals of light that flowed in the same direction as the "sun" called "stars," and three great spheres of stones called the "moons." The "sun" is out in the "day" while the "moons" may or may not appear with the "sun" or at "night."

"Sun," "moon," "stars," and then there are "clouds" in the "sky." "Clouds" are ... they look like soft rocks, maybe fabric is the better word, as they also flow along the unseen current in the "sky." Water falls from the darker clouds, much like the steam-mists of our cavern-roads would condense water onto cooler surfaces. I am not a man who seeks the answers of how the unknown work, but I imagine the "clouds" are hot to the touch, if we could reach them at all, as they tend to be bright, like flames are.

While the features of the eternal ceiling are fascinating and unlike our homes, they are not what must be noted here for all memory for our people.

We have the ability to consume whatever tries to kill us. Those of the Sunlit Lands are weakened by whatever tries to kill them, if they cannot eat them, and sometimes what they kill will try to kill them after death. Madhis is our best cook, and when the Sunlit Landsdwellers made us a feast when we first met, we felt we could return the favor - it seemed an appropriate custom to mimic when we have the same custom. We have had time to learn how to hunt and harvest food before meeting those living up here, and had found a variety of highly palatable combinations in culinary arts of the Sunlit Lands.

This, we found, was to be a diplomatic disaster. During the "night" after our meal, one of the aides came to our camp demanding to know what we had cooked with. We and Madhis were delighted to share but the aide ran away shouting about "poison" and how we tried to kill the diplomats. This made no sense. We were armed, yes, but we never put our steel to them.

Concerned we had killed, cooked, and then presented some creature of cultural value, we approached the camp with open arms and without weapons. We had to know how we erred, how we could best repair this tenuous peace. I reiterate, it is all but certain that the expedition would be lost if we were to come into combat due to their numbers and familiarity with this environment despite our superior weapons.

We have no word for "poison" because it is a Sunlit Lands weapon one eats or drinks to make one become "sick" - which is another word we don't have. Or rather, we don't have the right word-equivalent. It is starting to be irritating when each word seems to be meaning another word when our words build on each other to make a new meanings when written.

Is this food? by Lyraine Alei/G.Art

We had proven ourselves capable of not getting weakened, or "poisoned," when we ate exactly what had been prepared ourselves without issue. The dwellers of the Sunlit Lands get weakened when they eat a plant called "hemlock" that we had ground into a paste to season with. Our constitution was marveled at as something unusual, suggesting the people up here are less enduring than us when they were forged by the gods - if they were forged by our gods at all.

I had recommended some excellent working songs that have helped me recover my strength when I had been weak in mind as a young man or when my body had felt the urge to lay about, our meaning of the word "sick," but apparently my advice was inappropriate and unappreciated. "Illness," a word apparently also meaning "sickness," which also means "being sick," is a condition where these Sunlit Landsdwellers must laze about and continue being weakened until they stop being weak or simply die. It makes no sense to me, when we are weak without injury, we do not laze about and pray for the gods make us better out of their mercy, we bolster ourselves and endure into greater strength.

We were lucky in our willingness to share our ingredients, as it allowed for healers to provide some kind of drink to resolve the worst of the "poison." This may have been the sole reason we were able to salvage diplomatic relations with the Sunlit Lands, as well as our ability to eat the food without being "poisoned." One of the aides still suspects we were intending to kill them.

It is interesting that the person who was healed first is also the person who used magic to let us all speak together.

We do not have these words, as apparently "sickness" is not the same as being weakened. I suspect "sick" up here is more akin to our word for injured, but is an injury with no wound we can readily heal.

In our future dealings with these peoples, I recommend we learn to cook their meals and replicate those instead of what we ourselves would eat. Perhaps we should proceed with caution when eating Sunlit foods, as our belief that nothing we have killed and have eaten is capable of killing us may not hold true up here.

I wish I had more I could report on, but after the dinner, we've been more cautious when interacting with the peoples of this land. They've been delighted to hear how we have crystals we can store light within, but have politely requested that we cease our cooking attempts for them. I will write another report by the end of the week. Included with this report is a request for a diplomat who has experience with reuniting Lost Routes to us, as they likely have more applicable skills than we do, considering they actually deal with people, and not combat like myself. And please, a healer, the last thing I want is to be remembered as the man who died of stress when dealing with peoples who are armed with wooden and bronze weapons when we have iron and steel.

— Commander Dor'ist Ironstone

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Legacy:

The Dwarves have adopted a number of words they call "sønd͡zint" - Sunwords, words from the languages of the Sunlit Lands - and while they may not fully understand the terms, their language now use the terms to describe "This idea is one we don't have in our language and it looks like this description as according to people from the Sunlit Lands."

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Additional Reading: