Mealverse/Clearstone
Hello and welcome to the first installment of Metis's Focal Voyages, starring me, your admirable host and decorated explorer, Metis of Vetteswoods. Together, you and I are going to travel to the farthest edges of Llokin civilization, from the crimson willows of Zsungsgarden to the evergreen jungles of Rockthorn. There will be much to see, learn, and most importantly, eat - so strap in for the voyage ahead.
In today's episode, we plunge into the sandy dunes of Clearstone, the ancestral land of the Rockbiters and current residence of the (possibly dead) Chieftain of Llokinkind, Meazs.
History
Often considered the center of all of Llokinkind and the only place on the Surface where Kraza's gaze is true, Clearstone is very, very important to Rockbiters - for some reason.
Now, I didn't want to mention this so early in the series, because I hate to make things about myself - but I am a Sunkissed, and unfortunately, the purity of my Focus-warmed blood is not recognized by the eared savages on the northern stretches of the Caldera. And while we secure our territory with a loosely-built stretch of unmaintained fence spattered with narcoleptic guardsmen, the Rockbiters take unauthorized entrance into their territory extremely seriously, and anyone without a pair of ears spotted near arrow-shot of whatever dead stretch of desert they say is theirs will be given the welcoming gift of a hand-carved war totem delivered by stone arrowhead to the chest. This, I'm sure you're aware, is unideal for our travels, considering I would not be able to refuse such a heartwarming present, and I would be so overcome with joy and gratitude I would need to be carried to the nearest infirmary at once.
Thus, dear reader, a plan emerges. The premise is unsophisticated; an pair of wax ears applied just below my horns will give me the appearance of legitimacy to the hyper-attentive guardsmen around Clearstone, and complemented with a woe-is-me story about my prior affiliation with some other tribe and my subsequent orphanage by a pair of crazed but devilishly handsome criminals slashing my parents to pitiful bits behind a bakery, passage into Clearstore would be assured. Since I am of such strong character, lying through my teeth to someone with the legal providence to donate my blood to the soil without repercussion would be the hardest part of this heist, second only to the pain endured through sawing off my two lower horns to make room for my fake ears.
So there I found myself, waxen ears melting into my scales under the blazing Focus, kneeling before the last obstacle which stood between me and writing a single word that's actually relevant to this article - a bored member of the Clearstone guard. But before I could shed a single tear for my theoretical dead parents and their daring roguish assassins, the warrior behind the post, not even lifting a plam from his chin, waved me on through.
My blood boiled at this supposed watchman and his offensively laxidasical attitude towards the sovereignty of his tribe. What was he thinking?! Would I, a clearly ficticious Rockbiter, simply be allowed to pass into the holy lands of Clearstone without so much an apprehension, a spearheaded line of questioning, an invasive investigation of my purpose of visit, a stern admonishment that my life is forfeit should I taint the sands of Clearstone with my Sunkissed feet?! Wrathfully peeling my waxy ornamentations from the back of my head, I reprimanded the "guardsman" with scalding words. HOW DARE, you violate the Clearstone Declaration by simply allowing me to pass! HOW DARE, you be too indolent to uphold your holy duties! HOW DARE, you insult Chieftain Meazs by showing such disdain to the history of your people! This land was once ours, and it was won by force! Has the prideful spirit of war of the Clearstone people taken so short a time dither into the dust?!
"Very funny, Zsera." he replied. "I get it, you don't want me to let Sunkissed over the border. You've made your point. Just come along already."
I stood in silence for a moment. I was struck with the realization that I had been gifted a godly serendipity, and it was now time to move past the dissapointment that my trip into Clearstone, despite my Sunkissed heritage, would be so banal. I apologize for the white lie I told earlier, my friend - for my true plan was not "unsophisticated," rather far more sophisticated than any of us could have even realized. The wax ears were merely a piece of a much greater puzzle, which fell into place under the intervention of the Gods; I had managed to not only naturally appear indistinguishable, in color, earlessness, and physicality, to this supposed "Zsera," but the target of my unintentional disguise was also of such a flippant personality that pretending to have ears and harassing this particular guardsman was an expected and material behavior of hers.
And so, not correcting the guardsman that I was not this person, and thus temporarily taking the identity of the elusive "Zsera of Clearstone" - who I hoped I would not cross paths with before my time here was up - I walked through the stone gates.
Geography
As I stepped foot into the sun-baked lands of Clearstone, I can comment only that the descriptions you have heard are unmistakably true; it is hot. Extremely hot, incredulously hot, relentlessly hot. Despite the Gods being closest to Vetteswoods, the radiance of their warmth deeply consumes Clearstone in a suffocating blanket of heat, so intense that it is unlike even being on the Focus's shell. The air is on fire. If it were to rain, the water would boil back into clouds seconds within leaving the sky. Anything living surely bursts into flames upon a moment's exposure to the Focus, meaning there are no trees, no grasses, no mosses breathing life into the landscape. The baked sand caused me such enormous grief as it seared into my mulchy feet that I began a habit of hopping wherever I went, trying desparately to keep my feet from touching the burning ground for long enough.
In the unsettled parts of Clearstone, there is nothing to see. The Surface rolls in massive dunes, the accosting, burning wind listlessly tossing pockets of sand into my eyes and nostrils. Clearstone's territory is massive and its borders expansive, but not because its population is large or its people truly desire the land - it is merely because they can say they own the dunes, and like a mentally troubled child screaming that they want to eat their moldy bread, nobody else is stupid enough to fight them for it. There are no valuable resources here, no life-giving waters or healing fruits, only pain and death and sand.
Unfortunately, as a result of my hopping-based locomotion strategy, every drop of liquid in my canteens had lept from their containers and sizzled into plasma on the searing coals of Clearstone's dunes. With my relentless jumping taking a dire toll on my body, I began to grow incredibly thirsty, and in an instant became astutly aware of my unenviable situation. Only a single episode of my show, and I was already about to perish from the face of the Surface in the midst of my journies. At least, I told myself, I would die doing what I loved - playing hopscotch in Hell.
As the last drop of hope boiled from my soul, leaving it as parched as my body, I fell face-first into the molten sand and embraced death. The Focus-powered Surface dissolved my body into primordial soup, blasting the molecules of my organs into whirlwinds of boiling mist, my blood turning into fire that streaked across the sky. The agony did not last terribly long. My body would never be found.
Politics and government
Face-to-face I had come with Dejil, hatching from his egg as a purple-horned skeleton, the rest of my flesh having melted from the planes of existence. The sand of the Focus was downright glacial in comparison to that of Clearstone's. It was a refreshing, soothing dip in icy waters against the infernal blaze by which I had just been consumed. Relief from the pain I had endured flooded my mind, so highly elevating my spirits I could not help but give the God of Deliverance a bony hug as he stood before me.
"Hello, my child," he sung with his crisp, swooning voice.
My hollow sockets stared at him with affection, but a deep sadness rumbled far beyond the empty gaze. If I had known Clearstone was no tribe, but a portal of brimstone to the spiritual realm, I would have planned my approach differently. But, as I know too well, it is the way of exploration such that you sometimes fall into unexpected places. I looked down, causing my skull to drop off of my spine. Dejil waited patiently as my headless corpse stooped to pick up its head and screw it back onto the vertebrae - and off we went, to, as I assumed, be returned to the center of the Focus.
Dejil walked with me across the wintry desert, his glowing form undulating and dripping with globs of gelid sand. My bones began to rattle, shivering from the algid temperatures of the Focus's warmth. Losing my thoughts, waking nightmares grabbed hold of my mind of what would happen to my defiled body when Zsung saw what had become of me, a beautiful sculpture of beating flesh scraped to a meatless pile of bones, picked to pristine cleanliness by vultures of magma. Perhaps Gimel would be upset, too, to see me so devoid of water and life as to be the physical manifestation of drought, an elemental of dust. One of my toes snapped off my brittle skeleton. We stopped briefly to re-adhere it, then moved on.
Then, on the horizon, through the arctic haze of the Focus's blazing, frigid air, I saw a sign emerge. Not a metaphorical sign, like an interpretive signal from the Gods, but a literal sign, a street sign, emblazoned with white English letters.
"Clearstone: 0.5 miles"
Dejil sung to me again. "Here is my city, my daughter. Welcome to Clearstone."
As he softly spoke to the holes in my skull that were once ears, I saw its glacial horizon emerge as a frosty mirage; the Lost City of Clearstone. The kingdom of Dejil.
Economy
Some will wonder why Clearstone is so named, given the fact that its traditional depiction is that of a flawless, flowing desert - barely a stone in sight, let alone of any transparent quality.
The Lost City of Clearstone cannot be so misunderstood. The city is of crystal, built of towering citadels of frozen glass. The landscape is lucent, of shining solids and vitreous angles. Aquamarine ribbons, like frozen auroras, decorate the diaphanous skyscrapers and pellucid halls. Everywhere and everything is glass, every footpath across the snowy sand, every façade of every building, even every fruit and vegetable found basking in the windowsils of the homes. There is stone, and it is clear.
Undead citizens rushing to my side, I was welcomed heartily into Dejil's kingdom. Skeletal priests came to shake my hand and hear my story, as snowflakes of quartz tangoed through the frostbitten air around us. I told them of my brief and terrible travels through the unholy inferno - it seems everyone's fate, should they wish to find the true Clearstone, is the same. They shook their skulls at my story of pain, and with the icy breath within their ribs passing through their ratting teeth, they expressed their deep empathy to my experiences, the boiling of my flesh and the parching of my soul. Their words had such a weight of solace to them. They had not only accepted their new reality, unliving forever as a revenant of bone in the city above the Surface - they had become one with it.
I entered a circle of robed priests, skeletons rattling into the crystalline sky, sending heartfelt thanks to Kraza for letting their immortal soul bond eternal to their rocky, marrowed form. Joining them, I was asked to lead the prayer of the undead.
Winterous air stirred beneath my missing heart. I was offered a glass starfruit, swimming with little sparkling sediments, to calm my nervousness. I beheld it, the flawless curves of the glass sliding around the thin, frigid bones of my fingers, making satisfying sounds that echoed through the arctic sky and shuddered the auroras that hung above. I bit into it. It was crunchy. I was ready to begin.
I gave thanks to Dejil - for delivering me to this holy place, and for saving me from my mortal suffering. They shook their eyeless skulls in agreement.
I called out to Gimel - to show her my fealty and my love persisted. Their nodding heads slowed. Then stopped altogether.
I begged Zsung for forgiveness - to repent for the mistake that robbed me of my flesh.
The priests seized me. I was grasped by the shoulders, by my legs, and by the vertebrae of my tail - hoisting me helplessly in their grasp, their empty faces staring wrathfully at mine.
"You DARE wake the unholy one in this sacred place?!" They screamed at me, the coldness of their souls' breath growing, icicles forming underneath their skulls; the blues of the sky deepening with their rage.
"Unholy one?! Zsung?" I fearfully questioned.
"DO NOT SAY HER NAME HERE!" Anger ran thick in their voices. The auroras above began to wilt. Rain began to fall from the sky.
I saw the reflection of a face, in the glass. One of flesh. Lightless eyes.
The rain intensified. It smelled of iron. The deep blues of the sky turned to black. Then to red.
The crystalline citadels began to shake. Their flawless faces cracked, and blood spewed forth. A set of great wings emerged from the ground, shattering a world of glass as they rose quickly into the frigid air, toppling buildings and fracturing the world to scintillating chunks. A mist of shattered crystal swam around and through me as chaos erupted with her.
I saw one of her faces, as I fell. It shook, sloughing off its sleepiness. She smiled at me with gratitude.
Demographics
MISSING PERSONS REPORT
Named Zsera of Clearstone. Female. Green scales, purple hook-shaped horns, no ears. Former Sunkissed initiated by Jakal.
Please tell your nearest priest if sighted. We are praying for her safe return to our family.