Erde ErdeI have on more than one occasion had someone of rare skill or particularly hungry academic interest take me into their confidence and tell me something which I have but slowly come to believe; that they are from another world.
Their stories of arriving here share common elements, a mysterious stairwell that transforms in its construction from the carpeted and brass-embellished halls of a 'train' to the salt-smelling waxed planks of a ship. Doors that refuse to open but for the touch of some stranger unwilling to help them, or the touch of some artifact or heirloom (a JanusCoin, commonly) of theirs. Strange creatures. Danger.
These immigrants often share an inability to find a way home, or an unwillingness to face the risk of the journey twice. I suspect some come and go boldly, but they do not share this fact with me.
Ah, but Erde! This other world. I understand that there they lack a DeepCourt or seafolk, instead all lands are 'empires' or 'nations' upon the surface. This jockeying for control of distant land between empires defines Erde much as the delicate intra and extra-court balance defines our own. Sometimes they produce paragons of sport called an Arcadian. Oh, and such green, flat lands they have in abundance! So I have been told.
Their artifice, also, is different from ours. Flight occurs in 'aeroplanes' and not ships. Wires carrying thimblefuls of tame lightning transmit words all across the world at lightning's ambitious speed! But without LightningBottles.
I would love to go, but I fear Ele hasn't the fortitude.
-- HalloaGrisau
What? Describe Erde? Someone else should visit it, surely, I hardly know it for having been there for so long.
-- JuneLaveau
Is Erde somewhere across that Grand Stair thingie that people keep whispering darkly about?
If those 'aeroplanes' you speak of are anything like that lumbering hulk FlightSerendipitous, then you can keep your Erde. It is clearly a land of barbarians, however tame their lightning.