Hospitality

Born from the strife of The Great Schism, when survival often depended on the goodwill of strangers, hospitality in Everwealth is more than a courtesy, it is a sacred act of mutual trust. Inviting someone into one’s home binds host and guest in an unspoken contract, one of peace and provision. Bread and salt are the universal symbols of this bond, representing life and trust, and a guest who refuses them is said to invite suspicion or fate’s scorn. Guests are expected to offer something in return, coin, stories, labor, a blessing, while hosts are bound to provide shelter and safety, even if it means going hungry themselves. Though some claim hospitality was stronger during the structured years of The Lost Ages, many believe it is in The Civil Age, after all was broken, that its truest form emerged. Shared suffering tempered pride. Few in Everwealth today have not known loss: a burned village, a vanished brother, an empty pot. That shared ache breeds empathy, and with it, the expectation that no one should be turned away without cause. Travelers are not just tolerated, they are witnessed, recognized as fellow survivors on the long road. In some hamlets, it is tradition to place a small stone bowl at the door, filled with grain or broth, as a silent offering to any who might pass hungry. To refuse hospitality without grave reason is seen as a rejection of one’s own past, and a dangerous invitation for it to repeat. Violating this trust, whether by harming a guest or betraying a host’s kindness, is said to bring a curse upon the offender, marking them as outcasts in a land where community is often the only shield against starvation, sickness, and sorrow. Four-hundred-eighty-three years in a post-Schism world, the echoes of those dark days still resonate, not in history books, but in the gestures of a quiet roof given, a fire rekindled for a stranger, or the final scrap of bread split in half without a word.