“The world cracked apart. And in the spaces between, people made fire and tried not to forget how to pray.” -Barden Loames, Of Hearth and Hollow, 248 CA
It is said that where cities falter and towns teeter, it is the villages that simply endure. Everwealth’s villages are not so much planned as they are remembered into place, stubborn knots of humanity and kinship tied to the land by necessity, memory, and blood. Most begin as little more than a gathering of tents, lean-tos, or crumbling Pre-Schism foundations, yet over decades, sometimes centuries, they become homes. Tucked in the shadow of broken watchtowers, nestled among poisoned rivers or forest clearings where no beast dares tread, these remote enclaves survive by grit, luck, and local myth. They are often overlooked, even by the maps etched in ink and godsblood by The Scholar's Guild, not due to oversight, but because many choose to remain forgotten. Life in these places is harsh, brutal, and rarely long. Medicine is homemade or superstitious. Laws are more likely to be carved into bark or passed down by song than enforced with any kingdom’s seal. Folk here are marked by soot-lined faces, cracked hands, and sun-scorched hides, many never seeing a city in all their days, nor needing one. They barter, they bury, they raise their dead where they fell and name the stones after them. Yet the people are far from helpless. Villages may lack infrastructure or trained soldiers, but they possess deep-rooted knowledge of the land, the cycles of creatures that wander it, and which spirits require feeding. It is not uncommon for an entire village to vanish overnight, not because they were slaughtered, but because they knew it was time to move on. Despite their isolation, there is culture here. Festivals of torchlight and bone-masks, harvest rites where old songs are sung to keep the beasts at bay, murals etched into cliff faces by firelight. And though the Monarchy claims dominion over all who live under its sky, many villagers hold allegiance only to their soil, their saints, and each other. Travelers from outside these enclaves would do well to tread carefully, for the smiles of villagers are not always welcoming, and what is buried beneath their hearths may be older than Everwealth itself. Though viewed by nobles as mere specks between the “real cities,” the villages of Everwealth are often the first to see disaster, and the last to be saved. Yet somehow, they remain. Not proud. Not safe. But present.