Mura had never seen a Vessel-ship before.

She had heard stories from her uncles and aunts who had traveled to the distant Port City. They described what glimpses they caught of ships rising into the mists, vanishing into the Velvet with a crackling hum.

When she was younger, her grandmother told her the Old Tales, until her father demanded she stop. Mura still remembered, though, the stories of monstrous wizards from behind the Aspectured Wall who traveled the Velvet in spheres of glass. She could clearly see in her mind’s eye the golden boats with silk sails all bedecked with small metal coins that drifted lazily between the ice crystals. She shivered at the idea of giant beasts with broad bodies and their barbarian riders who drove them between the Worlds.

The duties of the Quill-Servants of the Ever Palace were legion. They were the clerks, note-takers, scribes, and historians. There was never a time when there was nothing to do, and the Librarian kept all of them working like tireless ants.

Of course, they did tire — a fact the Librarian was reluctant to acknowledge — and eventually the number of mistakes and unreliable work forced the rules of the Hall of Record to change.

Every Quill-Servant had a guaranteed rest period, as well as a limit to the days spent doing a specific job. The servants were rotated between different tasks to keep their minds sharp, and they were never assigned to the same duty twice in a row, no matter the need.

You ever hear the story about pots?

It goes like this: a teacher tells one group of students they will be graded on how many pots they make in a pottery class, while another group will be graded on the quality of one pot. At the end of the semester, the best pots all came from the group being graded on number, rather than quality.

It’s a parable about quantity vs. quality, about how spending time focusing on the qualities of a single product may hamper your growth, while experience and failure can be excellent teachers. It’s about getting wrapped up in details as opposed to finishing your art and moving on. It’s beloved by all art-teachers and life-coaches and people who love quippy parables over the ugly trench-warfare of creating art.

That said, this is one of those parables that can be twisted to mean different things by adding or removing details. When I say “best pots,” for instance, what do I mean? The ones with the shiniest glazing? Most resistant to breaking? The ones voted best by the class? The ones the teacher liked the best? Adjusting or defining the term can really change the message.

The Imperial Vessel-ship Blessing of Harvest was cold. It was an odd feeling for the Bulquis Renner Torvis, who had commanded entire military campaigns from its marbled interior.

Usually the ship was quite comfortable, cool at worst. The Velvet’s winds were rarely too hot or too cold. The old Priest-sailors considered such temperatures as ill omens.

Renner stood on the Royal Balcony, staring out over the railing down towards the pale white of the Fifth World. He had heard many years ago that beyond the Aspectured Wall, the strange people named their worlds. He had thought it was an odd idea, and time had not mellowed his opinion. Perhaps, he thought, the idea held more merit when there were more than five worlds.

Only slightly shorter than an average folk of the Myriad Worlds, the Imwii are, as a group, a most cordial and welcoming people.

Their physical similarity to the folk of the Arcwhite Kingdoms has led many scholars to assume the Imwii are distant cousins to the people of Arcwhite. Others believe this is no more than convergent evolution, while others call this belief a form of physio-centrism.

Imwii are generally believed to be a young people; their society’s history goes back only a few thousand years before available records vanish. There have been countless alternatives floated — the Imwii are offshoots of the Arcwhite people, they are from a different plane of existence, they were created by a new deity to serve some hidden agenda, and more — but general consensus is that the Imwii people simply didn’t bother evolving until recently.

The Archonarcheans are, without a doubt, one of the most feared people across the Myriad Worlds. At least, they have been, though most of their historical threat has been suppressed in the more recent years, due to the natural progression of time and fading of memory.

Rest assured, for those of us who were alive at the time, there is nothing more terrifying than the looming black-clothed presence of a group of Achonarcheans walking down the street.

For you will never see fewer than two at once. Archonarcheans are perhaps pathologically adverse to solitude or independance, especially in relation to their own. They are recalcitrant, and thickly accented in their speech. There have been many attempts throughout the years to translate the Archonarchean language, but for obvious reasons, they have been unhelpful and the efforts proven fruitless.

Of all the folk across the Myriad Worlds, I felt the greatest trepidation about writing of the Euili. While a great deal of scholarly work has been done on the Euili and their culture, virtually none has a more layfolk value. I even attempted to coordinate an interview with an Euili for this book. From such different lands we were, and such different worlds within those lands — I dare say the lowliest Euili are of a higher station in life than even our Countiers and Countesses — that conversation was a constant struggle.

If you have never seen an Euili, feel not alone, for they are among the rarer folk of the Myriad Worlds. As a people, the Euili are nearly uniform in shape and size, enough so that those who are not Euili can find themselves in great confusion when asked to differentiate — a confusion that is not shared by the Euili themselves.

Of all the known races, the Zyth are the ones believed to be the first race of all the Myriad Worlds to travel the Velvet. Evidence of ancient Zyth societies have been discovered on multiple different worlds dating back to before the first Golden Howdah left the ground. There is contrasting evidence with the Insect-folk, of course, but little is reliable when it comes to these hard-skinned folk.

As a people, the Zyth are tall and wide-jointed. Their necks are thicker than their limbs, and crane up and over like those of a Herankadil. Their faces have been compared both to the feline and the porcine, while I myself must interject to say that there is a distinct chiropterine shape to their hairless heads and ears.

The mouth of the Zyth is often cited as the most alien aspect of the Zyth, being vertical in orientation and framed by flexible bony ridges and covered by two mobile lips. The prehensile movement of these “teeth” has made the phrase “a Zyth’s smile” a common idiom for something that illicits vicarious terror or discomfort.

The Esquin, as a people, tend to defy precice definition. This is not only because of their deep and varied culture, distinct and diverse, but also because of their awkward relationship to each other.

Esquin, similar to the Aspanighoraji, tend to avoid others of their own kind. While their behavior can range from disgust to casual dismissal, the fact remains that it is rare to see more than one Esquin in a single place.

Dissimilar to the Aspanighoraji, there is no mystery why this is the case. The Esquin are a mildly psychic people, able to observe the mental and emotional states of other beings to varying degrees of precision. Among other Esquin, however, these innate abilities become much sharper and absorptive.

The Empire was a house. Like all good houses, it protected all inside from the storms that raged, from the beasts who hungered, and the dark night that crept closer every hour.

But for a house to be a good house, it needed many things. It needed a strong roof overhead, and a strong roof needed mighty walls and braces. Walls could not stand without a solid foundation and steady floor to stand upon. A good foundation made for good walls, which made for a good roof, which made a good house.

This was the Empire; a house that would stand for Ever and Always. The foundations of every House were the servants. Their work kept the walls of Nobility upright. The Nobility collected the tithes and taxes from their subjects, and used them to raise and support the roof of the Church and the Ever Lord Himself. This was how it had been explained to Navin, how it was explained to children across the Empire.