Introducing Wyseld.

After half his face burned, he had thought people would nickname him. No one dared.

Wyseld, a man of emerald eyes and red hair, lived in Nomlesk mostly. Mostly, because he was a mercenary who had made an excellent life for himself. On occasion, he traveled to Phav or Rhea on business, but he preferred the city-states to the empire life. What was it that drew him to Nomlesk? He was not sure. He knew four languages—the main ones in both Phav and Rhea, and two for Nomlesk—but, that wasn't why he preferred the city-states.

The road they took went over-land straight as an arrow. Where it met hills and valleys, it carved and spanned with bridges, rising gently as it went. Where it cut into the hill, picturesque retaining walls rose above them on each side, grass growing over the sheer edges and clinging to the spaces between the uncut stone. In one place, the road soared from the steep slope of a table-land across a lower plain, perhaps a thousand hands below, where spread out below them an idyllic, green country of lake and stream, with primitive fern forests. Where the road met back with the upper height, a precarious road was carved into the wall, but Oru lost its track a hundred hands above the ancient trees and giant ferns which crept up the side, hiding who knew what on the forest floor before. He felt an inexplicable pang, a desire to turn from the emperor's way and descend into the little valley. But he did not.
For the main, they passed the great jungle lands, the prairie-plains, and the like which lay outside the central mountains which enclosed and shielded the capitol.
Many of the folk born and raised within the capitol lands marveled at the greatness of the sky (the divine father was one such man); that it should be so distant from horizon to horizon. And the storms which spread themselves against that distant sky. Darkness and sprays of lightning whilst they rode in sunshine. Truly a wonder.