Graya mulled that over, before spelling out more. “Come from Jianghu? Kingdom we don’t have reports on?”
“Or at least we don’t know it by that name. And they don’t know about us, either; they had no idea about Healer Greens. But that makes no sense.” Knuckles whitened as he gripped his notes. “Where haven’t we been? It’d take months to get farther than Heralds have ever traveled. Herald Vanyel went all the way to the Dhorisha Plains! He was a Herald-Mage; you’d think he’d have written it down if there was a kingdom that made magic with ink and paper.”
Graya nodded.
“And King Roald went down there to tweak Tarma of Tale’sedrin’s tail when he was the Heir, less than a century ago; he’d have heard if there were any new kingdoms cropping up. The Wens have a different language, they have a whole different system of Healing – they have to have come from somewhere that’s been around a while. It has to be far away. And yet, they haven’t been traveling long.” Granted, the aftermath of a war could make it hard to tell, but Arvil liked to think the two of them were pretty good judges of travel stains after all these years on Circuit. And the travel wear and weariness on these people…. “Three, maybe four weeks, I think. At most. They have children, they have elders; they couldn’t have moved half as fast as ordinary caravans. Three weeks back-trailing from here wouldn’t even take them south of Rethwellan!”
Graya blew out a breath. “Wei said Qing put him back together after a war. No war in Rethwellan. So, what war? Where?”
Good question. “It couldn’t have been our war with Hardorn,” Arvil concluded. “We know all the kingdoms involved in that. If they’re not from Rethwellan – well. There’s no way they’re from Karse.”
Graya twitched, and nodded.
Right. They’d both trained with Herald Alberich and Companion Kantor when Karse had still been Valdemar’s mortal enemy. Sun-Priests meeting a man who could deal with ghosts? The result would have been… explosive. And likely fatal to any innocent bystanders.
“Farther away,” Arvil muttered. “They have to be from much, much farther away. But they can’t be. There’s no way they could have ridden here any faster-”
Graya flicked a glance at him, then nosed the cloth firmly. “Vanyel. Chronicles. Gates.”
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
lols, yeah, the Dhorisha Plains are pretty much Valdemar’s benchmark for distant lands. And the travel times are tripping the both of them up a lot.
… The Mage Storms are really gonna mess with Jianghu/Sect Lands, aren’t they? They use transportation/Gate talismans a lot right now it looks like, and the storms are gonna make that hard if not impossible.
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Eep.
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Actually, they don’t use teleportation-type arrays and talismans except for emergencies. Each one takes a lot of power. As in use one and it pretty much drains the average cultivator to the dregs.
Which is why Nie Huaisang realized this could be a way to escape in the first place – Wei Wuxian, with the Stygian Tiger Seal, has the power of whole clans worth of cultivators.
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/… The Mage Storms are really gonna mess with Jianghu/Sect Lands, aren’t they?/
Maybe, maybe not.
From what’s mentioned on the Valdemar wiki the ones coming will start off mild and get worse. Considering that the Cultivators would no doubt be able to detect the build up (assuming the storms will hit their lands) not to mention their skills at dealing with twisted energy flows etc; they’ll probably be a lot better off then Valdemar.
I have this image of Valdemar going completely insane due to the Storms but if you look over at Rabbit Hole, there’s this ten kilometer radius of normal. Well as normal as the Pelagirs can get.
Of course WWX and co consider the entire mess pretty mundane. Sure there are easily-killed monsters popping up here and there but compared to Sunshot, this is easy mode. Though if those tree yao don’t learn to sing on key for once, the village is going to have some extra firewood this year.
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It might be a bit hairy even for them. But it’s a familiar kind of hairy. Like prepping for hurricanes on the coast. You might end up picking yourself out of the wreckage, but you know how to build so the important places stay intact – and you laid in supplies in advance!
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/It might be a bit hairy even for them. But it’s a familiar kind of hairy. Like prepping for hurricanes on the coast. /
Or to expand the example you have a house designed for and inhabited by people expecting hurricanes; and a house and people that was designed for and are expecting completely different weather conditions.
They’re both good designs and nobody present is stupid etc. But if a hurricane pops out of nowhere, I think we all know who is going to be the comparative winner.
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Exactly!
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“Wei said Qing put him back together after a war. No war in Rethwellan. So, what war? Where?”
Do Arvil and Graya know Wei is a family/clan name and Qing a first name?
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They may not care, so long as they answer to it.
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ATM they’ve heard Wei Wuxian referred to as “Master Wei”, so that’s the name they use. The Wens have been careful not to break out the whole “Wei Wuxian” in other people’s hearing. He has a reputation….
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I was about to say something about good thinking, then I realized:
this is demonstrating horse sense. 😀
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*Rimshot!*
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I love Graya! The Heralds could really use a good newspaper, particularly one that mentions current events like flying mages sending Diplomatic mission.
It happened a couple of chapters ago but the Wen group were making up a whole backstory about why a man from a different clan with different colors was part of their group. Herald Avril never thought to think about it as he didn’t realize that people were suppose to wear livery identifying their clan, and thought it reasonably normal that refugees from a war would comprise a diverse group.
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*G* Yeah. They kept expecting people to ask, and nobody has! Arvil’s figured out he’s slightly separate from the rest of the group, but, well, the talking to ghosts explains that….
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Beck Avril might just think thats how guys who deal with ghosts dress, like how his society has Healer Greens.
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*G* Fair point!
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