Friend,
If you are reading this, then sooner or later you intend to leave a gate.
Perhaps you stand in Hearthhold already.
Perhaps you are reading this in a village tavern while rain taps against the shutters.
Perhaps someone placed this guide into your hands and said, "Read this before you do something foolish."
If so, listen to them.
The Concord of Five Banners is a larger place than it first appears.
Maps help.
Road signs help.
Experienced guides help.
But sooner or later every traveler discovers the same truth:
The world cannot be understood from a map.
It must be walked.
The forests must be entered.
The rivers crossed.
The mountains climbed.
The roads followed until they become stories.
This guide cannot replace experience.
Nothing can.
What it can do is help you survive long enough to gain some.
Within these pages you will find descriptions of the Five Banners, the roads that bind them together, the dragons whose names echo through every corner of the realm, and the people who have shaped the age in which we live.
You will also find warnings.
Pay attention to those.
The realm has a way of educating travelers who ignore warnings.
Some lessons are expensive.
Others are fatal.
If fortune favors you, this guide will spare you a few mistakes.
If fortune truly favors you, it will encourage you to make the right ones.
Because mistakes, surprisingly enough, are not the enemy.
A traveler who never errs rarely learns.
A traveler who learns nothing rarely changes.
And the purpose of a journey is not merely to arrive somewhere else.
It is to become someone else.
When your travels finally bring you back to Hearthhold - and most meaningful journeys eventually do - I hope you return wiser than when you left.
If you do, then this guide has served its purpose.
Travel well.
— *Pell* *Whispering Stacks, Hearthhold*
MAGDA'S NOTE
Pell spent three days writing that.
Three days.
He used words like purpose and meaningful and fortune.
So let me save you some time.
Here's what you actually need to know.
Bring extra socks.
Carry more water than you think you'll need.
Never trust a horse trader who compliments your intelligence.
Never insult a cook.
Never ignore a librarian.
Never eat mushrooms unless someone who already ate them is still alive.
And if a dragon gives you advice, write it down.
You don't have to follow it.
But write it down.
Dragons rarely waste words.
Most people do.
— *Magda*