Chronicles of the Five Lands

The world in one paragraph

It is the year 63 of the Pact Era. The continent is divided into the Five Lands — Fire, Water, Wind, Lightning and Earth — and at the heart of each a hidden shinobi village guards the borders, carries out missions and keeps its own law. There has been no great war for a generation, but the peace is fragile: alliances and wars are decided today by the Kage themselves, not by old treaties. Between the villages lie the wilds — forests full of ambushes, deserts, swamps and mountains — where rogue ninja, bandits and beasts roam. You are a freshly made genin. Nobody knows your name yet.

The times before the villages

Before the hidden villages arose, shinobi lived in clans. A clan was a family, a school and an army at once: it passed its techniques down from generation to generation and sold its swords to whichever daimyō paid more. The chronicles call this time the Era of Warring Clans. Clans that drank tea together today stood against each other on the battlefield tomorrow, and children went to war as soon as they could form a seal.

Customs from those times have survived to this day:

• A name is not given away. A shinobi who introduces themselves to a stranger hands them a piece of power over themselves. That is why to this day a stranger stays a "Stranger" to you until they introduce themselves — and NPCs remember who they told their name to.
• Techniques are wealth. A scroll with a technique's notation was worth more than gold. From this tradition grew the art of calligraphy — calligraphers are still the keepers of jutsu knowledge.
• Samurai armor and shinobi steel. The daimyō's samurai wore heavy plate; shinobi preferred light kusari chain mail, in which you can run and form seals. Smiths of both schools work side by side today.

The Pact of the Five Lands and the birth of the hidden villages

The Era of Warring Clans ended when five daimyō understood they were paying for a war nobody was winning. Each of them made an agreement with the clans of their land, remembered as the Pact of the Five Lands:

1. The clans of a land settle in one hidden village (-gakure no sato) and stop fighting each other.
2. The village protects the land and carries out missions for it; the daimyō pays and stays out of its affairs.
3. At the head of the village stands the Kage — the Shadow — the strongest shinobi, answerable to the daimyō for the whole village.
4. Merchants, bankers and craftsmen under the daimyō's protection are inviolable. Whoever raises a hand against them raises it against the daimyō in person. (That is why vendors and bankers in the game have yellow names and can't be attacked.)
5. No blood may be shed within the village walls — this is the Law of the Gates. (The protected zone of towns and villages.)

Years are counted from the making of the Pact. In the decades that followed, the villages twice went to the Great Shinobi Wars — the first over borders, the second over mines and forests. After the second, the Kage understood that fixed treaties break, and today each of them decides alone with whom their village lives in alliance, with whom in neutrality and with whom at war.

Chakra, seals and the hidden nature

Chakra is the weave of two forces: the energy of the body and the energy of the spirit. The body gives Strength and Dexterity, the spirit — Focus. A shinobi learns to mix them in the right proportions and shape them with the hands: they form seals, and when the series is complete, the chakra takes the form of a technique. A seal broken by a blow falls apart, which is why warriors train Fortitude, which lets them hold it through the pain.

Every person carries a hidden chakra nature — one of the five elements:

The nature is inherited from the land, not from the parents: a child born in the Land of Fire most often has a fire nature (roughly two chances in five), but any other can come up. Nobody knows their nature from birth. It sleeps until the shinobi learns to master the flow of chakra — when Chakra Control reaches 30, the nature awakens: you feel it, but don't yet know what it is. It is recognized with chakra paper, made from the wood of the giants of the Forest of Death: pour chakra into it and the paper reacts in front of everyone nearby. Every Academy graduate gets one sheet; more are sold by the Academy sensei and by calligraphers.

The same control carries the body. From 30 chakra gathered in the soles throws a running shinobi onto roofs and along the tops of village walls; from 50 it holds them on the surface of water, so a lake that others walk round is crossed straight over — deep water draws a little chakra with each few steps, and with none left the water won't hold you. Some lakes hide islets that only those who walk on water ever reach.

Only a recognized nature opens the way to elemental jutsu. Whoever wants to master them fully trains Nature Transformation; whoever prefers pure chakra without an element — spheres, blades, projectiles — Shape Transformation.

The Five Lands

The continent is vast: running from Konoha to another hidden village takes a quarter of an hour, sprinting half that. Roads join the villages and small towns, and signposts stand at the forks.

The Land of Fire — Konohagakure, the Hidden Leaf Village

The richest and most wooded land of the continent, lying at its heart — from here roads lead out to every land. Konoha is tucked away in the forest, ringed by a wall with gates, and the Hokage tower rises over its roofs. Its shinobi wear green vests, and its guards wield fire and earth. Konoha believes in the Will of Fire: the strength of the village is the strength of the bonds between its people, and an experienced shinobi has a duty to teach the younger ones. That is why Konoha teaches the most techniques of all the villages — from taijutsu to summoning.

• Tanzaku — the land's biggest merchant town, full of stalls, inns and gambling houses. Home of the merchants who live off the Pact.
• Rice Village, Tea Village, Fishing Village — quiet settlements of farmers, tea growers and fishermen.
• Border Outpost — the watch on the western road.
• Woodcutters' Camp and Bandit Camp — one lives off the forest, the other off those who pass through it.
• The Forest of Death — an ancient forest right by Konoha, with trees so huge their crowns hide the sky. Giant spiders, snakes and hornets live in it, and in its Heart stand iron-bound chests that nobody left there by accident. Only here does the chakra flower grow, and only here stand the giants of the Forest of Death, whose wood is made into chakra paper.

The Land of Water — Kirigakure, the Hidden Mist Village

A land of islands, swamps and mist. Kiri stands on the coast, wrapped in vapours that thicken when the village senses danger. Its shinobi wear gray-blue, and its guards often hide their faces behind masks and carry swords. The Mist is famous for its Mist Swordsmen — some of them fled the village and now hunt travelers as mercenaries. Suiton rules in Kiri. The village has a harsh tradition: weakness is a shame, and the shinobi exam was once a fight until someone fell.

• Marsh Village — a settlement on stilts among the swamps, where nightshade grows and swamp snakes lurk in the water.
• Sharks swim along the coast, and fishermen tell of pirates whose hideout is on no map.
• From the misty islands comes mist cedar — a wood that holds chakra well.

The Land of Wind — Sunagakure, the Hidden Sand Village

Desert, canyons and oases. There are no forests here, so there are no forest ambushes either — rogues roam the dunes in the open. Suna is a fortress in a rocky basin whose walls shelter it from sandstorms. Sand shinobi wear sand-colored linen, cloaks and headscarves, and their element is Fūton. The harsh climate toughens people: in Suna nothing is wasted, and water is worth more than ryō. Suna is famous for its puppeteers, who fight with marionettes on chakra threads — and only here does the puppet master on the square before the Kazekage's tower teach Kugutsu and Puppetry.

• Oasis — the last water before the deep desert; the desert lotus grows here.
• Pass Outpost — guards the only good crossing towards the Land of Fire.
• Nomad Camp — the wandering merchants of the desert.
• The sand snake hunts on the dunes, and the only trees are acacias and dead trunks.

The Land of Lightning — Kumogakure, the Hidden Cloud Village

High mountains, pine forests and storms. Kumo lies among the peaks, where lightning strikes more often than anywhere else. Its guards wear white armor and fight with Raiton. The Clouds value strength of body as much as chakra — the storm warriors who abandoned the village combine the two and are among the most dangerous people in the wilds.

• Shepherds' Village, Village under the Peaks, Borderland Village — mountain settlements.
• Hunters' Camp — far in the north-east, where snow wolves hunt.
• Birch and ginseng grow in the forests.

The Land of Earth — Iwagakure, the Hidden Stone Village

Rocks, quarries and autumn forests. Iwa is carved into the rock, and its shinobi are famous for their endurance — red vests, bronze, heavy kanabō and tonfa. Doton rules here. Iwa is proud and distrustful: it remembers both Great Wars better than any other village. Its renegades, the bombers, fight with explosive clay.

• Stonemasons' Village — the stone for the walls of every village is quarried here.
• Northern Watchtower — the watch on the road towards the Land of Lightning.
• Maple grows in the autumn forests, and ginseng in the mountains.
• Merchants whisper of smugglers who carry ore over the mountains.

The wilds and places beyond the lands

Between the lands lie the wilds, where the Law of the Gates doesn't hold. The further from the towns, the deadlier — right by the walls you'll meet a wolf or a bandit, a few thousand steps further whole gangs of rogue ninja. Seven mines hide in the mountains, and the furthest of them is the Fallen Star Crater: the place where a stone fell from the sky ages ago, and today the only place where star iron can be mined.

Shinobi ranks

The hierarchy is simple and the same in every village. A rank is not just a title — you can tell it at a glance by the attire, and under a shinobi's name their title is written ("Jōnin of Konoha", "Hokage").

Academy student

Before you become a shinobi, you finish your village's Academy. Every graduate knows two basic techniques: Kōsoku Idō (moving fast) and Kawarimi (swapping places with a log). You spend your last day of school in the Hall of Gatherings, where five scroll pillars stand in the library — the techniques your village is famous for. You may choose only one; the rest you have to earn yourself. Choosing a pillar is a shinobi's first decision.

For the road everyone gets: a supply of kunai and shuriken, a hundred ryō, chakra paper, onigiri and water skins — and a forehead protector.

Genin (下忍) — lower ninja

Every new character is a genin. As a sign of it they wear the hitai-ate — a protector engraved with the village's sign: a leaf (Konoha), the four lines of the Mist (Kiri), the Sand's hourglass (Suna), a cloud (Kumo) or a rock (Iwa).

• Takes missions from the notice board in the Kage tower and in the academy, alone or in a team.
• Posts no missions, approves no one and promotes no one.
• It is the rank of learning: a genin trains, gathers, does simple work for craftsmen and learns about the world.

Chūnin (中忍) — middle ninja

A chūnin is a shinobi the village trusts with people. They wear the chūnin vest in their village's colors — olive in Konoha, gray-blue in Kiri, sandy in Suna, white in Kumo, brick-red in Iwa — with one stripe on the left shoulder.

• Posts missions for genin (for the whole rank or for one shinobi). Their mission goes on the board only once a jōnin or the Kage approves it.
• Leads teams — a leader picks people of a rank no higher than their own.
• The villages take the guards of their gates and the Kage tower from among the chūnin.

Jōnin (上忍) — upper ninja

A veteran who leads, teaches and takes the hardest missions. Wears the jōnin vest — darker, with shoulder guards and two stripes on the shoulder. The Academy sensei are jōnin too.

• Posts missions for genin and chūnin; only the Kage approves their missions.
• Approves chūnin missions in their village.
• Can take a mission from the Kage and hand part of it on — to a chūnin with genin — out of their own mission's reward.

Kage (影) — Shadow

The leader of the village, one per village. Wears a kasa — a wide hat with the sign 火, 水, 風, 雷 or 土 — and a white cloak trimmed in the village color.

• Promotes and demotes the shinobi of their village — to genin, chūnin and jōnin — even those who happen to be on the road (offline).
• Hands on the title: naming someone Kage, they become a jōnin themselves. A village never has two Kage.
• Their missions go on the board straight away, with no approval; they post them for every lower rank.
• Decides on the village's war, peace and alliances.
• The first Kage of the new era is named by the daimyō (in the game: the Game Master). After that, power passes from hand to hand.

How you get promoted

There's no exam by the book. The Kage decides on promotion — for missions done, for conduct, for what the shinobi has achieved for the village. Whoever loses a rank takes off the higher rank's attire; whoever is promoted gets the new attire at once (also on returning from the road). Rank attire can't be forged or bought — you only get it from the village.

The chain of missions

Missions flow downwards: Kage → Jōnin → Chūnin → Genin. The reward leaves the poster's purse straight away, and once the mission is done it's split evenly among the team (up to six people; what's left over from the split goes to the leader). The poster or someone of higher rank confirms it's done. A rejected or withdrawn mission gives the ryō back — and the poster can't withdraw a mission someone is already doing; only a higher rank can.

Beyond the ranks: who else walks the world

Townsfolk of villages and towns — vendors, blacksmiths, tailors, herbalists, cooks, scroll sellers, librarians, bankers and ordinary passers-by. Merchants and bankers are under the protection of the Pact (yellow names). Vendors teach the basics of their trade for ryō, and the streets are crowded with townsfolk, dogs, cats and birds.

Guards — chūnin and jōnin who watch the gates and the Kage tower, in their village's colors and with its elements. A guard in their own village sees every criminal, murderer and shinobi of an enemy village, shouts "Halt! In the name of the village's law!" and strikes them down with one blow.

Nukenin — rogue ninja. Shinobi who abandoned their village and struck through the sign on their protector. They live in the wilds by plunder and hired work. Among them:

Rogue ninja love ambushes: in a thick forest they leap out of a burst of smoke and attack straight away. They chase a fugitive far, but lose whoever vanishes from their sight — a smoke bomb and Kakuremino save lives.

The law of the villages

The law of the villages is an old code from the days of the Pact, seen in the game as the color of the name over a head:

• Blue — a clean name. An innocent shinobi or townsperson.
• Gray — criminal. Whoever attacks an innocent or loots their body bears the mark of guilt for two minutes. Anyone may attack them without penalty then, and the guards chase them.
• Red — murderer. A victim who regains consciousness can report the killer or forgive them. Five reported kills and the name turns red, and the murderer goes on the wanted list on the notice board. The guilt only expires after forty hours without a new crime.
• Yellow — invulnerable. Merchants and bankers under the daimyō's protection.
• Orange and green — a shinobi of a village yours is at war with (you may fight them without penalty), or an ally.

The Law of the Gates: nobody can be attacked in towns and villages. There's one exception, and a foolish one — attacking a guard. It's a crime the whole watch chases you for.

Bounties: anyone can add ryō to the bounty on a murderer from the wanted list. Whoever defeats the murderer takes it — unless a guard gets there first; then the bounty keeps waiting.

Stealing: a thief looks into someone else's backpack and pulls things out of it. The owner, and players and guards nearby, can catch them — and whoever is caught robbing an innocent becomes a criminal.

War and peace between the villages

Every pair of villages lives in one of three states: alliance, neutrality or war.

• War is declared, and an alliance broken, by a Kage alone, with a single word.
• Peace and alliance a Kage can only offer — they take effect only once the other village's Kage accepts the offer (it waits a day).
• Shinobi of villages at war see each other in orange, fight without penalty and may freely loot each other's bodies. Guards chase enemy shinobi even in the protected zone.
• A village without a Kage has no policy — then the daimyō (the Game Master) decides its relations.

This way the history of the continent isn't written in advance. The next Great War or Great Alliance will be written by the players.

The shinobi arts

Technique ranks

Techniques are ranked from E (Academy) through D, C, B, A up to S — legendary techniques few know. You have to grow into every technique: it needs the skill of its school and Focus (for taijutsu — Strength), and some can only be grasped once you have mastered an earlier one: nobody creates a Rasenshuriken who hasn't mastered the Rasengan.

Schools

• Ninjutsu — techniques of chakra and the elements: fireballs, water dragons, wind blades, lightning, earth walls.
• Genjutsu — illusions. An illusionist holds an illusion by standing still; the victim doesn't know they're dreaming until they see through it. Illusion Dispelling and the Kai technique protect against illusions.
• Taijutsu — fighting with the body and with weapons. Whoever gives themselves wholly to taijutsu (above 80) will never master ninjutsu or genjutsu well — body and chakra go different ways. Weapons are taijutsu specializations: swords, daggers, polearms, blunt and chain weapons, and separately throwing and ranged weapons.
• Iryō Ninjutsu — chakra medicine. The highest of the medics' techniques is Iryō Sosei, which brings the defeated back to consciousness — but costs the medic a great deal of strength.
• Fūinjutsu — seals: explosive tags, barriers, sealing someone else's chakra.
• Kuchiyose — summoning. A shinobi signs a contract with a clan of animals and from then on can call them: ninja dogs, snakes, sharks, the weasel Kamatari with its sickle, a stone golem, the thunder beast Raijū, the slug Katsuyu and toads — from little Gamakichi to the great Gamabunta.
• Kugutsu — puppets on chakra threads, the art of Sunagakure. A puppeteer carries folded marionettes, unfolds them in a fight and moves them from a distance — one at first, three for a master. While the fingers hold the threads the puppeteer only walks and uses no technique but those of Kugutsu, and every puppet costs chakra; too far, and a thread snaps. The puppets are built by Puppetry, and the better the puppeteer knows that craft, the stronger they come. Every puppet grows on the hands that move it: the longer a puppeteer fights with one, the harder it hits and the longer it holds — but that bond is theirs alone, and a puppet sold or given away has to be learned anew. A skilled puppeteer works from hiding, and only the threads lead to them; a master's threads can't be seen at all, unless someone senses the chakra in them or knows how to look. Masters go further still: they send their mind down the threads into one of their puppets and fight with its body while their own stands still — and a blow to that body can tear the mind back.

Knowing techniques

You can know a technique in two ways. You can have heard it — shinobi shout the names of their techniques in battle, so whoever stood nearby knows what it's called — and you can practice it. Nobody learns a technique from hearing it: first you have to read its scroll, choose it from a pillar in the Hall of Gatherings, hear it from a teacher or take a lesson with a calligrapher. Only that gives you your first practice, and the rest — all the way to full mastery — you have to train yourself.

Calligraphers are the memory of the shinobi world. A master calligrapher knows the notation of hundreds of techniques, writes out scrolls and teaches others. In every village's library a calligrapher can, for a fee, read the notation of that village's techniques (ranks E–C) — this is the so-called reading room.

Hidden paths

Among old shinobi goes a tale of the Eight Gates — points in the body that hold back the flow of chakra so that a person doesn't burn up from within. It's said they can be opened one after another, and that each gate gives strength paid for with health. There's also talk of breaths that carry chakra through the whole body. There are no scrolls about this, and no teachers at the academy. Whoever seeks this path has to find someone who knows it.

Crafts and the land

The villages live off crafts as much as off missions. Every trade has its secrets: everyone knows the basics, but better products need a schematic or a recipe, earned on a quest, found in loot or in a chest.

• Blacksmithing — shinobi steel (kusari: light chain mail you can wear on the run) and samurai plate; swords with silver and gold fittings.
• Tailoring — clothes and leather armor; snake, frog, snow wolf, boar and fox leather each have different properties.
• Carpentry — furniture and wooden goods; every wood is different.
• Tinkering — tools, padlocks, keys and mechanisms from various metals.
• Alchemy — potions, pills, dyes and poisons. Every potion needs its own herb, and the rarest grow in only one place in the world.
• Cooking — good food fills you up and speeds up learning; special ramen and nabe are more than a meal.
• Calligraphy — paper, ink, technique scrolls, explosive tags and chakra paper.
• Puppetry — Suna's craft: joints, frames and fighting marionettes — Karasu the crow, Kuroari the black ant, Sanshōuo the salamander, the scorpion, the mantis, the spider, the crane, the snake, the archer and the cannon. A puppet smashed in a fight comes back broken, and only a puppeteer can mend it — or plate it with iron or steel, so that it takes more than a new one would. Puppets shaped like people wear what people wear; beast-shaped ones take modules — hidden blades, springs, plates, a chakra conduit — and any can be dyed. Hiruko is a shell its puppeteer climbs into and walks in, out of every reach until it breaks. The height of the craft is the hitokugutsu: a master takes the body of a fallen shinobi from their corpse and builds it into a puppet that goes on under their name and fights with their techniques. Its schematics aren't for sale.
• Chakra Infusion — the youngest of the arts: an alchemist distils an elemental essence, a calligrapher locks it in a seal, and an infuser of the same nature breathes the element into a weapon or armor at an altar.

The land gives raw materials to anyone who knows how to reach for them:

Ores in the mines, from the most common: copper, iron, coal, then silver, sulfur, gold, chakra ore, and last of all star iron — only from the Fallen Star Crater. Herbs: healing herb, mushrooms, nightshade, ginseng, desert lotus and the chakra flower. Herbs are cut with a sickle — a careless cut destroys the plant.

Life, wounds and unconsciousness

A shinobi rarely dies from a single blow. Chakra clings stubbornly to the body: the defeated lose consciousness for a few minutes. They lie where they fell, see the world as if through a haze and can't move — and anyone who passes by can search their body. Then they wake in the same place, weakened, with whatever nobody took from them. That is why the wilds are cruel: a lost fight costs everything you were carrying.

• Wounds are healed by bandages (First Aid), potions, pills and medics.
• Poison flows through the body for a few seconds, and while it flows the wound won't close. It leaves behind a toxin that doesn't pass by itself — an antidote, a good dressing or the medics' cleansing jutsu cures it.
• Hunger and thirst slow learning and tire you faster. River water quenches thirst, if you know how to bend down.
• Fatigue comes after long training and fighting. You can't train forever — you have to rest, eat well or drink tea.

The wilds and their creatures

Outside the guarded villages, life is real. Out there you'll meet:

• Ordinary animals — deer, foxes, hens, roosters, crows, pigeons, sparrows; dogs and cats in the towns.
• Predators — wolves (in packs), snow wolves in the north, boars (they charge if you come too close).
• Snakes — ordinary ones, swamp snakes in the Land of Water and sand snakes in the Land of Wind.
• Giants — giant spiders, rats, hornets, snakes and frogs, mostly in the Forest of Death.
• Sharks off the coasts and stone golems in the mountains.

Animals have hides that tailors make armor from, and rogue ninja have loot, ryō and sometimes a schematic or a technique scroll.

Under the earth

The Five Lands are hollow in more places than the maps admit. Every hidden village has its cisterns and storm drains; the old capital of the desert lies under the dunes; caves run through the rock of every land, and great houses that the war emptied stand with their doors open on the dark. Gangs of bandits and missing-nin live down there, where no guard goes. The way down takes a few breaths — long enough that nobody slips out of a lost fight to bind their wounds.

Underground there is no sun and no moon. Torches burn where somebody still lives; elsewhere the dark is total, and a shinobi who goes down without a lantern sees nothing but their own hands.

The orders in the shadows

The wilds have their gangs, but four orders are something else: old, patient, hidden even from the Kage. Each keeps a stronghold deep under the earth, level below level, and at the bottom waits the one who leads it. Nobody has found the ways into them — or nobody who found them came back to tell.

Kurotsuki — the Black Moon. S-rank missing-nin in black cloaks with a pale crescent over the heart. They hunt shinobi whose hidden chakra nature is rare, and seal what they take into scrolls; their leader Getsuga is said to carry five natures at once. Their sanctum lies under the rock of the Land of Earth: outer caves, the Halls of the Eclipse, and below them the Sealing Chamber.

Hakuja — the Cult of the White Serpent. Medics who left their villages to study what the villages forbid: grafting, poisons that heal, the body that does not die. Their Pale Sage keeps laboratories below flooded serpent warrens in the Land of Fire. Apprentices who go missing are sometimes seen again, in white.

Yoru no Shio — the Night Tide. A syndicate of smugglers who row without lights: chakra ore, stolen scrolls, people. Their docks and treasury are hidden under the coast of the Land of Water, and their Admiral Kurotaka boasts that Kirigakure's own captains buy from him.

Hoshikui — the Star-Eaters. Monks who went to the Fallen Star Crater and did not come back the same. They swallow the dust of star iron and burn with chakra that is not theirs; under the peaks of the Land of Lightning they dug through the Star-Iron Depths to a temple, and below the temple to the Heart of the Star, where the Starborn Abbot sits.

The orders leave traces: a moon-sealed scroll, a medic's notes, a ledger of cargoes that never touched a harbour, a sliver of warm grey iron. Those who know how to read them say every trace points somewhere.

Time and customs

• A day lasts two hours of real time. At night the lanterns light up, and in the wilds it gets truly dark.
• Ryō is the money of the whole continent. Ryō is kept in the bank — every bank in every town reaches into the same box.
• Speech: ordinary talk carries a dozen or so steps, a shout further, a whisper only right next to you.
• Signs over the doors tell who works inside; the map marks the services you already know.
• The notice board in every hidden village: missions from the ranks, the wanted list, bounties and small notices from townsfolk ("bring me hides", "I need herbs").
• Henge — turning into someone else. Whoever wears someone else's face is a stranger to others.

Rumors and unfinished stories

Things people talk about in the inns. Some lead to quests, some to treasure, and some to nothing.

• In Konoha they talk of a missing medic apprentice who went west three years ago and never came back. His sister sells herbs on the market lane and no longer believes in promises.
• Nobody comes back from the Heart of the Forest of Death empty-handed. Nor with full hands, if they went alone.
• Fishermen in the Land of Water see boats without lights at night. Stonemasons in the Land of Earth — muleteers without cargo.
• The Fallen Star Crater is far from everything. Whoever brings star iron back from there won't say what they saw.
• Someone saw a shinobi whose skin turned red while the ground cracked under their feet. They carried no scroll at all.
• A man in a black cloak paid a calligrapher in Iwagakure to copy a list of names — and the chakra nature beside each. The calligrapher kept one line for himself.
• In the Land of Lightning, monks with burned palms buy every lantern in a village and walk up into the peaks at night.
• Herbalists say the White Serpent buys nightshade by the cartload, and pays with medicine nobody can name.

Glossary