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If you stand at any port-rail on a clear morning and look up, you will see the world divided in three. Above you, when the upper mist breaks, are the high airs and the mountain-anchored isles of the Upper Reach. At your level, where the working ships cross and the great cargo-circuits run, are the populated waters of the Middle Reach. Below you, half-glimpsed through the lower mist, are the contested isles and grey ruins of the Veiled Reach.
These are the trade’s three divisions. They are old. They are roughly accurate. They are also, as every working captain will tell you, roughly accurate — because the lines between them shift, the weather does not respect them, and the actual experience of crossing between them is more variable than the diagram suggests.
A traveller who knows the three Reaches in their working forms can navigate most reach-conversations and most port-postings. What follows is the working overview, neither romantic nor exhaustive.
The Upper Reach
The Upper Reach is the highest of the three habitable bands. Its isles are anchored to the mountain-spines — the great stone columns that descend, in some unfathomable way, into deeper anchorings the trade does not pretend to understand. The air thins. The cold is real. Crossings to the Upper take longer, demand more of the stones, and pay more.
The Upper’s principal cluster is Ironvale (see entry), home of the Anvilbound dwarves and a smaller population of mountain-bred humans. The cluster’s hub is Highforge, governed by the Council of the Anvil. The Upper Reach is the source of most of the worked iron and stone in Aetheria; the Copper Ring’s ledger-books would be considerably thinner without it.
The Upper has its lesser clusters too — small mining-isles, a few remote scholar-settlements, two or three monastic orders that do not welcome visitors. Most outsiders never see them. Most outsiders are not invited.
A traveller to the Upper should expect: cold weather, slower crossings (the lift through high pressure is gentler), plain hospitality, and direct manners. The Upper does not wear social softness well. A reach-folk who has spent a season in Ironvale comes home, by reach-tradition, honest in a useful way.
The Middle Reach
The Middle is where most reach-folk live, where most cargo moves, and where most working ships spend most of their crossings. It is the populated centre of Aetheria, and it carries — by every working estimate — about three-quarters of the inhabited isles and roughly the same proportion of the population.
The Middle’s principal clusters are:
- The Copper Ring (see entry) — twelve isles in a ring, hub at Brassmarket. Centre of the brasswright trade; keeper of the Ledger that records most of the Reaches’ commercial life
- The Quiet Reach (see entry) — a chain of fishing villages and small farming-isles on the Middle’s quieter periphery. Author’s home, for purposes of this almanac
- A scattering of smaller clusters — the trader-isles around Crescent Markets, the shipwright-cluster near Hollowkeel, the wool-isles of Threadmoor, several others — each of which the trade knows individually and the published almanacs cluster as inhabited Middle
The Middle’s weather is the most predictable of the three Reaches — which is to say it is occasionally violent, often grey, and reliably bearable. Most cargo routes are middle-only. Most working captains spend their careers in middle-only crossings. There is no shame in this. There is, in the trade’s working judgement, wisdom.
The Veiled Reach
The Veiled Reach is where the air becomes uncertain. It begins where the lower mist thickens beyond ordinary visibility — somewhere south and west of the Quiet Reach’s outermost isles, depending on the day and the weather — and continues, by the best maps, for an unknown distance. The Wren Academy’s most recent published charts show the Veiled Reach as approximately half the area of the Middle. Most working captains regard this estimate as conservative.
The Veiled contains:
- The Grey Archipelago (see entry) — perhaps seventy low ruined isles in permanent mist; pre-Unmaking ruins; tourist-safe at Westkeep, dangerous in the inner Grey
- The Bloom (see entry) — perhaps forty Verdant-overtaken isles in the Veiled’s eastern reaches; not to be approached without reason
- Charted-but-doubtful islets, current-shifts, and conditions that do not consistently appear on any chart twice — see Charts and Their Liars
The Veiled is where the trade’s worst stories come from. It is also where some of the trade’s largest single-crossing payments come from. Most working captains accept Veiled-work occasionally; few make a career of it; the ones who do are, by reach-statistics and by trade- custom, either extraordinary or doomed, and the trade does not predict reliably which.
The fourth — the trade does not include it
If you push a reach-folk on whether there are three Reaches or four, you will, sometimes, get a different answer. The honest fourth, when named, is the Hidden Reach — though “Reach” is a stretch, and “Hidden” is the politest of several possible adjectives.
The Hidden, in working folklore, is whatever lies beyond the Veiled’s furthest charts. Some accounts hold it is more isles — unknown, uncontacted, possibly inhabited. Some accounts hold it is not isles at all but something else. The Wren Academy does not publish on the Hidden. The temple of the Seven does not include it in any teaching. Most working skyfarers will, if pressed, say roughly: there are three Reaches, and what is past the Veiled is not our business.
This is the trade’s working answer. It has held for four centuries. It will probably hold for a few more. The almanac-keeper, on this question, defers to the trade and adds nothing.
“The published charts show three Reaches in three colours. The harbour-rolls of Westkeep keep a fourth column for crossings that do not return — labelled, with no further note, Hidden. I have seen the column. I have not asked the harbour-master what is in it. I have, on consideration, decided that I do not need to know as badly as I had thought.”
— from the field notes of a Wren Academy delegate, 412 AU