The Roads

Source: Oathbond World Bible (Final), §5.7

Three overland routes and four sea lanes connect the six cities, and that is the whole of the world's traffic. Travel is not attempted casually; a caravan on the Guild Road or the Brass Road is taking a trip of weeks.

What a road is

On the Frontier a road is not a road in the sense a city street is one. It is cleared ground, a drained margin where growth is held back, and a surface a Dorath team can pass in most weather. Bridges stand where they can be kept standing and fords serve where they cannot. What makes a route a route is not its surface but the Roedhavens along it.

Roedhavens

A Roedhaven is a walled settlement on a Frontier road. It exists because a caravan cannot make the distance between cities without stopping. They sit three to five days apart — forty-five to seventy-five miles — a spacing nobody planned; it is what the traffic supports, close enough for a caravan to reach the next before its supplies run out and far enough that each has passing trade to live on.

Between Roedhavens a caravan camps two to four nights in the open, and those are the dangerous nights. A Draech follows a caravan for days waiting for a straggler; a Grimvach pack tests the flock in the dark and withdraws if the answer is convincing; the Venneks and the Wysk troops earn their keep. The Roedhaven is the night you finally sleep properly. That is what you are paying for.

The larger Roedhavens: On the Guild and Brass Roads: villages of two or three hundred, with a wall, a gate, a market, a hall, stabling for a dozen Dorath teams, a smith, a cooper, and a physician. Some have stood for centuries and have the graveyards to prove it. Each has an agricultural ring of about half a mile, laid out in Naevla strips against the Ryda like a city ring, with a cleared margin and a light line of watchtowers — what a Wysk troop and a few Vennek clans can cover. A large Roedhaven grows almost everything it eats.
The smaller: On thinner routes: about twenty people, one hall, a wall, and a gate. The keeper's family, some hands, a Wysk troop, and a Vennek clan that knows everyone who belongs there. A garden inside the wall and nothing outside it; most food imported; no physician. Both are why they stay small.
Garrison posts: Supplied by the city that garrisons them, in convoy, on a schedule — one more thing that costs Clearhold money and one more thing the Registrars count.

Every Roedhaven, whatever its size, has the same three things: a wall with a cleared and drained margin, running water in the buildings, and a gate that closes at dark.

The Muyra

The toll for a night inside the wall, charged per head and per animal. Nobody argues it, because the alternative is another night outside. It is not where the money is made: stabling, feed, repairs, provisions, drink, and beds are the real trade, and a caravan of forty is a good week for a small station. The Muyra is the fee for the one thing that cannot be bought anywhere else on the road — safety, and good sleep.

Who owns them

A Roedhaven is self-governing and under no city's jurisdiction; in practice, whoever built the walls decides. Some are run by keeper families across generations, some by a council of households, some by whoever has the most hands or the loudest voice. No two work the same way.

Independent is not free. A Roedhaven exists because a road passes it, and a city that reroutes a road has killed a settlement that can do nothing about it. Both sides know this. It is the only leverage a city has over the road, and it is rarely used, because a closed road costs the city more than the station would. Forgegate's guilds subsidize stations on thin stretches of the Guild Road; that is a contract, not an occupation, and the station keeps its own governance and takes the money.

The exceptions

Clearhold's passes

The Mountain Way is too dangerous for a keeper family and a Wysk troop. The Kammra hunt the cliff routes in the warm months, the Kollgar work the high ground, and a Stoendh that takes a pass closes it until somebody moves it. So Clearhold garrisons its own road, staffed through the assessment system and rotated on the same intervals as everything else. Those stations are not neutral and do not pretend to be: a traveler on the Mountain Way is inside Clearhold's authority before reaching Clearhold, logged, questioned, and counted in and out. The garrisons stop where the mountain stops. The last independent Roedhaven before the passes is the busiest station on the road — where escorts are hired, the season's pass reports are heard, and Clearhold's authority is still a day ahead rather than present.

Eldershore's posts

Specialist scout posts at the Spynra crossings on the tropical routes — stationed rather than traveling.

Ironpass

Has a Pass Warden who keeps current record of which stretches a Stoendh has claimed.