Background and Setting

Traveling and Danger

Mark is waiting for Charles because traveling is considered dangerous and outsiders are not trusted. Charles had managed to avoid almost all trouble in his life and was blissfully unaware that he was different. He didn’t have psychic visions or anything, after all. His observations seemed obvious to him.

The Westerners and Bites

• Bites: “Bites” were produced by powerful, but non-warring people in the West. The West was a wonderful place to live if you lived there. But if you visited as an outsider, you risked spending the rest of your life as a slave to their nobility class. Escape from the Westerners had never been achieved. Still, they came to Atlan to sell their “Bites” along with other items that would be impossible to produce outside of their realm because the raw materials didn’t exist in appreciable quantities unless the crops were grown properly. Altan simply didn’t have the resources to produce enough food to feed their population so poor people in Altan often live entirely on bites for months at a time, only eating “normal” food on rare occasions when it becomes available and affordable at the same time.
• Slavery: Some Altans have gone into slavery in the West on purpose to avoid starvation. Darker times beckoned memories from the past. Like when Altanians sold their family members to Westerners for money or the promise of ongoing payment in the future. That only worked a small percentage of the time. The Westerners had no need to pay. Sadly the family member who was sold into slavery was not eligible for rights in the western society nor did they ever qualify to gain their freedom. The best they could hope for was to be enslaved somewhere that didn't cause them too much discomfort or make them do anything too objectionable.

Altan Wars

Mark and Charles are members of a race similar to those called Atlonians from Altan. They are not a powerful people because they have lost several wars and no longer have their independence. Charles was just young enough to have missed the last war, but he knew enough about it to know they didn’t want to repeat the missteps of the people before them. Look at what his generation was left with. There were no resources in their country that weren't completely controlled by the Hoards.