The Middle of Nowhere

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Everyone comes from somewhere, the Elder used to say. Kender have a home, even if they leave it once and never return from their wanderings. Soldiers and priests, merchants and monsters, all have points of origin. A patch of ground, the shade of a tree, a pattern of stars overhead are all parts of home.

The village of Nowhere was just that: isolated, unknown and unremarked. A scholar could have pointed out the larger locale on a map, but no map bore the name of Nowhere. Unlike some hamlets kept secret and safe by high mountains or steaming swamps, Nowhere was nowhere simply because it was out of the way, a small spot in a large expanse. Riches and resources they had none. The terrain was nondescript grassland, amidst low hills crowned with stands of willow and alder. Too scrawny for lumber and too gnarled for spears or tool shafts, even the trees of Nowhere were of little use.

Despite the forgotten nature of the place, people did live there. A village had grown up around the only clear spring for two days’ ride in any direction. Gray-bearded villagers called it the Eternal Spring, for in all the unbroken history of their lives, it had never run dry.

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