Farmers struggle in the rocky, mountainous demoralized. Shale clanks and slips beneath feet and hooves. In the lowland marshes, tall grasses grow. Bugs bite. Snakes slither and hiss. Rodents scurry. Mired in mud. Stuck in quick sand. Travelers try and fail to pass quickly through.
Mud slides down mountains. Disaster uproots.
“But we never give up,” says the Guide. “We stay and rebuild.”
While others in borderlands prosper.
Located on the Demoralized Pennisula, the port city Stunted welcomes ships turned back from longer journeys by storms. Sailors come ashore, dream of distant ports, and drink away their woes.
“There’s a job opening for a lighthouse keeper. Free room and board and decent pay, but the position has been open for years,” says the Guide. “The lighthouse is automated, but it’s nice to have a keeper all the same. But no one stays in Stunted long."
The sailors pass through and don’t share knowledge or skills. Innovations and trade goods must make their way instead through the mountains and marshes of Demoralized.
So progress remains slow.
Most of the Demoralized have never visited the capitol Stunted, that they can remember anyway, perhaps their parents brought them as small children.
“The capitol was nicer than the countryside,” says Miss Emeline, who is always complimentary though always honest. “The structures of Stunted are small but sturdy and the storms seemed less fierce.”
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