A Primer on the Ringbound Dominion
Being the front matter to the collected journals of an unnamed scholar, set down for a reader who knows nothing at all.
There are ten short chapters, and you can read them in any order, though Making a Living makes more sense once you've read How Rare This Is.
Each chapter opens with the short version. Read only those openings and you'll have nothing wrong, though a good deal missing, which is about the best I can do in the space.
| 0 | Before You Read Any of This: who is writing, and why you shouldn't entirely trust him |
| 1 | Where You Are: a broken world that stopped drifting, and the ruins left in it |
| 2 | What Aura Is: a connection, more than a power, the six Sources, and the ladder |
| 3 | How Rare This Is: the arithmetic, and why a practitioner is a visitor |
| 4 | The Five Houses: who raises them, and what each is for |
| 5 | The Three Who Sit: the Crown, the empty fourth seat, and a classification that doesn't fit |
| 6 | Becoming One: the signs, the awakening, and the three things nobody remembers learning |
| 7 | Making a Living: licences, marks, the levy, and how a village gets help |
| 8 | What Is Dangerous: iron, the Deepening, the edges, and what gets through |
| 9 | What People Believe That Is Not True: the errors, and what they tell you about a district |
| 10 | What I Have Not Answered: seven things I chased and never caught |
The journals proper follow. They cover four years, they're arranged by enquiry instead of by date, and they're a good deal less tidy than this.