As this card indicates, the characters in our story have a long journey indeed, Maldene being a big place and all, not to mention everything in their way.  So let’s take a quick look at some of those places that the Long Road will be taking them through.

The Harbor of the World is aptly named.  Picture a harbor about the size of the Gulf of Mexico with the space between Florida and Cuba being the way in, then locate it near the Equator in the North Tropics and you have a place where people and cultures from all over the world, many of which have never previously encountered one another, can meet and trade.  It’s a place whose streets mix dozens of different cultures in the architectural styles of its streets, the products sold and traded, the people you meet.

It is also said to be home to a million vessels, many of them making a career out of simply trading back and forth across various locations of the Harbor.  In any war, it is generally agreed to be neutral territory, and besides– who’d be nuts enough to invade a place like this?

Some time after popping through the Harbor (at least a couple of times, actually), our travelers find their way to a castle.  A grand castle unlike any other, home to a certain King that will prove to be a prominent figure in our little tale.  Shaped like a 6-pointed star, a full mile across, walls closing in on a thousand feet high, with the Royal Keep about the size of most lesser castles.  And just ten miles from its own lake-port with a river-avenue to the sea.  A place where the Movers & Shakers plan against an undefeatable Evil.

The last point of interest on our little journey is a small rock of an island lost in the middle of The Sea Of A Thousand Islands.  A place to be called Haïkldalnsa by those who will build it with their own hands, magic, and friends.

Well, that’s enough of a tour for now.  So many more places to visit, so little space to write about them.  Unless, of course, you were to start reading the books.  There’s a reason why it takes thirteen books to describe it all.