As it turns out, paper and parchment are different things with different purposes. A shocking revelation!

I wanted to see where it’s made and maybe help out for a bit, but I soon learned that Pelda actually doesn’t make our own supply of paper, we trade for it! Therefore, I went down to the port and conducted an on-the-spot interview with the merchants.

“Comes from one of the towns upstream,” Adrian Sakow the Merchant Captain Extraordinaire relayed to me. “Fersivva, it’s called, inhabited by the riverlanders. Their whole purpose is to make paper and gift it to their evil steppelander masters as tribute, but they always have a little extra they’re willing to sell to use when we trade for it.”

“A whole town just for paper?” I asked.

“It’s pretty important for logistics. Keeping records and all that. The steppelanders have a big empire.”

“What do they want for it?”

“Oh, a little of everything, whatever’s in our hold. Fruit, weapons, lumber, hides, it’s not really a set price and our ships are full of all sorts of goodies from stopping at other towns along the Vistula.”

“Do you buy a lot?”

“Whole boxes of it, yeah. The city uses a lot for how small we are.”

“What’s the point of paper? Why don’t we and these steppelanders put all their records in parchment?”

“Paper is easier to make. It eventually rots and fades, but if you just need a document to last a couple cycles it’s the better choice. Like when we teach you kids how to write, we don’t need parchment for that.”

The paper I’ve been using for so many news reports… is cheap garbage that won’t last.

So I’m gonna get real good at making parchment and only write on that from now on!