Chapter 596: Chapter 580 – Glass in the Desert

“Got to make use of whatever you got in hand. If all you got is sand, then make some glass out of it and use that!” - Popular Hassid saying.

The deeper into Caliphate territory the convoy traveled, the more they noticed a peculiarity of the nation. It was not really present in the villages or smaller towns, but in the larger towns, it was hard to not notice the buildings made entirely out of glass, so thick and durable that it was about as solid as one carved straight out of solid rock.

 

Such buildings were typically offices that belonged to the local governor of the region, and almost as a show of force and wealth, the roads in the vicinity of the building – usually up to two to five city blocks away – were paved by the same solid, thick glass, with its surface purposely roughened for easier purchase. 

 

They were naturally the work of the local glass artisans. The Caliphate was renowned for their glasswork, generally considered to be the finest in the world, and was home to many Sand affinity mages, with the majority of those of the Glass variety. These mages often became part of their artisanal producers, and were also responsible for the grand constructions that the Caliphate set up in its cities, as well as their repair and maintenance whenever needed.

 

It also made for a fascinating sight unlikely to be found elsewhere, as the sand native to the region where the Caliphate was founded apparently made for really high quality glass. The glass made from that sand was known to be sturdier and more durable compared to other glass, doubly so when the processing was done by the hands of a skilled glass mage. It was part of what gave the Caliphate its reputation for fine glassware.

 

With its reputation, it was easy to recognize glass produced in the Caliphate. The glass would be near-translucent, with only the slightest tinge of green, which made some equate its color to that of jade or emerald. That said, the slight tinge was mostly for typical glassware, which had the glass stretched thin. When it came to sturdier constructions like the buildings and the roads, the thickness of the glass used turned that slight tinge into a dark green shade that mostly kept the glaring sunlight out during the day.

 

From afar, it looked almost as if someone had made the buildings entirely out of massive gemstones, especially with the way it glinted under the light of the sun. It gave a strange aesthetic, one of elegance married with simplicity, in a manner that presented both at the same time in harmony. 

 

Their merchant-guide also made a few small trades with old trading partners of their house present in some of the towns and cities they passed, mostly passing luxuries from Vusila that was harder to come across in the Caliphate in exchange for fine glassware and local Hassid spices similarly not found in the east. 

 

Aideen noticed how the man saved up most of the contents of his storage artifact – she could estimate it to be at least a room-sized one based on the items he brought out so far, some of which wouldn’t have fit in a typical backpack-sized storage – despite the trades though. It made sense, as the trading house likely had their biggest clients in the Caliphate’s capital of Al-Hassid rather than in the smaller cities and towns scattered around the Caliphate’s territory.

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They took the southern route as the guard in the village back then suggested, and the journey was uneventful. The Caliphate kept a tight grasp on their internal security, and the convoy ran across at least a half dozen patrolling teams every day while they traveled on the main road. The dwarven patrols used large lizards likely cousins to the Horned Lizards they saw back in the village, albeit the ones they used were smaller, sleeker specimens, each only about a meter and a half tall at the shoulder or so, with two horns set above their eyebrows, and a bird-like beak. 

 

While the lizards were by no means that fast, they possessed great stamina and could keep up a pace about as fast as a running human for a long time. That alone likely made them useful mounts for the dwarves, who were known to be poor and slow runners. That, and the horns likely made the beasts useful in stopping carriages and the like as they seemed to be well-suited for ramming such things directly off the road.

 

In some of the regions which had better soil, the dwarves built their typical underground dwellings, but those were few and far between. As such, most of the dwarves who lived in the Caliphate stayed in above-ground dwellings. Unlike their pale cousins from the Kingdom Down Under, most Caliphate dwarves had tanned skin, though not as dark as those who hailed from Knallzog.

 

Rather than skin color, however, to the dwarves themselves what they viewed as the greatest difference between themselves and their northern continent cousins was their fashion sense.

 

Where the Alcidean dwarves typically kept their beards long and luxurious – often reaching down to their waists in length – the dwarves of Ur-Teros favored a shorter cut, rarely longer than the base of the neck. In exchange, however, they tended to style their beards in bolder, more radical fashion compared to their northern brethren, using the beard itself as a medium rather than its decoration.

 

As such, it wasn’t rare to see beards that were made to stand out like the spines of some odd creature, or ones that were hardened with some sort of gel then fashioned into all sorts of patterns. Some favored keeping things simple, which was a statement in itself, and there was so much variety that it was rare to see two dwarves in the same town sporting the same style of beard.

 

Aideen could only imagine the effort and creativity that must have gone into those thousands of different ways to style one’s beard like that. It was clear that the dwarves considered it part of their lifestyle, though.

 

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