Puboe

Puboe is a human town in the northern reaches of Ionia's Shon-Xan region, lying not far from the lands of the Kinkou Order. During the invasion of Ionia it became a contested place, its people caught between resistance to the black-and-red-clad invaders and collaboration with them. The town is remembered as the site where the vastaya Rakan and Xayah saved Consul Akunir and Speaker Coll. The rescue spread their names widely: the invaders came to know the pair from what had happened at Puboe, and word of the deed carried far enough that the elder of the distant Vlotah tribe, Leivikah, later sought them out by reputation to ask for their help. It was at Puboe that Xayah first felt a strain of mortal magic unlike any she knew, alien, dark, and angry. She encountered its like only once more, in the enormous thorn-vine wall of a later town, where vines each wider than a horse had been goaded and forced rather than coaxed into dragging stone into place. The memory fixed Puboe in her mind as a place where such ill magic had been worked. Not everyone in Puboe stood against the occupation. A high councilman of the town sold out his own people to the invaders in exchange for gold and safe passage to the coastal city of Weh'le and beyond. His flight did not save him. A masked assassin of his own people, carrying a kama forged in magic, followed him and struck him down in a tavern at Weh'le, wanting others to see him pay for his crimes so that his betrayal would not go unanswered.