The danger of this place

If each place has its own danger, places matter.

As a GM, I like each location to have a single listed danger.  There can be other dangers, like the regiment patrolling around or the spined coyotes the party just woke up, but I like to have one danger that's about the area itself, the danger of that place.  A few examples:

• In the coal mine, air that's thick with coal dust is likely to explode on contact with flame.
• Out on the bog, legs and wheels could get stuck in the mud.
• Near the fort, there are spiked pit traps to grievously wound unwary attackers.

Having one single locational danger is very helpful for me.  If there's always a danger, I'm used to thinking of it.  And if there's always only one danger, it's easier to remember.

Dangers like these are also helpful to give the players a sense of the world.  The mine where explosive dust is a problem feels very different from the mine where all the timbers are about to collapse.  The players get to learn about a problem that they can interact with, something that reacts to their actions and can be overcome by their ingenuity.

Each danger has some kind of clue, a sign of its presence.  I don't like springing dangers on the party without any warning at all.  When my adventurers all die, they'll be able to look back and see how it was all my their fault.  (Here's a more serious take on lethality in RPGs.)

• A sign at the entrance to the mine lists the mine company's regulations, including rules about wearing helmets, obeying the foreman's instructions, and only using safety lamps.
• There's an abandoned cart halfway sunken into the mud at the edge of the bog.
• A want ad is posted (with plenty of pictures) looking for giants to help dig pits around the fort.

You might prefer more explicit clues, or perhaps none at all.

Dangers could also happen in several steps.  The old bridge across the chasm won't give way all at once (assuming no one does anything stupid).  The first time you're on it, one of the crossbeams will break.  The second time the whole thing will creak and dip (time for an agility check).  The third time it'll crack and fall into the chasm.

What about places that don't seem to have an inherent danger?  My first suggestion is to figure one out anyway, even if it's not that big of a danger.  Places with no reward and no danger don't matter very much on the map.  (And if a place doesn't matter at all, just skip over it with a "You travel for several miles, reaching your destination...".)

But if you'd like to have a certain place in the game, yet there's no immediate danger, try one of two options:

1. Show evidence of a danger that already happened.
2. Show signs of a danger that's yet to come.

Crossing the high plains, the party might stumble onto a cabin that's been burned to the ground, along with the remains of its inhabitants.  They might find many square miles where a wildfire has come through.  Unknown creatures might have stripped the leaves from every tree around.

The director's office could easily hold danger (based on the party's standing with the company) but it's also a good place to show danger that's yet to come.  The director could know about threats to the company, impending war, famine in a nearby country, and so on.

---

Signs in the Wilderness is about adventure driven by big opportunities, not looming threats.  Danger is an obstacle on the way to your fame and fortune, not the driving feature of the adventure itself.  In an upcoming post, I'll talk about how to craft dangers that relate to the particular opportunities in your game so far.

Inner workings of a human tribe

In the previous post on human tribes, I talked about their food source, boats, houses, and a few other things, mostly visible when you first meet them.  This post is about how the tribe actually functions.

Leadership

Some tribes aren't organized at all, being just a handy way to describe the culture of the local humans.  Each settlement in a such a tribe governs itself independently.

Chiefs rule some human tribes, kings that come from the upper class of the people.  Their towns send some kind of tribute, food, laborers, or warriors.  Chiefs tend to inherit their position or seize it through war.

Many tribes are more democratic, decisions being made by a council of delegates or by a popular assembly of as many as can gather.

Tribal Leadership (d10)
1-3	no central leadership	Each town is independent. There is no tribal leadership. Roll again to see how towns are typically governed.
4-5	chief	A high-ranking person rules the tribe, receiving tribute/labor/warriors from the various towns. The position is likely inherited or seized in conflict.
6-7	council of chiefs	A council of the most important high-caste people makes decisions for the tribe.
8-9	assembly	Each family/clan/town sends a representative to speak at the ruling assembly.
10	popular consensus	A large portion of the people gather together in one place to argue and come to decisions.

Some tribes use a mix of these, with a chief who chooses the clans to be represented, or a popular assembly that elects a council, or a pair of chiefs with different areas of responsibility, etc.

Men and Women

Of all the talking species, humans have the most rigid gender roles.  They tend to divide up tasks and areas of expertise into men's things and women's things.

(Goblins have gender roles but are more flexible on them, giants are too independent to worry about such things, and elves are basically all the same gender, biologically, so they don't really understand the concept.)

Most tribes follow the gender roles handed down to them by their ancestors (so related tribes tend to follow the same rules) or they've adopted the practices of their neighbors.

(d10)	men	women
1-2	warfare, hunting, woodcarving	farming, weaving, settling disputes
3-4	dealings with outsiders	dealings within the tribe
5	animals, stone and metal working, settling disputes	plants, water and settlement rights, death rituals
6	farming, construction	fishing, hunting
7	only men eat potatoes, salmon, turkeys	only women eat corn, wild rice, deer
8	warding off dangerous creatures	interpreting dreams and signs
9	trade, searching for things	making and using fire, keeping the history of the people
10	roll again, but switch the results

Religion

The Starving Time broke many people's understanding of the world, forcing them to resort to new ways of thinking.  New religious movements have cropped up (all with something to say about the apocalypse of our parents' day) and they've been spreading across the land.

I'll be doing a post about how human religions work later on (and how to roll up a random religion of your own) but for now let's look at how this tribe relates to religious practice.

Religion (d6)
1-2	Holding to tradition in the face of all these strange new religions. Some have secretly converted.
3	Enthusiastic converts to a new religious movement. A few are quietly keeping to the old ways.
4	Most of the (d4) 1: men, 2: women, 3: youths, 4: common people; have joined a new religion while the rest follow the old ways.
5	Most people have fallen away from their ancestors' religion and are eager to listen to preaching.
6	Deeply divided between two different faiths.

Roll up a random tribe's workings with the table below.  (Sorry, I still haven't figured out how to get it to work on mobile.)  I've copied over the entries from the first post in this series, head back there for more explanation about what they mean.

random human tribe
reputation
what they lost
food
boats
captives
leadership
men and women
religion

Coming up: who the tribe's rivals and allies are, and how they came to be that way.

Star-currency of the gods

You've probably heard of the stone money of Yap Island, great stone wheels called rai.  They're terribly impractical: large, cumbersome, fragile, just about the most awkward currency in the world.
In fact, they're so awkward to move that no one really moves them around anymore.  When you spend one, everyone knows who it now belongs to, so you don't need to bother rolling it all the way over to their house.  And when they spend it, everyone knows who it belongs to now.

The stones change ownership without ever changing hands.

As Yap islanders once used stones, giants use the stars.

When the world was young and the giants first emerged from the earth, the gods opened their mouths and taught them to speak.  They told them the names of the animals and mountains and the stars.

The gods gave stars as gifts, a sign of honor for the noblest and most loyal giants.

Owning a star means knowing its name and its place in the heavens, and being able to recite its history many generations back.  Gifted with prodigious memory, giants know the names of thousands of stars and their owners across the land.

Stars can be sold or given away, but only at an annual gathering where others may bear witness to the transaction.  Dim stars are traded away regularly, but bright stars are reserved for the most valuable of purchases or gifts bestowing high honors.

---

Stars function as something like money in the bank, a form of wealth universally accepted, but kept in a form that's very hard to steal.  Instead of a ledger showing how much you have in your account, the collective reckoning of giantish society keeps track of who owns which stars.

There's a bit of a delay in passing along that information.  It may take several years for knowledge of a transaction to propagate to the farthest reaches of the continent, but it will eventually get there.

Stars have fallen into the hands of other species.  Some have been given to human tribes as a peace offering.  Some have been used in trade with the goblins.  A few have even been given to the elves since their arrival a century ago.  But even the most giant-friendly of outsiders don't keep track of stars across generations, so giants will, from time to time, inquire about lineages and inheritance in an effort to determine the rightful owner of a star.

Many stars were lost in the apocalypse as people died without kin and heirs.

Giants name stars by their place in a constellation.  Each is named for a divine figure: a god or something like a god from one of the stories.  These are some of the major constellations; there are also many minor ones.

Constellation (d20)
1	Old Porcupine
2	Talking Goose
3	Granny Vulture
4	the Flock of Quail
5	One-Eyed Bear
6	the Poet Cricket
7	Lean Coyote
8	Salmon Who Listens
9	the Thundering Moose
10	Youngest Squirrel
11	Snowstorm Jackrabbit
12	Lame Deer
13	Devouring Owl
14	Mother Skunk and her Three Children
15	Too-Fat Turkey
16	the Unrepentent Raccoon
17	the Crow Brothers
18	the Great Rattlesnake
19	Sleeping Turtle
20	Many-Hued Beetle

Once you know the constellation, make up a position that makes sense there or choose from the list below.

Position (d20)
1	the outstretched wingtip of
2	the broken horn of
3	the left shoulder of
4	the third right toe of
5	the end of the branch dropped by
6	the long tooth of
7	the wound in the side of
8	the corner of the mouth of
9	the tip of the tail of
10	the drop of blood from
11	the neck of
12	the nose of
13	the stone before
14	the stolen amulet of
15	the fly that annoys
16	the eye that watches
17	the one that pursues
18	the bright eye of
19	the second point of the right antler of
20	the ear of

Roll up a random star yourself:

random star
star

Pioneers and refugees

There's a better life out there on the frontier, but you have to go out and make it for yourself.
The apocalypse upended everything, destroying whole tribes and nations.  Once-great cities fell to starvation and disease, towns were abandoned, and alliances ended.  Survivors took refuge in a few crowded havens.

Now a new generation has been born, and they don't have to accept the hand their parents were dealt.  It's a big world, and there's bound to be somewhere better out there.  Pioneers are headed into the wilderness, migrants and refugees and wagon trains streaming across the land.

For this post, I'll mostly be talking about ways to make money (since it's useful for everyone) but migrations are important for more than just wealth.  If it's your group of people that are migrating, their success matters to you.  Helping or hindering a migration might factor into other plans.

Hired hands

Before a migration can get underway, they'll need a suitable destination, a new place to live and a way to get there.  Scouts and wilderness guides can help.  Guidebooks to the wilderness are traded and sold across the frontier, all of dubious quality.  If you find a better route through the wilds, you might make some good money leading people on it.

Humans are some of the most common migrants, usually fleeing from enemies and setting out for new farmland, hunting grounds, or fishing harbors.  If they don't already have a place in mind, they'll send out scouts and consult their prophets (a topic for a future post).

Elves can also be found seeking a new home in the wilderness.  Organized groups supported by a city are out establishing farming settlements, mines, forts, and trading posts.  They're willing to pay for porters to carry their things once they're in rugged terrain where ox carts won't help.  Religious pilgrims can also be found, exiled as heretics and looking to found a new home in the wilderness.  They're more likely to need guards if traveling through dangerous areas.

Tree goblins tend to migrate in small family groups, looking for dense forests to settle in.  They're likely to avoid other people if possible, but they might hire a guide if they don't know the way.

Individual giants migrate all the time, but they don't usually do so as a group.

Prices vary, but in general:

• Scouts and porters earn 1 or 2 shillings/day.
• A very knowledgable wilderness guide could earn 5 shillings/day.
• Armed escorts in dangerous country might make 2 or 3 shillings/day.
• Guidebooks about a wilderness country cost anywhere from 1 to 5 dollars.

Permission

The elves are all about protocol.  You don't head out to colonize the wilderness without a charter and a proper plan.  Imperial or city charters cost money (the more the better) and require the right connections.  New charters are hard enough to come by, so would-be colonists often buy up shares in a previously-chartered company.

Wherever settlers are going, they're likely to run into some kind of local rulers.  There's plenty of open land nowadays (after the starving time) but authorities tend to expand to fill the space available.  Anyone leading a migration needs bit of diplomacy, some well-placed bribes, and gifts from far-off lands.

So why would rulers let people settle on their lands?  Newcomers can bring plenty of trouble and use up resources, but they're also good for a few reasons:

• They could join their hosts' group and provide extra labor or military might.
• The hosts could trade the right to settle in exchange for something of value.
• The newcomers could bring valuable knowledge and techniques.
• Unoccupied land might be taken by enemies; new settlers help establish a claim to the land.

Passing through someone else's territory isn't always free.  If the locals are stronger than the migrants, they might demand gifts or a toll before allowing passage.

With all these travelers coming through, a few types of establishments are useful:

• Trading posts to sell supplies.
• Forts to provide defense for the region.
• Ferries to carry people and cargo across a river.

Trouble

Some people seize the opportunity to prey on pioneers.  Charging tolls isn't very friendly, but it's generally accepted.  Outright robbery (often accompanied by murder) is considered criminal just about everywhere.

Some human tribes are known for taking captives.  A group of unguarded refugees could easily disappear into the wilderness, taken for slave labor, without anyone else ever knowing their fate.

If the migration is a threat to your people, you'll probably try to get them to go elsewhere.  Just telling them to leave might be enough, but threats can easily escalate to warfare.  If enough migrants meet a grisly fate, the rest are likely to change their route, but that's also when they might call for military aid.  You don't want the army showing up, and you especially don't want a band of hired adventurers.

---

Coming soon: what happens when these pioneers get where they're going, an article about founding settlements and trying to get them through the winter.

Gold! (or, riches and chaos)

A great resource is discovered, drawing all manner of trouble as people toil and struggle and contend for riches.

Signs in the Wilderness is a setting driven by opportunities, not threats.  It's about the great potential out there, a hopeful future full of the dreams of today's poor folk out on the fringe.

This post (hopefully the first of a series) is about a clear opportunity driving story, a rush for a newly-discovered resource.  The resource could be gold, but it could be plenty of other things just as easily.  A few ideas:

• gold in the rivers and the rock
• diamonds dug out of the deep earth
• delicate fruits that heal and save
• seedlings of a fabled tree
• bountiful farmland for struggling pioneers

Most people have heard of one gold rush or another (the '49ers of California, the Klondike, a whole pile in Australia).

Less well known is the story of the trek for the stone that fell from the sky, the iron Cape York meteorite of western Greenland.  Around the year 1000, the Thule people (ancestors of today's Inuit) lived in northwestern Alaska, a world of whalebone and walrus hide where iron was a near-legendary treasure.  Rumors came from the east of a great resource, a boulder of iron there for the taking.  The Thule people traveled over two thousand miles across the frozen wastes of the Arctic, all the way from Alaska to Greenland, just to gain the riches of the meteorite.

(Archaeologists tell a more cautious tale: they might have taken up to 150 years to make the journey, they may have been driven by more than just the meteorite, etc.  But the exciting trek in search of treasure is definitely one of the possibilities.)

Rumors and signs

A rush doesn't always start all at once.  The first person to find gold/diamonds/whatever will probably try to keep it secret for as long as they can.  Or they might only find a little at first, so when their neighbors come looking there just isn't enough to start a stampede.

You might hear about the discovery by talking to a traveler from that distant land, someone who saw the stuff with their own eyes, maybe dug a bit up themselves, but someone who doesn't think there's any more of it left.

But sometimes a rush gets big real fast.  When Sutter discovered gold in California, he tried to keep the news quiet (as he rightly feared it would destroy his nascent agricultural empire) but word got out in only a few months.  It was talked about on the streets, in the newspaper — the president even made an address to Congress about the news.

Riches and trouble

A resource rush is an opportunity for even the poorest prospector.  All it takes is one gold nugget, one perfect diamond, and you've struck it rich.  It's the appeal of the lottery but earned through toil in a far-off land.

Precious few make it rich, of course.  Most prospectors run out of funds before they find their treasure.  Some return home in poverty.  Others never can afford to leave, spending their last shilling to drink away the despair.  But enough do strike gold to inspire all the rest, the boundless hordes of eager souls looking for a piece of the action.

Wiser ones aren't there for the resource itself; they've come to sell supplies to the hopeful and naive.  You might pay a few pennies for a shovel back home, but here in the gold fields you're paying ten or twenty times the price to the only folks smart enough to bring what you need.  (This too can backfire, as his imperial majesty Norton I can attest, having attempted to corner the rice market.)

A rush also brings trouble, just about all of it driven by greed.  You'll have to fight your way through other prospectors who don't respect your claim.  Companies and families might be willing to make trouble to get you to sell your claim.  And all kinds of authorities will show up looking for their coin in licenses, fees, taxes, and tribute.

Then there's the danger of the resource running out, or the process of obtaining it causing something else to go wrong.  Digging deep into the ground or stripping away the earth makes a mess and tends to anger things.  Cutting down trees and planting crops could do the same.

How the locals respond

Many stories talk about the local people, the ones indigenous to the land where this stuff is discovered.  They're often portrayed as victims who only react to the actions of the invaders.

Truth is, people are clever and ambitious and tend to see to their own interests.  Local people are as smart as newcomers, and just as eager to advance their own cause.  When the Iroquois saw alien European technology, they didn't wait around hoping for charity, they figured out what the newcomers wanted (furs) and they used all their craft and might to obtain them so they could buy the fantastic new technology.  A short while later, they were the well armed rulers of everything from Vermont to the Mississippi.

The Northern Lands feature three indigenous species (giants, humans, and goblins) in the face of one newly-arrived group (elves).  All four are as likely to pursue a newly-discovered resource as any other.  They're all desperate for wealth and safety, with mouths to feed and family to protect.

---

(Roll up your own random Rush in part 2.)

A newly-discovered resource makes for a great opportunity to drive story and adventure.  If you'd like to see more posts like this, let me know which opportunity sounds interesting:

• smuggling and avoiding pirates
• a new contraption everyone will want
• making a new home in the wilderness
• preaching the word
• starting a revolution

Difficult terrain: when a day's journey is just a few miles

If you're traveling through wilderness the terrain itself can be the biggest obstacle.

Cracking open my old Dungeon Master's Guide, it suggests a human can travel around 24 miles a day over easy terrain, or as little as 3 miles a day over the most difficult terrain.

So what makes terrain truly difficult?  Good places to travel are level, clear, and have a trail to follow, so let's take all that away.  The first one might come as a surprise:

Grass

You'd think grasslands would be easy crossing, and usually they are, but grass comes in many kinds.  Tallgrass of the prairies easily grows 7 feet tall (2 m) which is high enough to leave you basically blind as you're traveling through it.  (It's also the perfect place to get ambushed by a lion.)

Pampas grass is notorious for its razor-sharp blades that can cut up anyone wading through it.  Turn up the danger just a bit further and you get a grassland deadly to most things that don't normally live in it.

Jungle

Thick woods can be more than just trees, and dense undergrowth hides more than just the path.  When you can't see where you're putting your feet, fallen logs and uneven ground might result in a broken leg.  And any place that has plenty of plant life is likely to have plenty of creatures crawling about, too.

Jungles don't have to be hot places.  Wet and cool climates can have temperate rainforests that are as thick and dense as the Amazon.

Wetlands

Mud and mire can stretch for miles in the right conditions, making passage nearly impossible.  From a distance, marshes and bogs might just look like another type of grassland, but they can have mud deep enough to sink in and disappear without a trace.

Standing water is a great place to get an infection, though alligators, leeches, snakes, and mosquitos might drive you off first.

Streams

Moving water is its own kind of problem.  Coming across a stream in the wilderness, far from any trail, you'll have to search for a good crossing point.  If you're lucky, there's a ford where the water is wide and shallow and you can wade across.  If you're not, you either swim or find something that floats.

Crossing has a few dangers of its own: losing your footing, getting your powder wet, getting swept downstream, not to mention bitey things in the water.

If you have boats and are headed in the right direction, creeks and rivers are better than roads.  But if you're on foot and one is lying across your route, it's going to take some time.

Rocks

Sharp, jagged, or loose rocks can be terrible to walk across.  This is broken ankle country:

As bad as rocky terrain is for your feet, it can be even worse for most livestock.  Drive a herd of cattle through a place like this and you'll mostly end up with beef that's still crying out for a while.

Up and down

The steeper the ground gets, the more arduous of a journey it'll be (even if there's a trail).

Cliffs and escarpments can stretch hundreds of miles across the landscape, leaving no way around.

Canyons and gorges pose a similar problem, though usually with a rushing watercourse at the bottom.

---

If your game has exhaustion rules, you're going to need them crossing the wilderness.  Plenty of other things can hinder your journey: deep snow, bad weather, dangerous creatures, but these are all topics for another time.

Mystery plot hooks: foreshadowing without railroading

Or, how to look like you've planned it all from the start without railroading the story.

Imagine, the party finally breaks through into the crypt under the village.  Inside they find a massive one-eyed clay statue.  As the thief reaches out his hand, the eye opens.  They have awakened the Eye in the Mountain, a mystery you've been planning out for months.

Only you didn't really plan it out.  You just tossed in the phrase "Eye in the Mountain" and let the players run with it for a while.

I like to keep a list of mystery plot hooks, about four or five at a time.  In the very first adventure, throw in a snippet of vague but evocative information.  It could be a password, an engraving, a note clutched in a dead man's hand — anything to drop it in the game.  Don't worry about what it means yet.  In fact, it's more fun if you have no idea yourself.

The idea here is to foreshadow things you haven't even planned out.

I don't care for preplanned plots, myself.  They always end up robbing the players of their agency in the world, making their choices feel insignificant in the shadow of the story the DM wanted to tell.

But preplanned plots do allow foreshadowing, building of tension towards a narrative climax and a more satisfying story.

One way to combine the two is to add mystery hooks that you'll figure out later.  Short phrases tend to work best:

• the Lady of Spring
• the Withering Stone
• Silence will Fall
• Beware the Red of the Grumbler
• the Day of Resounding

Toss a mystery hook into the game with no leads, no clues of how you could learn more about it.  Let the players speculate, but don't give them more information yet.

There are many ways to sneak a hook like this into the game.  Some that I've enjoyed:

• a nursery rhyme
• the last words of a dying man
• an informant tells you they overheard it while spying on someone
• inscribed on an artifact
• a prophecy being talked about by superstitious people
• carved into a tree (but misspelled)

For example:

Beneath the dry hand of the corpse you find a page that's been scribbled all over, random squiggles around a single phrase written in the center, "the whispering glass".

Don't explain it.  After all, you don't know what it means yet either, but don't tell the players that.

Then wait a few game sessions, and throw in another reference.  This time add a few details nearby that don't really explain anything.

She says there was a fairy tale her grandmother told her, many years ago.  Something about stone and glass and whispers you shouldn't listen to.  So long ago, when she was just a little girl.  They lived by the sea then, and she ate corn porridge with a bit of pepper.

Over time, sprinkle a few of these mystery hooks into the story.  Listen to the theories the players come up with, and let the mystery stew for a while.

Then when you need to introduce a new element to the story, decide how it relates to one of the hooks you already introduced ages ago.  Armed with more of an explanation, you can start to add clues that actually mean something.

Maybe the Whispering Glass is a globe full of tortured souls that will drive you mad by listening to it.  Maybe there's a looking glass that whispers secrets you wouldn't want revealed.  Maybe there's a secret society that has a ritual where all drink from a common glass and speak in whispers.

Whatever the hook turns out to mean, the players will already want to know.  They'll be paying attention the moment you say "whispering".  If it's something they thought of, they'll feel proud for guessing what was coming.  If it's nothing like their ideas, they'll be surprised at the result.

Either way, you'll look like you planned the whole thing and they'll get the satisfaction of uncovering the mystery.

Some newfangled contraptions: the spindly Sun-Walker, Pellet Lanterns, and the Silver Sight

I've been rolling up some strange newfangled contraptions, and I thought you might find some of them interesting.

The Sun-Walker

An enormous mechanical creation up high on spindly legs, the Sun-Walker is made mostly of brass.  Glass lenses concentrate sunlight onto fine metal spindles and vanes, causing them to bend and flex, moving the Walker inexorably forwards.  Its legs are articulated to lift high with each step, allowing the Walker to slowly traverse some of the most rugged terrain.

The inventor has tried to market the device, but it has only been ridiculed in the local press.  It's hard to control, but the inventor is confident that it can be improved.

Kinda like this, but with more sunlight and less smoke.  (ebalint96)

Pellet Lanterns

A safer, longer-lasting lantern has been invented.  A single pellet can keep it glowing for an hour, it doesn't warm up, and it won't ignite explosive gases down in the mines.

The lantern is a small glass globe (inside a protective wire cage) with a geared mechanism attached to one end.  You stick in a pellet and turn the crank; the pellet is crushed to a fine powder that glows with a bright bluish light inside the glass.

The lanterns themselves aren't that expensive, and you can buy a hundred pellets for just a shilling.  Or at least, you could.  Trouble is, there's a legal battle going on over who owns the imperial license to manufacture the pellets.

Imagine a cross between a pepper grinder and one of these old lanterns.  (Garrett Wade)

The Silver Sight

The Sight is a colossal telescopic device, mounted on a track so it can swivel and aim in any direction.  A massive clockwork mechanism causes it to rotate as needed, powered by weights hanging from chains below the main platform.

Inside the Sight are many colored glass lenses, complicated prisms, and silver reflectors.  It collects not light, but some other form of ray that can bend over the horizon.  Looking through the eyepiece, you can see the grey, indistinct forms of people hundreds of miles away.

Not that you'll ever get to look through the Sight yourself.  Its existence is a closely-guarded state secret, an intelligence-gathering device belonging to the Viceroy, who uses it to extend imperial power (or rather, her own power) across the Northern Lands.

A bit like this, but much bigger. (David Wenzel)