Shades of the New World

'This is quite boring, huh?' Evin thought idly, 'I wish Runa would've kept me some company, but I guess she would've gotten bored eventually and left me for the World Sprites… Sigh.'

The skinshifter ditched Evin 30 minutes into the mission when he was drawing the map of the town. Runa was already getting bored during this, since Evin wasn't focused enough to properly reply to the little girl's endless questions. When Evin mentioned that the following part would be even more boring, Runa decided to enter Evin's shadow, telling him to call her if there was any fighting to do. 

Thinking of random things, Evin passed the time in silence… But a few minutes later, Evin suddenly realized something.

'Wait, since they could fly, why would they even go through the town gates? They can quickly fly into a random dark corner of the town and dispel their illusions there. Since I can't see through walls I'd just think that some resident of the town is just leaving their house…'

One problem with the town of Saar was that its buildings were built a tad too close to each other, which made it so that there were many blind spots for mages to hide in. So if a mage decided to navigate the town through those narrow streets, unperturbed by the shit and piss on the ground, it would be very hard for Evin to take notice of them.

'Should I just make it rain on the town and see if there's any spot in the sky that's oddly deflecting the water?'

It was a good idea, but Evin's core capacity wasn't big enough to sustain such a spell for long. At most, he could gather a sphere of water for a bit before making it explode over the town. But that was much too flashy, so he could only think of something else. 

In his opinion, even the fact that he was sitting on the tallest building in town was much too daring for comfort. 

'Mages don't really have to walk through the city gates, but the purpose of their visit remains the same – to gather information. The most likely place to find the relevant information would be the place where mages gather, but as far as I know, there isn't such a place here.'

Evin asked Ertu about this before and learned that practically all mages flocked to the Tribes to get better education. This was mostly due to Kal's policies to relocate the population to better designed cities. 

Before Kal started ruling over the North, the country was a lot less organized than it was before. Originally, the Northerners lived a very traditional and nomadic lifestyle, herding sheep throughout the plains and deer throughout the forests. Like migratory birds, they would search for a warmer spot to stay in winter time, like under the cover of mountains where the cold winds couldn't affect them as much. And when summer came, they would search for a cooler spot to stay in, place close to rivers and lakes, for example.

After that Selat took over and the situation in the North started to undergo a lot of big changes. Due to the many wars that occurred during those times, countless new towns and cities started to be built. Perhaps because they weren't used to such a lifestyle, many towns were built with glaring flaws like Saar here, where the buildings were built practically right next to each other.

Selat being Selat, didn't really care about these problems that much. He was much more interested in shooting for the level of Authorities at the time. 

Kal took over afterwards, saw these towns and decided to do something about it. He made it so that all Tribes could only be located in towns meeting certain standards that the Paradra set and if they couldn't find a suitable town or city, they had to build one themselves. The Paradra also expressed their willingness to help out with the resources if the new town's design met the proper standards.

If some ruler declared the same back on Earth, his people would've probably rebelled, but the Northerners didn't really mind that much. They had mages and magicians all over the place so it wasn't that hard to build a town or two since they had the resources. Probably, the more ambitious Tribe leaders even saw it as a chance to solidify their rule. After all, not everyone had the privilege to build a new city.

As for how these new towns would help the problem of the old ones being bad? Well, Kal thought that the residents of these old towns saw the new towns being built, they would sooner or later start moving to them. After all, all the mages were living in the new towns and usually, mages were the catalysts of progression and good life.

But, Kal had underestimated the stubbornness of people. Everyone was stilling living in the shitty towns of past, unwilling to mingle with the mages and citizens of the newer cities. Apparently, Kal had no problems about freely bullying the Tribes but he was weirdly adamant about not forcing the non-mages to do anything. Evin guessed that it had something to do with the Oath, but Ertu denied it. She explained that it most likely had to do with the super-imposer's principles.

Long story short, team Eleven was probably the only Northern force in the town of Saar. There were probably a few odd mages living in the town, but Evin didn't really know where to find them.

'Maybe I can ask Ertu when I have the time…' Evin thought, 'In any case, since there isn't a prevalent Tribe here, the foreign elites can only search for information in crowded places… which would be the common room in an inn, or a[SA1]  tavern of some sorts.'

During his quick trip through the town, Evin saw two taverns and three inns. If he observed the entrances to these five buildings, then perhaps he would be able to see the type of people he wanted to. 

'Okay, this one seems like a better idea,' Evin decided and switched from staring at the gates to looking at the entrances to the taverns and inns.