Travel in the Kueh Shogunate

Currently, there is no overt ban on travel to and from the Shogunate. Xianese visitors and merchants are permitted to enter and leave, albeit they are subject to rather stiff import and export taxes. Xianese officials are not advised to enter the Shogunate; while there is no official ban on it, "unfortunately vigorous national sentiment" has resulted in many "tragic accidents" that drastically shortened the lives of Xianese civil servants. The former magistrate of North Neck himself was almost cut down in the streets of Low Port, if he had not been saved by an adventurer and spirited away by a fast courier ship.

While no formal law prohibits Shogunate commoners from leaving the land, their lords exert a quiet but emphatic discouragement of such departure. The Accursed nature of their new rulers discomfits them, and their new lords insist that this restriction on movement is merely for a time, until the peasants can see that they are in no danger from the devil-men. Of course, it also ensures that most peasants are kept safely in their villages, toiling for their lords. Some try to escape by water, but few can hope to cross the broad stretch of sea between Kitaminato and Highgate, and the eastern coast of the Great Berm swarms with pirate ships eager to gobble up small craft. The only land route south passes by the shadow of Fort Shen Guo, whose Commander Takahashi Yoshimori is a fierce Shogunate partisan. He permits merchants and Xianese travelers to pass, but Kueh commoners are normally required to prove their business is justified elsewhere. It is possible to bypass the fort by cutting around it through the foothills further west, but that route leaves travelers at the mercy of the savage goblin and bugbear tribes of the Mantle Peaks and few are so hardy as to dare it.

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