‘There are new followers amongst us, as there are every night. For their benefit I shall explain how I was blessed by an encounter with the visitors. How they imparted the wisdom by which we organise ourselves here, and made the promise that they will fulfil when they decide that we are ready to receive it. I know that some of you have heard the story so many times before that you can tell it better than I,’ Foeless Landwalker said, and paused while laughter and hooting briefly rolled through the crowd before going on, explaining that he had been hunting for stray bears in the forests of the far north when one night he had been visited by a tall figure dressed all in white, with a white helmet with a visor of black glass fitted over its head.

It had told him that its name was Afir and it was an emissary of the people of Morningstar, who believed that the people of the Mother were at a crossroads. One road was dark and led to the fate of the bears; the other was the road which the people of Morningstar had taken long ago, leading to a peaceful union with the guiding spirit of their world. That was the road they wanted to help the children of the Mother find, and they had chosen Foeless to be their emissary. He told the crowd that he had been humbled and awed by the invitation, and when he accepted a great light shone around him and the emissary, Afir, and he suddenly found himself amongst others of Afir’s kind, aboard a kind of ship that shot up into the sky and crossed the gulf to Morningstar.

It was almost a word-for-word retelling of the story set out in Intrepid’s first pamphlet. Pilgrim remembered that Master Able had read the parts that he found silliest before giving up on it and skimming it across his room, saying that it was entirely fiction, and not even the good kind.

Foeless described the rainy forest where the visitors’ ship landed, and the glass room where he met with their spiritual leaders and was told about the new age that would come if the children of the Mother could be persuaded to follow the right path. The oppressed would be relieved. The elite would be overthrown. Homes would be found for migrants and outcasts. The New Territories and Akeban would be raised up and the leaders of the Union brought low. Laws that benefited the few rather than the many would be replaced by natural law, and there would be a return to the values of land and blood, and true harmony with the Mother.