The teleport had tossed him out on the marsh created by two branches of the River Pontar. The southern branch, owing to its size, had even been given its own name by cartographers—and thus appeared on many maps as the Embla. The land lying between the branches—or rather the scrap of land—was called Emblonia. At least it had been once. And quite a long time ago had stopped being called anything. The Kingdom of Emblonia had ceased to exist around half a century before. And there were reasons for that.

In most kingdoms, duchies and other forms of government and social communities in the lands Geralt knew, things were in order and in fairly good shape—it would be reasonable to state. Admittedly, the system faltered occasionally, but it functioned. In the vast majority of the social communities the ruling class ruled, rather than just stealing and organising by turns gambling and prostitution. Only a small percentage of the social elite consisted of people who thought that “Hygiene” was a prostitute and “gonorrhoea” a member of the lark family. Only a small number of the labouring and farming folk were morons who lived solely for today and today’s vodka, incapable of comprehending with their vestigial intellects something as incomprehensible as tomorrow and tomorrow’s vodka. Most of the priests didn’t corrupt minors or swindle money out of the people, but dwelt in temples, devoting themselves wholly to attempts at fathoming the insoluble mysteries of their faith. Psychopaths, freaks, oddballs, and dullards kept away from politics and important positions in the government and administration, busying themselves instead with the ruination of their own personal lives. Village idiots hunkered down behind barns and didn’t try to act as tribunes of the people. Thus it was in most states.

But the Kingdom of Emblonia wasn’t part of the majority. It was a minority in all the above-mentioned respects. And in many others.