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Stepping through a portal changes you. This Advancement is permanent, warping your body and soul. You probably think that things can't get any worse. I've got some good news and bad news. There's a reason we send Harbingers to Earth to bring in new people, there's a reason the nations of Middara stay so small.
What you're about to learn isn't a transformation in your body or soul this time—it's something inherent in the way humans and Middara itself interact. No, you're not built differently, this is the same for you too. Let's rip that bandage off and show you why Middara looks the way it does.
Middara is a realm of agelessness, at least for creatures of Earth. Something about living under the veil, then coming here—it's like we slipped through a crack in reality's perception of time. How you look and feel when you walk out of the portal, that's how you'll look and feel for the rest of forever, unless you do something to change it.
Let's be specific for a minute. Your body doesn't suffer the typical erosion that comes with time. That's an incredible blessing, one that shapes just about everything in every Middaran nation. People don't trickle out of the population as time passes.
In some ways, that's incredible. You won't lose energy when you get older. You won't stop being able to do the things that bring you joy, or live a lifestyle as active and dangerous as you can imagine. You won't turn gray and lose your strength, and your mind and memory won't fail with the passage of time.
Your days on Middara aren't numbered. That doesn't mean you're invincible, as we'll soon discuss. But you're not going anywhere in a hurry. You've got freedom now you could've never before imagined. Want to change careers completely and become an artist? Spend a few decades traveling the world and learning languages? No need to worry that you won't be able to provide in your old age, because old age isn't coming.
Most Immigrants from Earth don't realize how much of their world revolves around the cruelty of age. We accept the irresistible march of time, and plan for it in everything we do. Every city has a graveyard of some kind, and every culture has important burial rites. Though beliefs about what happens after vary (they do here too!) the truth also doesn't matter.
You may not realize it, but age and the death waiting at the end is the ultimate equalizer. Earth doesn't care how rich you get, or how well-connected, the reaper will eventually find you. Your positions of power will be taken by younger people, who allow the orthodoxy of your time to fade and modernize over the generations.
The same is true for all the resources you manage to hoard. Eventually you're gone, and they can be distributed back to society. Even if you manage to keep them in your family, they still dilute across generations, turning kings into paupers if you continue enough generations.
What about becoming the best in your field? Artists, musicians, poets, craftspeople—they spend a lifetime perfecting their talents, far better than their young competition. But they get old, they get weak, and they retire. They can't keep releasing new stuff, so sooner or later even their biggest fans will need to broaden their horizons and give someone younger a shot.
None of these things happen in Middara. The miserly can gather more and more wealth in perpetuity. The senators never have to resign, no matter how outdated and backwards their policies might feel to new arrivals. Long Live the King isn't just a motto anymore, it's a guarantee.
Walking through a portal right now means you're the worst you'll ever be. You're ignorant, the skills you brought probably aren't very useful here. Whatever talents you think you have, someone else has spent a century perfecting that same one. Stay in the big cities, and you'll probably find a lot of discouragement. Everyone here has done it first, and done it better.
What does a newcomer have to offer?
Living a long time proves one thing. Not that someone's the smartest, fastest, or strongest. Their beliefs aren't more likely to be true. Rather, they've proven they have a survival strategy that works for their environment. The longer Middarans last, the better they are about avoiding danger, and having the resources required to overcome whatever might come their way.
Most of Middara's old guard lasted this long by keeping their heads down. Once you've got resources, there's no reason to go out into risky situations, no reason to do hard work, no reason to swing a sword around. Every single one of them probably found an occupation they're passionate about, or at least one that provides for the lifestyle they want without potential injuries.
As one of Middara's newest arrivals, this is what you have to offer. You can't be better at your job, but you can be willing to do it somewhere more dangerous. You can be willing to take up guard duty instead of office work. You can volunteer for the foundry or the chemical plant. You can take up exploring into the frontier where no older citizen would dare venture.
Older Middarans tend to know more disciplines, have better gear, and be better trained. But if you crack open a history book, you're going to find that most of those who pushed the boundaries, those who encouraged radical change or spurred revolution—they were young.
You have less to lose than they do, and more to gain, if you're willing to be bold. That haul of incredible treasure might just be what sets you up for life, if you can find it.
Spend enough time in Middara, and you'll hear the word "Immortal" thrown around casual conversation a lot. This word isn't just wrong, it's infectious, particularly with the attitudes of the young. If you don't get old, doesn't that mean you'll live forever?
Touch something sharp, trip over a rock, get too close to the flame, and you'll receive an instant, painful reminder of just how wrong that assertion is. If there are Gods, perhaps they are immortal, but you're not. Your bones still break, your body can still be poisoned or damaged.
Unless you walked out of that portal with the lottery winning Advancement, you aren't going to regenerate lost limbs, or heal from permanent damage your body takes. You can still lose your vision, you can still suffer permanent, life-destroying wounds.
Most importantly, you can still die, and Middara's full of ways to make that happen. Even in the most ancient, 'civilized' nations, there are creatures lurking in caves and wild places that can easily kill a human being. Many of them are smarter than any earthly predator, and are only too eager to end your life.
That's why every new arrival ends up in the Institute. Your life has the potential to be infinite in length. That's not the same as a guarantee. But here's one I can give you: let your guard down, wander somewhere you don't belong, and you can end that ageless life with a single stupid mistake.
Despite the social consequences, being here in Middara can feel like an incredible windfall. So many humans have offered all they had for a slightly longer life, but you get to be ageless for free? Of course the answer is no. Put aside all the social consequences, and there's one "gotcha" lurking in the fine print.
Humans don't age, but we can't have kids either. Doesn't matter how virile you were before walking out of the portal, or how much gold you're willing to fork over for questionable "tonics" from shady stalls. No amount of determination from you and your partner will ever yield a productive result.
Yeah, that has all the impacts on society you probably think it does. With exceptionally rare exception, illegitimate children aren't a worry here. There are no unplanned pregnancies, and no kids walking around who weren't wanted.
That's a problem for everyone. Life is dangerous. Even in the rare nations that have eliminated all natural threats, there's still accident, disease, and the violence of other humans to worry about. Our numbers are constantly eroding, and we can't refill them here no matter how badly we want to.
Without a portal of its own, no nation can exist for long. Even the smartest, best-prepared, and best armed humans can still make mistakes. Live long enough, and the question is not a matter of if you'll die, but how. By owning a portal, each nation can keep the flow of warm bodies moving.
That doesn't always mean staying honest with the ones coming through. Earth has stories of tempters and demons leading people to hell for a reason. Even without connections to Middara, there are many who would accept the promise of agelessness and dismiss or ignore what it costs. So long as there's a portal open, there will be people willing to come through.
But just because no one on Middara can have kids doesn't mean none of them want to. Rather, the opposite is true. Middaran couples can live together for centuries, cementing relationships with a level of trust that Earth life simply does not permit humans to experience.
The drive to reproduce is irresistible, even if the means may be withheld. Great power rests in the hands of anyone who can grant what nature withholds. This is the real key to owning a portal, and why every nation that survives for any length of time also maintains one. This trait is universal across all Middara—lose your portal and you lose your sovereignty.
There is no potion or discipline that can make you fertile again—but there is a way to have kids. All you have to do is go back to Earth, and the strange effects of Middara are undone.
It wasn't your Advancement that makes you immortal, and it isn't the Advancement that makes you sterile. One step back through to Earth, and both effects cease. Your body resumes its aging process, experiencing the damaging effects of time the same as any other human.
This is why Harbingers are among the best paid and most prestigious positions in all Middara. In a world of agelessness, these people are exchanging pieces of their eternity to help others to have children. Even if the threat of angelic discovery and execution wasn't following them, their roles would likely still be compensated as richly.
It isn't just aging that resumes—so does your ability to reproduce. Only in the rarest exceptions does the Advancement make someone truly sterile. For everyone else, the portal is a chance to have children, and build a family despite whatever may've changed about your new life.
For at least one (and usually both) partners, this means about a year sacrificed to live on Earth, in conditions that would not typically be called glamorous. Remember that objects can't travel through portals, so it doesn't matter how rich or well-prepared you are. Going back to Earth is always a dangerous affair.
But for many, it continues to be worthwhile. So long as there are clients willing to pay, there will be harbingers to place their kids with foster families, until they eventually get old enough to bring back to Middara.
So long as there have been enough smart people to write their findings, there have been scholars asking why Middara works the way it does. Why don't we age, why can't we reproduce? Why do the angels hunt us so fervently when we try to go back?
No conclusive answers have been discovered to these questions, though many have been proposed. The one most typically given to students who ask is the Faulkist interpretation. In that view, Middara is a forsaken, damned world. To travel there is to cut oneself off from the creator, and to suffer His wrath.
This takes the form of an eternal curse—the agelessness of Middara. Angels enforce this barrier, preventing the return of those who should be damned to escape their curse.
Of course, most Middarans are perfectly happy with the status quo in this regard, and would not likely agree with anyone who called it a "curse." Getting old sucks, and not having to do it seems like it could only be an advantage.
Those who claim to know the truth are probably just repeating their religious beliefs back to you. Don't trust that someone you meet has some special or sacred knowledge, when all they really have is more time on you.
We all have to make up our own minds. What you choose to do with your life on Middara is not a decision someone else can make for you. One way or another, you're here to stay. Might as well live it the way you want.
