Yam Network

The Yam network of waystations is a great part of what made the Mongol Empire and the Silk Road possible. Every 20-60km on major travel routes, there is a waystation that provides fresh horses, food, shelter or simply sanctuary, depending on the importance and rank of the traveller as indicated by their Gereg passport.

The Yam network not only serves as an expedient mean to move people and goods fast and safely across the Silk Road, it is also regularly traversed by couriers who deliver messages back and forth between the major hubs of the Mongol Empire, allowing a level of fast and reliable communication unimaginable to the people of Dark Ages Europe.

The Yam network itself, its waystations, maintainers, messengers, messages and users enjoy special protection under the Yasa law, of the kine and the kindred alike. Any interference and sabotage is very likely to meet a very gruesome, slow, painful and public Final Death.

Yam and the Kindred

The Anda didn't forget about the needs of the kindred as the Yam network was established. Many Anda have the power to meld with the earth and make the world their shelter. But there are also young Anda who yet lack this vital ability, as well kindred of other clans who provide unique skills to sedentary Karakorum without being as able to survive in the wild as Mongolia's main clan.

Most Yam stations are accompanied by a day shelter (ödrin zuslan) a slight distance away. The maintainers, while stabling the horses for the day, will be able to point any gereg bearer who arrives at night time and asks about it to a nearby ovoo of Erlik, the Mongol deity of death and the underworld. No Mongol would visit it around dusk or dawn, fearing Erlik's ghostly minions who mostly strike around those two times, adding another layer of security to cainites who enter or leave.

Nearby to the ovoo, there will always be a hole in the ground, hidden by foilage, thorns, poisonous plants or locally feasible other impediments that keep random kine and their cattle away. A ladder leads a short distance down, to a pool of stagnant brackish water. Anyone who dares to dive the pool and crawl through a tight tunnel(especially if they don't need to breathe) will eventually arrive in a small cave, its ground filled with manure, its air filled with the noxious fumes of manure gas, lethal to kine and kept from escaping by the the siphon of the water pool.



It's not comfortable resting, and the terrible smell will clinge for a while on anyone who spends the day in a örlin zuslan, but the reliability enables easy travel along the main routes. And the Yasa's special legal protection of the yam network extend to the örlin zuslan - it is a serious crime to rob, assault or kill any gereg bearer resting in one and enjoying its sanctuary, punishable by Final Death.