Common Ground

More about Common Ground

No charter established this place, and no authority enforces it.
It exists because it must.

Every table bears the weight of incompatible pasts: routes that crossed only once,
wars that ended without signatures, trades made under skies that no longer exist.
Languages overlap and simplify. Customs are observed, ignored, or quietly retired.
Here, differences are not resolved—they are managed, the way fire is managed:
contained, respected, kept useful.

The technology is deliberately modest. Enough to keep the lights warm, the drinks
cold, and the air breathable. Nothing that reminds anyone too strongly of who holds
power elsewhere. Wood is chosen because it ages honestly. Stone because it
remembers. Metal is present, but never dominant.

Disputes end here not because they are settled, but because the next leg of the
journey begins in the morning. Deals are struck not on trust, but on mutual
recognition of limits. Violence is rare—not forbidden, merely understood to be
inefficient.

This is not neutral territory.
It is necessary territory.

This is where the frontier pauses long enough to become civilization.