JustJae

What a good grandson

It's explained a bit in chapter 151 or so, the Vale has lost lands, what they have now is the core that could be easily fortified against the Lothians. Also, their previous capital city was burned to the ground, what has been rebuilt since then its a shadow of what it once was. The Vale of Mists used to be a nexus for trade flowing through the High Pass but now, lack of commerce is slowing recovery.

High Lords have larger territories and greater personal power than Lords. Nyrielle has never been a High Lady, but Torbin - her grandsire and the previous ruler of the Vale of Mists, was a High Lord. The Vale lost its status when Torbin died along with many of his people before Nyrielle made her 47 progeny and 'revived' the Vale of Mists. But the Vale of today is greatly diminished from what it once was.

Chapter comments got out of order (my fault), I fixed the chaps within minutes but I forgot to fix the comments. Glad you like our dark angel :)

Energy has to come from somewhere. Sorcery, at the right level, consumes calories just like exercise. Mystical, not literal calories, but you get the idea. Eat, sleep, work out and you can do X amount of sorcery per day. Go past that and the energy has to come from somewhere. Just like working out past exhaustion damages the body, over using sorcery results in damage that manifests as aging. It isn't 'you get X amount older for Y amount of sorcery', it's that the body takes comprehensive damage from over drawing its resources. Make sense?

It's fine, really. I'm sure Hauke is a universal donor....

Horned girls are the best 😀

look at you getting caught up! I was afraid I'd lost you!

It's not driven by industrial pollution. Human sanitation, smelting and other environmental handling isn't great, but they have yet to reach climate altering scale with it.

Zedya says you will like tomorrow's chapters too ;)