"It's... a language and culture. My culture." That's probably going to take more time to explain than a train ride will allow, so Jon just presses on. He can't help quirking a brow, though.

"Unusual and deadly things that happen frequently because of LIEs?" The Archivist huffs. "We just got finished with a war that lasted... god... two weeks, maybe? The pitched fighting of it, anyway. I expect it's all been brewing much longer than that. It's only served to make the restrictions on Submissives tighter, though, since the Creator of LIEs won. Before that... well, a lot of things. The city transformed into a desert randomly and there were slave auctions and trials and... all sorts of things. Then the city turned into a hellish inferno with monsters everywhere and people dying and fire and earthquakes and floods.

"It's sort of incredibly horrible or marginally tolerable."