From the introduction:
Half a world away from each other, the Inner Sea region and Tian Xia had little contact until 1300 ar, when the intrepid explorer Amatatsu Aganhei traveled across the Crown of the World and established a trade route between the two continents. This connection to what his patron, the shogun of Teikoku, considered a culturally inferior people scandalized the leader, who ordered the destruction of the explorer’s maps and records. Yet Aganhei had not only hidden copies away for future generations, but also forged lasting compacts with various inhabitants along the trail—many sealed with oaths or contracts, others commemorated with structures and monuments. By the time another Minkaian explorer rediscovered Aganhei’s maps 3,000 years later, many of these arctic populations still retained written, carved, or oral records of the Tian trailblazer, and these ancient agreements shield travelers along the Path of Aganhei to this day.