Trades company cartographer

"One day I came upon a rare sight indeed, or one that used to be quite rare before our southern cousins joined the war. However this person was not only rare that they were from the south, but apparently had been all over the world! They themselves are of eastern and southern heritage, which I cannot imagine to be a very common thing at all. They carried all manner of interesting metalworks with them and they found it quite amusing to see someone who they referred to as a 'native' be amazed by their interesting tools. I had always wondered how people created maps, and I was glad that he had a moment to explain how he measures the landscape with the tube he calls an "ocular glass", an extension to your own eye, and when I looked into it, I was amazed to see that my sight had traveled several hundred paces towards the target it was pointed at. He explained that the tool functioned in a similar manner as water, being able to embiggen or shrink things that are on the other side of it and thus making it seem that things are either farther or closer than they actually seem.

I don't believe he was working with the soldiers though, as he and a few others seemed to be wearing clothes which did not seem like anything that the soldiers I had seen wear. I think I heard something about a trades company. Once I left they continued to silently observe the landscape while scribbling things down on parchment, every now and then saying things I could not understand to one another."