Campaign News for 10/5


Campaign News for 10/5

The sights and sounds of Rastingdrung wash over you, a welcome homecoming after journeys parlous and absurd. The city is a bustle with preparation for the coming Festival of Sybarites. The streets have begun to swell with foreign dignitaries, having purchased their festival tickets early for an extended debauch. The Crimson Censors are about, stirred to great vigilance by the usual paranoia about foreigners, but suddenly strangely powerless.

Court gossip is focused squarely on Lord Kex of Viridistan, nephew to the World Emperor. He came two weeks ago in a swaying palanquin atop a white elephant, accompanied by a mighty entourage. His bare green chest and unnaturally tall and graceful form have become a fixture around the court. Fishwives state with great certainty that he has been sent to seal through marriage the World Emperor’s alliance with the city state. Civic pride prevents them from asking what his interest in an alliance with this backwater might be.

Business booms in the Temple of Ulim, which is decked in holiday finery. Foreigners eager to taste the pleasures on offer are met by a mix of prostitutes, some experienced in the byways of delectation and other fresh from the slave boats, stunned and terrified. As is to be expected, entertainers of all kinds, acrobats and mountebanks, jongleurs and stiltsmen, are in high demand at the Temple, and will be through the festival.

The Mercury Whistle—that redoubt of foreigners, poets, and those of dubious orthodoxy—where the party first heard the whispers about Ultan’s door, has reopened its doors. Although its owner, old Ludlow went down to the White Halls in one of the periodic roundups of undesirables, his son Peters has taken up the mantle. The characters from this waking world know and like him. He has a wandering eye and is a great teller of stories, none of which are true. The bar is in the dilapidated neighborhood of Chanticleer.

Old men sit smoking from their long pipes as they always do, sipping bitter tea, and playing at shards in the small courtyard cafes. They gossip relentlessly about the floats and effigies for the Blasphemer’s Parade, and chuckle at the growing anxiety of the censors who will soon be running the Gamut. But today their normal chatter has dried up. For eerily, yesterday literally all of the fishers’ nets came up empty. Being a superstitious lot, the old men view this as a great ill omen. Some whisper that the Bishop, the mythical talking fish of Lake Wooling, has called his congregation to a great sermon deep in the oily waters. Others that he has recalled them to safety against some terrible threat.


Comments

  1. Ben L.October 5, 2017 at 11:33 AM

    No worries Anthony Huso . I knew you needed to step back at least for a while. Also fell free to send me materials from the City of Brass when you want feedback. I’m eager to take a gander!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aleksandr RevzinOctober 5, 2017 at 12:06 PM

    Ben L. Well, its time for Salinger to start making plans to publicly perform dances from his unfinished Zyan Cycle youtube.com - Landlord Marty's Dance Cycle

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ben L.October 5, 2017 at 12:15 PM

    THE FEELS

    ReplyDelete

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