Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: arsmith@nyx.cs.du.edu (Alan Smith)
Subject: [NTY] Traveling.
Message-ID: <1993Jul20.204115.15920@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
References: <1993Jul19.045202.17880@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 20:41:15 GMT

  "Orluccar: The religious center of Rameshan, and the seat of the Oacularity
of the Temple of Ashes.  The Oracle at the temple, according to legend, 
is a four thousand year old woman."  --The Atlas of the Known Lands

  There is a definite aura to Orluccar, not necissarily in the magic sense
(though there's definitely one of them as well) but in the more mundane
sense that later generations on a different world would call "zietgiest."
In a nutshell, everyone in Orluccar was pious.  Greeting a stranger on the
street was likely to entail a reference to at least two gods, and any sort
of business transaction had a 30% chance of involving the sacrifice of a
furry animal.  The archetecture was a modified version of that seen in
Pashar, the windows being vaulted instead of square and the ubiquitous spires
of Pashar were replaced with temples.

Cardinal Xar's men were out in force, though Palandun saw no sign of the 
Cardinal himself.  Strangely, in close association with Xar's demonstraters
were demonstrators for the Society of Gentlemen Apothecaries.  Palandun
asked one of the SGA's if the two societies were working together.
  "<Snort> Hardly.  Xar's misguided legions are trying to supress the use
of magic, while we quite rightly defend it.  How about yourself?  Do you
support goodness and decency, or do you fall in with those perverted discples
of innacurate religion?"
  Palandun replied that he was a foreigner, and felt it better to stay out of
Rameshan's internal strife, however, he had not heard so many value adjectives
crammed into a smaller space since the last time a Factionalist had gone to
speak at the town hall in It-Atta.  Yes, that was a compliment, of sorts.

  Acting on the advice of the woman he bought lunch from (who was pretty
adamant on the point) Palandun payed his three sheckels and managed to avoid
sacrificing a cow to take the tour of the temple of ashes.  His little joke
about the god ashes flopped miserably, and he resolved to shut up for the
rest of the tour.
  Palandun heard a lot of useless facts about temple architecture and history,
and on the whole spaced it, except when the tour group stopped by in the chamber
of the Oracle.  She stood up, walked over to Palandun, and said: "You will be
the Carrot."
  "Gee, thanks." Palandun replied.
  "It's better than being the Stick." She replied.  Palandun was inclined
to wonder how she judged these things.
  The rest of the tour, including the guide, was very impressed that the
Oracle had actually taken the time out to give *him* his fortune, and several
of them asked him fir his autograph.  The Priests were more than a little
pissed, and tried to extort a large sum of money post facto for his             
"consultation with the oracle."  Palandun was disurbed, as he really didn't
want to become a carrot, or any other vegetable for that matter.  The whole
thing reminded him of a recurring nightmare of his.

  There were fewer foodstuffs invoved in securing a berth in the convoy to
Alamatar, and they set off the next day, to the sacrifice of two camels.
He travelled in a large cart with a silk merchant, a concubine who's lover
was coming in on the next Silk Road Convoy, a knight (the two of them had
long debates about the relative merit of Heavy Cav versus Carted Inf), and
his girlfriend, a spoiled princess of one of the itty bitty countries in
the Great Heath.  By dinner on the first day the Concubine was annoyed with
the princess, by breakfast the next day Palandun was, and the Silk merchant
only managed to hold out till lunch.
  On the fifth day the three of them were idly plotting and, on the eighth
day, when the Convoy leader announced that they were officially lost, it
was only with drawn sword that Palandun managed to stop the other two.  When
they finally arrived the concubine and the silk merchant immediately went
to the temple of United to offer thanks.
  Palandun rented a camel and rode out to the diggings.  There he found
1) A big hole in the ground.
2) A lot of tents.
3) No sign of any people.
  He had, in fact, expected this, and rode back to aquire some supplies.

  Armed with light-gem, among other things, Palandun dropped into the hole and
looked around, finally deciding to follow the smoke-marks on the ceiling.