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Thief's Favor
The Enclave > Known Roads > Three Stones > Local Color

Well and well - for that and the coin for another ale, I'll tell you the tale I heard only this very day, fresh as blood on the Great Way. Friends are those who keep a thirst as as far from here as Watch blades, mark me ... and flame and dark, you're such a friend - this coin and I will remember you!

Happens there's a commoner from the farmfolk with a Thief's Favor lately come to his purse, and him not knowing the truth of it. A pretty thief was clumsy on the Great Way these past days, and clumsy where Watch blades could see, mark my words. The Burning Truth in their hearts makes them quick to anger, I say, to be leaning their blades into a tripped woman who made them run in armor. By the dark below, there'll be a chilled bed somewhere these past nights! Blood! You and I know there'll be worse and worse from Watch blades, just give them a season yet.

There's no crowd like the folk drawn to blood on paving stones, and there's a truth for you. You don't want to look behind lest you see Visitors with blood writ upon their faces, or something worse than a woman spilling herself onto stone. Away went the Watch, leaving blood and thief, and in with Guard spears and empty bluster - goats with coins to be paying poor folk to drag away the thief and bleat at traders to clean the Great Way.

You can guess the rest - how farmfolk on the Great Way after market found themselves taking away the dead for coin, and what should fall from the thief's sleeve but the sparkling Favor gem. Flame and dark! Never let it be said that these farmfolk and commoners are all moonfaced; slip away the gem quick as you like, they did, and right under the goat's noses. Not that I'd be taking a Thief's Favor, even if it did drop from the very sky into my open purse; who's to say what it marks and what I might find myself owed or owing?

[ Posted by Reason on December 29, 2005 | Permanent Link ]

The Goat's Tankards
The Enclave > Known Roads > Three Stones > People and Places > Taverns

The Goat's Tankards is a haggard stone structure, slumped against the base of the great city wall in the City Without. The slanting roof would give a view of the Stone Road and flanking watchtower hills, were any so foolish as to trust their weight to the sagging beams and leaky thatch.

No-one has owned the Tankards since the aged barkeep Lafal passed from the World five winters ago, but the poorest of commonfolk in the City Without haven't stopped coming to drink as they always did. Honest farm folk and crafters made poor by the Council of Traders have always taken their ale side by side with lesser thieves, outcasts and coinless travelers. Now the honest commonfolk pool their leaden coin to bargain casks of bad ale from passing traders at the Bitten Eye, and appoint one another barkeep or "Lord Lafal" for a night.

Above the Tankards' doorway, covered against summer rain or winter wind by rough boards rather than door and frame, hang battered wooden mugs on rusted chains, remnants of an old tavern tradition in the City Without. A prancing goat statue once hung with them, but that has long been gone. The poor folk come to drink, but the Tankards continues to decay a little more each winter; soon enough the roof will fall in, and the drinking will continue elsewhere.

[ Posted by Reason on December 28, 2005 | Permanent Link ]

The Third Flame
The Enclave > Known Roads > Three Stones > People and Places > Taverns

The Third Flame Inn is mostly hidden away behind thick grey stone walls on a paved street leading onto the Great Way. Hired spears in red iron and expensive cloth guard the entrance, for the Third Flame is a meeting place for the wealthiest and most influential of Three Stones; nobles, priests of the Temple of Powers, Watch captains, magisters and merchants with influence in the Council of Traders - and renowned sages, in past times. The high-born and influential meet behind four walls and in the great carved cellar of the Third Flame. Retainers, guards, servants and lesser brethren drink and dine on a wooden deck overlooking the Great Way, calling down to friends and cityfolk, wagering on the fate of thieves, suitors and those who bargain with well-dressed tradesfolk.

The high-vaulted cellar of the inn is set into booths and long tables, lit by a smokeless stranger's flame - the Third Flame itself - burning tall and hot, purple and white by turns. The carved walls depict scenes from the history of Three Stones in between shelves holding curios and engravings.

The Third Flame Inn has stood for generations; the origin of the stranger's flame in the cellar is a mystery, however. It was never unveiled by the merchant who rebuilt the inn and enlarged the cellar, now long passed from the World. The inn was already much as it is when it passed into the hands of Tivia, an austere old woman who was once a trusted retainer to Lady Talmur. Tales are told as to just how is was that the previous owner went before the magisters, and thence to the prison vaults in chains, fined all his possessions - but many similar tales are told by the poor folk of Three Stones.

One new addition to the rich decor is a statue of the High Priest Hadren as the Vessel Ascendant, a smaller replica of that recently placed in the Temple of Powers; the innkeeper is a shrewd old woman, well versed in the ways of power.

[ Posted by Reason on December 28, 2005 | Permanent Link ]

The Twice-Folded Scroll and the Farthest Library
The Enclave > Lore > The Farthest

In the Year of Winter, The Twice-Folded Scroll was the eldermost whitebeard of the Black Tower, of such great age and frailty so as to have passed into that lonely demi-realm that only the very oldest mortal folk inhabit, and then for but a short time. Many Ammander sages of the Tower vanished in the seasons following the Winter of Trespassers, and this most ancient whitebeard was amongst their number - already all but forgotten by those beyond the black crags and former retainers. All that remained were folios and inkwork, copied hastily by a few poorly rewarded scribes, buried and misunderstood in private collections, lost amidst long shelves in the Three Stones Library.

The Twice-Folded Scroll was a sage of the Farthest from the very first, a student of the works of The Denier and The Expected Smile, of the Port sages of past times, those who had walked two shores of the Unending Sea. In his lifetime, The Twice-Folded Scroll journeyed to Spire, the vaults of Great Home and Ura above the Mountain Below to speak to wise Datarii, and to the Watch of Trees in search of the last Ammanene. As seasons passed, and hair faded to white, this Ammander sage was drawn ever more to the Library of Three Stones - and all Creation beyond it, the unending shelves and halls of the Farthest Library.

It is perhaps this closeness to the Library, and the old, bad blood between Black Tower sages and Library priests, that led The Twice-Folded Scroll to obscurity in his own lifetime. The guarded, jealous hierarchy of Black Tower sages had no place for those overly-familiar with priests of the Vessel. The priests, for their part, have long been comfortable with the Farthest Library as a mystery of the Seeker after Burning Truth, their honored aspect of the Vessel. In the eyes of the Library faction of the Temple of Powers, the Farthest Library exists for all, a necessary step on the Road walked by the Vessel and all those touched by the Burning Truth ... but what possible use could there be for any sagely elucidation of the Farthest Library? Burning Truth can only be sought, found, mastered - not taught.

So it has came to pass that the deepest secrets of the Quintessential Realms of learning - sought, founded and scribed by The Twice-Folded Scroll - were never told, but are hidden away in fading ink and aging folios, their very existence all but ignored or forgotten.

[ Posted by Reason on December 25, 2005 | Permanent Link ]

The Stench of Cities
The Enclave > Known Roads

Hah! A fine speech, fine as the coat on yonder mule, but by the Beard, Staff and Sack, no roof and mattress could recompense for the stench of cityfolk, all pressed together tight as firewood. I've not set foot in Port these past ten summers, mark me, and I'll wager coin against grass stems I'll not be treading Port cobbles next summer, for good measure! Every draggled rat, sickened eel and ale-sodden noble casts their spew from land to sea, and a wonder the waters aren't black and steaming with it under the hot sun. The only good to come from winters like the last is the burying of filth under clean snow - and a pity it cannot last!

Were I not gifted by the Traveler with these good legs and eyes, were I forced by cruel circumstance to call one place my home, why, I would be a woodcutter in the smallest cottage of the Corner of Creation - Lost to the Farthest Greenwood soon enough, like as not, and myself no Krineth to be coming home from such a dark fate.

[ Posted by Reason on December 24, 2005 | Permanent Link ]