The festivities following the Coreguyi Games are inescapable--wherever one goes throughout the harbor of Cothon, one cannot but see throngs in the taverns, cheering their neighborhood champions with endless rounds of wine, while in the tavern-corners barstool-gladiators go over and over the contests between the blooded warriors, gesticulating energetically as to which techniques they should have used to win victory faster, or to escape defeat.
Almost unbelievably, a fresh gladiator came out most famously victorious these Games: Elam al Kir defeated Mortu the Black in the final match, and despite the crowd's insistence that Mortu die, Elam was allowed to grant him mercy, and received the palm fronds and the golden laurels to the wild acclaim of the populace. Nevertheless, the crowd was granted the "joy" of surprise blood when Himar al Chlen was fully run through by Mortu's longsword, adding another notch to his "Blade of Death" as the stalwart old gladiator bled out before even any magic could staunch his mortal wound.
At the Heroön, tavern of the gladiators, Sesel, of the Survivors of the Tel, joined in the celebrations singing paeans to the victors and elegies for the fallen, and he was heard to improvise this short verse in memory of Itra the Swift, a warrior of old:
He did defeat his foes
With his great psionic powers planned
And struck to close
Itra did grow great and strong
But all great things
And every life both short and long
Does find it’s final Inn
Where rest his weary head and end
His long life goes
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Eschewing the final celebrations after the Games, the two-galley expedition of Telman of Tsipa slipped quietly from the Kantor Kabljauhof's slipways, through the harbor to sail east and north across Dirac's Sea in seek of the Denyan Akho. Four adventurers from among those new-come to the city answered his call to adventure, hoping to win heaps of gold and excess of glory should they successfully destroy the beast disrupting trade from the east.
Meanwhile, also at the Kantor, Captain-General Zaytar's preparations for his campaign against the pirates of Dirac's Sea continue apace. Though he has yet to secure the public assistance of the Soufets of Cothon-Gadeed, nevertheless the talk is that Zaytar has recently come by certain useful information in his preparations, i.e. in the capture of a pirate from a hidden pirate-cove in the sea-caves north of Cothon ...
[concerning this, the referee has just ordered the Avalon Hill game Trireme, with the intent that when this anti-piracy campaign actually kicks off, it can be properly "wargamed out"]
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Furthermore, by this time word has circulated through the city that the Herm & Stone tavern is offering a nominal bounty of 5 gold pieces per chnelh hand returned to the tavern from the Weirding Caverns. The chnelh are a kind of ape-man, described more like some kind of mandrill or baboon than other great apes: "roughly humanoid in shape, with long, sharp jaws and sharp teeth, a rudimentary nose, and large jewel-like round eyes beneath beetling brows."
The chnelh are said to have recently increased in population such that they have taken over portions of the Weirding Caverns, and are now disrupting the explorations of the prospectors of the Guild of Miners and Prospectors that is tied to the Herm & Stone tavern. They can wield primitive weapons like barbaric men, but their only known culture is the worship of strange pillars of crystal.
Akin the Beautiful and his comrades, Lakhmish min Aqqa and the Kzin Hero Chrr'ff-Hunter, associates all of the Herm & Stone, have set themselves up as a small company of adventurers intent on claiming much of this bounty for themselves, in opposition to the new appearance of "up-and-comers" in the other taverns throughout the Dual-Cities.
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Finally, a note on a research project long-labored over: Master Aljadd of Cothon-Under-Star emerges from the back rooms of the tavern where alchemical work is done with a haunted look on his face.
For several weeks he has labored, dissecting and investigating the corpse of a creature recovered from inside the Spire of the Attine Klackons by an expedition some weeks ago ...
Though not intending to spread rumors too far, nevertheless the strange results of Aljadd's investigations provide grist for the rumor mill: the insectile creature that he dissected contains stingers filled with paralyzing venom in both of its forward striking-arms, venom that is especially potent against the particular biological systems of Klackons. Though humans and others may be affected by the paralyzing venom, Klackons are particularly susceptible and almost incapable of resisting it. And the creature's purpose beyond that seems clear in the fact that its abdomen contains a dagger-like ovipositor/stinger to deliver an egg into the body of whatever creature is paralyzed by its venomed attack ...
Turning to the Survivors of the Tel, who supplied the body that he has dissected, Aljadd offers further recompense if something more about this creature and the "plague of the 6th House" that it seems to represent can be recovered (yet the word gets around, and if others than the Survivors can do as he asks, surely he would pay them just as handsomely). In particular, he wishes to see the corpse of a Klackon fallen victim to the creature, or better yet, what might hatch out of the eggs the creature might implant (if possible to discover!).
Nevertheless, appreciative of the Survivor's initial success, Master Aljadd is able to supply a dose each of a potion of anti-paralyzant to Sesel, Avin, and Ravna. He claims that it will "denature" the muscle-locking venom, whatever that may mean, but in particular will "cure" paralyzation caused by the creature's stings.
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