Excerpt from the day of arrival (33 Wendequil, 4E 287):
I roused the crew from their slumber once I had realized we had made landfall. Evidently, we had not died during the storm of the night before, which was a relief to many. It was a relief to me as well, and I hoped we could find somewhere to get wood and make repairs.
In the process of waking up
Fiero Dezarollo, the first mate told me that we had arrived at a city of some sort. I scoffed. Cities were the stuff of back home, but then I climbed onto the deck of
the Crab's Wake. I immediately took back everything I had just said as I took in the marvellous sight of our landing site:
The entire city seemed to stretch directly toward the sky, each building crowned by an ornate red-wood roof. The height of the buildings were dizzying, and several looked like they were about to fall over. One large golden building crowned the top of a central hill, and a surprisingly ordered assortment of walls, houses, and stores continued down the hill towards the sea. A large and lazy river flowed through it, forming a canyon in the heart of the city. In the distance, I could see great plumes of white smoke, like the smoke of a thousand furnaces.
It was magnificent, and
definitely unexpected. I thought there would be maybe a small village surrounding a temple, filled with the delightful
Vatarians that we had seen throughout the Thousand Stars. But a whole culture was waiting in front of us, completely different to anything Castor had ever read in her books. Or so she told me the second that she came on deck and sidled up next to me.
"We'll need Fiero for this." she mentioned with her usual hurried voice. "He's got that translating spell. Comprehend languages or whatever he called it. I don't remember."
'Well then, go get him!" I replied as Castor ran below-decks to take Fiero with us. After a few moments, the kind-hearted
De'arian was brought above-decks and agreed to follow us into the city to be our interpreter. Flashing his hands in a gesture we had seen many times while chatting to the Vatarians while crossing
The Thousand Stars, we set off.
Getting down from the boat, we immediately came across the dock workers. They were very focused on their work, but one of them did wave us over. In a completely random and chaotic mess of words that Fiero translated for us, he told us that we would be incurring the usual costs for keeping a ship there. I fished for coin, and the dockhand became incredibly confused. He said he didn't want "cold favours", whatever that meant, so Fiero thanked him and told them that they could have some of the fresh fruit that had survived the storm. That did the trick and the dockhand was ecstatic.
Wandering into the city proper, we found signs everywhere. Every single one was in a strange script, completely indecipherable until Fiero looked over them with his glowing eyes. They were all shops; some sold jewelry, wooden furniture, something called a
kitako which Fiero couldn't translate. Smells surrounded us, hinting at spiced food and roasted meats. Unfortunately, we were on a mission.
After a moment, Castor finished a prayer of finding, focused on the location of the Jug, and she began to walk directly towards the top of the hill. Considering that the Jug of Getranus conferred incredible wealth on its owner, you didn't need to be a diviner to figure out where it was. So we decided to ask the locals to find a way into the golden building.
We eventually found a bar of sorts. Going inside, it was relatively quiet, and everyone was sitting on the floor and quietly sipping some kind of sweet-smelling local liquor. Fiero and I sat down next to an older gentleman, and Fiero asked him quietly if he knew how to get into the temple at the top of the hill.
The gentleman smiled. "
The Temple of the Golden Arm only lets in those who give as much as they receive." Then he proceeded to drink, ignoring the rest of our questions until I threw a coin on the table and asked the server to get him another one.
After a moment or two, he answered our pleading and said, "You will need to give the guards something so valuable that they will consider you worthy enough to be let inside. Hopefully you have a favour-giver that can grant you that. I cannot help you further."
So we began to search for a favour-giver, whatever that means. I will write again when we have found a way inside the temple.
2 Vatanquil
We finally got into the temple, although it took us a long while. Looking back, I slightly wished we hadn't.
Firstly, these
Sha-din (as they call themselves) are obsessed with favours! They hate money (which is what a “cold-favour” is), and doing good by someone is high praised. For people who decorate their houses with gold, I found this very strange, but then I thought about it a little more, and it made sense. If gold can be easily acquired, does it really matter? It is simply another object of little worth to these people, so they use it as often as they trade well-made clothing or fresh vegetables.
It made it rather simple to find a favour-giver, thankfully. An old man who was apparently well-respected needed some help with collecting a variety of fish, and as a reward he let us accompany him to the temple. The problem was, we didn't know what half of the types of fish were, so we had to do a myriad of smaller tasks to get people to give us the right fish.
Eventually, we were successful, and the kind old man led us up the hill towards the temple. The four of us walked inside; Fiero, Castor, myself and the old man. We were flanked by many guards wearing shining plate armour studded with gems. These, we were told, are
The Goldarms, the guards of the temple. What we called Getranus was called Zhenu here, and this appeared to be one of his temples.
We were very carefully escorted into the central atrium. And there, standing on the central dais, in full view of the midday sun, was the Jug of Getranus. Every jewel and band of gold on the container's surface shined in the daylight, dazzling us and causing us to cover our eyes for a moment. Castor fell to her knees and prayed.
The old man went up to the Jug and turned it onto its side. As we watched in shock, shining rocks and precious gems began to pour from the Jug and form a small pile. He then righted the Jug, scooped up the pile and began to walk out, leaving us in the atrium.
I grabbed his arm just before he left and handed him a small collection of smooth stones that I had collected along the beach in case of needing a favour. "Why not take more gems?" I asked, and the kindly man smiled. I'll never forget what he said next, or rather what Fiero told me he had said afterwards:
"For that would be greedy, small one. These will go to my fellow jewellers, and the jewellers will give their handiwork to others who will give other things to other people. I do not know what strange customs are the norm in your lands, but here it is an obligation to give, not to receive. Why keep things to myself, who cannot use all of them, when other people need them as well?"
After that, he left the temple. I never saw him again.
Castor, who had been praying the entire time, turned to me, her eyes full of tears. "Cousin..." she began and sniffled. "I know why we're here." She pointed to the Jug. "We were never supposed to take it. We were here to guard it, to spread its wealth like that man will." She sniffled. "Getranus is a god of trade, not a god of wealth. He wouldn't want us to steal anything."
I shook my head. "Well, I cannot stay here. I can't help but feel drawn elsewhere." I looked out the open doors of the temple, which overlooked the forest of stick-like trees that lead towards some far-away peaks. "I belong out there."
"Then I shall guard it for you." She sat down and closed her eyes, praying again. Even Fiero trying to grab her hands wouldn't budge her from her meditative state.
I walked out of the temple, wincing at the biting sea air that was causing my eyes to water.
I never went back to that temple. Instead, me and a blubbering Fiero returned to our repaired ship, paid out much of the money we had left from Niganta, and set sail for home.
This is a really cool article! I'm a big fan of treasure hunting, and "city of gold" style locations. Gives me a bit of "Road to Eldorado" vibes, which is a good thing! Onto some things I noticed... For the authors of the document, I see that it's both Castor and Drek, however reading the actual document, I dont see any signed names after either of the entries. I think it'd help to know who wrote which entry -- or did they both collaborate with both entries? It's a little unclear. Another quick thing about the document, I think it'd help to have the date's of each entry in the article be headers! Something to make them stand out just a little bit more. I love the introduction of "cold favours" at the beginning of the document, and the explanation of them later on. I was originally going to ask you to create a tooltip for them, but then I kept reading and figured it out. Speaking of tooltips, I think a few linked articles with tool tips would go a long way! A lot of the words you have in bold might serve you better as a linked article, I think. I'd like to see more tidbits of information about the characters. I'd probably keep the tooltip info about the Jug of Getranus more mysterious though, I like the reveal of it's powers at the end of the document. One little thing, this paragraph here:
I think it could use a little bit of reworking. The jump from "We'll need Fiero for this"... to "I then had Fiero brought to us, and..." is a bit jarring. Maybe Castor wrote some thoughts down about it, or said something, before having Fiero brought to them? There's really not too much to nitpick about your article though! I really enjoyed my read through of it. You painted a super interesting setting with this article! I'd enjoy reading more for sure.Thanks Stormbril! It's a little late for edits for the DoD challenge but I'll put them in afterwards. About half of these suggestions are things that I had to do to make the word count, unfortunately... So Castor wrote a couple of her thoughts earlier in the journal, usually descriptions of her visions but her contributions weren't large scale. It was her cousin's journal after all. Yeah, and I'll fix the rest of that. I'm still new to the whole writing game, so this is exciting enough!
Apologies for not getting to leaving a comment earlier! It truly is a great article regardless though haha. And yeah, word counts are pretty hard to deal with. You did remarkably well for being new to the while writing game!