Marble

Marble is an adventure that begins on Clarus but takes the characters to a town called Warwick on Vagor. The potential payment for success is 20 kgp.

Warwick is an island-nation of forty thousand square kilometers in Vagor's southern hemisphere, two hundred kilometers south of a large continent. Vagor is a free world. It has no moon, but its night sky is illuminated brightly by three nearby stars, two visible from the southern, most populated, hemisphere, and one from the northern hemisphere. Each star is as bright as Clarus's full moon. Gravity is 10 ms⁻², the year is 0.6 of a Clarus year, and the days are 28 hours. Seasons, aside from being short, are not severe because the tilt of the planet's axis is only a few degrees. Maeon wind strength is 0.5 Yardley. Vagor means "wander" in Latin.

According to clause ten of the Free World Declaration, there are no plots on Vagor. The gods may travel freely, but they may not declare themselves as gods, nor even are they permitted to claim to have special contact with the gods. They can intervene in the affairs of Vagor's citizens, but they must do so if they were sapiens. The same applies to demigods, who take animal forms. Vagor is supposed to approximate the original Terra in that the gods must go amongst its people incognito. Human spies and visiting gods help enforce this rule upon all gods and demigods who visit the world. Because of the restrictions upon imports to Vagor, pantheons and spirit agencies cannot serve the world's inhabitants.

Warwick's climate is temperate, with only slight seasonal variations. Snow lies on the ground for no more than a few days in winter, and it is uncomfortably hot for only a few days in summer. The south-eastern portion of the country is home to forty thousand people. The rest of the island is hardly populated, a refuge for renegades, trappers, and mystics.

There are places in Vagor, and Warwick is one of them, where people grow up and die without ever seeing any direct evidence for the existence of gods. Nevertheless, the Warwickans are a deeply religious people. One thousand years ago, a man calling himself Jesus Christ came to the island and preached the Gospel. He claimed to be the son of God, and said that his flesh was mortal but his spirit was eternal. He spoke of heaven and hell, repentance and sin.

Christ, a mere mortal despite his belief to the contrary, was crucified by Garibaldi the Great, King of Warwick. He took three days to die on the cross. Legend has it that he was placed in a cave sealed by a great bolder, but that the bolder was moved by the force of god, and Jesus rose up to heaven.

Christ's religion, now called Christianity, amounted to a rebellion against the authority of the King of Warwick, who ruled his subjects as slaves, sacrificed human lives to his pagan gods, and encouraged sexual promiscuity. King Garibaldi suppressed christianity, but his grandson failed to do so. He himself converted to the new religion and banned pagan rites. Those were good times for the people of Warwick. The christian leaders were sincere, and the king was in fear of them. Later, the monarchy was deposed, and the church took over. Now the church is inefficient, arrogant, and riddled by corruption and decadence. Among the church's leaders, a pious man is a rarity.

Students of Terran history might recognize Warwick's Christianity as a duplicate of the successful Terran religion of the same name. Jesus of Warwick was not a god, and knew nothing of Terra. It was his comrade, Judas, who was the god. Judas, whose real name is Raphael, is a member of a club gods who have made it their hoppy to go about Vagor starting Terran religions. They publish the results of their efforts in Olympian journals, and gods are invited to go and admire what they have achieved. Raphael, as Judas, did not claim any divine powers, because that would be against the rules of contuct on Vagor. Instead, he encouraged Jesus and others to believe that Jesus had divine powers.

Warwickan Christianity won acclaim for Raphael. He returns every quarter-century or so to see how things are going. These past few centuries, the religion has become static. Raphael expected it to be tested by invasion from the continent, or internal divisions, but is was not. The other members of his club encouraged him to go and start something. It's been a while since he has produced any good work. His objective is to demonstrate that, even if the established clergy in Warwick is overthrown by a rebellion, the rebels will keep to Christianity with only minor modifications in its outward trappings. This was what happened in Terran Europe in the sixteenth century, so he has high hopes that he can do something similar here.

He came as a representative of Rongovia, a country that did not exist, saying it too was Christian, amid a sea of pagans. He came to see for himself the word of god being acted upon in a foreign land. He ingratiated himself with the bishops of the time, and even stirred up theological debate. Rongovia, of course, had not had the benefit of Jesus Christ, only refugees from Garibaldi's persecution. His bible was different from the Warwickan bible. He told them about the marvelous cathedrals they had back in Rongovia. It was not long before the bishops were vying to match these marvelous buildings. By the time Raphael left, the bishops were committed to the cause.

The cathedral has been in construction for a hundred years. It is three-quarters done. It is made out of sandstone quarried twenty kilometers from Chester in a range of low sandstone hills. Two thousand people from the city and surrounds work upon the building, each putting in a three days a week while trying to make a living at the same time. The country does not have the resources to make this building without torturing its population with hunger and exhaustion. But the clergymen are convinced, for their various reasons, that the cathedral must be built. Arch-bishop Beech, a pious man, believed it should be built for the glory of God. His advisor Yew believes, privately, that it should be built to awe the people. The people are getting hungry. They are ready to rebel. Raphael is back. He has found his rebel champion, Rowan, and is getting things moving. This time Raphael is disguised as a devout hermit who has come from the wilds of the north to see the cathedral. He is staying in Rowan's father's house, having solicited their charity.

Clarus is connected to Warwick through a synchronized pair of conjunctions that link Vagor with Clarus via a stretch of desert in Feras. The conjunctions open every fifteen hundred Claran days for five weeks. The stretch of desert in Feras takes three days by camel to cross. The half in Clarus is two days into the borderlands by horse, and so is not easy to get to. You can either do it by stealth, by air, or with a hundred soldiers.

The conjunctions are both watched on both sides. Even the Vagor conjunction is watched by the Vagor watchers. But their operation is modest. They send one watcher and an assistant, who arrive by boat and hike up to the place. They watch from a distance. The conjunction is in the north-western part of Warwick. Nobody goes up there except trappers. But the leaders of Warwick know of it, and keep it secret, partly because of the dangerous ideas spread by the travellers, and partly because of the monopoly they thereby obtained upon imported goods.

The opening of these two conjunctions punctuates the background to this adventure, so we will talk in terms of "cycles", where the beginning of each cycle is the opening of the conjunctions. A cycle is soon to begin, and the adventurers will be asked to go to Warwick.

Four cycles ago, Beech was visited by a traveler from Clarus, a salesman. He brought samples of things he might import for the church. Among them was a piece of marble.

Beech was much taken with marble, a stone found only on two or three worlds in the entire celesti sector. Clarus is one such world. Marble is metamorphic limestone. Limestone is made from layers of calcium deposited at the bottom of oceans in the form of plankton skeletons and sea-shells. Only worlds that had biological life tens of millions of years ago will have limestone, and only worlds which have had limestone for hundreds of millions of years will have marble. Clarus once had its own biological life, but it died out over one hundred million years ago. You can find strange fossils in the rocks there, but all the descendants of those creatures were dead long before the former-celesti arrived upon the world and made it habitable for Terran species. (Also available on Clarus are oil, coal, and amber. )

Beech determined to buy marble to pave the entire church, and for a large number of columns. He did not, however, trust the travelling salesman to take payment in advance and return with the marble. And the traveler did not trust the bishop to pay if he showed up with the marble either. In the end, the traveler moved on, and the arch-bishop sent Ash, one of his trusted assistants, to Clarus with 10 kgp in cash, and authority to commit a further 40 kgp of the church's money. Beech wanted twenty cubic meters of red marble and twenty of white marble, to be delivered in blocks of one meter by half by half. The traveler had told them marble would cost around 500 gp per cubic meter on Clarus, plus another 1 kgp per cubic meter to transport from Clarus to Vagor through the conjunctions and across the Ferran desert.

Ash went to Clarus, escorted by twenty guards. They lost one to heat in the desert on Feras, and two to skirmishes in the borderlands on Clarus. He found a marble quarry and dealt directly with the owner, Harper, who said he could provide the red marble within a couple of weeks, but he would have to obtain the white marble from one of his peers two hundred kilometers away. Ash trusted and liked this man. The man trusted Ash, but not the institution behind him. He signed a contract with the church of Warwick whereby Ash would pay 10 kgp cash in advance for forty cubic meters of marble, half red and half white, and another 40 kgp payment due on delivery of the marble to Chester in the next cycle of the conjunctions. Ash had to hurry, because the conjunctions were due to close in a few days, so he concluded the deal in haste, and rode away, leaving the 10 kgp with Harper. His party was attacked in the borderlands again, and this time he himself was blinded in one eye, and five more men were killed.

The majority of the clergymen in Chester were against this expenditure on marble. When Ash came home, he was well received by the arch-bishop, but the news of his arrangement with the quarry-owner was met with dismay by the rest. They had hoped he would come back with the stone, but he did not. Now there was 10 kgp of Warwickan cash gone to a distant planet, with only a paper contract to say that anything would be delivered in the next cycle. Beech's credibility was doubted.

Over the next four years, Beech began to go senile. His appointment as arch-bishop is for life, but it is possible for the church to vote him out. To protect himself, he accepted the guidance of a powerful faction in the church lead by Yew. Since that time, Yew has been the effective leader of Warwick. His faction are unpopular among the majority of the church, who view him as corrupt, which he is, and lascivious, which he is too. He passed a law allowing bishops to take confession from private citizens in the confines of their own house, which he uses regularly to indulge himself. Warwick bishops can marry, but it is a sin to have sex out of wedlock.

Four years later, however, the marble did arrive, exactly as promised: twenty cubic meters each of the finest red and the finest white marble. It was brought by Cardil Faymar, who came with fifty mercenary cavalry and forty wagons each drawn by four horses. They fought their way to the conjunction on Clarus, struggled across the desert, and cut a road through the forest on Vagor to Warwick. The arrangement between Cardil and Harper was that Cardil would get the first 10 kgp of the 40 kgp that was due, and Harper would get the remaining 30 kgp.

When Cardil arrived, Beech told her the church had no money to pay her. Yew had so advised him. She told him she would take the stone back to Feras and sell it there if they did not pay her at least 10 kgp. After much apparent agonizing, the church produced 10 kgp in silver bullion. In fact, they could have paid 20 kgp, but Yew saw no reason to pay more than they had to. Cardil went away with her money. She got back home with the loss of only four of her men.

Harper was disappointed that he did not get to see any more profit from the deal, but he was satisfied with the initial 10 kgp. Nevertheless, he sent three adventurers to Warwick on the next cycle, armed with papers to prove that they were there to collect the remaining 30 kgp on his behalf. One of the adventurers carried the papers upon his person at all times. Yew paid Shemano to seduce the man, which she did with the help of a strong aphrodisiac. The adventurer had the presence of mind to put the papers in a locked box, but in the morning, she picked it open and threw the papers out the window to an accomplice. Then she said goodbye. The adventurer, who had a wife back on Clarus, claimed the papers were stolen in the night by someone who crept through the window. Without the papers, the three of them had to go home. The adventurer who was seduced has subsequently died in action.

Yew has those papers, and he does not know about photography, so he thinks that Harper has no further recourse. He has forgotten about the matter. Now, as the next cycle begins, he is planning to have Beech killed, and install himself as arch-bishop with the help of the standing army. The commander of the army is his ally, Oak. The army contains five hundred infantry and one hundred cavalry.

Harper gave up on the debt. He sells it to Coramundel. Coramundel now has high-quality photographic copies, and an original signed by Ash that Yew is unaware of. He bought the debt for 2 kgp. He seeks adventurers formidable enough to go and collect the remaining 30 kgp by force. He'll give them the last 20 kgp, and keep the first 10 kgp for himself. He can be persuaded, however, to part with the debt for as little as 3 kgp.

When the party arrives in Chester, Rowan is giving rousing speeches to secret gatherings of townspeople, urging them to act together to reduce the pace of the work on the cathedral. Yew has heard of him, and intends to have him captured and burned to death as a heretic. He is waiting to set up a good excuse to do so. Raphael knows this, but it is part of his plan. When the adventurers show up, Raphael determines to find out what type of people they are to see if he can use them to support a rebellion. Rowan's death might, if timed correctly, prove the catalyst.

Diablo is the Queen of Thieves in Chester. She controls the underworld. It includes about thirty professional burglars, a hundred pick-pockets, and one hundred beggars. She also holds tentative sway over twenty ghouls who haunt the sewers and graveyards (ghouls are people who suffer from a mental illness called cannibalistic schizophrenia) and two vampires (vampires suffer from methuselaic anemia). The vampires get their human blood from the beggars, who will part with a pint of blood for a gold piece.

Diablo lives in the Wookie Caves, a huge system of natural caverns beneath the limestone hills to the north of the city. These caves are accessible by several secret entrances, but the main entrance is guarded is guarded by the Monster of Wookie Caves. It is an big old water-hydra that lives in the pool of the first cave. The hydra is a little stiff and a little slow, but it makes up for it in cunning. It is too big to get out of the cave mouth, so it never bothers anyone. Nobody from the city has seen fit to risk his life killing it for many years. More formidable than the hydra is Diablo and her lieutenants.

Diablo is a tenth level adventurer with thief level thirty and dexterity eighteen. She ran away from her abusive father at the age of eleven, and joined the thieves.

Through her spies, the beggars, she knows about Rowan, and she has given thought to Raphael. She does not trust his story. She has spies among the clergy, too, and she senses that Yew is about to make a move on Beech. If there is going to be a rebellion, she wants to get in with the winning side. If she can sway the matter herself, her thinking now is that she will sway it in favor of Yew. He is a nasty man, and very vulnerable to blackmail. Diablo lives in luxury in the caves. One of the vampires is a sorcerer. He has made luminous stones and hot stones for her. She takes her pick of the men who work for her. She goes out in the city several times a week. She steals, she kills, and she intimidates. She enjoys her life. She also sings. When she wants to warn people of her approach, perhaps to get them scared, she sings.

One of the first things Raphael did when he arrived in Warwick this cycle was to go to Wookie caves. He knows the words that charm the hydra. He was tickling its chin when Diablo came to see him. He gave her a space bridge and a ruby worth 100 gp. He promised her two more rubies to have him watched day and night. If he is killed, she is to bring his head back to Wookie caves, and report through the space bridge.

In the Warwickan church, the hierarchy of priests is as follows, in ascending order: pastor, vicar, deacon, bishop, cardinal, arch-bishop. Pastors, vicars, and bishops are associated with hamlets, villages, and towns respectively. Deacons and cardinals are part of the church administration. Yew, for example, is a cardinal. Beech is the bishop of Chester, which is the home of the church, and therefore he is the arch-bishop.

In Chester, there is a tea-house near the square in which the cathedral is being built. It is run by Quinella, Oak's thoughtful and kind-hearted sister. They love one another, but she thinks him too hard, and he thinks her too soft. Recently, Oak has taken to going in for a cup of tea after he inspects the guards at the cathedral, and they have been talking. Raphael comes in occasionaly, too. Quinella likes him. She thinks he is a truely pious man. Raphael says he has no money, so he gets free tea and scones there. Quinella urges him to come at the time when Oak comes, because she hopes that Raphael's conversation may enlighten her brother. After all, the only reason he is so harsh these days is because he spends too much time with the cardinal.

Quinella's tea house is opposite the best hotel in the city. It has fifteen spacious rooms, and is where guests of the church stay when they are in town. It is in this hotel that Cherry seduced and robbed the adventurer. The cardinal will no doubt think if trying the same trick again. He knows how to get in touch with Diablo, too. He may hire her services. He is not ashamed to use the army to help in his subtrafuges. He does not want to pay the remaining 30 kgp. He needs the money to fincance his overthrow of Beech.