[IC] Into the Unknown

[MonsterMash]

Decimus Numerous

Decimus approaches cautiously trying to look friendly and calls out "Greetings to you. Is there any place we can water our horses nearby?"

[Julius Sleazer]

Alfius the Aeviternal, Fighter

"Hail, villagers!" Alfius calls out. "We are strangers who have found fortune to discover your settlement, for we have been on the trail for countless days with only each other for conversation. What name does this place carry, and who is sovereign over these lands?"

Aflius' inquiry inspires great philosophical debate among the locals. Finally, the tallest and lankiest of them silences the others, seemingly having ensured that his own point of view carries the day. He hitches up his trousers and addresses the newcomers.

"We call this place 'home', sir. Indeed, the willy-nilly assigning of names to each and every place of thing is a profligate waste of words. Surely there is only a finite supply of names in the world? When they have all been expended, what are we to do? Grunt and groan like beasts, or point and gesture like mutes?"

One of the other loons, now red-faced, interjects his own point of view suddenly and angrily. "The question itself is simple, and needs in no way a response which touches upon speculation of what will occur after mankind has reached the unhappy hour of peak verbiage. These men are obviously far-faring travellers, and see many places and converse with many folk. They merely wish to know what others might call this place, so that they have a point of reference for future conversations. Folk nearby call this Caius' Place, for the first man to establish a dwelling here was so named."

"Silence!" shouts the tallest lad to the interruptor. "You are out of order! What if one of these men is named Caius, and he had designs of founding a settlement nearby? Now he must wrestle with a weighty dilemma indeed, and will likely be forced to invent another name out of whole cloth, thus preventing that name from being appropriately utilized by future generations!"

[Julius Sleazer]

Cadmus the Confused

Cadmus makes sure his holy symbol is tucked away as they approach the local yokels. He keeps an eye on the second and third story windows.

Cadmus sees a few faces peering from the windows, many of which are little wider than arrow-slits. He has better luck looking at the wider windows on the higher floors. He finds a few women of various ages gazing out curiously, as well as a few greybeards and tow-headed youths. The prudent priest detects no sign of leveled crossbows or the like.

[Julius Sleazer]

Decimus Numerous

Decimus approaches cautiously trying to look friendly and calls out "Greetings to you. Is there any place we can water our horses nearby?"

The recently-chastised loon who interrupted the first now makes a gesture of extreme frustration.

"Be welcome to our water, sir! Come within the 'circling wattle-wall, and we shall draw forth cool water from the well and place it in a trough for your steeds! However, ask not over-many questions concerning the names of aught, lest my presumptuous cousin here vex us all with his sophistries and mock-philosophies concerning the potential speech patterns of unborn men!"

[Vektunaxa]

Alfius the Aeviternal, Fighter

"Fortunately, I am not named Caius, so it is unlikely that any settlement I found will have that name bestowed upon it. My name is Alfius. I will not force you to share your names, although I am not one prone to feeling restraint by the choices of others and would happily learn them. We have crossed many miles of wilderness; are we at last returning to realms populated by Men?"

[Wyzard]

"Silence!" shouts the tallest lad to the interruptor. "You are out of order! What if one of these men is named Caius, and he had designs of founding a settlement nearby? Now he must wrestle with a weighty dilemma indeed, and will likely be forced to invent another name out of whole cloth, thus preventing that name from being appropriately utilized by future generations!"

Tacitus the Multiloquent

"I suppose we'd simply name it New Caius, Or Caiusburg, or else abandon eponymous ambitions. One can always find some nearby geographical feature or an incident, no matter how trivial, after which to name a settlement. I heard of a village once where, when establishing it, they had seen nine eagles in a tree. So they named the place Nine Eagles."

"I applaud your forethought in considering the matter of conservation of language. However, some fairly basic arithmetic will show that the vast number of phonemes and in fact complete words available, along with the combination and permutation of multiple words, prefixes, suffixes, et cetera, along with the fact that geography and history can both tolerate a certain degree of duplication and that any given settlement will have a finite lifespan after which its name would again be freely eligible for use..." Tacitus pretends to do some math, by way of moving his hands as though he were operating an imaginary abacus and moving his lips as though talking his way through complex equations, "it is conclusively certain that the sun will be die and this sphere shall perish before we could possibly exhaust the stock of available names."

"On the other hand, the duplication of names can be a great inconvenience, particularly when warrants for arrest are issued. There should certainly be a central registry of names for human persons, with consistent spelling, and a requirement that each person's name be totally unique." Tacitus considers this for several seconds. "Although considering the difficulty of finding that number of pleasingly euphonious personal names, it might be easier to issue each person a unique numerical identifier, and then granting them a nickname for daily use."

[Julius Sleazer]

Caius' Place

The lanky loon looks abashed and crestfallen for a moment, but then begins to stonewall with an expression of renewed superciliousness. "I may be short on arithmetic, sir," he retorts, "but I am long on caution. How are we to say that future generations will have enough words to last until this purported heat death of the universe? Perhaps future agricultural advances will enable a more holistic approach to nutrition, and the men and women of the future will reach full physical maturity at earlier and earlier ages, thereby enabling the procreation of an alarming number of generations and thus accelerating linguistic drift to truly mind-boggling rates."

Several of the other lads nod sagely with pushed-out lips and furrowed brows. They scratch their chins and nod in weighing fashions. Some shrug in manners characterized by false modesty.

The interrupting youth, however, interjects once more. "I behold that these newcomers are what we hereabouts refer to as pert sorts and trig coves indeed. They should perhaps know that our homestead is currently all a-flummox, for a visiting lord was kidnapped from within sight of our walls and is presently being held for ransom by bandits. This casts us into dangerous territory indeed, for have we not thus failed to properly safeguard a man who claimed and was granted guest-right? Most of our fathers, as well as the village elders not too daft or arthritic for the journey, are at a nearby village consulting with the Washer of the Winds, a clinquant conjurer of cantrips if ever there was one."

"Perhaps these wandering horsemen might have something to say about the matter."

[MonsterMash]

Decimus Numerous

"Bold bandits breaking guest rights? That sounds like a matter in which we may be able to aid you having some skills acquired over our short careers. How far away is this village that the elders have gone to so that we may offer aid and assistance in this delicate affair?"

[Julius Sleazer]

Decimus Numerous

"Bold bandits breaking guest rights? That sounds like a matter in which we may be able to aid you having some skills acquired over our short careers. How far away is this village that the elders have gone to so that we may offer aid and assistance in this delicate affair?"

Assorted Loons at Caius' Place

"The village to which the elders have travelled is but two dozen miles north of here, sir," replies one loon who has heretofore remained silent. "In truth, 'tis a day's walk for an unladen man, but one with a good horse would not find the trek so long."

"Hold and attend!" interjects yet another local lad who now makes his first contribution to the conversation. "We are presenting a false dichotomy: that there is naught for these roving men save an opportunity to debate philosophy, or to immediately intervene in a local affair involving hostage-taking hack-and-slashers. This is surely not the case."

"While I myself am firmly convinced of the wisdom of nomenclature conservation, of course," he continues, "I also feel that we need not proselytize. These men may not be dyed-in-the-wool philosophers as we are. As long as they do not offend us, why must we bend them to our way of thinking? Surely they will soon be gone upon their own errands, and their personal beliefs and modes of conduct will have no more effect on us than the life habits of any other outlanders."

"Being such strangers, these men may merely wish to water their horses before passing on upon their own private errands. They may also have been attracted by the talk of the giant's skull. For all we know, they could have a distant blood relation in these parts and merely be seeking direction to the settlement in which their kinsman or -woman dwells."

[thirdkingdom]

Decimus Numerous

"Bold bandits breaking guest rights? That sounds like a matter in which we may be able to aid you having some skills acquired over our short careers. How far away is this village that the elders have gone to so that we may offer aid and assistance in this delicate affair?"

Assorted Loons at Caius' Place

"The village to which the elders have travelled is but two dozen miles north of here, sir," replies one loon who has heretofore remained silent. "In truth, 'tis a day's walk for an unladen man, but one with a good horse would not find the trek so long."

"Hold and attend!" interjects yet another local lad who now makes his first contribution to the conversation. "We are presenting a false dichotomy: that there is naught for these roving men save an opportunity to debate philosophy, or to immediately intervene in a local affair involving hostage-taking hack-and-slashers. This is surely not the case."

"While I myself am firmly convinced of the wisdom of nomenclature conservation, of course," he continues, "I also feel that we need not proselytize. These men may not be dyed-in-the-wool philosophers as we are. As long as they do not offend us, why must we bend them to our way of thinking? Surely they will soon be gone upon their own errands, and their personal beliefs and modes of conduct will have no more effect on us than the life habits of any other outlanders."

"Being such strangers, these men may merely wish to water their horses before passing on upon their own private errands. They may also have been attracted by the talk of the giant's skull. For all we know, they could have a distant blood relation in these parts and merely be seeking direction to the settlement in which their kinsman or -woman dwells."

Cadmus the Confused

"Giant's skull, huh? That does sound awfully interesting. And tell me, my friends: on our way here, not too far to the south, we espied the tallest tree that any of us has ever seen. It towered into the sky, reaching almost to the clouds. Have you any tales or knowledge of such a phenomenon?"

[Julius Sleazer]

Loons

Several of the loons nod readily and confess to having heard tales that dead men and treasure were to be found beneath said tree.

[thirdkingdom]

Loons

Several of the loons nod readily and confess to having heard tales that dead men and treasure were to be found beneath said tree.

Cadmus the Confused

"Interesting. Do you know of any who have ventured under the tree and returned with said treasure?"

[Vektunaxa]

Alfius the Aeviternal, Fighter

Alfius also inquires of the dead men beneath the tree, and how they became that way, and how it is known that they are there.

[Julius Sleazer]

Cadmus the Confused

"Interesting. Do you know of any who have ventured under the tree and returned with said treasure?"

A Loon

"No and never, sir. Around here, we fear haints."

[Julius Sleazer]

Alfius the Aeviternal, Fighter

Alfius also inquires of the dead men beneath the tree, and how they became that way, and how it is known that they are there.

A Loon

"Wisdom passed down from time out of mind says that men from the elder days are buried beneath that hill, lying in their eternal repose."

Another Loon

"As far as the manner of their death, no tale specifies whether they died in battle, in the hunt, a straw death, or some other cause."

[Julius Sleazer]

Loquacious Loon

The first loon, he who spoke so strongly against the profligate use and assignment of names, now makes yet another contribution to the conversation.

"Nowadays, when a man dies, he makes a will, and all of his valuable possessions thus pass in a hopefully orderly fashion to his heirs and assigns. Horses, cattle, weapons, houses, cloaks of fine wool: all such things are in short supply and must be parceled out to those who have pleased the dead man in life, or at least those who have sprung from his loins and caused him to feel obligated to leave something to them. However, in the older-than-olden days, matters stood in a different way."

"In those times, gold coins, magic swords, and eldritch objects were in such a state of over-supply that no man had any need to leave them to his descendants or companions, for they themselves were surely weighed down with wondrous objects. The whole earth groaned beneath the weight of treasure, and there was insufficient space to move about freely. Thus, the men of the elder days devised a solution: as they buried the man beneath the earth, so too would they bury his belongings with him. Those things which today are priceless and rare were in those days common beyond belief."

"A man today is buried with little more than a shroud and few prated prayers. All, however, have heard of the barrows, burial mounds, tumuli, kurgans, dolmens, mounds of immortality, and the like. Such places are stocked chock-full of wondrous treasures. It needs little investigation or critical thinking to adjudge that any such place will contain enviable items. It is, sirs, an acknowledged truth."

[Julius Sleazer]

Alfius the Aeviternal, Fighter

"Hail, villagers!" Alfius calls out. "...who is sovereign over these lands?"

Lurking Loon

A semi-concealed loon scoots out from behind a tall tussock of grass and moves over to speak with Alfius. The young man does not seem to be a lurker with any ill-intention, but rather a bandy-legged swain with a slight stutter and myopic body language. He addresses Alfius' unanswered question.

"There's been no king or queen holding sway over this area since well before Caius founded this place," he says. "Some of the people in the older settlements might perhaps remember who was lord over this place in the days of their grandsires' grandsires, but no tax collector or anything like that has been here since time out of mind."

"Like enough the rulers of nearby realms, such as Vocontia or the City-State Valeria, have enough trouble repelling encroaching entropy from their own borders and lack the men and time to establish a firm grip on this little land. I've even heard tell that there used to be kingdoms and such in these parts two hundred years ago that have vanished clean off the map. The world's moved on---that's what the old-timers say sometimes."

[Wyzard]

Caius' Place

The lanky loon looks abashed and crestfallen for a moment, but then begins to stonewall with an expression of renewed superciliousness. "I may be short on arithmetic, sir," he retorts, "but I am long on caution. How are we to say that future generations will have enough words to last until this purported heat death of the universe? Perhaps future agricultural advances will enable a more holistic approach to nutrition, and the men and women of the future will reach full physical maturity at earlier and earlier ages, thereby enabling the procreation of an alarming number of generations and thus accelerating linguistic drift to truly mind-boggling rates."

Several of the other lads nod sagely with pushed-out lips and furrowed brows. They scratch their chins and nod in weighing fashions. Some shrug in manners characterized by false modesty.

The interrupting youth, however, interjects once more. "I behold that these newcomers are what we hereabouts refer to as pert sorts and trig coves indeed. They should perhaps know that our homestead is currently all a-flummox, for a visiting lord was kidnapped from within sight of our walls and is presently being held for ransom by bandits. This casts us into dangerous territory indeed, for have we not thus failed to properly safeguard a man who claimed and was granted guest-right? Most of our fathers, as well as the village elders not too daft or arthritic for the journey, are at a nearby village consulting with the Washer of the Winds, a clinquant conjurer of cantrips if ever there was one."

"Perhaps these wandering horsemen might have something to say about the matter."

Tacitus


"Where are these bandits laired?"

[Julius Sleazer]

A Loon

"Exactly seventeen and one half miles northwest of here, sir. The path lies through grasslands and then light forest, primarily deciduous, mixed with rocky outcroppings and rolling hills. Their lair is no wise concealed or secret. They make their home in a ruinous castlet of grey stone which is much overgrown by vines."

[Wyzard]

Tacitus

"We should consider rescuing this man in return for a reward."