Grelsh. It doesn't sound right, the luh and shh mushed together like that. But perhaps I should be concerned with more important things. I sit here in the Grass Pipe Inn on the waterfront in Grelsh. It is summer, but much cooler than home. I am hungry, but I am husbanding some silver yet, so the hyena is not quite at the door - although I can hear him barking. But it is important to record why I am here.
What is it, a month ago now? The circle - Mi'sid, Zayn, and 'Aziz, all of them agreeing for a change - charged me with an unusual task. They gave me scroll case and told me to take it to the chief cleric of the temple of Coros in Feck. They told me it was a mission of utmost importance, handed me a parchment with some directions, and pressed some gold into my hand, all the while wishing me luck and chanting prayers of goodwill.
Anything to be gone from the circle! The journey to Feck and back could eat up weeks - perhaps scores of days away, on my own (well, with C'hallah, of course). And there had been recent reports of zombie activity to the north, so I wasted no time gathering my travel belongings and hiking to the caravansary to join an eastbound train.
I secured passage for a reduced rate in exchange for some minimal guide duties, pointing out quicksand and fech-fech and like hazards. We travelled swiftly, and soon the great city of Feck lay before us.
I had seen Feck only once before, as a youth, and thought that my memories of its vastness had been exaggerated by a child's imagination, but it was, if anything, even bigger than I had thought. I was overwhelmed by more sounds and sights and smells than I encounter in a month in the jangwa.
I tried to complete my task, I really did. I took out the parchment, and read the directions, and tried to follow the signs, but the city is just so big, and there are so many streets, and it's just so crowded, and the man I stopped to ask for help got very angry that I didn't know what I was talking about and he started yelling and C'hallah got upset and the melon cart fell over and then everybody started talking all at once and some soldiers came up who did not look happy and I may be a poor druid from the jangwa but I know enough about Feck to realize it was time to leave. So I ran.
SO HERE IS WHERE I WANT TO STATE FOR THE RECORD THAT NONE OF THIS WAS MY FAULT. I TRIED.
Anyway, they chased me for a while, but I somehow managed to dodge them by sneaking with C'Hallah onto a docked ship that was being loaded. (A large crate of geese had broken open and all was chaos.) I stayed hidden for a very long time... so long, in fact, that when I ventured a peek from a porthole, we were at open sea! I had no choice but to remain hidden; I feared being returned to the authorities.
I was discovered a few days into the voyage by a low-ranking seaman, a half-orc laborer. For a few silver, he was willing to keep my secret and provide me with sustenance. I think he liked being in the catbird seat with a Sunner.
In any case, I managed to debark at G-rel-sh without further incident, and found lodgings at this inn. The landscape here is very strange - many colors, many varieties of plants and trees, strange birds and animals - C'hallah gets some very odd looks so I am sure he is a rare thing here - and lots of people. This city is not as large as great Feck, but it seems to have twice the energy.
There are mostly humans in this city, and the one Elf I have seen was one of the Wild Cousins, looking a bit the worse for wear as he was led away, drunk on who knows what, by some guards. But the innkeep here, one Stuckey, is a friendly sort and tolerates both me and C'hallah easily, as well as some other obvious foreigners, among his human guests.
There are a couple of half-orcs here, and I think one is a Sandey. They're each as ugly as a camel's ass. And there's some halfling or gnome or something who keeps looking at me from across the dining room... and I think I heard her muttering in Druidic.
I must pause.
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