North Razer

North Razer is a town on the Razer river in the campaign Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel"), across the river from South Razel. The mage Castor was born there and left his family at five to go to the Archon; he returned after his errand in South Razel, ten years after his last visit at fifteen.¹²³⁴

The town

A great stone bridge crosses to the north bank of the river, with no guard upon it. Because the town lies close to the heart of the Empire, the road is partly paved with stone, and it runs past apple orchards and groves of trees planted and replanted for timber. North Razer is about two or two and a half times the size of South Razel, with some hundred and fifty to two hundred households, ninety to a hundred of them in the town itself and the rest on scattered farms and orchards. The houses are painted and well kept, with small gardens; nearness to White City has brought prosperity.⁵⁶⁷

The town has no wall or gate, only fences around the fields. The main merchant road does not pass through it but runs to a market beyond the eastern grove, so that it need not cross the river twice; there is a roadside inn there, and other inns in the town. Since Castor's last visit a new mill grinding with the river's water and a large new stone temple have been built.³⁷⁸

Because the town is so near White City, the land around the Razer river is governed not by a lord but by an imperial governor, who lives in North Razer in a house behind a great wooden fence. The guards bear the emblem of all governors: a crow holding a branch in its beak before the silhouette of an eagle with spread wings.⁸

The town grew up around an old, dry well that still stands in the square. Beside it is a plain stone statue of Emperor Vaden I, crowned, one foot on a black rock in which his sword is planted; its face differs from the descriptions in books, and the sculptor is thought never to have seen him.⁹¹⁰

Castor's family

Castor's father Felix is the town's only carpenter. His workshop stands at the edge of a grove, about ten minutes' walk from the town, with the family house built against it. He has four apprentices, one about eight and three about sixteen, and he makes the benches of the temple without charge. His wife Claudia, Castor's mother, suffers from a lingering cough. Their children are Castor, his brother Gaius, who attends the legionary school, and his sister Julia, twelve years old, betrothed some twenty days before Castor's visit to Lones, the young keeper of the Lona shop; the fathers settled the match over food and drink, and the wedding is planned for when she is sixteen. Felix has also raised Flavia since infancy as one of his own. Castor's medal from the Archon hangs in the house.^{4111213141516}

Because his sons do not want the trade, Felix thinks of selling the workshop after Julia's wedding and living quietly with his wife; the apprentices might buy it with their savings. He is proud of what his children do for the Empire. When he heard that Flavia had left, he took up an axe to go after her, but Castor calmed him; Felix also corrected the story that he had carried Claudia off, saying that her family gave her to him only after he threatened to.^17181920

Medicine and the northerners

A northern butcher lives in the town with his wife; they worship the Great Wolf. The butcher's wife caught the same cough as Claudia. The local priest of Alarath, Otto, is said to have refused her medicine and told her to go to her own shaman, and Claudia in turn refused to take her own medicine while her neighbour went without. Castor visited the butcher, who said the priest would not give them medicine even for money, and left his father money to order medicine for two, with more for the family's needs.^21222324

The Lona shop

Lona is a large, orderly shop near the square, named for the wife of old Lupos, who kept it until his death; it is now run by their son Lones. It has a large counter in front and a store behind, and sells farm goods and food as well as rare luxuries such as chocolate. Among its stock were a barrel of dwarven beer from the Köpüklü Sakal clan and four Infernal books, copies made in the library of White City by a Master Malson of a drow mage's studies, which Castor bought. Lones gave Castor a family discount, offered to sell a jewel for him for a tenth share, and on parting said that he belonged to the White Coin, a merchants' guild around White City.^252627282930

Mor Balık and the moon festival

The Mor Balık ("Purple Fish") is an old, well-known two-storey tavern near the square, kept by the stout Tikus, who remembered Castor from his last visit. It has no rooms for lodging, and the upper floor is given over to gambling. It is named for a scaled fish of the Razer river that shines purple in the sun and is caught at night; its sweet flesh goes into pies that people come to the town just to eat, and its bones are carved into small figures.³¹³²

At each full moon the town holds a small three-day festival for Lunos, the Prince of the Moon, with food given to the poor, and the tavern holds a dice tournament played with six dice. Its prize is a small flask of quicksilver, known as the "silver water" offered to Lunos; the villagers believe that worship of this local god, accepted by the church, blesses the fish caught by moonlight. Leonard won his first round and lost the second.³³³⁴³⁵

Tikus told the legend as the town knows it: Lunos, whose parents the tale does not name, was found wounded while still mortal, and Amarath saved and blessed him and gave him the power of the moon to guard the river. Castor knew more: Lunos was a half-elf, a fact little known, wounded in a hunting accident; Amarath, walking the earth, talked with him for three days and nights under the full moon and, moved by his compassion, made him an angel-like guardian of the town and river. The people worship him as a spirit rather than a god, and it is said that the town was founded at their meeting place. The priest Otto spoke of a long correspondence between two priests debating whether a river lies under Aquaron or Lunos.³⁶³⁷³⁸

The woodcutters' ghost

More than ten woodcutters work a camp in the nearby grove under Gerim, a big, long-bearded foreman in his twenties, with Marcus as his assistant. For two months the workers had told of a white, flying woman seen on the nights around the full moon, and they wanted to stop work for three days; the stoppage held up Felix's timber. One of them, Nel, described a dried, empty-eyed woman with pointed ears and long teeth, but Castor saw that he was only feigning fear. Taken aside, Nel admitted that there was no ghost: the workers, all but the foreman, had made up the tale so that they could spend the three festival days eating and drinking with everyone else. Nel begged Castor not to tell, fearing they would be dismissed; Castor kept the secret and in return asked for extra wood for his family.^394041424344