Gnomish traveler and scribe Ziplip graces us with his contributions into realm-wide knowledge and understanding in these cutting, but popular, forays into the communities that make our world the organic and wonderful place we know and love.
NOT FOR SHEEP—Ziplip’s Guide to Shou Lung
“Or read it—I’m an author, not a cop”
Shou Lung, the city of crotches and doorknobs: a lot of people live in Shou Lung, and it ties with Sijil for the numerity of its doors. Shou Lung’s doors, however, are attached to buildings, hundreds of buildings, ranging from tar-paper huts to immense skyscrapers. Shou Lung actually consists of dozens of neighborhoods and burrows that are, themselves, the size of cities. In far growth they burst with vegetation like immense greenhouses and grass-thatched roofs. In far waste, the glass and metal has been abraded to limit reflections that might give away the citizens’ true identities.
Near the Silent City, factories produce bouquets of scent. Drones race to work, where they churn out the mass-produced goods vital to other parts of the realm. Full of paladins, guardsmen, mechanics, and lawful citizens. Visit Shou Lung if you have lung conditions and a criminal record to receive the very best in civilized hospitality. I spent a wonderful two weeks jailed for giving a vendor the wrong currency, during which I developed a lovely hacking cough and several patches of discolored skin. Despite the vociferous citizens, various nooks and alleys (and allies) permit a flourishing trade in immensely organized crime—they must be organized, to avoid the incorruptible lawmen.
Author’s Note: readers FOR WHOM THIS PAMPHLET WAS NOT MADE have informed me that I missed noting several attractions in Shou Lung, including the impressive architecture and towering administratum staffed entirely by modrons. Reading the book despite its name mean you are not nearly as lawful as you like to think, and jibes about the writer's height and attention span are unwarranted.
Author’s Note Note: Several other readers pointed out that “modron” is the plural of “modron.” I know.
NOT FOR RAGS OR RICHES—Ziplip's Guide to the Rule of Cold Iron
“How do you find time to read with all the balls, housework, and horribly painful transformations?”
Step foot onto the Rule of Cold Iron (RoCI), and the earth itself sings: be our guest. RoCI, a land of dark woods and deceptively cheery parties, a land of stories, a land where you can—and will—be anything. The RoCI has a human king, and the region is majority human, dragonfolk, and fey. Human (or “human”) towns consist of a few small villages clustered around castles too big for the towns, surrounded by woodlands. These include Dreamer’s Glass, Red Hood’s Reach, the Changelands, and the Minute Waltz.
RoCI butts up against the Boundless Lands, and its major exports include the cold iron that gives the region its name and wood; there are lumberjacks here whose families have cut from the same few trees for generations. Smiths are the most respected craftsmen in the land with some of the highest mortality rates in the region: cold iron wards off the fey who enforce the tellings. Wolves eat grandmothers, twins burn witches, and princes always seem to be in need of hidden princesses to fit a shoe. Kings need true love’s kiss to be human, and princesses need it to be awake. Here, myth and story are stronger than reality, and you can become a princess, a knight, or a thief-queen by being in the right place at the right time—or the wrong one. I myself have been a “fairy” godfather no less than five times.
NOT FOR CHILDREN—Ziplip’s Guide to the Hanging Gardens and Kinland Annex
“What, they didn’t put this on a high shelf?”
We emerge from the fanciful theatre and threats found in the forests of Cold Iron into the tamed Hanging Gardens; here, the immense terraced pyramids that give the place its name gush with greenery and drip with water. Some of the workers walk on the walls with the ease of spider climb spells or boots. Others have to make due with ladders, of which there are many. The Annex—recently colonized by kinfolk, and until then called Greyhawk, or Flanaess—consists of mundane fields.
Mostly kinfolk—that is, any member of a species that stands about three feet tall on average, such as halflings, kobolds, goblins, gnomes, and kenku—work the Hanging Gardens as what members of civilization might call a co-op; all own the Hanging Gardens, but some ownership is more equal than others. The Annex runs on criminals from other regions, indentured servants working off their time, and elves, humans, dwarves, and other races who resisted the colonization and now work their homeland as prisoners with jobs. The kinfolk claim that rumors of hapless travelers being press-ganged are just that, but the sight of a centaur pulling a plow will never leave me.
With their reasonably proportioned furniture, gorgeous gardens, and cheap food, every fan of greenery and good cooking should visit the Hanging Gardens or Kindland Annex so long as that fan has friends who can pay a ransom or demand his or her return.
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