Bell Digest v940614p3

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Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 14 Jun 1994, part 3
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From: MARTINCRIM@delphi.com
Subject: Some info on Cam's Well
Message-ID: <01HDIA28Q8PE91Y5UY@delphi.com>
Date: 13 Jun 94 17:04:37 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4558

File: CAMSWELL.1                    Copyright 1994 Martin R. Crim
                                              All rights reserved

              CAM'S WELL SCENARIO PACK: BACKGROUND

Introduction
Cam's Well is an oasis in Prax, on the trade route from Heortland
to the new Lunar colonies on the Zola Fel.  It also lies on an
alternate trade route from Heortland to The Paps.  It is a
stronghold of the oasis people, a place where they have some
control over their own lives.  It also holds importance for the
Praxian Nomads, because it is the largest oasis in the Orani's
Mistake area.

Geography of Southwestern Prax
     Cam's Well sits on a vast flat plateau known as Orani's
Mistake.  The plateau sits about 100 to 125 meters above sea
level, rising higher in the west.  Only ten miles south of Cam's
Well, you come to a cliff that stretches in both directions as
far as the eye can see.  The cliff is forty meters high along
this stretch.  Below it, flat and relatively fertile plains
stretch for three to ten kilometers to the sea.  

     Cam's Well sits in a natural bowl about three kilometers
across.  If you climb the edge of the bowl, you see that it is a
ridge rising five meters above the center of the bowl, and ten
meters above the surrounding plain.  In Storm Season, harsh winds
blow harmlessly over the top of the bowl, leaving the air in the
bowl calm.  Dust from the storms settles down into the bowl,
coating people, animals, and the earth itself.

     The earth in the bowl is brown and fertile.  If you dig
down, you find clay and rock.  The elders know that rain water
collects in the bowl, filtering down to Cam.  Two muddy hollows
collect rains in Sea Season.  The hollows become ponds full of
life, but dry up in the middle of Fire Season.  

     If you leave Cam's bowl, you cross sand and flinty clay. 
Tough plants tear at your clothes, and grow thickest in silt
washed out of the many canyons and arroyos.  Bands of sand mark
ancient river courses or recent floods, depending on which expert
you listen to.  You can try to use tall rocks as landmarks.  Some
rocks stand tall enough to provide shade from the deadly sun. 
You pass rock outcroppings carved by the wind into weird shapes.

     You will see very few hills in Orani's Mistake, except at
the western edge.  That edge includes the foothills of the
southern Stormwalk Mountains.  Further west are the mountains
themselves, impassable to normal traffic.  The peak of Storm Walk
Mountain is visible from Cam's Well, and lies west and a little
north.  Another landmark is the peak of Wintertop, far to the
northwest, visible only when the rain has cleaned the air and the
wind has not stirred up the dust.


The People of Cam's Well
     The free natives are known as Cam's Folk.  They have lived
there since the Godtime, following their ancient ways.  Cam
protects them.

     Everyone farms, except for temple residents, the ten full-
time crafters, and Honey Man the beekeeper.  Also, there are
thirty or so slaves, who are part nomad.  Slaves cannot join any
cult, and they do the heaviest and dirtiest work.  

     All Cam's Folk keep animals.  Each household has a herd of
udads, a type of sheep.  They provide milk, wool, and meat. 
Cam's Folk eat udad only for important occasions.  They raise
guinea pigs as their principal source of meat.  They are the only
Oasis Folk to raise animals, though some native farmers do so.

     Every day of the year, the folk drive the udads out to
graze, and milk the ewes with lambs.  The farmers make cheese
regularly.  They shear the udads after the spring planting. 
Children do their share of the chores.

     The farmers plow, sow the grain, and harvest it.  The rest
of the year, they gather oilseeds and dates, herbs and roots.  In
the dry season, Cam's Folk irrigate the land with well water.  

     Skullbushes grow throughout the bowl in profusion,
pollinated by bats that roost in the ruins.  Skullbushes produce
oilseeds, husk fodder, a musky nectar for flavoring beer, a very
durable wood, and oil.  Date palms, grapes, many herbs, and other
edible plants occur naturally.  The residents cultivate many of
those plants, and also grow grain.

     For millennia, Cam's Folk grew the native Praxian grain as
their staple food.  The Folk received a gift of maize from the
Lunar Survey which followed the Battle of Moonbroth.  Now few
grow any of the old grain, and maize is the principal food crop.

     Every household also has some poisonous Friend Snakes for
pets.  These are arm-length pit vipers that eat rats, mice, and
any extra guinea piglets.  The snakes rarely attack people, and
anyway Snake Witch knows how to keep a snakebite from being
fatal.  

     When the rains come, frogs and fish appear in the two pools
of water outside town, as if by magic.  People say that Cam sends
them.  The farmers catch only a small number of fish, but each
Friend Snake eats a frog.  Then the water dries up, and the pools
disappear until the next year.

     Every day, farmers bring food to the temple.  Usually, it is
a brace of guinea pigs (already trussed), a skin of udad cheese,
and whatever herbs or roots they gathered that day.  The temple
residents supplement that with guinea pigs of their own, and food
grown in the garden.  The temple also stores the entire town's
harvest of grain, oilseeds, and dates, the staple foods.  

     The temple must provide food for the giant watersnakes.  The
older ones are intelligent, and are called Awakened.  They can
talk well, although a bit sibilantly.  Each awakened watersnake
eats a guinea pig or two a week, or a few Friend Snakes. 
Unawakened snakes, being smaller, eat less.  Now and again a
watersnake goes out of the temple and takes an udad. The Friend
Snakes that live in the temple, temple complex, and garden have
to find their own food, and try to avoid becoming food.

Myths and History of Cam's Well:
     This is what the elders know.  Cam herself knows far more,
but does not communicate with outsiders.  

     In the Golden Age, Cam was born to Escaturigine, Mother of
Wells.  Her father was Genert, which makes Cam an incarnation of
the Earth Maiden.  Cam took this corner of Prax as her favorite
place.  She wandered at will beneath the surface of the earth. 
She controlled the mighty underground rivers that flowed down to
the sea, returning the water of the up-running surface rivers.

     Then the bad gods slew the Earth and destroyed the World
Mountain.  When the rivers changed direction, Cam weakened.  She
came to the surface at her holy site, at the request of a tribe
of the lost.  She protected them against the howling winds.  When
Eiritha threw the land's protection to Storm Bull, Cam lost the
ability to move about underground.  Fending off an army of chaos
cost much of her weakened strength.  Waha dug his canal and
polluted the waters, weakening Cam further.  Cam used much of her
remaining god-strength to seal off the polluted underground
waters from her own aquifer.

     For the remainder of the Great Darkness, Cam's folk hid in
the obscurity of their refuge.  Several times, hostile armies
found them anyway.  Each time, Cam saved her folk, although a few
always died.  After the hostile armies left, her folk crept out
to rebuild.  Each time, they had less to work with, and ruins
remained.  

     At the Dawn, Cam greeted the reborn Sun and the newborn
Time, who added some stability to living.  Since then, she has
aided her people in maintaining their ways.  In return, her
people maintain the ancient worship.  

     Cam's Folk have prospered in the last century, and have sent
colonists to other oases.  That involved tricky negotiation with
the nomads, but proved profitable for all involved.  Now families
of Cam's Folk live at Agape, Biggle Stone, and Barbarian Town. 
With all the ruins standing around, it might seem more sensible
to rebuild.  However, the colonization policy comes from Cam
herself.

     Nomads treat Cam's Folk as slaves, as they treat all other
native farmers.  However, they treat Cam's Folk a bit better than
others because they fear the snakes and unspecified superstitions
about the goddess of the well.  There are only two paths through
the cultivated land around the settlement.  These paths are
usually free of snakes, and by custom the nomads may kill any
snakes they find there.  Elsewhere, the snakes abound, providing
an incentive for the nomads to stick to the trail.

Getting from one place to another in southwestern Prax: 
     The main caravan routes do not go through Cam's Well, but
one must understand where they do go in order to understand the
economic role of Cam's Well.  Caravan Alley remains the most
traveled route in Prax, taking travellers along a short route
from the relative safety of Sartar to The Block and The Paps.

     Caravans from Heortland set out from the Marcher Barons'
fortified town, Knight Fort.  Most pilgrims and traders bound for
The Block go along the edge of the Stormwalk Mountains, where
intermittent streams provide water.  From Barbarian Town, they
strike out for Sounder's River, crossing it at Waha's Ford.  Then
they follow the river east to the canal, and the canal almost to
the Devil's Marsh.  At a safe distance, they circle around toward
The Block.  Those continuing toward the Sacred Ground go by way
of Tourney Altar.  Caravans from The Paps to Heortland retrace
these steps.  Caravans travel in both directions in all seasons
except Fire.

     Caravans go through Cam's Well for one of two reasons. 
First, the caravans may wish to travel between The Paps and
Heortland but avoid the Block.  They would need a good reason to
do so, because the route through Cam's Well holds greater danger
than the Barbarian Town route.  One danger is the greater
distance between sources of fresh water.  Another is that a
miscalculation in direction may deposit the traveler at the edge
of chaos-infested marshes.  

     Second, a new caravan route has sprung up in the last few
years between Heortland and the Raus Domain on the River of
Cradles.  This caravan only travels during Dark Season, when the
plains are cool and the sea traffic grows cautious.  The caravan
makes one round trip each year, but other caravans may soon adopt
the route, if it continues to prove profitable.

     For either destination, Cam's Well allows caravans to rest
for several days.  When the weather and omens are good, they head
on.  The Paps caravan heads toward Biggle Stone, the Raus caravan
towards Agape, and the Heortland-bound towards Small Well.  From
Biggle Stone, the Paps caravan follows the edge of the Belly
Hills to the Sacred Ground, a relatively lush area where travel
is easy.  From Agape, the Raus caravan circles the Head Acres and
usually takes the Bilos Gap route to the Zola Fel River.  Once,
it went instead by way of Horn Gate and the Weis Cut.

[end of part 1]