Apple Lane

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_...>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 23:33:07 +1200


Since people are perturbed by Apple Lane's oddness, I'll present a exploration/explanation of sorts.

Looking at the village, there is:

a Sheriff,
an Ulerian Temple,
two retired (!) Humakti,
an inn with a tin roof,
a female shaman that has learned acupuncture from Kralorela, two horse-masters that teach horse-swimming and horse-leaping-from-high-places but

           *not* fighting from horseback,
a sage that doesn't know anything but works as a shopkeeper, a werewolf merchant with a duck manservant, a family of third-eye blue smiths, and
a trollkin stickpicker

Any one of these things would be noteworthy in any other Sartarite village, in Apple Lane they're *normal*. Clearly Apple Lane is an oddball magnet. How did this come about? The EWF might be to blame. During the resettlement of Dragon Pass, the clans are afflicted by several "adventurers" that are looking
for an "inn" - it is my suspicion that they seek Apple Lane, being psychically attracted there.

Some of those characters can perpetuate similar-minded folk in Apple Lane (i.e. the Sheriff can always appoint somebody else and likewise for the Ulerian Temple).

So any time one of the above characters disappears or dies out, they are replaced
by other strange figures that just happen to turn up. Perhaps the Brass Mule Merchant, Bundalini and his all skeleton band (BA p30), Slon Openhandist Exiles (Elder Secrets p116) and so forth. I'll stick with humans as inhumans gets to be too strange for my tastes (although something of the sort must have happened during the inhuman occupation).

Under the Red Moon

I haven't seen this adventure, but I suggest that in keeping with the oddity of the
place, the traditional story of harsh brutal lunars (as per BA p38-39) be shunned
in favour of a more subtle tyranny. Since the Lunar that inhabits the nearby manor is also an oddball (why else would he come to Apple Land), he must be very weird indeed.

--Peter Metcalfe

Powered by hypermail