Stories Sombre and Salacious
Thirty Fifth Day of Ikomi-hamba (Ikomi Descendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)
For all the bustle and clang of commerce and war preparation that passes each day by the three gates of the city and into the mouth of its harbor Orinilu could not sustain itself without the treasure that lies within the great grey granaries on the Street of Succor, or as they had come to be called half in quiet mockery and half in grim remembrance, the Fane of Famine.
According to Antonio, some fourteen years past there had been winter, long and black, snows that filled the streets and ice that froze the river solid a moonturn and more into the season of Ashinu, then the seed had rotted in the ground from some blight, leaving many of the common folk of the city to the mercy of the temple and its prudent and divinely mandated stores. For that year the gates of the temple had opened and the influence of the priesthood waned more with every month. It was said they had the power to name and to cast out all members of the Ruling Council save only the Lord High Admiral, and yet for all the sacrifices that the priests had attempted and all the long months of fasting and of prayer which had been asked of high and low alike, the harvest was not better on the second year and barely better on the third as the blight started to wear itself out.
Less grain had come into the city and new customs were born. Where before it had been that any man who would come to the door of the temple would be given food, albeit in exchange for having his name marked in the Book of Hearts to be recalled and perhaps cursed with greed if he took more than his share and tried to pass it on, now some were cast as wastrels and by their misfortune cursed by the god already and so were driven away...
Driven away with those, you think, spying a guard bearing a tall rounded shield and a heavy club tipped with a round granite plug that was not quite a hammer. The man certainly looked old enough to have been part of the Ragpicker's Riots, named for the man Rangum the Ragpicker who had finally lead the mob into trying to force open the gates. More than three hundred had died then, their end likely more merciful than what hunger would have dealt them as the great landowners were not interested in more mouths to feed.
Rumor went that the priests had been having great and decadent feasts that only grew in the telling, that they were using the one coin that was most precious at the time to gain full control of the city. According to Antonio, who knows cities better than you, that is the sort of rumor that hunger and plague often set in the streets, like spark to dry kindling. No doubt the priests had not been starving, but neither did they have the means to feast in luxury, and the notion that they could have taken the city was, in Antonio's words, 'the fruit of a fevered mind'.
Yet true or not, fair or foul, it is true that Ashinu, or more particularly his priests, are not well loved among the hovels of Farshore even now and Serik's skill with curses may not just be in the lifting of them. There is little more fearsome in a magician, no matter his stripes, than the power to lay curses.
He had been nothing but kind to you and seemingly fascinated with the otter-kin and their story, you remind yourself, not to judge a man more by hearsay than by what you had seen of him yourself.
Once into the warm corridors of the temple you are swiftly lead not into any hall of worship, but what seems to be a solar specifically for the head priest to meet with important visitors, all about draped in tapestries woven green and gold and lit with candles and incense. You are given food and fair you find the offering, more refined than the simple fish and roots you have been living on for most of the season, and then Serik names his price.
"Of all the treasures of your travels I wish for the stone egg that once burned with Elder flame yet now is dead to ashes fallen. I ask this not for myself nor for my own greatness, but that I should better prepare the city for the evil of which we have spoken. In exchange, all of those who were given the curse of brine and bitterness shall of it be cured."
Seeing your surprise and uncertainty Antonio speaks up: "Just like that, they will be cured? You know the priest of Olweje told us to kill a dragon, not hand him an egg."
"Tssk," Serik shakes his head. "Asking a warrior to break a curse. Give a man a warhammer and he will try to grind seeds to flour with it. But no, I will not be using the egg or anything of dragons for it, but the Way of Earth and Sea, so two will be joined as one and they will be freed." He pauses a moment and asks. "All those cursed are men yes?"
"They are, yes," you answer. "Is that needful for the magic?"
"Needful, no, but I must ask. The prayers are different whether the man or the woman is cursed."
"The man or woman...?" you begin, but Antonio cuts you off.
"I heard about this, only rumors but... they would have to lay with the priestesses as man with woman I mean? Ashinu is, after all, what did Zaia call him? A fertility god? Both of the harvest and of, well..."
The priest waits quietly for his answer. You check...
Antonio had not misheard those rumors.
What do you reply?
[] Make the deal (exchange dragon egg for the ritual to lift the curse from all your men)
[] Do not make the deal
OOC: If you are feeling mood whiplash, well so is poor Roland. Sometimes the strangeness of the world comes at him fast. 
