This entry is written on a cold iron floor in 34 Jeriniad, at a caravanserai who's prices border on highway robbery. The tall room, painted an eggshell blue, stinks of some smoke akin to hashish, but with an unpleasant metallic odor that has driven all but me and those that are partaking in this drug, a group of four legged, snake-necked peoples. This room is mercifully quiet, relative to the other spaces within this freeport, but it still pulses with a brain-numbing drone. I have negotiated an open window, but that is a small comfort in this hot room. The breeze is hardly refreshing, and I look down on a charming slice of misery and crime. In the space of time since I have taken roost have seen eight people get beaten. Three of them managed to fight their attackers off, to the general acclaim of all, and in one case those in the same room as I have clustered around to cheer them on, a person with hair like flickering fire and bark like skin, with a sheathed blade they used as a cudgel, adeptly fending off an entire gang.
From questioning, this person appears to be an ambassador, but rarely, in my experience, do ambassadors stride out into the streets to fight criminals. Instead they mostly sit around at palaces drinking tea, which is why I have always wanted to be one. Perhaps ambassador means something else, something that the fish in my ear is not translating properly.
When the corsair vessel approached this free port, I was reminded of a cracked egg, the shell being a meteor and the running yolk and white a city. Thick-set spires and domes rise from fissures in the meteor, and at the very least there were perhaps three dozen ships at dock, swarming around the free-port like flies. One less charitable to pirates may describe all of 34 Jeriniad as a rotting cut of meat, spawning maggots and flies that hover around it and fill the air with a buzzing sound. Indeed, this description has some truth: when I set foot on the pier, I was immediately assaulted with all sorts of foul buzzing noise. Ragah had informed me that this is music, but I question the label. The stench is similarly unpleasant. It is a devilish mingling of acrid oil, something like the remnants of lightning after a storm, and the assorted smells of piss, refuse, and the other evil odors expected of where men congregate in great numbers.
The planets around these stars are affairs similar to that of Al-Mirrekeh, deserts of sand or ice, or simply barren rock. They have a harsh beauty of their own, but they are also non-conductive to farms. Therefore, 34 Jerniad has many glass towers, each floor being a plot of farmland that also freshens the air blown through them.
I have seen many things that are supposed to be lewd, but much like the supposed music, I question it's aspect. What could be lewd with lizardlike blood-flushed throat-frills? Then again, I would imagine that many more titillating aspects of our own prostitutes or whatever euphemism is in vogue to be equally confusing.
This is as good as any place to describe the freeport itself. Pick a city, whichever great seat of power your choice- Rum, or al-Qahirah, or the City of Peace itself, and find an alley in a destitute quarter of the city, one with tall walls that cover all but a thin slice of the sky. Now, remove the sky. Color it in with pitch blackness, and then cover that with blocky towers without art in their construction, and cover those in glowing paintings- the flag of the admiral of 34 Jeriniad, three spears slanted downwards over a comet.
One could be lost in here forever, give or take a few limbs. It is a fetid jungle, or a stinking labyrinth with a certain vitality to it. There are arcades suspended by mysterious floating rocks that have entire marketplaces built on them, hawkers no doubt pushing some kitschy junk that are snares for the unwise traveller and nobody else. Being singularly unwise, I traded one of my silver coins for a small statuette consisting of several floating cubes arranged in an abstract pattern. The trader seemed more interested in the make of the coin and it's inscriptions, rather than the value of the silver itself.
Look at the streets and you will find flamboyant gangs of pirates, bedecked in gaudy armor, in dress uniforms that would shame any dandy that you may pick out of an army. These fellows are recruiters for the varied pirate bands that serve the freeport. Here, the profession of piracy is treated as any other, and captains of renown have offices in which a merchant may acquire reassurances that they may pass 34 Jerniad's vicinity unmolested. In this way the pirates pay their crews and the dues to the admiral of 34 Jerniad.
I have been dreading describing the inhabitants of 34 Jeriniad. How can one man describe the ocean? He may shrug and give it in general terms, that it's waves are broad, that it's span is immeasurable, but that is merely a blind man crying that an elephant is a snake-like creature from the trunk alone.
Therefore, describing the tribes of 34 Jeriniad may go and wear my sandals on their head for the time being. I shall go and accost the others in the room for conversation. My hands are cramping and the smoke does me no favors. If I cannot beat them then I shall join them.
An hour has passed in more or less pleasant conversation. Those fellows, who name themselves Birrit, are travelling dilliantes, much like myself. They were quite astonished to lean that I came from a hirethro uncontacted planet. It seemed that this affair is not entirely unheard of, there being many worlds like mine where some fellow with a vessel alights and makes a fool of himself and the local scholars, perhaps taking as a companion to the skies.
In addition, my previous comparison of the smoke in the room to hashish was correct. To the Birrit, an afternoon spent partaking of this drug is similar to a familial meal. At least for them, this drug is of use, but to me, it merely brought a headache from sitting near the burner, which eventually led to me begging off the conversation.
In any case, I'm in no real condition to write anymore. That concludes this entry, for the moment. I shall go and get some air, so if one discovers sudden bloodstains on these documents, know that I was ambushed by some back alley thug.
