(Three printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.)
ASIDE FROM BUOPOTHS, NO ONE knows exactly what a fatberry-cake tastes like. But measuring by how many the quaint lumbering beasts eat, the greasy maroon lumps (smelling faintly of lavender) must be a delightful treat.
Prosatio Silban pondered this mystery as he fed his own buopoth, Onward, a sixth cake of the day and wiped his hands on his faded green apron. It’s a good thing fatberries are ubiquitous, he thought, or I’d be out a useful dray-beast – and a beloved traveling companion.
(Six printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.)
THE BROKEN TIRE SOFTENED AND then hardened again under Prosatio Silban’s kneading fingers, but he soon realized that his repairs were little stronger than the god which powered them.
O Tersten, Dispenser of Temporary Redemptions, many thanks for Your assistance, the beefy cook prayed, trying not to wish for a different supplicatee. May a Cold Wall rubber-wright be happy to improve my repair for a pot of something delicious.
He was midway up the Long Path: ten miles of straight pitted road slashed like an old dueling scar up the face of a mile-high sandstone cliff. Mountains pierced the clouds to the northeast and south. On the western horizon, the green hills of the Uulian Commonwell undulated toward him; below him the Hidden River flowed its marshy way to the Rimless Sea. Between the two, the green faded into a tumbled black – wounds of a war which had finished when Prosatio Silban was too young to understand it. Continue reading “War Prints (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”
(If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.)
TO THOSE WITH LITERALIST SENSIBILITIES, the phrase “ridiculously beautiful” may suggest mere hyperbole and labored contrivance. But take dawn by the western bank of an iridescent river – black sands washed by rippling indigo sparked with silver and rose – with a golden mist muting the eerie calls of magah-birds and other early risers, and add the clean smell of a cooking fire, and words will fail utterly.
Prosatio Silban was, at least for the moment, content. His previous client had paid him well enough to obviate immediate further employment, and the beefy cook had taken the unusual opportunity (and the lesser-traveled of two roads) to bumble along with no plan other than to see if one would occur to him. So far, one hadn’t. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Leisurely Eggs”
“WHEN IT COMES TO DINING, the quality of the food isn’t the only concern,” Prosatio Silban explained, sliding diced potato into an oil-slick skillet and spreading the cubed tuber evenly with a satisfying hiss. “I have cooked gourmet dinners for wealthy patrons whose pleasure derived more from novelty than savor, and prepared simple pots of rude porridge for poorer folk who savored and drew life from every tiny bite. What’s interesting is the customer’s approach – are they merely Eating, or are they Dining? Fortunes have been lost by those who didn’t know the difference. It’s an old, old game.”
“THOSE MARKS ON YOUR CUTTING board look like words in an ancient language,” observed Prosatio Silban’s customer.
“They are, actually,” the cook explained. “The story it tells has been written by me almost every day for all my professional life, not in Uulian but in the older and more universal language of meat and green and root and knife. If you listen closely, you can hear a swallow echoing from every cut; often enjoyable but always nourishing.”
You’ve read the preface. Now here’s the introduction.
ALTHOUGH NOW A FORMER SACREANT, Prosatio Silban retained a sensitivity to the more spiritual aspects of his daily routine – but since his was the life of a mercenary cook in a buopoth-drawn galleywagon, the word “routine” was not always applicable. Continue reading “Introduction: Prosatio Silban and the Golden Moment”
A BUOPOTH IS A STRANGE beast: some say it is half-composed of dreams, others prefer not to speculate. But of the little that is known, one thing is certain: no matter what shape the beast takes, its eyes are the most soulful of any creature in all the Exilic Lands.
One of these eyes was fixed on Prosatio Silban as the cook approached with a bag of fatberry cakes. “Buopoths can lumber all day on a fatberry cake and a kind word” ran the proverb, and today had certainly proved it: a brisk sixteen-hour galleywagon pull along the Reaching Road through the light-forested countryside north of cosmopolitan Soharis. Prosatio Silban dug into the bag and surveyed his environs; a small clearing under a circle of maiden-oaks. A fine evening, and a good place to camp. He patted the beast, fed it, told it what a good buopoth it was, and made plans for his own dinner. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Starving Survivor”
Prosatio Silban in his galleywagon / Illo (c) 2008 Alana Dill, http://youbecomeart.com PROSATIO SILBAN WAS NOT KNOWN for nothing as “The Cook For Any Price.” He had long ago foresworn the Sacreanthood and serving people’s souls, for serving their bellies and letting the souls look after themselves. Yet every now and again, he wondered if The Flickering Gods were still playing tricks on him.
He was cleaning up his galleywagon late one night at the edge of one of cosmopolitan Soharis’ more workaday fish markets, making ready to fold down the ‘wagon’s canopy-awning, when the Siddis appeared.
Now, to understand this story, you must know that Soharis, a city perched where the Rimless Sea meets the Uulian Commonwell, is the sort of place where one may expect to meet almost anyone at almost any time. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Visitor From The Sands”
Prosatio Silban in his galleywagon / Illo (c) 2008 Alana Dill, http://youbecomeart.com IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’S DIABLO VALLEY c. 1978, Dungeons & Dragons was barely known outside the fantasy-and-science-fiction community. I first learned of it around that time via David Hargrave‘s Arduin: a created world not unlike J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, or Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar.
The most addicting D&D element for me has always been “worldbuilding” – establishing an ecology of people, monsters and treasure within a self-consistent storytelling framework. It’s an excellent outlet for structured creativity, and one day, while at my day-job as an offset printer, I grabbed a pad, scrawled a coastline and bay, added some mountains and a river basin, and began describing those who lived there.
Some years later I had compiled several notebooks and folders full of maps and diagrams, charts and lists, races and religions, legends and monsters, mostly written in two-to-60 minute slices during and between offset jobs. It was a lot of fun. But it was also pretty lonely; at that point, I didn’t play D&D anymore, and I felt a bit … unrequited. And, to be honest, somewhat silly.The Exilic Lands and environs
So in 2005, I decided to tell stories to answer the question, “What would it be like to actually make a living in one of these invented worlds?” After all, somebody has to clean up all those slain dragons (and, probably, buy groceries and pay rent). Thus was born Prosatio Silban, self-defrocked holyman and mercenary cook.
Worldbuilding and its fruits have brought me great joy (and occasional comfort) during the past several decades. I hope you have found some joy in it too.
“Well, I was on the freeway, and my car stalled right in front of a hurtling semi. Fortunately, the orchestra changed tunes at exactly that moment and distracted everyone.”
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE Emerald Incessance, that great sprawling grassland east of epicurean Pormaris, Prosatio Silban was searching for the Exilic Lands’ tastiest meal.
The Incessance was hundreds of square miles of hummock, tussock, occasional trees and overtowering reeds, only inhabited by roving beasts, societal castoffs and furtive oal-hunters — not a likely group among whom to find something described with bliss as every man’s favorite dish, all in one skillet-fried bundle.
“Like my mother’s potato-and-pea fritters, only more so,” sighed one of three wizened indigines of the Cook For Any Price’s hasty acquaintance.
