Freeform Roleplaying · Legacy archive
Tlot-Tuk, the Land of Liars
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Tlot-Tuk, the Land of Liars
#1https://t.co/QW7Ihocl2n
My friends, my friends, let me tell you something. Once, when I was younger I did travel down the river Tlot-Tuk, all the way to where it's waters start, the fabled city of Tlot-Tuk itself. There, the streets are paved with riverstones that are clear as running water, and the women are so gorgeous that to stare at them it to invite blindness, or insanity. A man there told me the secret was that there was a temple deep in the hinterlands of of the Tit-Tluk, a place forbidden to all but those brave and foolish enough to go. I sought out the temple, but nay, I never found it. Instead I found terrible things, insects that speak with the voices of children, and things that look like old men, but they are fungus and hunger for the flesh of the living, and eagles who shed golden feathers.
That is where I got the golden tattoos on my arms you see, for I did seek the temple, and came back to Tlot-Tuk, mad from the forest and half starved. To you I might just be a drunk and beggar, but in Tlot-Tuk, I am a holyman -
Re: Tlot-Tuk, the Land of Liars
#2[img width=400 height=400]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8HDXiNW0AQWhty.jpg:large
In Lie-liu-Seav everything travels southeast and everything ends downstream. “To be born and live your whole life is Lie-liu-Seav is to always be bleeding,” said my grandmother. I understand her now. The Mian river drowned her husband, and each year another of her kids took a raft or skiff downstream to Reijear or even the capital Miangnuag. The rams who did stay in Lie-liu-Seav sent all they had down the Mian. For every hundred trees they fell ninety-nine went down the river. For every pound of salt you brought home to pack away pork of fish for the summer, you had to send two pounds down the river. Only the salmon ever came back to us on the river, and grandmother said there was fewer of them each year. Everything we had went southeast and downstream.
I was still beardless, hornless and ewe thin when something finally came out of the West. It was a tinker. Her skin was leathery, pockmarked and so warty that she looked to be made of dirt. Her eyes were close together and her pupils were small and circular, not the wide vertical bars like the pupils of my people. She had no fangs or tusks protruding from her mouth. She was the first human I’d ever seen. I’d learn shortly, that even though she had no horn curling about her read, she was a he.
The human man, named KeMoo, was a tinker from Ruakgair. He smiled and came over to the bank of the river where I sat with an empty net.
“Well met young kid,” he said in our words. I was young then and did not yet know how many tounges are in Klok-Kaer. Thus, I didn't think it strange that human could speak our words.
“Morning,” I said without looking up from my nets. I was too far from a child to be scared but too far from grown to act anyway but stupid and proud.
“Fishing are ya? Looks like you haven’t caught much.” He pushed off his heavy backpack and looked half the size for it.
“Still early,” I said.
“Have you ever cast net from the long pier at Giotvanuag? The pier runs kind of north so that when currents Vanuag and Swee Rivers flow north into the ocean they combine just a stone's throw from the end of the pier. That is good fishing.”
“River don’t flow north,” I said
“Aye the great Mian and Gau river basins do not, but in Raukvua all the rivers flow north,” said the human man as he turned around on his knees to untie his pack. “Why in the center of the village of Giotluekiok there is a bridge, runs east to west more abouts.” The man took a large tome bound in brown leather out of his pack. “Aye, the bridge of Giotleukiok, the river Luekiok runs right under the bridge before it flows out to sea, good fishing there too.”
“These places, Raukvua, Giotluekiok, Giotvanuag, I’ve never heard of them. Are they in Kaerngueguik?”
“Nay lad, not all, I am speaking about the great Kingdom of Raukvua. What you need boy is an atlas it just so happens that I have one here,” he tapped on the book with his fingers. “It is a book of maps, made by the Brothers of Truth in the monastery at Kiokrei.”
“Is that downstream?” I asked
“Nay lad,” he cracked the book open to a page full of squiggly lines and letters. “You see this line here,” he said holding his brown dirty finger just above the page. That is the Mian river and if you follow it to this dot right here, that is Lie-liu-Seav.”
“That is here?” I asked gesturing at the page with my thumb and forefinger held as if I was going to pluck my town from the book.
“Aye lad it is, and the palace at Miangnuag with your horned king they are downstream, but the rest of the world, well lad, it is North. To get to the pier at Giotvanuag or the blue sand beaches of Suir-liu-Joi, where the people have horns and tusks like here, you will need many maps. This book has many maps. I could let you keep it, say if you could find me a pound of salt.”
“Where would you take the salt,” I hissed thinking that this was just another person heading downstream.
He paused and seemed to be puzzled by the questions. I pushed again. “Where?”
“I will go back to Kiokrei I suppose,” sighed the old human.
“Then I will get your salt,”
And I did, and the human gave me the book of maps. Maps, which I studied by lantern light, moonlight and bits of dying daylight until I was a ram myself, and ready to give the world my labor. But when it was time for me to leave Lie-liu-Seav, I didn’t head downstream. I took my book of maps and we flowed north. -
Re: Tlot-Tuk, the Land of Liars
#3The maps rock! The names suck. -
Re: Tlot-Tuk, the Land of Liars
#4
The maps rock! The names suck.
Weren't you the one that gave us the Pra-Oohk crater, home of the man eating grapes? -
Re: Tlot-Tuk, the Land of Liars
#5Don't see how both cannot be true.
I agree with Muro on these. The name generation can be much better.
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Re: Tlot-Tuk, the Land of Liars
#6
Don't see how both cannot be true.
I can't you tell that it isn't never true.