Haughty Truth, Exile of Ingacháit
Haughty Truth sits under a tarpaulin gazing out at the city of Ingacháit, whose people have rejected her. She will not return unless she is assured she will be welcomed, and paid restitution for the wrong committed to her. Once she was an honoured guest in the halls of universities, government houses and even in the ledger hall of the great banks -- not all and not always, but enough to keep her in finery. Now she begs for food on the roadside, trading her skill as a wise woman, always with one hateful eye on the city that scorned her.
Ingacháit swirls in dishonesty, every merchant a crook, every beggar a thief, every watchman and bureaucrat on sale to the highest bidder. The lawful temple to Saint Gireg The Pleasant sells watered-down sacramental wine and has witless adepts offering mispronounced blessings to a god who has turned his back on them. In the sewers beneath the city, the chaotic temple to Gerig The Foul stands worshippers in a dark sanctuary, the "goats blood" they are sprinkled with looking much more like red paint in the light of day.
In a city this entrenched with corruption, the profits only flow uphill. Everyone with real power in Ingacháit is perfectly happy for Truth to stay away forever. The burgomeister, the temples, and the crime lords send their agents to stamp out any who would seek true knowledge, true compassion, true justice, as these are bad for business. Once they conspired to kill Truth for good, but decided the deed a waste of resources -- they can keep her away forever by parading in their majestic, gilded palanquins and extolling the rewards of a treacherous life: "If only you set aside your scruples as I have, pursued profit to the detriment of every other person, then you could live as I. Train your children in the path I walk lest they be left behind. The cunning eat the weak, this is the inevitable way of things." It is a lie, but of course it is.
Truth is not without friends in the city, though they are strained alliances. Justice, reduced to a petty mercenary, skulks the streets, bloodily ending the feuds of vain and useless men. She will fight alongside those who would see Truth restored, but only at her rate for she has learned to distrust the resolve of those who will not pay her. Curiosity, twisted to a morbid parody of her former purity, scampers across rooftops, sleeping in belfries and watchtowers, subsisting off raw pigeon. She is wild and destructive, slaying with the casualness of a boy pulling the legs off a spider, just to see what breaks in the city when a victim falls. She will agree to do anything to help her dear sister Truth, but she is dangerous in her capriciousness.
Heralds and bards march forth in great armies to sing the praises of Ingacháit, to draw in scores of fresh rubes to replace those who turn their backs on it. There is a hard end to this ruse: Eventually the city will rot, every traveller, merchant and pilgrim will know to avoid it. The great men will simply take their winnings and move on to the next great city, leaving the poor to scrabble in the rubble. Then when the wretched cry out to her, Truth will return, though it may take many lifetimes of misery to draw her sympathy.
...
Reading: Werebeasts of Hel by Asa Drake
Listening: Lego Pirates: 1989-1996 by Dreamcastle
Playing The World Ends With You (Nintendo DS)