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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sanglorian" data-source="post: 6243359" data-attributes="member: 83822">Blessed are the MeekAlberon, the story goes, desired the witchcraft of the Pacharia. As a man, it was to him - as it is to all of his gender - denied.So Alberon passed out of the sight of men and returned as the Lady of Pain. He dressed as a sturdy fishwife and went unto the Pacharia to learn their ways.Alberon was found out, and the Pacharia strung him up from a hawthorn plant. The Green Lady would or could not cut him down, but Alberon’s first consort did - for a hideous price that has never been disclosed.Still, Alberon has the womanly art of witchcraft, and he sometimes puts it to use, appearing as a beggar-woman and dispensing cures, love potions, talismans and hexes to those who show ‘her’ kindness.In fact, the itinerant is one of eleven recognised forms in which Alberon appears. The others are: the newly-wed, the squire, the goliard, the handmaiden, the Doge (leading to some confusion, hijinx and paternity disputes), the elf-catcher, the mother, the father, the widow and the Lord of Pain.The similarity of these forms to the twelve gods of the Undying Cycle has not gone unnoticed, but the conclusions vary - is Alberon coopting the cycle, or paying homage to it, or somehow influenced by it outside of his control?Connections<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The goliards of the Sacred Foot are heterodox adherents of Alberon unloved by the Temple Indivisible.</li> </ul>Hooks<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">How could Alberon study with the Pacharia if he cannot leave the city?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Who are the Pacharia?</li> </ul>The Ocean atop the World (02.24)The bones of aboleth and other ancient things have been found in the rocks of these mountains, turned mysteriously to stone. Surely these peaks are a dead seabed, lifted from its place of rest by some unfathomable force.Anyone who scales these cliffs will find a seeming impossibility: an ocean, stretching for tens of miles southward, atop a plateau.The strange force that lifted the ocean left its inhabitants unaffected, and they thrive here though they are seen nowhere else in the world. Long-necked terrible lizards snap at flying reptiles the size of horses, and armoured fish gather in great schools as protection against long-nosed hunters.Here too, it is said, survive the aboleth, though no man alive claims to have seen them.Hooks<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Is there an aboleth civilisation here?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">How large is the Ocean?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Does its salt have any unusual properties?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What else from bygone days still lives in the Ocean?</li> </ul>Connections<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Least Ocean is another relic from this time (12.29), though it is much diminished.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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