Figure: Six-Link Circuit from Isewalus on Clarus, to Hashawami Temple on Olympia, and Back to Isewalus on Clarus.
The planet Draxius has gravity 0.90 times that of Clarus, day 1.02 Claran days, and year 1.67 Claran years. It's tilt is 18° and it has no moon. It's seasons are deep and its nights are lit only by stars. It is an Open World managed by the Athena Corporation. No public summoning is allowed. Draxius's strong maeon wind attracts many conjunctions.
From the Diary of Tanvi Ray, Draxius Day 2338: Dharmesh Khatun, Hemendra Ali, Prisha Sah, Bhavin Patel, Naitee Biswas, and I, Tanvi Ray, passed through the Draxius conjunction on 27th November, 2479. This conjunction is called CSDS3 in the Kambiz's Almanac of Conjunctions, 2475 Edition. We arrived at Lat +38.8 Long 65.7 on Draxius day 2337 as reckoned by my edition. It is mid-autumn. Our destination is a Draxius-Igneus conjunction, DSIS4, at Lat 39.1 Long 53.2, a distance of 933 km. Conjunction DSIS4 opens on Draxius day 2414 and closes on day 2420, but we must reach DSIS4 by day 2418 because the next conjunction we want to take, ISKC1 from Igneus to Kryanic, is a day's journey across Igneus and closes on Draxius day 2419.
Draxius Day 2386: Arrive Peyton, on the western edge of the Red Mountains, population five thousand. We believe we are 100 km east of DSIS4. We have walked, sailed, and ridden in a stage coach to arrive here. We survived three combats.
Draxius Day 2388: My five comrades are working for Sally and George Grensham. They are building a fence for a horse paddock. Looking from the main street in Payton, across the foothils of the Red Mountains, I see flat-topped pillars, called mesas, that rise thirty to sixty meters above the grassy plane. The countryside is dry. The bedrock is sandstone, as it is in the Red Mountains. The Grenshams are sheep farmers. They own one hundred hectares. The plane is covered with such farms. I am working for Roderick Goodheart, a tailor. He is old, with no children to carry on his trade. I am staying in the back room of his shop.
Draxius Day 2399: Last night, a giant bird descended out of the sky and stole a sheep from the sheep pen on the Grensham farm. There is one mesa on the Grensham farm, twenty meters tall and one hundred meters across. Naitee climbed it but found no giant bird. Three soldiers Arcturus, Mandrake, and Silas, all young men go to the farm. A month ago, the town posted a one-hundred guinea reward for the capture of this bird. The three soldiers go searching for the bird, walking down a river canyon to the west. One of them is now dead. The other two report that my comrades followed them into the river canyon and attacked them, killing the one called Silus. My comrades carried the body back to the Grensham farm. The body is now in the town. My comrades left the Grensham farm, going west. I believe they are not coming back. I am leaving the town tonight, riding on an pony with the Peyton sheriff and four deputies. They are hunting my comrades.
Draxius Day 2400: I am alone. The search party has returned to Peyton. My comrades have flown west on the giant bird. Last night I rode with the sheriff's posse. We went down the river canyon. We camped. We returned today. At the base of a tall mesa the sheriff found the footprints of my comrades: sandaled prints going up the south slope of the canyon. We found the place where they had camped the night before, and a trail leading to the sandstone cliff of the mesa. I stood at the bottom and shouted. My comrades answered from the top. I climbed up. When I reached the top, my comrades told me their story.
The day before, they followed the three soldiers into the canyon. When the three men turned around, my comrades hid. Later, they continued on down the canyon. They found the tracks of two giant birds, one twice the size of the other, beside the river. They find a giant feather. At this point in time they testify that they were attacked at a range of thirty meters by the three soldiers firing arrows from bows. My comrades charged. They say they wanted to close the distance so they would could not be killed by arrows. There was nowhere to hide in the canyon. The young men were armed with swords and protected by armor. Dharmesh tried to avoid combat by saying, "Stop!". I deduce that Naitee said something that infuriated the young men and the young men attacked with their swords. Naitee struck the one named Silus on the head. Silus collapsed. The fight stopped.
Hemendra, who is a healer of considerable skill and kindess, even though he is also tall and strong and fierce, determined that Silus was dead. Arcturus was pacing up and down and angry. Mandrake was sitting beside Silus's body and crying. My comrades retired twenty meters, trying to decide what to do. Eventually, they all return to the farm, my comrades helping to carry Silas's body. George took the body to Peyton in hand-cart, accompanied by Mandrake and Arcturus. Sally told my comrades that the justice of the peace in Peyton is her own mother Greta Grensham, but she suspects this incident would lead to a confinement and trial before eventual release. She recommended they flee. She gave them five days provisions as payment for their work.
My comrades fled from the law. They walked to the place where they found the giant footprints. They camped above the canyon, beside a mesa. They heard our search party pass down the canyon in the night. In the morning, they climbed the tall mesa. There, they found an adult hippogriff, which is a giant bird of mass roughly three hundred kilograms, and its offspring of unknown gender, of mass roughly half the mass. Naitee says the big one is the mother. She does not know the gender of the little one. Before I arrived, they found a torn harness made of leather, along with saddle bags. The saddle bags contained books and clothes.
After I hear their story, I gave them a message from the sheriff. They have nowhere to run to and they should surrender or else they will be arrested for resisting arrest. They laughed at that. I am not sure if they were laughing at the sheriff or if they were laughing at the way I say my ars.
On this mesa is a shed in some trees made out of a sparkling gray material. Dharmesh, who is very clever and has read many books, says is made of spirit matter, a magical substance. There are a dozen small goats and their kids wandering around, but not the climbing kind of goats. These are farm goats. There are several rabbit warrens with dozens of rabbits. Bhavin killed a rabbit with a stone and cooked it over a fire. I repaired the harness. All this time, the sheriff's posse is waiting below, but then Prisha sees them starting to try to climb the mesa. When I had finished my repair, Naitee approches the mother griff with the harness. The griff snatched the harness away. Bhavin kills a goat and Naitee feeds some of it to the griff. Among the books, Dharmesh finds a photograph of a man mounted on the same griff, as is obvious from the colors of the feathers. The man's skin is black, but we do not think he is one of us. Naitee puts the harness on the griff. The griff's beak is big enough to bite Naitee into two pieces. Naitee is very small and pretty. I would not like to see her bitten. But she mounts the bird and the bird and just like that she takes off. The bird runs off the mesa and disappears. I screamed because I thought she was going to fall to her death, but soon after I see her rising into the sky on the giant bird.
My comrades found a way to escape the law. Naitee took each of the others to another mesa several kilometers away, one after the other, until only I remained. I did not want to ride the bird, and I had given my word to the sheriff that I would return to them. I climbed down to where the sheriff and his men were almost at the top, with their ropes and spikes and hammers. I explained what had happened. The sheriff and his deputies laughed. They were glad that the monster had been taken care of, and how they did not even have to give out the reward. "All's well that ends well," the sheriff said. I believe that my comrades are safe from persuit, so long as they do not return to Peyton. Now I am sitting in my comrade's camp of last night. It is getting cold, but I have a fire.
Draxius Day 2405: I have not yet found my comrades. I walked down the river canyon to a town on a lake they call Mellisani. The tailor in the town did not want help. A boat took me to the other side of the lake to the town Marvellos. I am working for the tailor, sleeping in his back room. His wife is a good cook. The tailor's shop is busy with visitors who gossip.
Draxius Day 2400: I am recording what my comrades tell me of their adventures without me. On they flew on the big griff, Naitee going back and forth to carry them forward, the little griff following. This was New Year's Eve on Draxius. The big griff flew off on its own at the end of the day and came back with a sheep.
Draxius Day 2401: In order to avoid making the griff hungry, so that it would not steal another sheep, my comrades walked. They following the path of the river to the west, but not in the canyon. An hour before sunset they came to a cliff over Lake Mellisani. To the south, on the coast, with a tall mesa overhanging it, they saw Rodakino. The name of this town means "peach" in Greek. The town is famous for peaches it grows in glass houses. There are two walls about the town, one within the other. The glass houses are at the center, and they were shining in the setting sun. My comrades were cold and without blankets. They recalled the words of The Book.
Let the acolyte go to the new city, Let her enter in, rather than pass by, For how else can she find ways to serve? How else can she make the world glad?
They descended to the town, where they were welcomed by the mayor and chief botanist, a man called Venitos Arianopolis. The town was suffering from a conflict, and my comrades were invited to arbitrate. Sixteen of the town's children, aged thirteen to nineteen, were living on top of the mesa overhanging the town. These youths climbed up with ropes, and the adults were unable to reach them. The youths lower a basket each day and either the adults put food and peaches in the basket or the youths drop rocks on the glass houses. The youths demands eighty peaches a day.
The town produces two hundred and fifty peaches a day. Half of these are given as tithe to the Godess Athena. The other half are the town's livelyhood. They sell the peaches for one hundred dollars each. So each day they are giving the youths eight thousand dollars of peaches, and are left with only four thousand five hundred dollars to support the town. The adults of the town include the parents of the youths, and they wanted no harm to come to their children. This was the conflict that my comrades were asked to resolve.
Draxius Day 2402 Naitee and Prisha fly up to the top of the mesa on the big griff. They talk to the leader of the youths, a young man called Alexis Polydrachma, who is the son of Rodakino's head shepherd. Alexis tells them they are, "Spitting in the wind." He asks them to leave, and they do. The sheep of Rodakino eat a particular type of grass that the town cultivates in the fields outside its walls. The sheep produce wool, lamb, and droppings. The dropping fertilise the peach trees, which grow in pots in the glass houses.
Draxius Day 2403: They talk to many people, but mostly they remember this day as a day when they were amazed by how delicious the food was in the hotel.
Draxius Day 2404: Bavin and Hemendra fall sick. Naitee, Dharmesh, and Prisha go down into the sewers beneath Rodakino and do battle with a monster with tentacles that lives in a pool beneath the city. The pass by the monster and retrieve a chest of gold for the mayor. The monster is called a Gulosis. The mayor pays them sixty guineas for this work: fifty for retrieving the chest and a bonus of ten for not killing the monster. He promises to give a good report of my comrades to the agents of Athena.
Draxius Day 2406: Prisha has fallen sick. Before dawn, Naitee flies Dharmesh, Bavin, and Hemmendra to the top of the mesa, as well as the chief shepherd. They wait for dawn, then approach the youths. The youths are awake and gather together. My comrades deliver an ultimatum to the youths: they must come down on the griff or be tied up and taken down by force. Alexis laughs. My comrades attack. The youths put up a good fight, but in the end they are overcome by the prowess and staffs of the Hashawami. Alexis is subdued. Once he is taken away, most of the others were willing to ride down. One young women fought to the end. She and Alexis were locked up in the town jail. Everyone seemed content with the outcome, with the exception of the two in jail. The mayor paid Naitee, Dharmesh, Bavin, and Hemmendra a carton of twenty peaches each as payment for the successful arbitration.
Draxius Day 2406: Prisha has recovered from her sickness, but wishes to remain in Rodakino for a few days longer. My comrades believe that Prisha so enjoys the food that she will never leave. I hope they are wrong, because I will miss Prisha. Naitee flies across Lake Mellisani to Marvellos. Dharmesh, Bavin, and Hemmendra help a man sail his boat from Rodakino to Marvellos. They find me in the tailor's shop and tell me their story. They are staying in a house down by the docks. The owner of the house is Sarah. She is the sister of the man they helped sail across the lake. They paid her twenty peaches for room and board for themselves, and barn and food for the griffs at her nephew's farm.
Draxius Day 2408: We have been busy in the tailor's shop for the past week, making costumes and drapes for a rich man called Pernassus Artichokhos as well as the all the guests who are coming to the party he is throwing tonight in the villa he has rented for the winter. He came into the store today and saw my comrades and invited them all to the party. So they all went up the hill to his villa for the party. They walked, but there was also a wagon to take people up the hill. During the party, this wagon came back down into the town and out to the docks where it picked up a cargo of humans and transported them through the town and up the road into the mountains, then returned in time to take the guests back down the hill from the villa after the party. Dharmesh, Bavin, Naitee, and Hemmendra ride the wagon down again and in the light of the lanterns they find some hair and some skin and a drop of blood. Sarah says she heard people wailing in the cart as it went by her house.
Draxius Day 2409: Naitee flew up into the mountains to see what became of the people in the cart. At the highest point of the road, she found a stone house with a slate roof and smoke rising from a chimney. Beside the house was an open grave and the dismembered corps of a red-headed woman. She saw two men hiding and she landed her griff. Five people came out from behind rocks and trees. They attacked her by charging and leaping. She is sure they were trying to bite her. Two of them were women. She escaped on her griff and returned to us. We ran up the road, which is uphill all the way. My comrades went slowly so I could keep up with them. A cart coming down the road warned us of five bandits who persued him and his wife.
After two hours running we reached the top. We saw movement behind rocks that we believed were people. A man opened the door of the house. "Come quickly or you will be attacked!" Dharmesh did not want to go in at first, but the rest of us did. Mr. Ellis Snell and his wife Ingrid gave us pea and ham soup, which was delicious. "We are of the Order of the Necroni," Ingrid told me. "We come from Weiland on Clarus. There we suffered persecution because of the way we can coexist with the diseases of the undead. We are descendents of Galahad Mortus, the founder of our order, and from him we receive our immunity to these diseases." There was a big fire blazing. The house was one big room. Sitting in front of the fire on stools and chairs were fourteen people who did not move much at all and spoke not at all. But their hair was combed and some of them were eating soup from bowls they held to their lips. "They have zombiism," Ingrid said, "When cared for by us, they make calm and hardworking farm-hands. In the lands where they come from, they would be put to death."
According to Mr. and Mrs. Snell, they ordered twenty zombies for four hundred thousand Olympian dollars, and we deduced that Mr. Artichocus's men delivered the twenty last night. But five of them were not zombies. They were ghouls. The ghouls attacked and killed one of the zombies. Mrs. Snell, knowing a ghoul when he smells one, did not allow the ghouls into the house. Somehow, the dead zombie ended up in a shallow grave, only to be dug up the next day by the ghouls, just before Naitee arrived.
Ghouls are suffering from a disease that spreads from saliva to blood. The disease makes them want to bite people and then eat them. The only way to cure the disease is to pay the gods a lot of money for a course of medicine. And that would of course require that the ghoul be captured and restrained. "They will either run away and hunt somewhere else, or they will wait for us to come out. My wife and I are immune to cannabalistic schitzophrenia, but you are not, and nor are our zombies. Somebody is going to have to kill those ghouls. The only question is how many people they will kill before then, and how many more ghouls will be born of them."
Five Hashawami all agreed that it was our duty to go out and hunt down these ghouls and kill them. And that is what we did, with our staffs. One escaped us and ran down into the next valley. The mountain was steep. Hemendra and Naitee sprinted down, leaping from one boulder to the next like mountain goats. Bhavin and Dharmesh followed them. I came down the path, which went back and forth across the slope. They caught up with the ghoul at the bottom of the slope, before he reached the hamlet of the Necroni, where we could see zombies working the fields. Instead of turning and fighting like the others, he lay on the ground, curled up, panting and sobbing. We stood over him.
A tall woman approached us, dressed like the Snells: black long-coat, black top-hat. She gave her name as Glenda Olaf. She knelt by the ghoul and made a keening sound. The ghoul stopped sobbing. She sniffed him. He tried to grab her hand, but she slapped his hand away. "He is a ghoul," she said. "What are you going to do with him, now that you have caught him?"
We answered all her questions. After that Glenda agreed to take custody of the ghoul. Hemmendra held the ghoul from behind and made him walk to a stone building where Glenda locked him in a cell. The ghoul spoke on the way. "He comes from one of the tribes to the north," Glenda said, "They have many languages, and I speak none of them."
Hemmendra and I walked back up the mountain to tell the Snells that it was safe to come out. We stayed the night with them in the hall at the top of the road. Dharmesh, Bhavin, and Naitee stayed in Glenda's house. Glenda has a zombie servant called Gweneth.
Draxius Day 2410: In the morning, we fed the zombies, combed their hair for nits, cleaned the hall, packed up the perishable food, and set out with all fourteen zombies. It took all day to get down to the village. Tonight we are staying in the Snell's barn.
This village is calle Mica. The Necroni founded Mica eighty-one years ago. There is a mine in the cliff beside the lake. The mine produces sheets of mica. There are one hundred hectares of fertile land beside the lake cultivated for crops and grazing. Population: 163 zombies, 34 Necroni, 1 ghoul. Streams fall down the cliffs into the lake. The lake is long and thin and goes to the ocean. To get to Mica from Marvellos, take the road west up into the mountains, and when you get to the very top, go south. You should see the hall and find the path leading down into the valley to the south. You will see Mica from the top of this path. The lake is of a special kind: a fjord. It is one or two kilometers wide, but forty kilometers long. Mica is at the top end of the lack. The ocean is at the bottom end, to the south.
Draxius Day 2411: Say goodbye to the Necroni. Hemmendra, Bhavin, and I board a merchant ship. Dharmesh and Naitee start walking back to Marvellos to getch the two hippogriffs. Our plan is to meet on Skid Island in a few days time.
Draxius Day 2412: Dharmesh and Naitee fly up the mountain road from Marvellos, one person flying at a time, because the griff cannot lift both of them in the mountains. They glide down from the top to Mica, where they spend one night and buy a sheep for the griff mother and child to eat, for which they pay ten Rodakino peaches. Hemmendra, Bhavin, and I are sleeping on the ship's deck at night.
Draxius Day 2413: We rowed and sailed forty kilometers down the fjord from Mica, in a direction that Hemmendra judged to be south. When the fjord opens to the ocean, we turned west and then north. We sailed past Conjunction Island. We examined it through the captain's telescope. It is one kilometer across with cliffs all around. There is no natural harbor, only docks built onto the cliffs. A plateux hosts the two conjunctions: Draxius-Igneus Four (DSIS4) and Comitor-Draxius Two (CRDS2). Dharmesh consulted his almanac and provided the following schedule, in Draxius days:
2148 CRDS2 open 2157 CRDS2 closed 2184 DSIS4 open 2191 DSIS4 closed 2413 DSIS4 open 2414 ISKC1 open 2419 ISKC1 closed 2420 DSIS4 closed 2497 CRDS2 open 2506 CRDS2 closed
A mountain-top is home to a monastery. The monks of the monastery are responsible for keeping the peace during the conjunctions. Dharmesh and Naitee landed on Conjunction Island at about mid-day, soon after we had sailed by. Hundreds of merchants with their cargo and livestock are waiting on the plateaux. The DSIS4 celesti had arrived, and was due to open in a couple of hours.
The mother griff was able to carry Naitee and Dharmesh after coming down out of the mountains to the fjord. After leaving Conjunction Island, they must have overtaken us in our ship, although we did not see them. They arrived first in Skid City. They saw another griff landing in the higher part of the city, which lead them to the Broadnight Arms and its hippogriff stable. There they met Baradash Ragoon, who recognised our mother griff and called her "Flea". Mother griff and Baradash were happy to see eachother. Naitee gave Baradash all of his books and clothes, which we had been carrying, but did not agree to return the hippogriff of her child.
Our ship arrived in the late afternoon. Skid harbor is large and calm. The city is set in a forest that climbs a mountain. The captain of our boat recommended the Broadnight Arms, and that is how we found Naitee and Dharmesh. Before dinner, I went into the shop of Catherine Skiddle the clothier. She sells winter coats, and we may need such coats when we arrive in Kryanic. Her coats are well-made, but expensive. We are not yet decided if we should buy coats before we reach Kryanic, or trust that we shall be able to procure them upon arrival.
We are sharing one large room. We had dinner with Baradash. He works for the First Interplanetary Bank. He flies around Draxius on bank business. He has a new griff called "Wilks". He says he left Flea tied up outside a roadside inn in the mountains east of Peyton, one stormy night a year ago, when someone jumped on Flea and flew off with her. Baradash offers to pay us five hundred guineas for Flea and her child. He urges us to open an account with his bank so that we can keep our money safe and withdraw it from the bank on our journey to Olympia.
A man called Faust Grimm tried to take Naitee captive during dinner. He is a bounty hunter. Dharmesh and Naitee recall three soldiers on the road to Marvellos a few days ago telling them that there was a two hundred guinea bountee for the return of Naitee to Peyton, put out by Silas's mother. Silas is the man that Naitee struck and killed by accident. Faust is a big man. He was wearing studded leather armor. He surprised Naitee when she was coming out of the toilet. She escaped him, and the people in the dining hall were outraged that Faust would try to take a bounty in the Broadnight Arms. So he left, but he did not seem to be afraid or ashamed. We are keeping watch tonight.
Dharmesh consults the almanac of conjunctions, which gives the following Draxius dates and times for DSIS4 and ISKC1.
2413:13:37 DSIS4 open 2414:13:09 ISKC1 open 2419:10:48 ISKC1 closed 2420:10:19 DSIS4 closed
These same moments in Igneus date and time are:
1301:15:14 DSIS4 open 1302:04:48 ISKC1 open 1305:00:36 ISKC1 closed 1305:14:09 DSIS4 closed
We expect the conjunciton DSIS4 opened today at 13:37 Draxius time, 15:14 Igneus time. The ISKC1 conjunction opens tomorrow at 13:09 Draxius time, 04:48 Igneus time. The Igneus day is 1.77 Claran days, 1.73 Draxius days. We will arrive on Igneus through DSIS4 at lat 55.7°, long 14.6°. We leave through ISKC1, which is only three kilometers from DSIS4.
Draxius Day 2414: