Gamori

Part 12

 Running a mere criminal empire isn't enough for the boss-of-bosses. The lady has vision. The strange and occult sells, and all too often buyers sell themselves, knowingly or not. All the items for sale in The Oracle's Cameo are perfectly legal. Any illicit merchandise isn't for sale in the building, because that would be highly illegal, but such merchandise may or may not be obtained through special orders. All receipts verify the legality of all purchases, especially those specially ordered.

Our expedition to a blank spot on a map supplied much of the initial stock, but more comes in from old and forgotten places all over the world. There are books and scrolls sold nowhere else, rare potions and elixirs, mummified cats, shrunken heads, juju totems and jars of preserved eyeballs, just for starters. Precious stones and jewelry, which have not been touched by sunlight in an age, enticingly sparkle from glass cases. Several of these cases contain fantastic and jaw-droppingly expensive relics: oneiric gems, which allow one to experience the dreams of Gishites who lived at the dawn of civilization. Also to be had are marvels from Zin: fully restored suits of armor, life-sized terra cotta soldiers, jade figurines and flutes carved from human bone. For the casual browser there is shelf after shelf of curios and bric-a-brac.

"The lovely and quite comely owner, Jezebel Qareen, is most amiable, going above and beyond what is normally considered customer service. Miss Qareen's elan, panache and exquisite fashion sense meld with her beatific, winning personality to make one feel like royalty when shopping at the Oracle's Cameo. Her knowledge of and passion for the strange, rare and obscure is simply staggering. In addition, she has selflessly helped the most vulnerable members of our community by giving generously to charitable institutions such as orphanages, hospitals, shelters, asylums, and even a cat sanctuary and a center for the blind! Praise the goddess Twaiana for sending us this saintly and wondrous woman." Such was printed in Portsgate's newspaper, the Weekly Zephyr.

An excerpt from another of the Zephyr's articles, entitled "The Curse of the Gishite Queen", states: "Troublingly, the great majority of those who entered the necropolis last year have expired from a variety of causes. These causes include falls, bumps to the head, food poisoning, drowning at sea, house fires, violent domestic disputes, carriage strikes, rapidly deteriorating health, several suicides, scorpion stings, snakebites, and one electric eel attack. Many do not feel that this string of deaths is coincidental, and attribute it instead to 'Vazazha's Curse'. The three leaders of the expedition, the local merchants Sindar Pesh and Medea Stargazer, as well as a foreign explorer who, understandably, wishes to remain anonymous, are alive and well, seemingly unaffected by this so-called curse, if it exists."

In the taverns some say there is a new cult in the city, operating from below street level. They say monsters roam the sewers and underground passages.

It is true that some of the temples have been defiled recently, and that several of the priesthood have been found gruesomely slain. In each defiled temple was drawn, in human blood, a symbol, perhaps even a sigil, of three eyes and a triangle. It is also true that the recently overburdened city watch has been inundated with reports of missing persons, and of encounters with creatures not of mundane origin.

Portsgate just isn't what it used to be.