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Ed Greenwood the Den-Phu Cranes 7 Robin D The Excellent Prismatic Spray Being a Commodious Compendium of erudition, intelligence, advice, narrative and insight of inestimable value to those of a DISCERNING TEMPERAMENT and ADVENTUROUS INCLINATION TABLE OF CONTENTS Volume 1, Issues 4&5 Editorial 1 Jim Webster From our readers… 2 FEATURES Vance’s Spell of the Ineffably Pleasurable Prolonged Hour and What It Did To Me 4 Ed Greenwood The Den-Phu Cranes 7 Robin D. Laws The Dying Earth Needs You 17 Lynne Hardy 24 Efred,A Map City ofof SanctuaryThe Known World 26 David Thomas Mermelants Unite! 40 Thomas Russell ARCANA of Grashpotel 46 Peter Freeman The City of Lumarth 52 Ian Thomson Forell’s Port 77 Lizard Sample file Home Brewed Heroes 85 Ian Thomson The Laughing Magician 91 Steve Dempsey The Sculpted Chair 109 Lynne Hardy The Luminarion 114 Mark Baker Ghosts of the Forgotten Past 117 Kurt Brown EXOTIC VISTAS & STRANGE ENCOUNTERS: The Encroaching Green 121 Lizard & Ian Thomson COZENERS’ EXPEDIENTS 135 Publisher: Simon Rogers Art Direction: Sarah Wroot, Simon Rogers Designer: Sarah Wroot Interior Art: Dave Bezzina, Dover Books copyright-free Cover Art: Sarah Wroot resources, Marcio Fiorito, Ralph Horsley, Robert Million, Managing Editor: Jim Webster Derek Stevens, Hilary Wade, Sarah Wroot Editors: John Kahane, Anna M. Short PRINTED IN THE US • ISBN 0 9539980 2 9 Copyright ©2003 Pelgrane Press Ltd. Based on the Dying Earth book series by Jack Vance. Produced and distributed by agreement with Jack Vance c/o Ralph Vicinanza Ltd, New York. The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game, Dying Earth Quick-Start Rules and The Excellent Prismatic Spray are trademarks of Pelgrane Press. All rights reserved. Editorial t is with an air of more than conscious pride that we bring this combined Iedition of the two magazines to your notice. A double issue allowed us to do many things that we otherwise would have been unable to even contemplate. By popular demand we have produced a map of the entire inhabited area of the Dying Earth. We can make no claims that the map is definitive, or even accurate. It does possess a certain elegance that we feel more than makes up for any cartographical irregularities. Finally, we have brought you articles by Robin D. Laws and Ed Greenwood, as well as work from well-respected regulars, with our first major article from Ian Tompson. This volume of scenarios is merely one of many. Farsighted and mathematically literate individuals may subscribe for four issues (including postage) for a mere £35 in the UK, or $56 US and Canada. Those from elsewhere please contact Pelgrane Press and we shall calculate as economical a rate as is possible to suit your convenience. Those perspicacious individuals who subscribed to The Excellent Prismatic Spray when it first appeared will doubtless have noted that their subscription has run its course; it is time for them to once more pander to their cupidity and resubscribe. We trust that the next year will bring you as much satisfaction as the last. As always there are many wonderous, portentous, or even climacteric offers available to resubscribers who apply in person at our office in Kaiin. Bring at least two maid servants with handcarts. Editor: Jim Webster. Page Bank, Rampside, Barrow in Furness, Cumbria UK Tel. 01229 821561 email: [email protected] Advertising and Subscriptions: Pelgrane Press, 18–20 Bromells Road, London. SW4 OBG UK Tel. 020 7738 8877 email: [email protected] website file: http://www.dyingearth.com Design & Typesetting: Sarah Wroot, Meadow View, Church Street, Litlington, Cambridgeshire UK SG8 0QB THE SCHOLASTICARIUM Persons of quality desirous of advancing their education are invited to present themselves to Amserl Bassouc, admissions porter and battles overseer during the next few days to enroll in the extension courses on offer. As well as the usual array, there will be a series of lectures from persons of note over the coming weeks: Perrin: Misfeasance, the inevitable fate of the parvenu Mistress Flook: Morbid lasciviousness and dress sense Volune: Eonism, frottage and their place in 16th aeon erotology Grashpotel: The place of the remueur in oenology Myrna the Rootless: ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’: on the relationship of Hoon and Gid Guest Lecturer Parouc the Cartographer: Ferial excursions to the utmost East and what I did there It is with some regret that the management notes a distinct lack of initiative among some of its readers. We have had several complain that when the articles are read aloud for their pleasure by their hand-maidens, the playing of the minstrel maiden drowns out the reading. As a result, if this should continue to be a problem, we have retained the services of Nordob, doorman of ‘The Pelgrane’, who will come round and break the fingers of your minstrel maiden. Volume 1, Issue 4 & 5 1 Sir: tribulations we have endeavoured presentations, and are provided I write to enquire as to the reason to complete our task. Deterred here in order that your readership for the delay in publishing the 4th neither by the hired bullies of our better comprehend the inherent From our lessreaders... literate rivals, nor by the risks in the miscasting of even issue of the Excellent Prismatic Spray. Desirable as it may be, this blandishments of the wealthy who this seemingly innocuous spell: delay is unconscionable! feared we might expose their Filibous’ Findings: “Among the Masmauldetides Cuka prurient peccadilloes we stuck failures … 17 instances: the caster Gentleman grimly to our appointed task and found himself trussed up, naked, are pleased to present this, the lightly oiled and well-garnished, The Editor replies: result, to our readers. as the center-piece of the feast, It has been something of a albeit one thankfully uncooked.” chapter of incidents. Firstly one of In future it is hoped that our contributors was apprehended Grashpotel will experience a Sir by the Vigils for incipient sudden and inexplicable xenodocheionology. It was only Imbecile, simpleton, and dullard, blossoming of intellect and rapid and judicious bribery which these are but a mere sampling of diligence, lest such oversight saved him from the deodand pit. the appellations the so-called make him a laughingstock, and Two of our typesetters were eaten author Grashpotel so richly forever relegate him to the rank by rare slotted erbs (hitherto deserves following the travesty of of mere dabbler. believed to be extinct, so at least his article “Turgubut’s Fatal Blarsifiag scholarship has gained from our Statistics”! Provost, Thaumaturical and loss). A third was singing a Following the buffoon’s treatise, I Didactic cavatina in her bath when she was found myselfSample gripped by file a spasm overheard by a passing Sir of incredulity, much to my (now impressario. She is thought to chastened) sandestin’s levity, for I deny – have been kidnapped and I the vacuous poltroon has made First, your argument, believe is now an odalisque the singularly inexplicable error Second, your existence. singing salacious songs for the of repeating one of Turgubut’s Feathered Princes. At this point Iunutharis Grashpotel own lamentable mistakes! There things started to become complex. Archmage were eight hundred and thirty In a moment of desperation our instances of Behemoth’s Bounty last remaining typesetter drank being incorrectly cast, as the majority of our stock of ink. researched by Turgubut and his Sirs The remainder went off as it is assistants, not eight hundred and While I am scribing this missive prone to do if kept in quantities thirteen! As any true practitioner to congratulate you on the of less than a gallon. Searching of the magical arts understands, quality of the periodical you and for myrtle and gauze difono the efforts of Turgubut’s chief your esteemed staff publish, I also (difficult to obtain, but vital assistant, Filibous, were wantonly feel obliged to comment on ingredients of the best quality omitted by Turgubut following another matter. I am a long-time inks) the copy editor won a some infraction on the part of the user of the services of Wakdun bordello in Val Ombrio in a latter. the Panderer’s establishment here rigged card game and we have not in the city of Kaiin, and as such seen him since. Filibous’ findings, are as relevant was pleased to note that you have Yet in spite of these minor as any of Turgubut’s other 2 THE EXCELLENT PRISMATIC SPRAY From our readers… an advertisement on your will nonetheless broach this with labourer to recoup the loss. These “Internet” (whatever that term him when I see him next in an hapless individuals then laboured means) site devoted to your attempt to ensure your complete for the good of their fellow humble magazine. Yet it is with satisfaction in this matter. citizens, patching roads, stoking some dismay that I have noted an The same subordinates as the furnaces in the new baths, omission on your part that I previously mentioned insist that and removing any salacious believe requires correction. It those who may not have realised abbozzo from the walls of the appears that your “on-line” that we have taken advantage of public privies. After forty or so service praises various services what is mockingly known as “the years of solid service their debts and items that Wakdun sells (at new technology” be informed that were declared discharged and prices he must find more than our web site may be found at they were allowed their freedom. adequately remunerative), and yet http://www.dyingearth.com/xpson Now, due to the cupidity of the there is no mention of the line/index.html. gambling magnates who prefer to Ertomanic Priapist and Diestrus Wakdun’s online emporium is revel in the thin stream of dinkets Nullifier.
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