Tuesday, December 19, 2023

The Camp of Envy


  The camp moves about, springing up seemingly overnight near its current target of ire. Moving through the camp you'll meet businessmen muttering about long-dead rivals and neighboring kings sketching up battle plans against each other. Outcasts, has-beens, and jilted lovers all crowd around fires that give heat but no warmth. Everyone seems to subsist solely on black coffee, whiskey, and tobacco. Smoke hovers above the area, curling in twisted patterns like a brood of ghostly vipers.


Camp materials seem to be scavenged or scrounged from other sources. Visigoths use classical columns as benches. A pirate captain has made a pavilion from captured sails-- all dragged here painstakingly across miles of desert.

Around the camp, shady vendors promise quick fixes. Every other person seems to have a book or a tract they want you to read, right now, while they give commentary. Wild-eyed speakers whip up the placard-wielding crowd for fresh crusades. Guitars and occasionally odder instruments crop up here and there.


The trampled dirt here is not a soil from which deep friendships spring. Tenuous alliances shift in the everchanging wind, and any elevation in the fortunes of one is likely to draw the resentment of others. But while the status quo lasts, there is a certain grim camaraderie among Envy's followers.

For some, the camp is a permanent residence. For others it is a stepping stone to a career in the army of Wrath or the temple of Greed.

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