You were walking down the street, wrapped up in your thoughts, perhaps wishing you could get away from your life just for a little while. You take hardly any notice of the traffic around you -- until a horse bells a neigh almost in your ear and you narrowly miss losing your face under its rearing hoofs. You finally wake up and take a good look about.
You're standing at the edge of a very busy market square, where a large cathedral overshadows more than half the stalls. The people here don't dress the way you're used to: you see rough-spun clothes, rich silks, leather boots that lace up the sides, assorted weapons worn openly on belts and across shoulders. On the other side of the square, you see the turrets of a ruined fairy castle reaching arthritically to the sky. A solid stone wall peeks between a few ruined roofs in the distance, and medievally-clad guards patrol it regularly.
Doomed chickens squawk, hockers hock, peddlars peddle, and the occasional hooker whores. The air smells robust with fresh manure and exotic spices, roasting steaks, smoking fish. You take a step back from this bedlam, narrowly missing a pile of horse hockey. You knock your heels on the slightly raised boardwalk that runs the perimeter of this market, past every permanent shop. Most of them are empty. The one directly behind you glows warmly with yellow light through the tattered sheer bistro curtains. Someone opens the door and weaves his way out, sending a wave of multiple conversations sloshing over your head.
The sign above is that of a serving wench hoisting her loaded tray high above her head as she dances a lively jig.
You could use a stiff drink right about now.
Greeting, and Welcome to the Drunken Wench Inn, a remnant of my favorite BBS. Of course, I was the sysop of that BBS, and I still have my beloved FayryLand on the itty-bitty 30MB hard drive of my last computer. My citizens knew me as Lady Vanilla Javken. FayryLand was a gamers/writers message board -- we would gather in the common room of the Wench and get together (virtually speaking) over drinks. The common room was the place for everyday conversation in story format. (e.g. "Thor burst through the door of the Wench and demanded a large mug of ale. The wench brought it to his table just as he pulled his seat up, and he gulped it back messily. Wiping his beard with the back of his beefy hand, he groaned: 'I think I flunked my Physics exam. I kept forgetting to square the seconds on the acceleration formula.'")
In another corner of the Wench, we would spin works of pure fiction, called Fayry Tales. Someone would start the story, and then let another person add to the tale and move the plot forward. Some of those stories would get pretty involved.
I open the Fayry Tales again here, and everyone who sees this may join. Just email the story to me, and I will post it here. (I won't touch the content without your permission, I promise. Mind if I clean up any punctuation and grammar?)