501 – Bertold’s – Open 43 hours a day!

Wow! I need to have my wife write my blog posts for me more often! Thank you all very very much for all the kind words, they mean more to me than you could possibly know. 🙂 Speaking of someone writing for me, I hereby cede the floor to the kind scholars at Kilanio University…

And now, in a continuing service, an entry from the Encyclopedia Ardrisia:

SCRYBL

The Eternal Inferno. The Golden Fields of the Righteous. The Abyss. Bakersfield. These exotic locations all have one thing in common: somewhere within their borders is a doorway to another place, an interdimensional back way into a great city that touches all of the Outer Planes and yet is part of none of them: Scrybl, The City of Shortcuts.

We are all probably a lot better off not knowing the origins of the city of Scrybl. Unwise questions can get you killed in Scrybl, or at least garner you a strong talking-to by the Concordant Fist, Scrybl’s city watch. Scrybl is a vast city that seems to be situated on the interior of a large ring suspended in a ever-roiling mass of ochre clouds. Because of its connectedness to all the other Outer Planes, Scrybl is a sort of neutral territory where you can see angelic devas bargaining with hellish fiends over the price of a bushel of dragonfruit, where priests of Nal Niera can argue theology with minions of Kistadous and everyone gets along. This neutrality is enforced in a number of ways:

  • Mutual consent
  • The watchful eye of the Concordant Fist
  • and the presence of the Lady of Blave, the mysterious and powerful ruler of Scrybl (see individual entry)

Another peculiarity of Scrybl is the total absence of gods and their more powerful minions. The Lady of Blave uses her vast arcane and divine might to block all deities from even setting a pinkie toe into her city. Paladins and the like manage to slip past, but anything more powerful (avatars, demigods, etc.) might as well go home and brew a cup of tea for all the good it’ll do them. The fact that she is able to do this with about as much effort as you or I expend combing our hair in the morning demonstrates why The Lady should never ever be messed with.

Scrybl gets its nickname, the City of Shortcuts, because it is rife with planar portals, which are often used as shortcuts between completely disparate dimensions. For example, instead of trying to travel from Karceri to the Tranquil Seas of Neoliss, which are separated by several different planes, one could simply open a portal to Scrybl and from there find a portal that will take them where they want to go. Portal keys, mystical objects attuned to a particular portal in Scrybl, are needed for this to happen and are available in Scrybl – for a price. For those that can’t afford that price and/or are otherwise stuck in Scrybl, the city reveals its other, lesser known, nickname: The Coop.

The Encyclopedia Ardrisia, Volume 41 (Santor’s Sibiliant Swords to Slaadipuffs), Kilanio University Press, 48th edition.

Take care,
~Rob