>>6108962>>6108979Luz, Icarus and Phridon sketch out a sigil on the sand with sticks and lines of salt and good natured haggling. Professionals don't catch religion. You shouldn't really <span class="mu-i">believe</span> that invoking these different signs grant amensty from transgressions celestial and pardons for crimes profane.
But . . . you shouldn't really assume it <span class="mu-i">doesn't</span>. It's the Wastes. Ill fortune and worse luck stick to your like bad breath and morning hair, the gaps between intent and action grow vaster, the shadows are too cold, the sun is too warm and sometimes, when you blink, the brief flashes of light behind your eyelids show distant galaxies.
There are . . . signs to be made. Assurances to offer. Little rituals, practiced and rote, that we perform to buy a measure of consideration from things that have no compasion. To the smallholders and villages of this place, these sort of things are so mundane part of life that they do not even enter theology. You wipe your shoes before going inside, you sleep at night, you eat your porridge with salt and you bleed four drops - and never more - on the north facing wall of your hut every six days and then the Wind doesn't steal your fondest memories.
Surviving out here long enough is part practice and part forensic theology, figuring out what parts of old scattered miracles still hold sway and what part you can ignore.
For now, a small dispute must be settled. There are wards and signs to make.
But do we perform the usual checks, unsure they work? Or do we step up our efforts? Ill luck has been prowling lately. The wind is hungry. And recent reports put riders on the horizon, hostile or not so.
Of course the eternal issue is that one cannot barter for free. View it from the other end: Is this what we are going to waste water and salt and time on? Old superstition and half remembered prayers from a language no one even speaks any more?
>...?>Better try the Sunward Prayer - this is a wasteland desert steppe, and the sun does rule supreme here. Nothing to advanced, but mind your vowels. Simple, easy, we know this by rote.>We might want to dig into the water rations and offer some to the hungry ground and the restless Animant King, and all the hierarchies that they command. It'll cost water - and rations - and inevitable someone is going to break a leg, but on the other hand, it might be safer at the moment to pay the trespas toll for setting foot on the earth>Maybe the wind - what's the one, Ashon? Ashi? Ashir? Ashoniti? - should scatter some ash and smoke across the wide horizon. We'll have to light a few pyres and burn something precious, and that might not be the best of ideas. Still, no one's ever gotten in trouble for minding the wind.>Maybe we simply dip the good luck charms in the water barrels and distribute them around, tell everyone to whisper a prayer to whatever they find appropriate? We don't have time for rites and rituals right now - it's time to *move* 