>>5280826Caroline isn't a prostitute. Babylonia's [Insert tailor, clothier, weaver] Guild exclusively deals in making clothing, acquiring raw materials, and keeping an eye on the market. No sort of funny 'private embroidering' going on. She's a beautiful woman, but not in the sort of way that makes blood rush to one's privates.
Still, it's funny, even without the whole unintentional Discworld reference, something along those lines was mentioned in the last thread.
<span class="mu-i">Not that Jean would fetch much. Missing a leg and most of his left hand, a solitary thumb and fancy new digits notwithstanding, there isn’t much a cripple could pull in. And as sick as the thought makes you, Caroline wouldn’t either. There isn’t much money that anyone could squeeze from out of a desperate seamstress. Even if she put her talents to weaving in and out of brothels or the Temple of Ishtar instead of looms or spinning wheels.</span>
The city does have extensive prostitution though. You've got the low-class Flash Mollishers who prowl the Outer Ring and take clients out of alleyways, the Spells who sell their services at theaters and coffee houses, Bawds who own actual brothels, and the Babylonian equivalent of the Covent Garden Nuns, the Ringed Ladies. But above them all are the Priestesses of Ishtar.
Babylonia is largely secular, but the Temple of Ishtar exists as both a religious organization of neo-pagans who fell hard for the post-apocalyptic, return-to-antiquity LARP, and the (oft unspoken) guild for prostitutes. You won't see the Lord Protector of Babylonia engaging in ritual intercourse with the Head Priestess on the first day of the new year, but you might find his son going to a social function with a ravishingly beautiful woman on either arm.
So in that regard, Ishtarite priestesses often have more in common with Renaissance courtesans and Japanese oiran and/or geisha: beautiful women trained extensively in the "performing" arts that receive gifts such as jewelry, expensive furniture, or even real estate from favored lovers/clients. The temple gets a cut, from the lowest acolyte-in-training to the High Priestess herself, but the Ishtarites aim largely for social status among the elite of the Flooded World, and marriage into families of high standing. Plenty manage to find favor among merchant princes and industrial tycoons, but the greatest prize for an Ishtarite would be to secure a marriage into one of the five Founding Families of Babylonia. Or at the very least, one of their cadet branches, which happens far more than a marriage into the main branch.
Whether or not the historic priestesses of Inanna/Ishtar engaged in sacred prostitution is still a contentious debate among scholars.
A bit of a tangent, but still something fun to answer and clarify while stuck in a rut. Feel free to ask me any other questions about the setting.
Writing...