“ A group of wizards who will give others temporary magical powers, but the price is high and those who can't pay or won't pay get very badly hurt or even killed.”
“ The Macabre style of architecture is common in ancestor venerating societies, or societies that have been afflicted by a long term period of loss of life. The style is best noted for its use of a morbid and gruesome, skulls and bones, severed limbs and the like. It also alternately honors the spirits of the dead with stunning works of art, and mocks death through caricature and comedy. Macabre is the common architectural style in Ozea.”
“ Saril had a dream. To open a library in the windswept wastes of Naarish, so that the people of the many villages and towns spread over the hundreds of leagues of desert could discover the joys of his books. For a whole year he kept his library open, but alas, almost no one came.
That is when Saril came up with his new idea. If people didn't travel to read his books, he would travel to them! Saril closed his library, hired a team of twelve camels, loaded up the beasts with all of his books and proceeded to invent the first nomadic library.
Now children and adults alike, looked forward to hearing the bells of Saril's camels as he entered their villages, as he tirelessly traversed the deserts in a long circuitous route, visiting every village and town he came across, in turn. It came to pas that Saril's traveling library came to some fame, and that is how the folk of Naarish became literate.
A word of warning though. Naarish has only six thousand volumes. He deals with those that lose or steal his tomes quite 'harshly', by bypassing the town or village which was responsible for losing one of his books for that calendar year.”