Delon-Estin Ótí

Character

This's a town of peace and tranquility, a place where everything has become so ordered and so habitual the citizens have learned to anticipate the course of time and the flow of conversation based on what has come before. Its people hold entire conversations with no more than a raised eye-brow and the breath of a sigh.

Ruler

There's no ruler as such in this town: the citizens are so attuned to the prevailing mood of the burg that any one of them can make decisions for the whole place. Unfortunately, most of them have forgotten how to speak as normal people do, so there's a specialized few who hold on to the old ways of communication. These folks act as intermediaries between the other residents and outsiders, and are therefore alienated from both groups. They're chaotic enough compared to the other townsfolk that they can't completely understand the currents of feeling from within the town, but orderly enough that most visitors are uncomfortable around them.    The person who most often deals with travelers and who's therefore most often perceived as ruler is Jarua Britin (Planar/Female human/Fraternity of Order) a shaven-headed female who's willing to lay down the law to those she meets. She's got no illusions about being the true ruler or the town: she knows that the people would forcibly remove her if she claimed that honor for herself. She can explain the nature of the town to those who ask, but she's got an imitating habit of saying "knew you'd do that," as if she were keen on letting others know that she's as much a pan of this town as anyone. She's horribly literal, and unless a body phrases a question in just the right way to her, he's not likely to get the full answer.    Jarua's not the power in the town, and she knows it. It galls her horribly, and she's likely to do anything that'll bring her closer to rulership. If it'll mean she belongs, she's willing to betray the Guvners, or at least quit their ranks. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't realize that her personal ambition to be part of the town is all that's holding her back.

Behind the Throne

The Guvners would love to claim this town as one of their own, but even they don't have sufficient grasp on law to be able to understand it, and if they did, they wouldn't want to rule it anymore, comprehending it as a society of perfect equals. They've got people who work to make the town theirs, but the real townsfolk know these people and keep them from the important areas. Even Jana can't gel some places, and if she does access an imponant one, the townsfolk've already relocated whatever it is that makes the place significant.

Description

Delon-Estin Ótí is a perfectly symmetrical town, with twenty walls bordering it. There's gates in only two of those walls, located on opposite ends of town, and there always seems to be someone there to watch both of 'em. Just inside the gate there's all sons of agricultural plots, places where fruits and vegetables are raised to blemish-free perfection, and animals're nurtured until their deaths. Seen from above, the town looks like a spiderweb, with concentric roads radiating from its center. At the hub there's a great big open space, lightly covered with grass. There's three trees in the center of this circle, and underneath them is a bare dirt patch. Apparently, it's here that the townsfolk meet.    All the buildings are residential: there doesn't seem to be an inn or a hostel in the entire town. However, because residents have died or moved away, some houses have opened up that visitors're welcome to stay in.    Folks who live here are quiet, generally going out of their way to avoid outsiders. The town's picked up a reputation as a place where seers are born and to where they gravitate, and so there's a constant influx of visitors seeking to get the future told to them. While it's true that the people can read the patterns of the future, it's also here that they could no more communicate them to the outsiders directly than a man could speak to an ant.

Militia

The militia is based on whoever's supposed to be there at the time. This ain't exactly clear, but it's the way it is. Sometimes one Birk shows, sometimes another. The populace all knows what their duties are, and sometimes their duty takes them to the walls and streets for protection of the city. They fight with the perfection of modron hierarchs, almost never rolling for initiative, always attacking in the round when they need to. They always attack for maximum effect, knowing when they'll disrupt a spell cast or foul someone's blade. 

Services

There's no nightlife, no manufacturing of goods, and nothing really of value in the city. Mercenaries don't get hired here, there's no gossip or news a hady's going to want to hear. So what's to bring a planar to this place? There's just apparently no future in Delon-Estin Ótí.    That's where a body'd be wrong. There's plenty of future here, because the one thing the residents do know is how to interpret patterns — even to the point of making predictions. If a visitor can somehow persuade one of the speaking residents to translate what the locals can say, he can get a glance into the future. Since the residents of Delon-listin Ótí are experts at determining the course of events based on a few phenomena (at least those in the plane of Law), they can predict the course of the future with a high degree of probability. If the person they're telling the future for (the querent) is lawful, they can accurately tell the future for one week for that person. If the querent is neutral, they can tell it for only a day. For chaotic querents, the seers can't read anything: that alignment indicates the individual delights in breaking patterns, and the future for such a person is therefore unreadable — at least in this town.    Oddly, there's no price for this. There are, however, a few conditions that ought to be made clear. First, the residents don't predict the future for everyone: only for those whom they've decided are worth it. Second, the speaking residents are speaking residents because they don't completely understand what the others have to say and how they say it, so the prophecy's likely to be somewhat garbled. Third, the translator might choose to charge some jink for his time, even if the seer doesn't.

Local News

Theres no local news — at least not any a - traveler's likely to hear. The people have nothing they want to say to a casual traveler, and there's precious little that surprises them. Those who do speak also tend to be the ones starved for word from the outside world, so they're not full of news.   However, these folks have noticed that the residents of the town are tending to keep to themselves even more, as if they feared an upcoming event or some sort of taint. Occasionally, they'll look sadly into the sky at one of the gears (no one knows exactly which one it is), and hurry away. If someone asks them a question, there's never any answer. Visitors are becoming more than just a little anxious, fearing that something major's about to happen to the gears.