Robert Asprin: Shadow Of Sanctuary

Actually, a lot of things the editor didn't tell us were things he didn't know himself. We were all nai've about the mechanics of a franchised universe back at Boskone of 1978 when the Thieves' World project was created. It sounded wondrously uncomplicated: we would exchange character sketches and refer to a common street map; Bob would write us a history; Andy Offutt would create our gods. We only had to go to ground and write our 5,000-10,000 words. Fat chance. Unexpected discovery number one: Sanctuary isn't an imaginary anything; it's a state of mind recognized by the American Psychiatric Association.

We thought we'd gone to ground - it turned out that we'd gone overboard. Bob hadn't told us the things we'd really need to know, and none of us wanted to dictate to the guy who'd created this fun-house, so each of us made great use of the little vicissitudes of life that would add 'grit' and 'realism' to our stories. My not-gypsy read not-Tarot cards, dealt with necromancers, stole a corpse and witnessed the usual street violence.

It didn't seem too bad until I found the entire book oozing out of my mailbox and read the volume in its entirety. We had Crom-many drugs, magicians, vices, brothels, dives, haunts, curses and feuds. Sanctuary wasn't a provincial backwater; it wasn't even the Imperial armpit; it was the Black Hole of not Calcutta. Things could only get worse ...

And they did. Bob told us the second volume would be called Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn - the very name incited depravity. And we rose to the occasion or perhaps we fell. I explored the unpleasant pieces of my S'danzo's past. gave her a berserker for a half-brother and created Buboe, the night bartender down at the Vulgar Unicorn. Well, Bob said we were supposed to have a scene down at the ol' V.U. - but One-Thumb was hors de combat in the bowels of Sanctuary and no one knew who was running the joint. (I recall one of my confreres created someone called Two-Thumbs - I think that was from spite.) Buboe - a buboe isn't a person, a buboe is the rather large glandular eruption that accompanies the terminal stages of the Black Plague; opening it ensures death for the opener and the openee.

Tales didn't ooze out of the mailbox; it ate right through the metal. I haven't seen all the stories for volume three yet, but I'm confident the downward spiral has continued. Each set of stories brings new oddments of human behaviour, new quirks of character that the authors wouldn't dare put in a universe for which he or she was solely responsible. In Sanctuary, though, where guilt is shared along with the glory, one volume's innuendo becomes the next volume's complete story.

And frankly, nastiness is interesting. If I tell you that the smell of rotting blood can linger for years you might not notice what I don't tell you. Consider for a moment some of the things none of the authors know for sure: the weather in Sanctuary - daily and seasonal. It must be strange. If the Downwinders are downwind of the town then the prevailing wind is off the land - try convincing any coast-dweller of that.

As far as the city itself is concerned, I've always imagined it as a sort of late medieval town, out-growing its walls. The Maze is built like the Shambles in York, England, where each storey gets built out over the lower one so everybody can drop their slops directly into the street instead of on their neighbour. There are those who seem to think Sanctuary's like Rome. (Nonsense, Ranke is Rome - or is it that Rome is rank?) They imagine that the town has the rudiments of sewer systems, that the villas are attractive, open buildings and that at least some of the streets are paved. There also seems to be a Baghdad by-the-Sea approach, with turban'd tribesmen and silk-clad ladies, as well as a few indications that we might be dealing with a Babylonian building style. Since so many of our stories are set in the dark, I suppose it doesn't matter that we don't really agree on what the city looks like.

Of course, nobody, including the Empire, knows how big Sanctuary really is. Anytime one of us needs a secret meeting place we just create one - Sanctuary is either very large or very cramped. You can live your whole life in the Maze or the Bazaar, and yet it only takes fifteen minutes to walk from one end of town to the other - or does it? I'm not sure.

Take the Bazaar, for example. I've spent a fair amount of time in that bazaar and I don't know exactly how it's put together. Part of it is a farmers' market (though I haven't the faintest idea where the farmers are when they aren't at the Bazaar). Other parts are like the cloth-fairs of medieval France, where merchants sell their wares wholesale. Still other parts resemble the permanent bazaars of the Middle East. Rather than trouble myself with philosophical questions, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, someday I've got to figure out how many S'danzo can live full-time in the Bazaar.

Moving from angels to gods for a moment - it seems probable that anyone living in Sanctuary would have a personal relationship to the gods - nothing like worship or faith, mind you. The people seem homeric in their religion: the last thing an ordinary citizen wants is dealing with the gods; worship is designed to keep the deities at bay. We have at least two major pantheons represented in the temples and the gods know how many priesthoods trying to control them. They tell me there's a fellow out in California who has made a coherent mythology for the religions of Sanctuary. He's putting his theology into Chaosium's Thieves' World game, but nobody's saying where they're putting the intrepid mythmaster.

Then there's currency - or why we call it Thieves' World. Since no one knows how the currency works, the townsfolk have no choice but to steal from each other. We sort of agree that there are copper coins, silver coins and gold coins - but we don't know their names or their conversion rates. We say: a few copper coins; or we get very specific and say: nine Rankan soldats -just in case someone else is writing about soldats that weren't minted in Ranke. But how many soldats make a shaboozh - or does it work the other way around? It probably does.

Someday I'll create a money-lender for the town; making change in Sanctuary has got to be an art form. It won't do any good, though. Citizens and authors alike will find reasons not to visit my money-lender. They'll set up their own rates of exchange. The Prince will debase the currency. Vashanka will start spitting Indianhead nickels in his temple. I won't let that stop me. If the editor won't tell me how these things are to be done, I'll just have to start telling him.