In days of yore the quest was one of the most popular forms of travel, drawing knights and farmhands alike to its glories. In these later degraded days, wizards exhorting toward grand destinies are scarce in most localities (and deprecated in Wysania, where their numbers are still strong). Young people—and, to be fair, their older counterparts—who yearn for adventure are more likely to be satisfied if they seek it out in the form of their travel rather than the object. A catalog of such inherent adventures is sure to feature at least one to please the most discerning modern quester.
The Whippoorwill Lanterns of Bargo. The ornithologists and orthomancers of Bargo complain that the lantern carriage behavior is much more like that of starlings than that of whippoorwills. But the characteristic noise that the doors make when they are about to close cemented the name in common usage, and it is unlikely to be dislodged.
There is no feeling like the giddy glee of a flock of lanterns rising together. Tourists flock to Bargo not to see its famous university or its elaborate public fountains but to ride the whippoorwill lanterns. Experienced Bargoans (or “Embargoes” as they lovingly tease each other) know when to brace themselves for their carriage to bank and tilt with the winds, when it will leave the flock to swoop alone to the rider’s destination. Tourists tend to emerge rather shaken, but exhilarated all the same.
It is a myth that the gentlefolk of Bargo carry their characteristic spiked parasols to fend off importunate would-be fellow travelers from joining them in a lantern. The parasols predate the development of whippoorwill lanterns and were merely repurposed. However, sharing a whippoorwill lantern is an extremely intimate experience and not recommended in most circumstances, so having some preparations for this matter is extremely wise.
The Kelp Barges of Fanick-Lello. The orthomancers have, at least, the satisfaction of knowing that in Fanick-Lello their cautions have been heeded. It is they who painted the runes upon the bottom of the barges, guiding the kelp as it passes them from frond to frond. This mode of locomotion is very efficient of magical energy but provides a rocking sensation that takes some getting used to. Fanick-Lellans are easily spotted among the tourists by their ease in weaving up and down a moving barge to buy a skewer of blistered peppers and eat them without dropping a speck of ash on the floor.
The scent of the kelp is extremely distinctive. Some enjoy the salt-and-iodine nature of it, while others find it overpowering. Old Fanick-Lellan hands point out that there is no corner of a kelp barge that can retain the varied and noxious smells that are commonly produced by human bodies in transit. The kelp handles all.
Pikipo’s Train Network. The most modern and vital train system features express lines as well as a veritable dendrite of local lines. The seats are plush, well-maintained red velvet; the copious windows are framed with beautiful hardwoods trimmed with brass. The brass is kept shining and preternaturally free from smudges.
The source of this grandeur—or at least the reason it does not dim with use—is the conductors of Pikipo, automata who clank and whir smoothly down the center aisles enforcing ticket fares with literally iron hands. (Most are tipped with brass to match the train cars.) Inexperienced visitors to Pikipo may assume that the conductors run, like their trains, on tracks, but this is not the case; there is nowhere the conductors of Pikipo cannot find you.
Pay your fares.
Time Dilators. The time dilator is not, strictly speaking, a mode of transit. Rather than moving its users from one point to another, it stretches time to fit the duration of their walk into their day. You may even dawdle by the river, feed ducks, stop off for an ice, and still arrive in time to do whatever it is that you wanted to do, although the queue at the ice shop that does the particularly fine strawberry ices may be long due to overuse of this technology.
Within the city of Praxim one must be careful to use the designated time dilator lanes on the sidewalk; real-time pedestrians report a nasty shivery feeling when they are passed by a pack of time dilated pedestrians going a variety of speeds. However, this technology is by no means restricted to Praxim, though it is difficult to tell where else—and more to the point, when else—it might turn up.
The Pneumatic Tubes of Kloff. The Kloffians, no matter their species, are a hearty and efficient people. Their chosen form of transit is much like the Whippoorwill Lanterns, but much faster and less melodic. Even many of the most hardened Kloffian travelers close their eyes in transit, lest the alarming sight of the identical houses and factories of Kloff rushing past sicken them either physically or existentially. Very few pneumatic pods have ever crashed free of the tubes and hurtled over the rooftops only to plunge to their doom.
Quoronadar’s Dragon Trolleys. The biggest human-nonhuman détente of the last century, the human-dragon relations in Quoronadar only started to run smoothly when each species discovered that they enjoyed some of the services needed by the others. For humans, scale maintenance and beautification has been not only a growth industry but a source of artistic fulfillment. For dragons, the notion that they could help humans to rush about from place to place and also get a little bell on their human cart was apparently the height of charm and good taste.
Unfortunately, communication was still a difficulty to begin with. Settling the routes took a disconcerting time. Worse, the Quoronadar human council felt that reliable public transportation was worth a few virgins and did not inquire immediately as to what the dragons had been eating. Dragons having no interest in humans as cuisine or sorted by sexuality, they had been subsisting mostly on pitch. This would not be a problem except that fewmets from a pitch-heavy diet are not conducive to any form of life. The results nearly endangered the fragile détente, but eventually understanding ensued and a healthier diet of maple sap (not the more concentrated syrup) was shipped in from the provinces. However, there is still an entire meadow atop a cliff to the west of the city on which nothing will grow.
The trolley system does not visit it. Private transportation is not advised, as some of the ground may be hot enough to burn through boots.
The Omnibus. The Omnibus is everywhere and always. The trick is knowing how to get off the Omnibus.
We await a comprehensive study of Omnibus mores and cultures from the first scholar who solves this problem.
Hegoolian Personal Flight Assistants. In Hegoo the land is so pocked with swampy puddles that it is easier just to fly. If flight is not a power provided to you by the deities or arts of your choice, the Hegoolians will send a personal flight assistant to remedy this matter for the duration of your stay. This may be why Hegoo issues vanishingly few visas for land/water-bound species.
Trousers are advised for all travelers to Hegoo whose lower limbs permit and whose modesty customs require.
The Centaur-Run Ferry (New Pregolbus). For generations centaurs were held to be bad luck on boats—possibly because the more fragile boats of yesteryear were more vulnerable to hooves, or possibly because of the kind of unthinking prejudice supposedly sentient beings are prey to. The centaur community of Old Pregolbus sponsored a gorgeous array of pedestrian bridges to assist centaurs in full participation in civic life. However, after the old city burned, the centaur community took a different approach during rebuilding.
The colorful awnings over the broad, open decks of the ferry adorn the inner harbor and navigable rivers. The below-decks spaces afford a larger clearance than most small local craft, and they smell mostly of straw and apples rather than anything extremely obvious. Rates for travel are charged per leg.
Two of the Old Pregolbus bridges remain, and can be best seen from the decks of the centaur-run ferries.
Sorcerer Assisted Teleportation (Eidelsport). The Eidelsport Sorcerers’ Guild requires each member to commit half of their work time to the public good. Transportation through the form of sorcerer-assisted teleportation makes up twice as many of these hours as the runner-up category, healing.
Detractors say that sorcerers should be using their gifts for something far more important than sending their neighbor across town to visit her sister, and that traveling in this method prevents travelers from seeing the city. But the Eidelsport ethos gently points travelers toward considering whether their trip truly requires a teleportation or whether walking would do just as well. Their streets are scrubbed clean weekly by sorcerers who have violated city codes, with volunteer patrols taking over when no sorcerers have done so.
Eidelsport doesn’t have much tourism, but the people who are there—either as visitors or as residents—are generally content with their lot.
The Buses of Evvatalling. No one visits Evvatalling for its transportation. Its museums are sublime, its opera houses astonishing. The buses, on the other hand, are entirely ordinary: their cracked brown leather seats, the frayed cord one pulls for a stop. The bus drivers are brusque but pleasant. The schedule is mildly inconvenient but workable.
The main distinction in Evvatalling is that fare must be paid in a peculiar kind of soul coinage: fares must be paid in abandoned projects. Songs half-composed, plans for a new recipe, titles to poems, an intention to paint the shed—your choice of one of these fuels your bus pass for a proportionate amount of time. Those unwilling to part with these tiny pieces of their souls stay where they are until they can think of fare. Some of them never leave their block.
But the buses run reasonably full, if not on time, and they reliably contain the smell of other humans you have never known, and never will.
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Marissa Lingen lives in the Minneapolis suburbs with her family. She has a keen interest in tisanes, Moomins, and all things tree-related. She writes science fiction, fantasy, essays, and poetry. |
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