More Dreams

I am having recurring dreams of late of which I remember nothing but a single word: Uskul. The dream usually also contains the sound of lapping water.

~

I am a customer in a Babylonian tavern known as "Azif's Hundred Ale Holes", a restaurant with suggestive names of menu items such as a "Nutty Handjob" which is actually roasted chestnuts with sugar. A spiral staircase leads down into the earth with the monotonous whine of flutes in the distance. Every 100 feet down there is a simple wooden door with an Inn or Tavern of some sort on the other side. Notable taverns are "Potigerns Boar Ring", a gladiatorial combat ring run by darkiron intelligent golems, "Azal's Place", a simple temple to Mithra with a nearby weapons shop, and "The Slum Bucket", a watering hole for beggars who are lost. Not every door leads to a tavern, and some lead to blank walls or empty rooms guarded by a Guard as the previous owner could not pay Azif's rent. At the very bottom of the shaft, which is 10,000 feet long, there is a golden archway leading into the bottomost taverm. Known as "Lightbringers Challenge", this lavish tavern is decorated with the architecture of Egypt at the height of its power. Dancers, Sphinx's giving riddles, Jackals selling books and Priest's performing magic adorn the place, where it is said somewhere Azif himself lairs.

~

I am looking at several pencil sketches I remember drawing before, the setting is a street corner in a pre-Crusade city in Arabia. There are several men half hidden in the darkness beyond an arch across the deserted alley across from me, of which I have already pencilled a sketch. Suddenly, I begin packing my tools of art as a line of black robed men begin disrobing in the middle of the alley some way down. They then walk off in thin robes of white, each holding the others shoulders in single file. I am busy packing and when I finally start towards where they were headed they have disappeared in the heat of the far white dunes. I estimate them to be about 15-20 in number. All tanned and dressed in simple white. They wore no footwear.
I remember the heat being all but unbearable and the city very quiet but distantly noisy.