Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

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