From a Concerned Citizen to the Assaram Chamber of Commerce

Tue, 11/10/2009 — Rev. Ragu

As I'm sure you're well aware, Assaram has long been known as a city of the highest moral character, where good folks can raise their children, far away from the unchecked hedonism of Romaly and the ceaseless mincing of Shampane. A faithful and observant oasis in a desert of heathens, from the shocking man-Gods of Isis to the backwards deviltry of Jipang and even the bloody savagery of the Soo. We, the people of Assaram have been steadfast in our opposition to the seductive sensualism of a world gone rotten to its very core, where heroes feel they can wander into anyone's home and ransack their treasure chests for gold and tiny medals, and you can't walk three steps outside the town walls without running into a random encounter.

What has gone wrong? Where there once was light, there is darkness. Where children once played in the streets, there are brazen Puff-Puffers. Where we once had the finest drakee-kebab stalls in all the land, we have greasy Baharatans plying their ethnic wiles on unsuspecting tourists, hawking bootleg HECHO EN SAMANAO Stones of Sunlight on idiot tourists, dizzy and delirious on Medical Herb and Slime Piss. And just when you think the loud, drunken revelry is over and done with for the night, and every miscreant and pervert has meandered back to the Inn to lay with woman, man, or Hork in every manner of unholy fornication, some hero comes along, uses his Lamp of Darkness, and it starts all over again! It is outrageous what has been allowed to go on within the walls of our fair city, and it is here that I take the Assaram Chamber of Commerce to task.

Is this really the message that our town fathers want to send out to the world? The kind of tourist our city wants? Slavering animals unfit to call themselves human, seeking exclusively the myriad cheap thrills that their debauched minds can conceive and of which our once-great township is only too happy to provide? Where have our morals gone? The streets crawl with Heroes and their lackeys, well known for their lives of sinful itinerance, wandering in at all hours, pockets full of the spoils of violence and conquest, looking to sate their bestial lusts with back-alley puff-puffs and the tender flesh of our pretty girls and prettier boys.

In the original tongue, Assaram meant "Warm Cinnamon Walls". But even in that, after this shameful publicity campaign, the degenerates that congregate in our township would find something to chuckle about! And the "original tongue" part just makes it worse! But in acknowledging, we validate, and as such we are now a town of profligate buggery and sundry sins. Furthermore, as others have told me, thanks to this misapprehension of the name, most of the attractive young women offering Puff-Puffs and other carnal pleasures are... Not exactly as advertised. Which, I should say, if we are on this road to perdition, at the very least we could offer it honestly. With signs, or labels, or something along those lines. I mean, if this whole abolition business doesn't go my way, right?

Seriously, "Assaram: Exactly Like It Sounds"?