Taken from 'My travels and tribulations' by Arbacesse Belgarate, travelling merchant

I had travelled a good part of the day under a grey and menacing sky, following a narrow band of ochre coloured ground that an old hermit monk had pointed out to me as being the road to Moussillon.
"That's where you have to go to cross the river lad, there is no other way...unless you go back many leagues" he told me, smiling as if the obligation to pass through the town was something that amused him and that he enjoyed like a good joke. The man, whose skin was as wrinkled as that of a dried up apple, left giggling loudly through his toothless jaw.

Thus I was following the road shown to me by the hermit. His strange behaviour I attributed to the massive consumption of self-distilled alcohol, that heavily impregnated his breath.
After more than four hours travel, the wind had fallen to leave way to humidity and cold as the road approached a miasma infected swamp; I tried to catch a glimpse of the town's walls and towers in the distance, but in vain, the horizon lost itself in a grey and vaporous haze. The only thing around was a deserted and muddy moor, spattered only by occasionnal water holes and patches of furze. A bit further where the land was a bit more settled, I discerned a twisted and tortured copse of trees.

My cart was now rolling on a much larger earth track, which had been reinforced using much sand and loose stone. The land at the sides of the road remained muddy however, and it took much effort to pull my cart out after the horse had dragged me off-course. The haze had changed into a thick and acrid smelling smoke which made it impossible to see more than ten meters away. At the back of the wag, the DAGOLBACH pots and pans tinkled like many dissonant carillon bells, indifferent to the snoring of Gautielbe, my road companion. The din was absorbed by the moor, thereby betraying the lack of any kind of relief in the region. For the time being, the light of the tempest-lamp hooked at the front of the carriage was the only thing that helped me avoid going down in the ditch again. Having to push with all my weight knee deep in turf to free the cart from the swamps hold, was not a prospect which I particularly relished. I scrutinized the landscape in search of a sheltered place. Darkness was starting to fall and I needed to find somewhere to spend the night, if I didn't want to die frozen in these putrid swamps.

"Yes, come and see the new marvels from the Empire ! They don't wear ! They don't burn ! They don't even get dirty ! Yes, it's the pots, it's the pans, it's the cauldrons DA-GOL-BACH. Admire the difference, touch them, ask for them, buy them..."
I smiled, thinking of the coaxing sales patter I would serve on the market square to dazed strollers the next morning, and also thinking of the good bed which I would no doubt find in an inn just behind the city walls, which had suddenly appeared a few meters in front of my cart.