Choth

Choth. C: Captive. H: Healer. S: Soldier. T: Thief. W: Walter. M: Mage. L: Lokath. K: Khaleth's encampment.

Choth is a Ghanish town in the Antaran Empire in Betrayal in Antara. It is visited in Chapter 6 only.

Geography

Choth lies in a crook of the Glassrock Mountains, south of Keth and west of Bakril.

A mercenary encampment west of town cannot be accessed until after the party completes a mission for Lokath.

A chest just north of town, locked but not trapped, contains +6 Grounding Wire, a +2 Attractor, and +4 Bowstring.

Commerce

Tavern: The Tapped Barrel

• Amenities: Ale; Bread; Cheese; Leg of Lamb.
• The barkeep tells the party to explore the town and then come back for an ale. When they return after meeting all the residents, he invites them to select one as this year's best liar and bestows the Liar's Prop as a reward.

Shop: The Outpost

• Sells: Broadswords; Chailan Cutlasses; Onyx Blades; Rapiers.
• Buys: Swords, Staffs.

Culture

Described as "the most honest, trustworthy inhabitants to be found in all the Empire," residents of Choth enthusiastically participate in an annual Liars' Festival, an ancient tradition dating back to before the Grrrlf War. The festival, occurring shortly after the religious Spring Festival, requires local participants to tell the most elaborate lie they can come up with to the first traveler who enters town on the festival day; the traveler is then asked to judge the quality of the lies, and the best liar becomes Emperor or Empress of Liars for the rest of the day while the Liar's Prop is awarded to the traveler. Some residents take all year to plan and prepare props for their tall tales.

Though the party is initially unaware of it, the town is celebrating the Liars' Festival when they arrive. 

Festival Participants

The Captive

• Description: a red-headed boy.
• Tale: While on a Moon-long visit to his grandmother in Bakril, the boy was kidnapped by pirates who needed a new cabin boy. While he swabbed decks, polished brass, and waited on the captain, the pirates pillaged and sank a new ship every couple of days, killing everyone on board. One day, when the pirates were all aboard a new capture, he cut the grappling hooks, hoisted the sails by himself, and sailed away, leaving the already-burning ship to sink. His own ship broke up on the rocks somewhere off the coast of Aspreza, but he swam to shore with a treasure map he'd found and is organizing an expedition to find its treasure, somewhere beyond the Waste.
• Truth: Sandy the Bookworm is not allowed to go past the next house over by himself, but he doesn't mind because the neighbor's dog scares him.
• Prop: a treasure map purporting to show the location of a sunken ship, which the boy copied out of a pirate book his mom bought from a tinker; William concludes the map is probably a fake.

The Healer

• Description: A little bald man.
• Tale: A man with the Triune's gift of healing, Canaster has called upon his power much since the Feeblepox epidemic. When the Sisters in Isten were stricken, he became the only man ever permitted in their leader's sanctuary, an open chamber on the Temple's roof, with billowing curtains and white doves soaring in the dome. Canaster could do nothing for the dying Sister, but after a prayer of desperation, the shade of Denna Rae appeared to him, offering to help him heal the Sister in exchange for a sacrifice. He agreed, and fell into a swoon, waking many weeks later when winter had come to find that the Sister had recovered. Afterwards he returned to Isten, since the simple life appealed to him. The Sister sends him a nutcake every year on Emperor's Day.
• Truth: Miles Canaster, Apothecary, sells bunion plasters, blister ointment, heel lotion, toe jam removal kits, corn oil, boot disks, and shoe flies. He's looking for a Fire Wolf skeleton for next year's fib.
• Prop: Senwater and Herbal Powders.

The Soldier

• Description: A tall, muscular man wearing leather scale and bearing a sword and shield.
• Tale: During the siege of an impregnable Mehrat stronghold, on the edge of retreat for lack of supplies, he presented a plan to his commander; upon approval, he and several trusted friends dressed as easy girls, petitioned for entry to the city at a rear gate in the dead of night, and were admitted because the stronghold's camp followers had been outside the walls when the siege started and the Mehrat were suffering from a lack of available women. After strangling the guard, they approached the gate to let their army in, but were diverted by the captain of the guard and 20 other soldiers, who mistook them for camp followers in the dim light. Forced to play along, they were wined and dined, killed each officer they managed to get alone, and regrouped in the corridor. The army, once admitted, quickly overcame the Mehrat, although it was months before the strike force heard the last of the rude remarks.
• Truth: Randolph the Butcher makes meat pies from scratch on a daily basis, trying incessently to match the terrifying excellence of his mother's recipe.
• Prop: an Everedge Sword (one of only two in the game) and Tower Shield.

The Thief

• Description: A thin, dark woman, small and limber.
• Tale: Rolling a coin from knuckle to knuckle as she shares some wine with the party, she remarks that a thief can trust no one, not even someone like her old longtime partner Jacob, with whom she had once traveled to Ticor to steal a priceless gold coin from a Jaeger. Wearing her Shadowwring, she infiltrated the Jaeger's estate with Jacob, slipping through a ventilation shaft and letting Jacob crack the vault while she kept watch. But when they got back to the inn, Jacob claimed the vault had been empty. The two had been arguing recently over his attentions to a dancing girl, and she didn't believe him, so she parted ways with him after bashing him over the head and slicing him open from head to toe in search of the coin. However, sadly, Jacob had told the truth; she found nothing, and to this day she misses him and his honesty.
• Truth: Beatrice, a numismatist, drinks wine only during the festival, since she needs all her concentration when arranging her coin collections. After the festival, she offers the party ginger root tea instead. The murder never happened, but that doesn't mean she never thought about it.
• Prop: a Shadowring.

The Mage

• Description: A mage in a black robe sprinkled with stars.
• Tale: A wizard of great power and influence who controls the forces of time, he claims to have the original Carluda's Chain, forged by the mythical Carluda himself, who definitely existed because Gordistorini traveled back in time and met him. Traveling back to before the Waste was formed exhausted him, and he was brought to Carluda's house and became his apprentice in exchange for knowledge about the future world. He also witnessed the creation of the Waste, the result of a magical battle between Carluda and the evil Mage Morduse. At first Morduse won, but the time-traveler kept winking back in time to create diversions, and finally thought of linking the chain around Carluda's foot and taking half the damage from Morduse's next attack. Spared from dying, Carluda exploded Morduse all over the Waste, where nothing grows anymore because "pure evil makes terrible compost."
• Truth: Gordon, otherwise known as The Great Gordistorini, is a magician who performs card tricks at children's parties. His rates are reasonable, but his time travel is limited to 60 minutes per hour in the forward direction.
• Prop: Carluda's Chain.

Other Locals

• Walter Smit, a young, fair man, tells the story of his prized possessions, silver flasks of Halder's Brew and Malkere's Serum presented to him by Princess Aurora Valorian herself for his help in rescuing her from a band of eight or nine Black Montari who had ambushed her coach, killing a wolf that was about to attack her, and then escorting her safely through the woods to Antara. Upon returning after the Liar's Festival, the party can see a signed, watermarked Imperial commendation attesting to the truth of his tale. Walter never enters the Liar's Festival, because he's too shy.

• After getting a recommendation from Khorus Bale in Ganath, the party can find Lokath in front of the tavern.

• After successfully completing Lokath's mission, the party can meet Khaleth in the encampment west of town. Until the mission is complete, mercenaries guarding the encampment are willing to turn the party away by violence if necessary.

Trivia

• Before completing Lokath's mission, the mercenaries guarding Khaleth's encampment can be used to boost combat skills by fighting round after round, since defeated bodies disappear and there are always more mercenaries to fight.
• The "boot disks" sold by the apothecary are a callout to removable disks used to run operating systems on computers before and during the era in which the Betrayal games were made.