Chapter Five
“Stayout, as the name implies, is wary of outsiders. As in Barleyfields, the locals are primarily farmers of barley, with some secondary crops and supplementary animal husbandry.
The preference is for barley infected with the ergot fungus; the locals harvest it and distill it into a powerful hallucinogen. This may only be legally consumed by residents of the town, but there is an illegal trade in ergot dust which extends all the way down to Rivertown.
Paradoxically, the town is also noted for its religious conservatism. As in The Town, electricity is rare, usually pirated, and modern plumbing is unknown.”
(Excerpt from The Tourist’s Guide to the Blue Smoke Mountains.)
It was around sunset when they reached Stayout. From a distance, it looked a little like Barleyfields—a c
