Senate Race Hopeful Missing 12 Days With Dragon-Pox Flu

The Senate race in the Lone Star Marches went twelve days without one of its two candidates this month, and the Red Oliphants noticed before the candidate's own household did. Jaymes Talaricorn, the Blue Donkey nominee, left the trail with the flu (dragon-pox, as the clerics call it) and disclosed it by scrying-glass on the thirtieth, to a business council he had meant to address in person.

Marshal Kenrick Paxtomb, his Red Oliphant opponent, responded in the traditional manner. At a rally in the old mission city he led the crowd in asking where the gentleman from the Blue Donkeys had gone. The crowd, to its credit, kept to the script. The Red Oliphants have had a rough autumn, and a missing opponent is the first thing to go their way in weeks.

High Lord Donwald of the Golden Towers then took to the Truthscroll to declare Talaricorn "MISSING IN ACTION" and to demand an immediate debate. At a separate rally, Donwald told the crowd he had not known Paxtomb was in attendance and called him a pain in the posterior. I record this under Promises Made: the High Lord has promised to be helpful to his candidate. Promises Kept: none yet.

Talaricorn's household replied that the nominee was recovering and would return to the trail within days. They added that it had been 83 days since he first challenged Paxtomb to a debate, and that the ball was in the Marshal's court. A debate invitation unanswered for eighty-three days is a longer silence than any the Chamber has ever recorded, and I have sat through the budget hearings.

A courtier who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to be awake told me the missing days were not entirely spent in bed. A private fundraiser in the great eastern port, with a famous actor on the guest list, was said to have taken place two days before the illness was announced. Nobody has produced a quorum of witnesses. The courtier added that this is how the realm keeps its flu.

Meanwhile the gold has not taken sick days. The Red Oliphants and their allies have booked some 190 million gp of advertisements in the Marches between harvest and winter, against 52 million for the Blue Donkeys. One major poll still puts Talaricorn six paces ahead. Another calls it a dead heat at 43 to 42. Both cannot be right, and the gentleman from the polling guild declined to say which is wrong.

The Blue Donkeys have meanwhile announced a town hall west of Dullas, to which the Marshal was invited. Early voting opens within days. The candidate is said to be feeling much better. The motion to ask him how he feels carried. Nobody checked.

— O.V., from the gallery