3.12 THE POSTAL SYSTEM

(See also: HELP EDITOR)

** Warning: sending a letter to any of your own alternate characters is NOT PERMITTED and considered seconds abuse (HELP SECONDS). Do NOT mail anything,even a blank letter, to one of your alternate characters! **

Each city has a post office, often located near the city bank. There is also a general post office located in Delos. The basic idea is to first pay for and get a blank letter (REQUEST LETTER), then write in it (WRITE LETTER), and then send it (MAIL LETTER TO <someone>).

The postal system can only be used to mail things to other adventurers. To send a letter to a denizen (such as Rurin or Tyrandiel), there is a messenger located 
on the Delosian Bridge who can deliver letters to most denizens.

Letters can also be used to send up to five items to another person. If you need to send more than this, at any post office you can REQUEST [SMALL|LARGE] PARCEL which can hold either ten or twenty items respectively. Unlike letters, these parcels can not be written upon.

Syntax:

REQUEST LETTER
 Request a letter from the postal staff. Letters are magical and can hold 
 amazingly large things. They cost 100 gold each, and will decay within a 
 handful of Achaean months. If you want to include items, just PUT <item> IN 
 LETTER before you mail it. You can only request a letter while at a post 
 office, though there are stationery stores in Sapience where you can buy 
 decorative letters, usually for a higher price.

REQUEST [SMALL|LARGE] PARCEL
 Request a small or large parcel for sending items to people. Small parcels
 cost 200 gold and hold 10 items, while large parcels hold 20 and cost 400 gold.
 If you don't specify a size, small is purchased by default.

WRITE LETTER
 Compose a letter. (See HELP EDITOR for composing commands.) You can write in 
 a letter from anywhere.

MAIL <LETTER|PARCEL> TO <whom>
 Address and mail a letter or parcel to someone. You must be at a post office to 
 do this.

READ LETTER
 Read whatever may be written on a letter. You can do this from anywhere, 
 provided the letter is in your inventory or in your room.

CHAR LETTER
 Provided you have a source of fire with you, such as a tinderbox, you can 
 partially char a letter, which will cause bits and pieces of it to become
 unreadable. This can be done multiple times, making the letter less 
 readable each time. You can char a letter from anywhere.

LETTERLIST
 List the letters in your inventory (this is part of the LISTS ability in 
 the Vision skill).


Pasting Letters
----------------
It is possible to PASTE a letter into a journal or manuscript which can
permanently preserve letters into a great form to preserve for posterity in a
library. 

The syntax for doing this is:

PASTE <LETTER> INTO <JOURNAL/MANUSCRIPT> [PAGE <NUMBER>]

What are the catches/benefits to doing this?

- The pasted letter is destroyed in the process and cannot be recovered.
  Any contents will be left in your inventory.

- Once you have pasted a letter onto a page, you can no longer edit that
  page.

- Regardless of which language the journal has been written in, the page
  that the letter was pasted on will now be in the same language that the
  letter was in.

- If a letter is ENCIPHERed, the page in the journal will be forever
  ENCIPHERed, even if the journal itself isn't ENCIPHERed.


(See also: HELP EDITOR)