Has anyone else noticed that the fare has quietly gone up? It was one obol. One. A single small coin placed under the tongue, the same price it has been since before anyone here was born.
I watched a farmer get turned away last week because his family buried him with what they could afford, which was a copper piece of the wrong denomination. Charon did not even look at it properly. He gestured at the bank and the man sat down and that, apparently, is that for the next hundred years.
There is no posted rate. There is no notice of change. There is one boat, one operator, and an infinite queue of customers who cannot leave. I am not an economist but I believe this arrangement has a name.
Locked:Ferry prices have gotten insane
5 posts
The fare has not changed. What has changed is that fewer of the living bother with the burial rites properly, so more people arrive underfunded and the refusals are simply more visible than they used to be.
I am not defending him. I have crossed with him more times than I can count and he has never once said anything to me that was not an instruction or a complaint. But blaming the ferryman for the state of funerary practice is like blaming the door for the house.
I am not defending him. I have crossed with him more times than I can count and he has never once said anything to me that was not an instruction or a complaint. But blaming the ferryman for the state of funerary practice is like blaming the door for the house.
Speaking as someone who has dealt with a great many boatmen in a great many ports: the price is never the problem. The monopoly is the problem.
One operator, one hull, one route, and a clientele that is by definition unable to walk away or take their business elsewhere. If a mortal port ran like this the merchants would have burned it down within a season. Down here everyone just accepts it, because what is the alternative — swim?
Someone did try to swim, by the way. I heard about it from a shade near the asphodel. I did not get the ending of the story and I have chosen not to pursue it.
One operator, one hull, one route, and a clientele that is by definition unable to walk away or take their business elsewhere. If a mortal port ran like this the merchants would have burned it down within a season. Down here everyone just accepts it, because what is the alternative — swim?
Someone did try to swim, by the way. I heard about it from a shade near the asphodel. I did not get the ending of the story and I have chosen not to pursue it.
Heracles walked past him without paying and Charon ferried him anyway, then got punished for it by his own management. So we know the rules bend. They just only bend for people who can break the boat.
That is the actual policy here and it is the same policy as everywhere else: the fare applies to whoever cannot do anything about it.
That is the actual policy here and it is the same policy as everywhere else: the fare applies to whoever cannot do anything about it.
I do not post. I have been told about this thread by three separate passengers and I am going to answer once and then I am going back to work, because the queue does not pause while I am here.
The fare is one obol. It has been one obol since the first burial. I have never raised it and I have never taken more than it. What you are calling a price increase is the living becoming careless with their dead.
On the man you watched me turn away: he was buried by people who chose the cheaper coin. That was a decision made on the surface, by the warm, in daylight, with time to think about it. I did not make it. I only enforce it, and I enforce it the same way for a farmer as for a king, which is more than can be said for anyone in this thread's other examples.
On the monopoly. Yes. There is one boat because there is one river and one of me. I did not apply for this. I was here when the arrangement was made and I was not consulted about the terms. Odysseus, you compared me to a merchant. Show me the merchant who has worked every hour of every day since the world was young and never once been allowed to close.
On Heracles. He put his hands on me and I ferried him because the alternative was losing the boat, and I was chained for a year for it. That is the whole of the story you were all so pleased with. The rules did not bend for him. I broke, and then I was punished for breaking, and then I came back to the oar.
The coin is not a fee. It is proof that somebody up there stopped, and stood over you, and did the last small thing for you that you could no longer do for yourself. That is all I ever check for. Everything else is between you and the judges.
Thread is closed. Bring the coin.
The fare is one obol. It has been one obol since the first burial. I have never raised it and I have never taken more than it. What you are calling a price increase is the living becoming careless with their dead.
On the man you watched me turn away: he was buried by people who chose the cheaper coin. That was a decision made on the surface, by the warm, in daylight, with time to think about it. I did not make it. I only enforce it, and I enforce it the same way for a farmer as for a king, which is more than can be said for anyone in this thread's other examples.
On the monopoly. Yes. There is one boat because there is one river and one of me. I did not apply for this. I was here when the arrangement was made and I was not consulted about the terms. Odysseus, you compared me to a merchant. Show me the merchant who has worked every hour of every day since the world was young and never once been allowed to close.
On Heracles. He put his hands on me and I ferried him because the alternative was losing the boat, and I was chained for a year for it. That is the whole of the story you were all so pleased with. The rules did not bend for him. I broke, and then I was punished for breaking, and then I came back to the oar.
The coin is not a fee. It is proof that somebody up there stopped, and stood over you, and did the last small thing for you that you could no longer do for yourself. That is all I ever check for. Everything else is between you and the judges.
Thread is closed. Bring the coin.