Dry Pilgrimage (novel)

Dry Pilgrimage
Main character(s):	Bernice Summerfield
Main enemy:	The Khulyan, Czarita Violaine
Main setting:	Dellah, 2595
Key crew
Publisher:	Virgin Books
Writers:	Paul Leonard and Nick Walters
Cover by:	John Sullivan
Release details
Release number:	74
Release date:	3 May 1998
Format:	Paperback Book, 292 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-426-20525-1
Virgin New Adventures
← Previous	The Medusa Effect
Next →	The Sword of Forever

Dry Pilgrimage was the thirteenth Virgin New Adventures novel. Featuring Bernice Summerfield, this was the first novel to be entirely set on the planet Dellah.

Publisher's summary

"I am going to make you immortal."

Bored with her job, bored with being perpetually skint, Bernice Summerfield leaps at the chance of a free holiday arranged by her new friend Maeve Ruthven, St Oscar's Professor of Comparative Religion.

But all is not what it seems.

Benny's holiday rapidly goes from bad to worse to downright dangerous. For a start, the "luxury cruise" is a religious pilgrimage, and alcohol is forbidden to those on board. Then she is attacked, badly injured and confined to a wheelchair.

And that's before the murder.

Benny finds herself caught in a web of intrigue — not knowing who on board can be trusted or which way to turn. And with the future of more than one world depending on her actions, she must decide who to believe, expose the hidden killer and prevent a ruthless grab for power.

Chapter titles

1. Out to Get You
2. Living Too Late
3. Trouble With the Plumbing
4. New Face in Hell
5. I Need Proof Before Belief
6. Between a Man and a Woman
7. Waking Up in the Sun
8. Secrets and Lies
9. To Hide in Death Awhile
10. A Conversation
11. Suddenly My Feet Are Feet of Mud, It All Goes Slo-Mo
12. Not Only Love Can Break Your Heart
13. The Second Born is Dead
14. Audience With the Mind
15. Rage Against the Machine
16. Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime
17. War Stories
18. When You Tire of One Side the Other Serves You Best
19. Violaine
20. A War is Never Over, a Soldier Never Dies
21. Unholy Transference
22. Who Had Faith, Who Betrayed?
23. Bottom of the Well
24. The Great Escape
25. True Faith
26. Life's Hard and Then You Don't Die
27. At the Edge of the Sea
28. I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Bernice Summerfield
• Vitor Pluse
• Jane Waspo
• Maeve Ruthven
• Theo Tamlyn
• Karl Donimo
• Vilbian
• Brion Arvaile
• Captain Dieter Fontana
• Professor Hugh Southernay
• Martine Ingersköld
• Professor Hamilton Smith

Worldbuilding

Aquatic vessels

• Captain Dieter Fontana is captain of the Lady of Lorelei.

Fashion and clothing

• Bernice wears a purple velvet bikini, with gold tassels on the nipples and a big star on the crotch.

Foods and beverages

• Benny, in a desperate search for alcohol, drinks the potent (eye watering) Brettellian Potato Spirit.

Individuals

• Maeve Ruthven gets killed, has her mind put inside a Saraani, then inside a bioconstruct, goes on a rampage, recovers and then dies.
• Maeve Ruthven is a professor and member of St Oscar's Comparative Religion department.
• Martine Ingersköld is a climatologist.
• Professor Hamilton Smith specialises in alien-human interaction.

Planets

• The planet Visphok is an Earth colony that was settled by Russians and other Slavic peoples.

Religion

• Marunianism was a religion which believed all science is evil, but is now just against: genetics, vivisection and for no reason, experimentation. Its roots are in Protestantism.

Species

• The Oblongooni have thirteen genders.

Cover Gallery

• 

  Cover

• 

  Textless Cover

• 

  Sketch

Notes

to be added

Continuity

• Theo Tamlyn has studied Grel, (PROSE: Oh No It Isn't!, et al.) Canopusi, (PROSE: Ghost Devices) and Chelonians. (PROSE: The Highest Science, et al.)
• Hamilton Smith proposes theories on: Chelonians, (PROSE: The Highest Science, et al.) Krakenites, (PROSE: Dreamstone Moon) Valethske, (PROSE: Superior Beings) Xarax, (PROSE: Dancing the Code) Tzun, (PROSE: First Frontier) and Tractites. (PROSE: Genocide)
• Bernice has several bottles of Chateau Yquatine. (PROSE: The Fall of Yquatine)
• Hamilton Smith is later mentioned in PROSE: The Fall of Yquatine, Superior Beings, and Mentioning the War.

External links

• Dry Pilgrimage at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Dry Pilgrimage at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: Dry Pilgrimage