You do not need sex to survive.

I tell you this though I am Calistria's priest, and I tell you so because it's true.  You do not need sex to survive!  Absolutely no amount of this particular deprivation will kill a man.  Hunger kills, and winter, and thirst, and loss of blood, and then the mortal so tormented is released into his eternity!  Not so with the pleasures of the flesh.  These delights are unnecessary, and many would tell you: then they can go hang.  Suicide, you'll hear, is Evil, but that safest and softest self-torture, celibacy?  It has never damned one soul, except by that soul adding some other sin in its pain and misery.

Calistria says: that is not all that matters, in this world.

Can you really live, lonely, skin crawling with the sensation that it's unfit for contact with another person?  Maybe you can.  Maybe you are that specimen who can do more than merely breathe in and breathe out, this way.  Have pity, though, and do not imagine that because you are blessed with this invincible chastity it is all a matter of personal virtue.  A halfling eats less than a man.  A laborer sleeps less than a wizard.  It is not down to their personal admirability.  Some of us must seek comfort in others' arms.

Thoughtful people have wondered: why is the phrase Calistrian whore?  Are whores known for their own, personal lust?  Friends, are actors known for their own, personal poetry?  No, you put the words in their mouths and they'll sing them back to you for a penny.  The whore has a job.  She did not dream, as a little girl, of turning twelve tricks a Toilday; whether she even prefers it to cleaning houses or stitching jackets has little effect on her prospects.  She is there for the customer's lusts.  The greengrocer for your empty belly, and the whore for other aches and pains.

But Calistria says: watch out.

One doesn't say Calistrian whore because whores are lusty.  One says it because the brothel is where lust meets revenge.  What other recourse does a whore have?  Pick a noble's pocket and he'll have you dragged through the streets behind his horse.  Snatch the cooling pie off the goodwife's windowsill and she'll call the Watch on you.  Take a liberty with any unsullied daughter who calls your upstanding neighbor 'Papa', and perhaps Papa and all his sons will come running.  These regular and predictable consequences for these thefts and these encroachments go by the name of 'justice'.  And justice does not come to the defense of the whore!

What does?  What lets her earn enough coin to buy bread?  What lets her afford to feed your bastards and send the sheets next door for cleaning and keep the fire stoked and her merchandise wrapped in humble woolens?  The goodness of the gentleman's heart?  If it were that, Cheliax's bordellos would all be empty save for the ghosts by now.  Why does he cross her palm with silver, why does he ration the bruises, when the law would laugh her out of its offices if she bade it force him to pay, bade it put him under the lash for her pain?
Revenge.

Delivered on?  Seldom.  The whore blows a kiss to the wasp-nest and whispers her prayers, but how common is a miracle, really?  And you do not hear too many stories about abused whores slipping into well-to-do bedchambers or aboard misbegotten ships to take a knife to a brutal man.    Revenge is frightening, for most people, to undertake.  It is dangerous.  It is keeping every whore in Cheliax alive.  The meekest and mildest lady of the evening who could never bring herself to do anything but suffer is protected by her vicious harlot sisters, for who can be sure of telling them apart?  Calistria waits in both shadows, and if one's an illusion, you can never be certain which.  The killed are avenged by the living, who think: how dare he, and Calistria blows on the spark in their hearts.

Gentlemen!  I feel your suffering, when you have been months at sea without the sight of a pretty smile.  That is a true pain, as true and more prolonged than ever hunger pangs can be.  I know your passion when you collect your pay at the end of the week and only want to fall into a mattress with a lovely stranger who will listen to your tales and stroke your hair and press your face into her bosom.  That is a sincere passion, as deep and beautiful as the yearning for sunlight through the storm, music in the noise.  The ladies are there for just this reason, and they are at home to you!  It's a living!

But be gentle, gentlemen, and soft-spoken.  Pay on time and in full.  With your whore, or your mistress, or your affianced, or your wife - leave her neither stinging nor bereft.

Calistria's hiding her shadow.

Watch out.