Fellow monks, what do you suggest when your Perl app requires an embedded scripting language?

Well, Perl of course! And it's easy, all you need is an eval. ;-).

But you don't seem to need a full blown programming language. Neither Perl, nor Lua. I'm a bit at a loss, you toss templating systems aside, because you want a simpler syntax -- and then end up looking for a Perl equivalent of embedding Lua.

Tell me again, why aren't you opting for a templating language?