Spoiler: Isaera: Info on Venture Co.
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The Goblin "Nation", in as much as it can be considered such, is a Trade Coalition made up of most all extant cartels, organisations, unions, and trade fleets. The strange creatures have a society that revolves around innovation and prosperity, and The Venture Company (also trading under Venture Trading Company) is considered an unpleasant extreme of what many would call an unpleasant core philosophy. Venture Co's principle source of income is supplying raw resources harvested from unclaimed or poorly protected reaches of Kalimdor, and now also in the Southern continent of the Eastern Kingdoms since operations in Stranglethorn Vale began. Most notably, they began an exponential growth of operations when elements of the New Horde, under the leadership of the Warsong champion Grom Hellscream, began hiring the harvesting operations of the Venture Co's goblin shredders, and paying for them in the wealth plundered from the Kaldorei of Ashenvale. A reinvestment of this burst of income has established clearcutting and stripmining operations up and down the length of Kalimdor.

Venture Co's president is Mogul Razdunk; a ruthless goblinpreneur
who was unable to ascend to the position of Trade Prince, which would make him entitled to his own cartel. The Venture Company represents a kind of old-money-new-money clash within the Trade Coalition; the most recent chapter of which was the seizure of Ratchet from a Venture Co friendly Land Council by Gazlowe, and the Goin' Legit campaign to disassociate the town from what many consider to be disastrously short-sighted business practises.

Since they focus on the prosperity and not the innovation half of goblin psychology, they are likely to have little in common with the Tinker's Union, whose members' goals are atomized, and rarely megalomaniacal.


Spoiler: Jakk'ari: Info on Felix
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The lad seems distracted, which seems premature considering this is the first meeting of this kind your guild has had, and should be quite exciting to everyone involved.
Why, however, you can't say.


Spoiler: Emilia: Info on Felix
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You get the impression that Felix gets along with everyone in the group. The other four members here - along with a fifth you haven't met, Zachary - grabbed him tight and raised him from perdition. And he's quickly accepting of the other staffers, too. He seems a little shy of Seraphis' direct attention. But who wouldn't be?


"Moving target? Ah. Maybe. I'd be happy if I could consistently hit a stationary one, though I'd give it a shot." Felix concedes; eyes deflected, a little distracted.

Aleeana stares at him for a second to see if he's going to notice his own pun, but chooses not to excavate it when he makes no move. Her fel-green eyes flick back to the paladin. "I'm not sure shooting arrows at someone you don't intend to kill is a good training scheme. Unless you can do that... Thing." She makes a spherical gesticulation with her hand, probably referring to the infamous paladin capacity to become temporarilly impervious to harm.

Aglet jots down a reminder to himself to focus in study on the Burning Blade; Schlep offers a nod that is almost a bow for the neckless fellow, and capers immediately off down the corridor, out of the meeting, and into the hatch toward the down-down.

Seraphis fiddles with her spectacles while the group considers its options, waiting with a habit of patience learned over centuries, offering a faint smile when a lull strikes the conversation.

"I hear... casual interest in the Tinker's Union bid, though low urgency, and a request for more information - particularly a chance to see the manual in question." She transcribes this distillation as she makes it, on a page pinned to the cork board. "I will speak to Sputtervalve to see if we can arrange a viewing. I expect the Lady Mordis, and Master Gylphtoggle will be able to decode any goblin esotericism between them."

"Considering Crossroads' conflict with the Kolkar, it sounds like we have a broad uncertainty about the nature of the conflict and reticence to get involved in a lethal capacity without understanding it more clearly. I can't speak to why there would be an escalation in Kolkar aggression; but my suspicion would be it represents outward pressure from the dustbowl of Desolace, where the major tribes joust and drive one another. But the Barrens uses to be a conflict zone between the Razorfen quillboar, and the Kolkar. The Tauren might well have been wiped out by the unreasonably aggression of both, had not the Horde arrived to roll them up into its coalition when they did, and become the dominant presense on the region. But perhaps I have a bias against the centaur. They represent... a cultural dark spot, for my people. Perhaps more information on this specific clash is the right way."

"I'll find out." Aleeana volunteers, offering a loose shrug and adapting her existing plans in the manner Emilia had suggested. "Since I'm going that way anyway."

"As for the Cenarion Circle operation, I'm afraid I can offer little insight. I don't think the caves are mineral rich - they're connected to subterranean springs heated by thermal vents. The call them The Wailing Caverns; but only because of the sound of the releasing steam shooting through some of the fluted stone; not for any known... wailing occupant. But if the Circle has interest it them, it's likely because they possess some thing useful to the druids; whether it's a resource, or the caves themselves."

"So of the three tasks, only the Cenarion one has an implied urgency - lost druids being the factor. It's also the one that your support staff are most weakly positioned to illuminate for you. So if your party intended to seek out the Caverns yourselves directly, I'm sure Aleeana and I could have decomposed some of the mystery around the other two objectives to make them easier to roundly accept, or reject. Is that... roughly amenable?"

Seraphis suggests, pen hovering over a blank region of a pinned paper marked "conclusion". Her round-up is offered in a perfectly professional tone of suggestion without the presumption of authority. Marion and Mor'Lag certainly seem less enchanted with the Cenarion offer; but since Jakk'ari and Emilia are interested, and Isaera is atleast reticent to entrust that investigation to a singular scout, it seems to the night elf to be the best suggestable coarse that does not discard either of the others out of hand.

Spoiler: Jakk'ari's Side Scene - Soil and Toil
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The spirit roils and spins, unformed in reality but pulsing and alive in the realm to which it belongs. As you invoke each of your desired messages, the wind around you picks up in a flutter, as if the spirit is leaning closer to the real to understand your intention, and your nostrils are flooded with the scents of tsamma melon, lavender, and desert sunflower in sequence with the offering of their ground herbal expressions. It feels like a sort of confirmation process, as a mortal courier might turn around his note pad to show what he has written to ensure it matches the desired message.

"This, I do for you, shaman. I will find your chief, and your wife, and your children, and carry to them the things you have said."

There's a flutter of sound, a recycled blur of your own voice - "-the Tsamma to show prosperity, fortitude -/- party I travel with remind me of our children sometimes -/- remind them that they bring a smile to me even in the darkest times", demonstrating the successful capture of the spoken messages, collapsed mystically into the scents of the herbal fragments; and then with a rush of air, the spirit spirals upwards, dragging the scents, and dust from the cliff garden with it, and is gone. Perhaps, if the spirits are kind, the wind will turn back after it reaches Tanaris, and bring you something in return.


Spoiler: Emilia's Side Scene - Time Off
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Amber doesn't jerk her hand away, when you capture it for her gentle affections; bright eyes glancing up - and inevitably, up and down - at you as you make your delicate appeal. The palm turns briefly to cup the frame of Emilia's jaw, but then slips free from its capture with a smoothness plainly meant not to be felt as too severe a rejection.

"I bet you say that to everyone who stabs you."

It's funny, but it's funny offered as a consolation in the looming shadow of retreat; and so maybe not that funny. She stands - shorter than you by about five inches, as you knew during the fight but lost track of in the horizontal hours - and peels away from you,
turning to quickly pace the small room looking around for anything she left behind.

"But... seriously. I don't normally do this kind of thing. So I think I'm just gonna..." Another undeniably cute, but apologetic smile.
"But I had fun. More this time, than last time I mean. So..."

With her boots clutched to her side in one hand, socks dangling out of their cuffs, and her purse gripped in three fingers of the other, she begins negotiating a fully revolution of the door handle with thumb and forefinger alone.

"...So maybe coffee, next time. I have to go, but, it's a small town, right? We'll bump into each other again." Before she can cringe into a black hole at that particular choice of final words, the door clicks open, and she pads out on the balls of her feet, bumping the door with her hip, mouthing 'thanks' as it closes, and cuts her from view.

In the lonely moments after, as you're gathering your own things, you find something that doesn't belong to you - a strange, green glass lens on an adjustable leather strap, perhaps designed to be worn over an eye. Your mysterious paramour has left something behind after all - and whatever it is, it might be worth enough for her to return to your orbit sooner than later.

Spoiler: Check Results
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You're unaware of any group that uses the black horse head as a marking icon. You'd guess some kind of cavalier or outrider, but fit as Amber was, she doesn't strike you as a woman who does combat on horseback. Something about it is nagging you, however; like it reminds you of something you can't quite bring to the viewing space in your forebrain.

Your best instinct tells you that she's not recoiling from you in disgust - which is good, because she's seen you at your most intoxicated and offensive - but just embarassment for having woken up in a situation like this. Not everyone is a functioning alcoholic, after all; and for some, waking up with blurry visions of a previous night's shenanigans is unsettling. But like she said - it's a small town. It's not like she'd just skip town without saying goodbye, right?

Right?