Spire: Eidolon Sky IC

[n0ble]

Fear and Loathing in New Heaven

“I should very much like to be killed by them-by him-so that mine death might be beautiful. Captured forever in a tableau. Frozen in time as legend. As ice. To shed this corporealness and become not a thing wrought not of flesh, but of history! By the Bright Four how I ache…how I ache….to be killed by him. ”
“I agree. But only if he kills me first.”
- Overheard conversation between Aelfir socialites on the subject of the Swan, drunkenly slumming it at the Sober Saint in the North Docks

Light. Moonlight and the cackle of the corvids greeted him as he woke. Like old friends. And, less so, the wind, moaning through the fenestrations of his window. Come to join in chorus with the cawing of the birds and the snapping of cloth outside. Hunger rumbled in his belly and this was all the sound he needed to rise from bed. He much preferred quiet, and in this his current demesne was a misnomer. Packed close with the ravens and crow and the strange susurrus of wind come inside at the end of its journey, the tower he occupied had not been silent for a long time. The Magister blinked slowly, grimaced at the noise, and rose to sitting from where he’d last slept.

The area of the tower that passed for his bedroom-the middle tier of three if one discounted the top- was bereft of finery. A simple table carved whole from wood occupied the centre of the floor. Its frame was marred with carvings, flecked with chips on a leg here, a corner there. Five chairs, all cut from the same wood as their charge, guarded the table. A simple dresser with practical tools stood sentinel behind it. Beyond that: his personal affects mounted on nails he’d hammered into the black stone of the tower with the flat of his axe. The magister’s eyes wandered with thought, tracking across his cloak. To is boots. To the pale white skull of a mask that he’d whittled into a semblance of his own severe visage. To where the parakelsis axe was stowed underneath the table. To the commoner’s spider silk rug below the table. The one that occluded the trap door to the basement tier of the tower. His tower. The Magister’s stomach rumbled again, and this time it was enough to galvanize Shinzrae into standing, trying and failing to ignore the pained click in his spine as he straightened out his back. The birds and their missives would have to wait a moment longer. He was hungry.

He’d always been spindly of frame, even before his initiation. Before Deralictus. And seeing that contemptible sun for the first time. Draped across the sticks that passed for his limbs, the greatcloak’s sleeves looked overlarge. Perhaps one size too big for such a thin drow. And this was fine. It made the axe easier to conceal. Alone-for now-Shinzrae left his mask on the nail. Despite the cawing of the ravens, he did not want for privacy. The table was heavy: he’d been told by the Magister who come before him that it had taken two men to carry it up the entrance. With strength at odds to his proportions the Magister lifted one end of the table with his right hand. Tugged the rug out from under the table with his left to reveal the cellar door underneath. Slowly opened the trapdoor. And descended downwards.

The stairway winded downwards in a spiral, though it was not particularly deep. Moving with the grace of a mantis, Shinzrae hobbled as he walked, taking the stairs one at time. Pain shot through his hip as he did. Another reminder of Nujab to go along with the click in his spine. Spite for the pain carried him downward farther still. Past the first of the bodies.

They were-had been-a Charnelite. One of the blood-hunters on the opposite side of a war that most of him did not want any part in. Foreign Nujabian faith or otherwise. Mushrooms had sprouted from the Charnelites form. He’d not murdered them. Merely found their corpse after a conflict he was cleaning up. It had yielded much in the way of paperwork. Mushrooms bloomed from the corpse, all red and turgid with life, but small for how young the fungi were in their life cycle. The larger ones were farther down. It was not lost on the Mortician that it was hunger that guided him there. Past the Charnelite. A human corpse. Another human corpse. A dead gutter kin with fish fins along their arms to the elbow and the popliteal joints of their knees. A drow, not so much staked to the walls of the spiraling stairs as they were to floor at the spiral’s base. A massive red crest of mushroom had sprouted from their midsection, tearing the abdominal muscles and revealing smaller mushrooms blossoming from the yawning wound. Another had grown perpendicular across the corpse’s eye, swelling until it was large enough to cover the body’s entire face but for the eyes opposite. Advanced in their growth as the mushrooms were, a thin film of pink mycelium had begun to thread its way across the stone floor where the body lay. The Mortician sighed away the remaining pain in his hip. Then the axe slid from his sleeve, and Shinzrae hacked his meal of mushrooms from the corpse. He made sure to leave some of the reddened fungi behind in the wound. So that it could regrow. Shinzrae despised waste.

Laughter cut through the wind as he reached the trapdoor. Not the haughty clacking of the corvids in their rookery on the tower’s second level, nor the childish whooping of the Charnelites and their hyenas. Cruel, wet laughter that belonged to a group. He dragged the table back into place over the spider silk carpet. Set the mushrooms in a plain wooden bowl from the cabinet, clearly made from the same wood as the table. Shinzrae moved towards the barred window, moonlight casting his shadow large against the table. The Magister hazarded a glance outside, but not before dawning his mask with the cloak over it. Looking outside, it was as he’d thought.

Dreck addicts.

The tower of silence he had occupied for the past month had been built so that the window afforded him a slightly elevated view of the street below. Let him see the three addicts crowded around a something he couldn’t quite make out. What he could make out was the lead addicts razor flashing white in the light of Our Glorious Lady, marred with flecks of blood. Each flourishing strike at whatever occupied the crowd’s epicenter elicited more wet laughter from the other two addicts, along with the odd uncoordinated kick into the middle of their huddle. Pained yelping sounded out across the street with another cut of the razor, bouncing from the tower opposite Shinzrae’s. Echoing out to the jagged skyline of New Heaven. He mouthed a silent “F*ckers.” as the source of the yelping revealed itself: a hyena pup with a cut across each nascent spot, each wound weeping blood. Supposed religious prejudices or no, Shinzrae did not like waste, of which senseless killings were a kind. He considered doing something about it and in the time it took the Magister to deliberate with himself, Charnel gave answer.

Loud, inane cackling overwhelmed the dreck addicts’ laughter, giving them pause in their cruelty as they searched for the source. Something new to torment and hurt and maim with their cheap instruments of pain. Their gaze was answered with the twang of a bowstring as a crossbow bolt the size of his axe haft skewered the lead junky through their kneecap. He fell, burbling out more laughter as the other two addicts pointed, laughed and kicked at him and the hyena pup. One of them stooped low to grab at the fallen addicts razor, only to find their arm clamped in the embrace of a hyena’s jaws. A much, much larger hyena. A Charnelite hyena, clearly female for her size. A figure swathed in hyena skins swept forward from the shadows, cackling like a raven all the while as they swung their cleaver into the last dreck addict’s neck with a meaty thwack. The addict coughed up a laugh as life spurted from his artery with a quiet splish splish splish that was at odds with the laughter-screams of her hyena-savaged friend. Satisfied, and now definitely not wanting to get involved, Shinzrae turned to the ladder that led to his rookery. But not before cutting a few thin strips of mushroom from the largest of the fungi he’d taken up. Anything to make the corvids more agreeable in the wake of the slaughter below. He took a quill and parchments from the dresser as well. Every functionary and bureaucrat knew that letters did not write themselves.

The climb upwards was harder, and not just for what he had witnessed. Dreck addicts and the violence they brought were becoming commonplace. They were much in the same as the pain in his hip bones, grinding out a losing battle against gnoll shrapnel. Chipping away at the Spire, one huff at a time. Still, at least the addicts brought business, of a sort. Not that they had any personal money-that had all gone to the dreck vials they’d snorted from. Snorted they’re whole lives away to. But even if Shinzrae found the deaths they all inevitably received distasteful in their wasted potential, even he had to admit it was good for both sect’s business. Ghosts, even junkie ones, needed banishing, a service the Morticians were only to happy to provide. For a fee, of course. And the Hyenas got fatter and fatter.

The first thing to greet him on entering the rookery-besides the omnipresent cawing of the crows-was the smell of birdsh!t. The duties of a double life had meant that some things had slipped through the cracks. Shinzrae’s thin frame was proof enough of that on its own, never mind the filth that he had allowed to accumulate beneath the crow’s cages-hung from black spikes much as everything else in the tower was. He hated the smell almost as much as he hated waste. The Mortician grumbled out a laugh at the confluence of words, then he thought of the meal waiting for him below and his stomach loosed another involuntary rumble. Fertilizer, perhaps. For the mushrooms. A wide window, spider-webbed with cracks and fissures along its left side, occupied the right side of the circular tier. It was stilled latched closed. Just as the Mortician had left it. A rope trailed upwards to the apogee of the tower: the roof, where the funerary dead were staked to the heights of the tower. Charnelite laughter carried up from the street below, punctuated with the odd crunch of bone as the hyenas glutted themselves. He paused to hold his breath, failed and let out an annoyed gasp at the stink before hauling himself up the last rung and fully into the rookery

Calling it a rookery might have been a bit too generous given the number of crows present, but what the birds lacked in numbers they made up for in volume. The cages were stacked in twos, a pair of each on either side of the window with a third-a fifth raven-just below the window. Their occupants were noisome, chattering inhuman words. Some Magisters, he had heard, used different crows for different cell-members. Shinzrae did not indulge in such aesthetic choices. And even if he did, the crows were as much inherited from the previous Magister as the tower was. Each of the birds was of the same species of corvid, all black of feather and possessed of the same pointed beak their cawing tumbled from. Shinzrae sighed as he approached the cages to the left, cursing his lack of foresight at writing what needed to be written at the table.

He braced the first of the parchments against the wall of the tower, avoiding the window and moonlight much as he could. The stink of crow**** and lack of light did not make for a conductive writing environment. But he was a Mortician, the quill as much a part of him as the axe in his sleeve was. Each missive was the same, composed of tight, economical script that possessed neither flourish nor spelling errors. Lack of damnable light be damned. He wrote:

Tonight in New Heaven, a man has died
Come forth for the pecking
And hoist your flag high

Missives done, he turned to the corvids. With one hand he held a strip of mushroom-flesh out for the first crow to nibble and peck at. It served as an adequate distraction while he hitched the missive to the bird’s leg. He repeated the same motions with the other four birds, with only one of them hungry enough to try for a peck at his fingers. Shinzrae loosed a terse, disapproving cluck at the raven and tapped the ornery corvid on the head to settle it somewhat before he resumed tying. The bird only got half a mushroom piece for its effort, and as he went to the window Shinzrae swore that it was looking at the other crows in the murder with jealousy. Not for him, the wisdom of corvids. Better suited to the Charnelite below. The Mortician ate the half of the nub of mushroom he had left and his stomach growled out for more.

He silently unlatched the window, careful to time it with another peal of laughter from hyena and Charnelite beneath. Quickly loosed and the shooed the crows out of the tower, off to those they were meant to find with their messages. From where the window was, if Shinzrae craned his neck until his spine clicked again, he could just barely make out the skyline of New Heaven. The vast expanse of night was awash in pale moonlight, dotted with small pinpricks of stars. Small black specks-megacorvids from other towers-drifted in and out from structures, skirting around various flags which snapped and cavorted in the wind, each of them scrawled with strange pleas or offers to the various wind gods that called Spire’s heights home. Occasionally, one of the specks would land, presumably peck at a body hanging from a tower, then was harried back to the sky by the more territorial of it’s brethren. Shinzrae could even make out the white wings of an albino megacorvid, seeming larger than others for how white it was.

From a distance, the bird looked like a swan.

The thought was cause for enough hazard that Shinzrae grumbled and quietly closed the window, wincing as the pain in his hip flared in time with his anxiety. He grumbled his way down the ladder, limping with a ginger gait to the dresser, finally conceding to the pain in his hip and back. From the topmost drawer he removed: a boning knife, a small parcel wrapped in butchers paper and twine, several small pouches that smelled of spices, a half a dozen candles and a single match. From the middle he removed a black iron bowl with a small tripod underneath it. From the lowest he retrieved a clay jug of water and five wooden bowls, each of the latter with their own spoon. Setting everything on top of the table, Shinzrae sliced through the twin and butchers paper to reveal a length of goat’s leg, already skinned. It was disturbingly human in proportion to Shinzrae’s sensibilities. And his sensibilities would know. He went to school in Deralictus. Next he lit the candles, set three of them under the bowl while he cracked the top of the jug against the table. He poured the soup stock into the bowl, then began to cube the goat meat and mushroom as the stock heated. It was no bouyon kabrit. He was no Grangou. He had gone to school in Deralictus. But that just meant an appreciation for the little things.

Shinzrae sprinkled the first of the spices into his stew, then started in on tunelessly humming an old marching song he’d picked up in Nujab as he chopped, waiting for the rest of the cell to arrive. The skull-mask leered out, hugging his skin tight like a second face.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

Hey everyone, welcome to the game! Feel free to describe where the crow with your invitation goes/shows up/arrives and feel free to write about how you get to the tower as well!

[Bunny Commando]

Elise Monstresson

---------------

Thunk, thunk, thunk...

The sound of poor Kasper's head knocking on the wall of her small clinic finally managed to wake her up, even though she definitely needed more sleep - so much that she wondered if she shouldn't just leave her assistant bash his head, so that she could finally have a good day's sleep; self-recrimination hit immediately after, viciously snatching her from the drowsiness and so she tiredly got up and unlocked the small room where poor Kasper was fighting his uphill battle against the new drug that had recently flooded the streets of the Spire.
She tried to comfort him, cradling his head and whispering soothing words even though she knew it was not enough; and so she again administered the only analgesic she had at hand to ease Kasper's pain and again, she knew it was not enough. Still, for the moment, it gave Kasper peace enough to sleep and she remained at his bedside, gently stroking his head and wondering why Kasper of all people would become an addict; and if even him, who should've known better, could become a victim of dreck, what hope had the other people of Perch? What hope had the children, the weakest among a defeated people?
Just yesterday two children tried to fly away only to plummet towards the cruel ground, dreck fueling their fantasies. And she knew all too well that more children would die and she felt so powerless watching the future of the drow being poisoned by that cursed drug. These dark thoughts would keep her company for the whole day, but again a knock catched her attention: this time it was a softer and discreet sound and so she went to find the source of it.

A small bird was pecking at one of the clinic's window, demanding to be let in; and so she did, well aware that this bird was a messenger. She took the small piece of parchment and quickly read its content before burning it at a candle, since caution was never enough when the Ministry was involved. That done, she prepared herself for the long ascent to New Heaven: comfortable clothes that would not impede her movements (trousers, a shirt and a jacket - all in various shades of grey and black) and an ample cape to protect her from the Sun, even though she hoped to avoid traveling under its burning gaze; most importantly, a bag with the tools of her trade so that she could just tell she was visiting a patient to any guard that might become too curious (and also concealed her weapons, a habit she took during her Durance). Now ready, she left the clinic to find a passage on one of those shaky elevators that connected Perch to the rest of the Spire; she would usually be a bit scared, but this time the message she had received left no room in her mind for more primal fears.

She kept wondering why the Magister had summoned her (and probably the others, too) while the elevator brought her up, until the crew that manned it told her she had reached the end of the line. An open hatch spacious enough to let pass a single drow was a short jump away - it looked easy, but the people of Perch were used to scrape off the remains of those who couldn't leap far enough. She strengthened the grip on her bag and hopped towards the hatch, grabbing whatever she could to steady herself. Now back inside the Spire, she knew she was close to New Heaven but "close" did not certainly mean "easy" or "safe": after all, the upper Spire was the domain of the hated Aelfir. But her years of servitude to the Aelfir made her skilled in moving unnoticed even when in plain sight, to look so unimportant that no one would waste any time bothering her and so up she went, through stairs and dark corridors until she finally managed to reach New Heaven.

And now, finally in front of the Tower where the Magister made his nest, she let herself hope: that she could shed the feeling of powerlessness and help her people win back their future.

[Grim ranger]

Ranagos Torana

The worst thing about fighting for freedom, really, was that so little of it consisted of actual fighting.

When he had first seen the light leave the eyes of his dearest friend for no reason at all, Ranagos had known the need to fight for a cause for the fight time. The petty satisfaction of a skillful victory or the heady feeling of standing before a cheering crowd in mask of gold and bloodied blade in his grip... those things seemed so pale and childish after he had gotten the taste of that fire that had once driven her. That blaze demanded an outlet, a march through the streets with crowds of bloodied banners and raised torches.

An outlet that was not forthcoming unless he wished to die just as meaningless a death as many before him. While he had felt hot fury towards the man for giving voice to that truth, he had known that Shinzrae had been right. The Ministry did not suffer fools, and dreams of one righteous idiot would not even be a consideration in the calculus of their machinations when weighted against those of everyone involved. They would never hesitate to see him dead simply by giving him away to the enemies he would be making in their name should he fail due to something as trivial as lack of patience.

So as much as it stung him, he was walking along the sometimes dangerously haphazard streets of Perch listening to rumors rather than going through the truly dangerous and despicable areas to make a real difference. The wrappings around his lower face chafed against pair of scars tightening the skin as he walked along, a familiar feeling that continued down his neck and upper chest as well. A constant reminder, earned from naught but a moment of carelessness.

Really, why had he thought nobody would come after him? He had set out to make a difference and leave the past behind: of course someone took offense.

His path through Perch was always changing, but while the little town-facimile had changed since his childhood, he still knew his way around well enough...and where his memories would fail him, one of the rough salt of the earth workmen was always there to show him the way and trade talk of the day. Ranly had lost another worker not long ago: the dreck-heads never cared about anything in the moment, and from his brief but growing experience not even after the fact. It left sour taste in his mouth, the prospect of killing a victim out of their mind due to machinations of some dealer, but whoever was letting this epidemic loose in the streets of the vulnerable had so far covered their tracks well.

As his worn boots finally found their way through a familiar ascending alleyway mostly made of rooftops signaling the end of his usual route, the hidden mouth of the former duelist curled up in a smile. How long had it been since he had been running through streets of Perch and looking up at one of these modest lookout towers, thinking they were the be-all of achievement in the community? He had clambered up the best he could in hopes of one day being invited inside one... and now, when he made his way to high-rise bolthole of his very own, he could barely stand the sight of it. It was paradoxically both a sign of luxury he was now ashamed of of having partaken in and a dump compared to the life he had led while he had not thought of the cause.

The bird that was perched on the lower windowstill of the place caused his idle contemplation to come to a screeching halt, however.

A quick gift of dried meat and retrieved message later, he was hurrying towards a lift, curiosity practically burning at him. The Magister didn't send for them just for any little thing, so whatever this is was likely both more informative and dangerous than his nightly scouting runs around Perch and some of the lower levels. Clad in unremarkable enough attire of worn traveling cloak, scarf to cover lower half of his features and jacket plus workpants combination donated by one of the local crews, he blended into irregular stream of traffic out of Perch. He was left breathing somewhat harder by the time he had finally made his way to New Heaven and one very particular tower within... and much to his misfortune, he had of course run to the one person who would know all about the still somewhat-healing injuries.

He didn't need anyone doubting his ability to help when something important was about to happen. Hopefully she wouldn't make it an issue.

"I suppose we are still waiting for the others?" the Firebrand asked, his face hidden in the shadows of his hood as he made his way over to the door as well. "The crow was as cryptic as ever... this better be good."

[Bunny Commando]

Elise Monstresson

---------------

Being a Midwife had always been a numbers game; being a doctor, doubly so. How many children survived thanks to you? How many drow you restored back to health?
Elise keenly understood this, still she couldn't help but deeply care for the people she was responsible for. So when a familiar voice greeted her, she turned and immediately tried to assess how Ranagos' wounds were healing not out of doubt for his ability to perform his duty as Minister of Our Hidden Mistress - she just wanted to see him healed. At times she still wondered how she could save his life so terrible were those injuries, the people of Perch just standing there watching and waiting for a death that seemed inevitable so that no one except Kasper even thought of calling her and give at least some comfort to the dying drow; but even though she managed to keep Ranagos alive, it came to no surprise to her that the drow still needed time to heal before he could become whole again.

Time they did not have, of course. The Ministry needed them.

"We are. And it will." she said in response to Ranagos' questions, tiredness showing through her voice "I saw you in Perch a few weeks ago, by the way. Have you found a home?" she then asked, apparently trying to make some small talk just to pass some time; but it came natural to her to gather information, her Durance still not leaving her.

[Grim ranger]

Ranagos Torana

Her assessing gaze managed to get the firebrand to adjust the dark scarf covering up his mouth and jaw, as if making certain that the gradually healing scars were hidden from sight. Not that a cut or two would have completely ruined his face, of course... but having a recognizable scar was bad when one tried to act with any sort of anonymity. Thankfully, masks were a commonly enough embraced tradition around the Spire to leave a drow hiding their identity generally unmolested.

That was, if the local enforcers were in good mood, and the Solar Guard was not involved.

"Perch has always been my home. I just made the mistake of forgetting my roots for a while" he muttered cryptically before letting out a humorless chuckle. "Too much time near the sun, one could say. Still, I have a location I can trust to be secure for a time, and am looking into other possibilities on the lower levels. How is the clinic?"

[Alteiner]

Edrick Galbraith

Sir Edrick Galbraith, Knight of the Wolf & Hound, woke with a splitting headache in one of the upstairs rooms of a familiar pub. the Wolf & Hound tavern, self-proclaimed finest drinks in the North Docks and headquarters of the sacred knight order that shared its name, was close to empty at this time of day. The last bunch of sailors had shipped out that day (after their boat’s captain paid the appropriate protection fees, of course), and the Wolf & Hound’s knights were either out on morning patrol, or still asleep after the after-party from last night’s patrol. Oftentimes, North Dock alehouses served as impromptu barracks for their knights in addition to being their headquarters.

Edrick’s muscles ached, his stomach churned, and his vision swam. He was still in his uniform from the night before, sans armor, with beer down his shirt and blood on his knuckles. His face sported a number of small dueling scars, and his hair was several months overdue for a trim. Fragmented memories of raucous drinking games and friendly sparring escalating into a destructive barroom brawl briefly floated to the surface before vanishing into the haze of waking. Right, he reminded himself; it Morgram, the uptight lad, who’d put him to bed sometime just before sunup. It was at that precise moment, however, that Edrick realized that the steady, sharp pounding in his head was not, in fact, the lingering hangover begging for a bit of hair of the dog, but rather the beak of a crow pecking at his forehead to wake him. He tried to wave the bird away, only to end up with the crow perched on his hand, black, beady eyes staring hard into his. Edrick rubbed his eyes, grinding the bleariness of a poor night’s sleep from his vision, and took notice of the note tied around the bird’s leg.

All at once, the pieces came together in his head.

“Seriously?” he asked, incredulous, more to himself than the bird. “Now, of all times? You’ve got **** timing, yo know that?” The bird was thoroughly nonplussed by Edrick’s grumbling, maintaining its position on his body. “Of course you do. Well, no rest for the wicked, I suppose. What’ll it be?” He untied the note from the corvid’s leg and shooed it away. The walls of every tavern in the Docks were full of rats, and the last thing he needed was one of them catching sight of him getting a secret message. He unfurled the missive, read it over once, and set it alight with a candle burning in the room. So, it was New Heaven, then? Far from the Docks, but less so than one would think in a few ways. People loosened their tongues in the North Docks, be they city guard or the occasional aelfir slumming amongst the drow. News of the goings-on the city over found its way into the taverns and night markets, and Edrick had always been good at listening in to the word on the street. Being good in a fight was all well and good, but a badge of office and a keen eye were weapons as potent as any sword or gun in the right (or the wrong) hands.

That, Edrick supposed, was part of the reason the Ministry had extended the hand to him, and a good thing, too. He had heard more than a few watchmen wanting to petition a few knights under the table to assist in trying to curtail the city’s drug epidemics before they became large enough problems for the powers that be to step in. If there was any weight to that rumor, and if the missive was anything to go by, a death in New Heaven could’ve been sufficient escalation for Edrick to pass himself off as assisting in the investigation. Nothing had to come of it; so long as it looked like he was making a token effort, he could at least say that the Wolf & Hound had done their level best with the authority entrusted to them. He didn’t need to “win,” per say, so long as he never lost.

It was time to get to work.

Edrick’s trip up the Spire was marked by hushed whispers behind hands, suspicious looks and barely-hidden scorn. As a knight, he was expected to adorn himself as one belonging to an ancient martial order: his surcoat of dull, desaturated dark blues and mottled black and gray bore eye-catching badges, medals and trinkets; awards for service, trophies taken from defeated foes and memorials of fallen comrades. His knight’s quarter-plate, simple armor worn atop his surcoat and reinforced with padding and chain beneath, was polished as well as the wear-and-tear of daily use would allow. Above all, he wore a finely-crafted steel straight sword at his hip. Edrick could only imagine what they would say if they saw the pistol he was hiding in his coat.

It wasn’t hard to sympathize with the suspicious public. No matter how you looked at it, whether it was the city watch or the knights, law officers in Spire were traitors. As much as any well-meaning watchman claimed that they suppressed the freedoms of their neighbors to protect them whatever worse abuses the aelfir could inflict on them instead, it didn’t change the fact that they willingly enforced the aelfir’s monopoly on violence. Add in the fact that the knights, the only people in Spire legally allowed to carry bladed weapons, acted more like gangsters than the knights in stories, and it wasn’t a stretch to say that law in Spire was a profession peopled almost exclusively by scumbags.

The whole way between the Docks and New Heaven, people crossed the street when they saw Edrick coming, or gave him a wide berth on public transit. He had long since learned to smile and nod through it, to drink in the jeers. Just keep your head down and keep walking, he told himself. Yes, you are being watched. Don’t go calling attention to yourself by making a big deal out of it. He was regretting not having gotten drunk before this little trip.

The roaring winds of the peak of the Spire and the constant snap of banners against the breeze greeted Edrick as he stepped out of the elevator and into New Heaven proper. Temples to the gods and long processions of bent-backed supplicants lined the roads on the way to the Tower. The scent of burning incense and the sound of hushed prayers filled the air alongside the steady clack of Edrick’s boots against the road.

In time, his path brought him to the foot of the Magister’s Tower, where a few familiar faces waited.

“If it isn’t two of my favorite people.” he said, voice slightly muffled by the cloth mask covering the lower half of his face. “We really need to stop meeting like this.”

[Bunny Commando]

Elise Monstresson

---------------

"Kasper is unwell. Dreck." Elise said in response to Ranagos' question about the clinic, now lowering her gaze as a physical manifestation of the weight she felt on her soul "Children have become addicts, too. Their parents ask me for a solution and I have very little to offer them." and besides the pain that one could perceive between her words there was also a deep seated anger; she might be tired but such wrath had prevented her from surrendering to hopelessness.

Still, amongst the sorrow and resentment, she found the strength to care; she tried to gently squeeze Ranagos' shoulder "It does not mean you're not welcome there, however." and that said and done, she turned her gaze towards the approaching Knight. She welcomed Edrick with a weary smile and an affectionate joke "If were to meet at the docks, I'd have to constantly deal with the broken bones you leave in your wake - thanks, good Sir, but I like to rest sometimes."

[GameOfChampions]

Azari

Azari walked down the street, pulling his head lower into his cowl and leaning on his makeshift cane. He was pretty sure that the odds of being seen were slim to none but he hadn't gotten to where he was by being careless hence the old lady disguise. As soon as he was past the more 'civilized' neighborhoods though the hood comes down, the lumps of cloth under the shirt are pulled out, the cane discarded, and his hat placed jauntily back on his head.

These neighborhoods were his real home, he may... work in the upper sections of the city but this was where he could blend in more easily. His wide brim hat is pulled slightly over his forehead and he pats his cloak pockets absentmindedly. He ***** his head to the side for a second as he listens to the little whispers before smiling and reaching into one of the pockets once more, pulling out a smoke. Strolling down the dirty road he eventually comes to the person he had been looking for.

He slides down next to the dirty beggar on the side of the road giving him a tip of the hat as he puffs on his smoke. "Evening Basanti. How goes it in the slums?"

The grimy man beside him pretends to glare at him out of his one eye, the eyepatch hiding it slightly, before rolling his eye and flipping the eye patch up to show the second eye perfectly fine, "Dammit Azari you could have come later, these are the prime hours for working the streets."

Azari shrugs "I'm expecting a call to work soon so I figured that I would stop by to check on my favorite beggar. I need to make sure that your eating your vittles and drinking plenty of milk."

The man snorts, "Sure, milk. Now cough up some of the good stuff I know you always have some."

Azari grins and pats his pockets until he finds a flask that he gives a shake, a few swigs left it seemed like. He hands it over to Basanti and gets up, casually leaving behind a grimy looking sack that the beggar pulls into his robes. Overhead a crow caws into the bustle of the city and Azanti gives a wave to the beggar as he heads to the ally.

It was time to work.

[Minstrel Wyrm]

~ Kerys Malrique ~

After the long, lonely descent through the vast tunnel shaft the Drow call Necropolis, the crow fluttered down to perch on a lamp post. Relieved to have arrived in the oasis of riotous colours and life that is Choke, the soothsayers' town clinging to the walls of the narrowest part of Necropolis, the bird edged closer to the smoking lantern. Even though the lantern's warmth failed to fully drive the tunnel shaft's chill from its hollow bones, it was at least worth the attempt.

A faint rustle reminded the corvid of the small parchment roll bound to its leg, the reason it was down here. Casting a last, hungry look at the aelfir haruspex taking out some offal from a building a bit further down the main "street" of Choke, the crow took off again with a curmudgeonly caw.

Deeper in the jumble of winding alleys and precarious gantries, among the stands and shops of soothsayers and seers, oracles and austromancers, palmreaders and fortune-tellers, the crow homed in on a little old bookstore. Tomes Bought & Sold, Tealeaves Read proclaimed a wooden sign dangling over the door.. Owner: Kerys Malrique. An older name was crossed out. The black-feathered messenger landed at a small window next to the front door. Hesitantly, it peered through the glass before finally pecking at it to announce its presence.

Looking up from the drained tea cup before her, a young Drow in a dress of red lace and woven cloth turned an irritated gaze at the window. Returning her attention to the elderly Drow seated opposite her, she said: "My apologies, but the tea leaves don't reveal anything more today. Return next week, and we may gain clearer insights then." She escorted the old lady, still confused by the somewhat sudden end of the reading, firmly but politely to the door. Anticipating her customer's next question as she began to open her mouth, the soothsayer held up her hand. "Of course I will let your son know that you miss him terribly." As if his shade could even find its way back from far-off Nujab ... "Now remember: Take special care on the third gantry you cross on your way home. The third one. Goodbye, Maji."

After she had watched the old Drow wander off, Kerys closed her door and turned towards the window. Dourly looking through the glass at her unexpected visitor for a few long moments, she finally opened the window and allowed the crow to nervously hop onto the window sill. The corvid messenger worriedly looked around before flying over to the table, settling on the back of a chair. Closing the window again, Kerys returned to her own seat. "Well?" she demanded, holding out her arm. The crow looked at her askance, as if to remind the forgetful Drow of its strict "No reward, no message" policy. Then it spied a movement among the books on one of the shelves. Black-feathered, larger than the messenger, a raven looked down at the impudent nessenger, the steady gaze of the strange blood-red eyes unreadable. Hurriedly, the crow hopped onto the offered arm to surrender the small parchment roll to the storekeeper's deft fingers ...

Not too long after the departure of the elderly Drow lady, the door opened again. A hasty flutter of wings announced the hurried flight of the messenger crow, seeking to get away with a somewhat fresh eyeball carried in its beak. Then, the Drow storekeeper stepped out, now wearing a dark, hooded cloak over her red dress, her raven companion on her shoulder. She locked the door behind her and turned toward the main stairs that lead all the way up to the highest levels of Spire. The colourful bustle of Choke slowly faded behind her, swallowed by the cold shadows of Necropolis, as Kerys made her ascent towards New Heaven. Only solitary lampposts, their light barely holding the darkness back, the moaning winds of the vast tunnel shaft, and her blood-eyed raven kept her company on her way.

Spoiler: Status at the Present Time

Show

Resistances & Current Stress

Blood: +4 / 0
Mind: 0 / 0
Silver: 0 / 0
Shadow: +3 / 0
Reputation: 0 / 0
Armour: 0 / 0


Fallout

None yet

Equipment

• Athame (D3, Bloodbound)
• Several sets of tattered, weird-looking clothing
• A collection of occult ephemera

[n0ble]

“Half a huff?
Laugh at bloody stuff!

Snuff whole vials?
Overcome all trials!

Now, dreck by the handful?
Quite the scandal!”
- Song call of the dreck addicts of Perch, verses spouted in between fits of laughter

A low moan howls through the pathway the bisects through the row of Towers as the wind welcomes all of you-the cell-to New Heaven proper. The greeting is accompanied by the snap and Candlelight flickers in the window of the structure before you. The hideout is framed by carrion sounds: the squawk of the nights ravens, cut through with the odd bout of Charnel laughter. Seen from the outside, the street and tower are bathed in moonlight. All the birdspatter accumulated onto the tower shines with the same pale white, an antithesis to spireblack as much for the height of the corvid****’s location as it is for the waste’s coloration.

The door to the structure moans open as a gust of wind subsumes it. Shinzrae’s gaze tracks across each of you in turn, lingering first on the last of you to arrive and then a conspicuous bloodstain on the street not more than a few paces from where you’ve congregated. A few fingers litter the ground amidst what is clearly an arterial spatter. Bloody work. Hyena work. Shin’s gaze holds on the gory vista for a few more moments that verge on uncomfortable. They beckon you in with a skeletal hand and a few words. The Magister’s voice is a whisper, audible as the wind settles into a quiet lull. “You better come in.”

The inside of the tower is…well its not warm. Nothing this high up or this close to Frozen Amerath is ever going to be warm. And not at night either. But still. Your Magister has tried. The few candles that light the room provide some comfort. The bowl of goat-stew has just gotten hot enough that its smell has begun to fill the room. An earthy smell, cut with goat fat and some sort of Nujabian spice that makes the nose tingle. The seats are worn and gnarled over with flaws by age-missing arm rest here, uneven chair leg there. They are clearly carved from the same wood as the much scuffed table Shinzrae beckons you too. He does not sit.

Instead the Magister offers a quiet “Help yourselves” as they limp to the dresser, withdrawing a pair of clay jugs and a few wooden cups, the latter sculpted like aelfir finery knockoffs so that Shin can carry them all in one grip. The Mortician holds the jugs by a loop set into each jug. He cracks one of the jugs and pours sour red wine into the cups. The other, unopened bottle is set before Sir Ed. The Magister croaks out a tight lipped “Bread in there too.” from behind their mask before settling into a seat on a side of the table by itself. The words are accompanied by a nod at the dresser-drawer which held the wine. Once everyone has taken a chair the Magister helps himself to some stew. He lets the bowl cool a bit before helping himself to the stew, picking over the meal like each bite might just be the last one the Mortician might eat. Shin lets out a hale burp that dies as a cough. They let everyone dig into the food-a veritable feast by some Spire standards.

The Magister snakes a hand into the fold of their robes, the garments black as crowfeather. They withdraw something Held between spindly pointer and middle fingers is a clear vial, half filled with a vial of grainy dust. Contents and all, it almost looks like a smaller, more thinned version of a spice shaker at this distance. A small cork stopper crowns the open end of the vial, with a cheap, already used looking filter stuffed in underneath it. Dreck. “So.” The Magister lets the vial spill from in between his fingers, sending the dreck tinkling across the table at a roll. It plinks off the soup-bowl and comes to an awkward spot in the table where its closer to the rest of you than Shinzrae. “Orders come down from on-“ the Mortician pauses to look around the room, as though actually aware of how far up-Spire you all are for the first time. “–high. This…dreck stuff. You don’t need me to tell you. Near epidemic levels. I don’t know where it-where all of it-is coming from.” Shin nods at the vial on the table. “But I can sight who I bought that from.” The Magister’s words speak more to a suggestion than anything resembling a concrete plan. But it’s a lead. Of sorts. Their silence fills the space around the dinner table, a hospitable kind that invites discussion.

[Bunny Commando]

Elise Monstresson

---------------

Elise welcomed the offer of food, many times she had shared the little food she had so that those in her care could regain their strength that much quicker, but hunger was not her friend if the Ministry had need of her. But the little show Shinzrae gave them, made her put the bowl down and frown - she knew all too well what the Magister was speaking of, the already quite difficult job of being a doctor in Perch made that more arduous by the sudden appearance of dreck.

"Who they are, where we could find them." she asked, almost demanded, to the Magister. Dreck was eroding the sense of community her people felt that was already under attack by their subservience to the Aelfir and if they lost that, they would be no longer drow; she had to do something about it and could only hope the rest of the cell saw how action was needed, and quickly.

[Grim ranger]

Ranagos Torana

While the hospitality of their Magister was appreciated as ever, the mood seemed to remain solemn as they made their way inside the tower. This was the reality of rebellion: filthy, bloodstained alleyways, huddling in the cold and pursuing leads to destroy monsters. A far cry from comfortable cushions and fancy dinners to be had as a pet of the Aelfir...but he still preferred this misery to their charades now. At least what the Ministry did was honest, if secretive.

He took a seat on a wobbly chair, his terse posture making the uneven chairleg tap against the floor every now and then as he shifted on it restlessly. Tap tap tap.

"If they are open enough a about selling it that we could buy it... I doubt they are close to our mystery supplier. Construction crews 'round Perch have been feeling the effects: too many hapless idiots want to escape their situation for a little blissed-out evening, or just get dragged into an alleyway and not getting a choice in the matter."

His fingers restlessly played with the hilt of the gilded knife hidden in his sleeve, tone clearly frustrated and urgent. Things had already gone so wrong so quick... it felt difficult waiting at all.

"It'll be slow going if we have to go through one dealer at a time to find their higher-ups, and someone is bound to notice if they keep disappearing, or warning others about us. When we hit this lead of yours, we all should probably have cancelled our appointments for a few nights."

[Alteiner]

Sir Edrick Galbraith

----------------------------------

Edrick, hands stuffed into his pockets, was eager to get inside of the tower. Too many drow from disparate walks of life loitering in one spot were bound to pick up the wrong kind of attention on a long enough timeline. Once inside, he was eager to avail himself of the Magister’s hospitality. In contrast to the somber mode inside of the dimly-lit and slightly-chill tower, the knight happily dug into the goat stew, soaking a slice of bread in the broth to soften it, and washing it all down with a splash of wine (poured into a glass rather than drunk straight from the bottle. He was a lout, not an animal). He let out a long, satisfied sigh as he placed the empty glass down onto the table. Already, hair of the dog was doing its dark work in erasing the fatigue from his previous post-shift festivities.

“I definitely needed that.” Edrick said, patting his stomach between bites. “I cannot tell you how tired I’ve been of eating fried river fish day after day. It’s like the pub cooks think everything’s poisonous unless you fry it. I’ve been telling them ‘I don’t think there’s enough booze in this whole f*cking tower to drown out the flavor of frying oil. How am I supposed to get the smell of this sh*t out of my clothes?’” Edrick continued to talk throughout the meal, punctuating each little anecdote with a long draft and a refill of his glass before offering to top off anyone else’s drink.

He peered closely at the vial of dreck as Shinzrae cast it onto the table before them. He raised an eyebrow, wiping a few stray drops from his lips with a napkin.

“Even if our street-level dealers have never met anyone in charge of distribution, they’re still getting their supply from somewhere. I’m thinking dead-drops. That’s how I’d do it. If we can keep eyes on a couple dealers long enough for them to lead us to a drop-site or two, we’ll have a better idea of just the kind of operation we’re looking at. We might even find out whether the drugs are coming from inside the Spire, or shipped in from outside.” At least, that was how things usually went when Edrick was involved. Down by the Northern Docks, the knights were quick to clamp down on any new drugs in production and take over the distribution end quickly. Perch wasn’t the knights’ territory, by any means, but drug gangs ran similar operations no matter where you went.

[Minstrel Wyrm]

~~ Kerys Malrique ~~

After the long ascent from Choke, Kerys has brought almost enough appetite to rival that of the knight. A bit hasty in claiming a bowl of goat stew, she covers it up by walking over to the dresser to fetch herself some bread. Her large raven, not waisting the opportunity, hops from the back of her chair onto the table, deftly picking some choice morsels from her stew bowl.
Kerys, upon her return to the table, either hasn't noticed, or pretends so. She drops her bread next to her bowl, reaching for her wooden cup and nodding her thanks to their Magister before starting on her food.

“‘... to drown out the flavor of frying oil. How am I supposed to get the smell of this sh*t out of my clothes?’”

"Have you considered open flame?," Kerys comments with a chuckle. "Although, if you try that on your armour as well, you may end up the fabled Black Knight of the Northern Docks."

Amusedly following Edrick's assorted anecdotes, she hasn't finished her stew yet when the dust-filled vial rolls over the table. Her gaze drawn to it, she raises an eyebrow before looking up at the Mortician. Paying attention to his words, she then reaches for the small bottle. Kerys turns it around in her hand while the other cell members begin to talk, raises it in the air to peer at it, then closes her eyes and touches it to her forehead for a moment. "Laughing rage, asleep under glass," she murmurs, then drops the bottle on the table as if having lost all interest in it.

After the Midwife, the Firebrand, and the Knight have spoken, she shrugs, apparently unconcernedly. "Ask them who knows where that stuff comes from, once. Tell them that they can reveal what they know to you, or have your Haruspex reveal it then and there. Repeat ad nause... well, until I become nauseous. Or we have the knowledge we are being sent for, of course."

Having said that, Kerys takes up her bowl again to finish her meal.

Spoiler: Status at the Present Time

Show

Resistances & Current Stress

Blood: +4 / 0
Mind: 0 / 0
Silver: 0 / 0
Shadow: +3 / 0
Reputation: 0 / 0
Armour: 0 / 0


Fallout

None yet

Equipment

• Athame (D3, Bloodbound)
• Several sets of tattered, weird-looking clothing
• A collection of occult ephemera

[GameOfChampions]

Azari

Azari digs into the meal with gusto. He had been surviving on scraps, drinks and smokes for a little longer then was probably healthy but whenever he ended up getting a good haul of food he inevitably ended up passing it along to those in more need then him. Here though he wouldn't hesitate to fill his belly. Besides if the next few nights were as busy as it seemed it would be then he needed a good meal. After everyone finishes he rummaged another smoke up out of his many pocketed long coat before offering a few crumpled smokes to any others that would want one. "Anyone want a smoke?"

He listens to the others and nods along "I agree with Edrick there. I think playing this subtle is the play here. Set up and watch the dealer until we see him go to drop off their take or to get more product. Wait until we get a little higher up before making a move. Instead of torture or going through them with flame and blade we could flip a higher member. Gather enough evidence or plant some until we have enough the higher ups options are doing what we say or get lynched by their boss or the guards."

[n0ble]

"Next perhaps I shall kill a pair of gutterkin.
Or an aelfir. ”
- End-line of a letter written to the Torch, accompanied by a single glass Swan feather

Shin mulls the conversations and agreements fielded about the table. Swirling the dark booze around in their glass, the Magister downs it in a single gulp. The placid contemplation across their face becomes momentarily flawed with a sour look. And the small hint of a satisfactory grin at the hooch’s taste, ever so slightly tugging at the corners of their mouth. “Mm. Agreed. “ Its not said to anyone in particular, yet still clear in agreeing with the notion of a stakeout. And there's more: the Magister speaks, the more you can pick up on the twinge in the voice: a keepsake from Nujab that flaws the of their Deralictean accent. They drum a few boney fingers across the wood of the table, brace themselves against the furniture to a standing position. Halfway to rising the dark elf stops to wince at some sort of pain in their hip. Shins wastes a moment doubled over at the waist, looses a grunt and then hobble. From it they take a simple reem of parchment, no more thick that your Magister’s arm. The cylinder the paper is book-ended by is stone cast from the same sepulchre-black as the Mortician’s robs: onyx and utterly featureless but for the skulls that tiny skulls that cap each end. Like mirrors of the Mortician guild's broach-pins. Like the one that is curiously absent from your Magister’s personage.

The Mortician doesn’t so much as walk back to sitting their chair as they do limp over into a slump back into the furniture. As they move, its easy to see that they try and maneuver around the pain in their hip. A few marbles of sweat track across Shinzrae’s forehead from behind their mask before the Mortician quickly sops up the beads with their sleeve. Any exhaustion is banished from the Executioner’s rickety frame as they take out the most feared thing the bureaucrats of the Mortician’s guild could produce: a simple charcoal quill, absent any sort of ornamentation whatsoever. Crow black, naturally.

Without waiting Shinzrae unfurls the paper set before them and begins to quietly scratch down something onto the paper that has been rolled out. Their quill-strokes are economical and certain. Working with a quickness born of experience and the fussiness of a veteran bureaucrat, Shinzrae's shape begins to form onto the page to those who deign to watch: a youth. A drow youth, easily of age for durance, once you peer close and hard enough at it. Your Magister continues. Details coalesce from the charcoaled lines and the youth ages before your eyes. The heaped on years are a circumstance of their current employment: the skin of their forehead and cheeks is sunken with malnutrition, an almanac of pockmarks, blisters, teenaged acne scarring, and much picked over junkie-sores that lack the telltale suppurations characteristic to the mental degradation of a childhood amongst drug dealers. Addiction’s face, if ever it had one. These days it would be easier to picture Spire absent such faces as commonality for how the City has become clotted with their presence. As the Mortician finishes the sketch, he murmurs a few arcane words in a monotone voice and draws the quill across the face-the fully realized face, slantways slightly from beyond the bottom left chin to all the way past the top of the seed-shaped head’s topknot. Not a sketch stroke. An execution. Of sorts.

As though waiting for the command, the lines become much, much more faded, starting with the flaw your Magister has wrought upon their artwork. The addict-pockmarks become commonplace amongst Spire-goers becomes smudged islets, raw and unformed for how they crater the seed-shape of a head devoid of features. The boy’s beak of a nose reverts-retracts almost- until it’s little more than an indicative cross, an outline of where the nose should be planted. All life is washed from the portraits gaze in reverse as the eyes regress to hollow ellipses. Finally, their hair, once an unkempt topknot, dies by segments as each coil of the braid disappears until the head is bald as a corvid egg. Satisfied, Shinzrae pauses to rub a lick of charcoal from their thumb, tears the paper just below the boy’s chin then gingerly places the sketch in the table. They place the vial of dreck-stoppered end down- on the sketch.

“Apologies. Cannot go with you. But I can go with you, mm? Cannot speak to artistic skills. Apologies. Again. Soldier’s hands. Heh. Should return to being their face the closer you get to them.” They flick a pointer finger at the sketch. “Burn after use, naturally.” A thoughtful smile hooks at the right side of the Mortician’s lip, one much less fleeting than their prior grimace-smirk at the booze’s taste. And for just a moment, its easy to see the thin remnant of a drow backed by a high Nujabian sun, spitting and shouting and carving with a much more feral version of the same smile on their visage, laying about into hoards of bespotted gnolls with the strength of King Teeth hisself. Their grin freezes the air between the Magister and the rest of you in what is almost an awkward moment. Then the crescent of white teeth flashing is gone, the white crescent of maybe-filed sharp teeth replaced with the same calm state the Magister’s face has (almost) always held. “Will you be needing additional papers for them?” Their pointer finger has yet to waver from the sketched face they’ve left to lie in front of you.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

For the uninitiated, its technically illegal to murder anyone in Spire. (Yes, even Aelfir). To get around this the City Council has derived a loophole: the Morticians guild, of which Shinzrae is a member, can legally declare a living individual dead. Then its just a matter of correcting the bureaucratic “oversight” and file the appropriate paperwork after the fact. This is essentially what he's asking at the end when inquiring if you need additional papers.

Shinzrae isn’t exactly a good artist but the drawing should let you get a rough bead on this drek-hawker.

[Grim ranger]

Ranagos Torana

A slow shudder runs through the firebrand as he watches Shinzrae do his work, even the bright eyes of the rebel averting themselves from the picture for a moment. If the man does draft up the actual paperwork, it is effectively a death sentence: even if Mortician-executioners might delay the "correction of bureucratic oversight" for a while due to lack of talent or overburdened workload, it generally tends to get done one way or another. There is certain finality in earning the ire of the Morticians, or people pulling their pursestrings.

Still, their mission will need steps like this to keep them from being found out an executed by Ministry itself. Liabilities are not to be tolerated, after all: how else is the dream of rebellion to live?

"...well, I suppose it depends on whenever or not we think we can charm information out of them, or keep them out of the way until we have done our work at least. If they peddle the stuff willingly, I doubt they'll just go back to any normal work crew should we manage to stop the production" Ranagos points out, sounding tired: oh, violence may solve many immediate issues, but generally only creates more in the long run. "What do you all say? Should we really need to make someone disappear, well, people slip and fall all the time in Perch."

[Alteiner]

Sir Edrick Galbraith

Edrick smiled and huffed as Shin went about his dark work. Ed himself had no talent for the arts (unless drinking and bloodshed counted as magic these days), and even if it was something as grisly as a Mortician's work, it was no less a miracle before his eyes. So, this was the marked man. He was young, barely out of childhood. Made sense. Most of the time, crime was a young person's game. Goddamn kids. For a moment, memories breached the haze of booze, smoke and blood: faces, twisted in agony, painkillers masking workplace injuries, addiction covering chronic pain, lung inflammation, poisoned blood turned to sludge. He grit his teeth and gave a pained smile.

“Likely as not, our dealer’s in an even sorrier state than we are. A person typically doesn’t risk getting arrested and jailed by the guard slinging dope in the streets because everything else is going great in their life.” Life, Ed thought, finds a way, even if it’s not glamorous, or legal. If they were expected to execute everyone who ever peddled drugs because a sick family member needed medicine (or rent was past due), then Ed’s head would be the first to roll. “Then again, you don’t move or produce enough volume to get a whole district addicted without the Aelfir noticing. Someone, somewhere is probably getting a kickback to protect the whole drug ring. So, is our dealer a victim of circumstance or a certified scumbag? I say, we scare the guy, let him know he’s marked for death. He runs fleeing for protection, and with our little tag here,” Ed nodded towards the portrait, “and he leads us right to the next rung up. Whether we kill him after the fact or not… well, we can cross that bridge when we get to it.”

[Minstrel Wyrm]

~~ Kerys Malrique ~~

"A legal execution might draw the wrong kind of attention to this ... after all, we're not legally investigating this whole sordid business. A wrong step in Perch might indeed be a more ... natural ... way to have him leave this life. Or, even better if doable, make his business partners do the work for us. A rumor or two of betrayal to the guard - or rivals - could be hard for him to disprove, no?"

Kerys hesitates for a moment, inclining her head towards her raven as if listening. "Yes. Of course, that's only in the case of death turning out to be a needful thing there. As has been said already at this table." Her gaze turns thoughtful for another moment. "Also, we could come back for such papers," she actually shudders there, even if only for the blink of an eye, easily missed, "if they do turn out to be needed."

Spoiler: Status at the Present Time

Show

Resistances & Current Stress

Blood: +4 / 0
Mind: 0 / 0
Silver: 0 / 0
Shadow: +3 / 0
Reputation: 0 / 0
Armour: 0 / 0


Fallout

None yet

Equipment

• Athame (D3, Bloodbound)
• Several sets of tattered, weird-looking clothing
• A collection of occult ephemera