//A7 - Ordo BenevolenceHead Priest Nathaniel was a warped tree, bent and weathered by the passage of time but made resilient by it. His hands could no longer do the bloodied labour that Ordo Benevolence demanded of the acolytes, but it did not prevent him from clasping them together in prayer or concocting the substances necessary for corpses to be preserved. Time had robbed him of much, but his soul remained bright despite his deteriorating surroundings.
Cantor’s call, however, drew a sigh from that wizened old priest.
“Thank you, Acolyte Cantor.” The man took his own staff as he pushed open the door.
“You must have worked a fair while, no? Take your break while you’re here.”There was no particular urging on the Priest’s part; he continued to shamble on, towards the the main hall. Whether the Ichor-Blessed acolyte would do as Nathaniel said or follow after was up to him alone. The walls of the church were thin anyhow, and the dead did not scream the way the living did in churches more accustomed to the preservation of the living.
…
“Master Jamieson,” Nathaniel said by way of greeting, staff clacking as he approached.
“Ol’ Nate,” was the vulture-faced man’s response, displeasure carved into his brow.
“Thought you’d enlist that young’un to help your escape.”“I would never. Ordo Benevolence can go on without me, but so long as there’s need for ceremony and memory, I sh-”A sharp clack of the walking cane cut the Priest off.
“The rent, friend.”“Yes, yes…” He reached into his robes, pulling out a pouch. It wasn’t even half-full, and Jamieson’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s all we've got, after accounting fo-”A swift strike displaced the staff that the Priest relied upon and he immediately fell over, cushioning his fall with his elbow. That was a mistake; an audible
snap sounded, old bones too fragile to make it. The pouch of coins struck the ground as well, a handful of silver and copper spilling out. Jamieson didn’t even bother to pick that up.
“Been like this for three months now,” the debt collector said. He glanced around him, meeting the glares, the indignation of the surrounding acolytes, smug in the fact that they could do nothing to him.
“Did your prayers delude you into thinking that this land is yours?”The Priest wheezed, holding back pained gasps. He couldn’t hold them back much longer, when the spiked end of Jamieson’s walking stick drove itself through his right hand.
“I’ve been kind,” he spoke unkindly, twisting his cane deeper.
“I’ve given you and your group of butchers so much more time than I usually do. And yet, each time, you’ve got one excuse or another, while you still go off to the markets to barter for all those precious little potions in the dead of night. Nate, are you mocking me?”
“It’s, what’s neccess-”
“Oh shut the fuck up, old man. You are mocking me. I’ve got a boss too. They expect things outta me, and I’ve gotta deliver.” The collector leaned down, grasping the fallen staff of the Head Priest.
“Consider it my last kindness. You have one more week to pay off the rent. With interest. And if you don’t?”He turned, moving to leave.
“Well, it’s the land that’s ours, so I suppose I’ll just have to burn clear what’s atop it.”@Shovel
//O3 - The Pallid MermaidAn expulsion of breath, and then the sensation of only a hint of resistance, as sharpened steel cleaved through flesh and bone.
A heartbeat later, the expected spraying of hot blood, pumping out of severed arteries, and the cry of agony from that putrid pig.
Amidst that, a sigh from the Crag.
“You BITCH!”A howl, animalistic, from a man fuelled by adrenaline and a brain that was already suffering from the effects of blood loss. A stool clattered against the ground as he hurled himself bodily towards her, Elys’s cold exit disrupted by a dead man’s vengeance.
So there would be backlash after all.The benefit of seeing in mass and gravity, instead of colors, was that Elys wasn't limited to a narrow scope of vision. And in this not-too-crowded tavern, it was child's play to see the mass coil for a moment before charging forward.
Elys scowled, spinning on her heel. Her staff smashed across the one-handed man's hand, before it twisted around and the heavier portion uppercutted his face. She wasn't sure of her accuracy, which was to her advantage. Even if the strike was a few inches far, the strike would collapse his throat, and that would be that.
She wasn't cruel, though. A calculated blow to the jaw would jarr the man, and give her time to consider her next move.
She was strong, however. Too strong, even. The blow had not just jarred him, but had knocked him out completely, the ground itself shaking as that mass collapsed. In a few moments, it would be a cold mass.
Yet, the rest of the occupants of the Pallid Mermaid, after a moment of stillness to observe this clash, simply moved on to continue their own conversations, indulge in their own food and drink. And from behind the Ichor-Blessed, she could sense the bartender move from around the corner, something cylindrical ‘floating’ below his hand. The sloshing of the water gave it away.
“Clean yer own mess, girlie.” The lethality of her strikes seemed not to have phased the man.
“And I’ll tell ya where a naked blade can be best used.”The bucket settled upon the floor. There'd be a rag there too, most likely.
Without any more words left for Elys, the bartender dragged the dying, unconscious man by his belt and threw him out of the tavern. There were plenty of scavengers in the Outer Layer. By the time Elys was done, who knew if there'd still be a body outside for her to step around?
@Estylwen
//O3 - Entrance areaWhat marks were there in the Outer Layer though, truly? Stealing from the impoverished would provide a pittance and spark a violent desperation. Stealing from the property owners would be cause for sparking a vendetta that could not be resolved so easily. Stealing from the adventurers was a questionable affair, when they were prone to swift violence even in the absence of justice.
Thievery was all risk with little reward; the golden sheep, as it were, had already been picked up by others.
But Oratorio was not known to be the City of Opportunity for no reason, and there were always work to be done, if one had the strength and will to do it. There were workshops that needed new hands, carpenters that needed able-bodied crew, and the occasional tavern that needed dishes to be washed or dishes to be served. Poverty did not speak entirely of destitution and famine. At times, it was simply a lowering of standards, and even then, perhaps it was a lifting of them for some of the vagrants that Oratorio consumed. There was fair work out there, for those willing to take it.
There was dangerous work too.
“Aye,” a call rang out from a place too cramped to be considered a plaza.
“You lot know the deal! Half-day’s food and a fifth of what you mine from the Abyss! Ones I recognize get a third instead!”It came from an unarmored man, though he was flanked by rough-looking types that definitely were armed and armoured. Adventurers, ostensibly. A company, certainly.
“We depart in five!”It didn’t take long for others to gather and flock, most of them sporting some injury or the other, but all of them needing the money and food nonetheless. In absence of any skill, after all, one could always yield their flesh to partake of the Abyss’s bones.
@Silverpaw
//O4 - Main StreetsPerhaps Sebi was fortunate that not every guard was racist.
Perhaps it was because of the hypnotic allure of her womanly charms.
Or perhaps it was simply because no matter who you are, it was hard to resist the chance to talk shit.
The guard with sunken cheeks narrowed his eyes, then spat to one side. His companion, seeing this, sighed and said,
“Imma take a piss while this one goes off.”
“Aye, fuckin’ Cam, that snot-faced bastard,” Sunken Cheeks said.
“You ladies best leave ‘im well alone. Lad’s proof that laws dun matter when looks are involved.”A cursory glance upon both mother and daughter. A click of the tongue.
“He was one of us. Fellow guard n all, kicking away the rats scramblin’ round here and letting the good merchants in. Taught him myself, figured that, hey, babyface like that’s gonna have a hard time without someone like me.”Whatever good times the guards shared were gone though.
“That goes on, as it does, ‘til the fuckwit goes and charms the knickers off some du Moissan lady and heads straight into the Royal Road! Woman was in her fifties! We all knew what he was doing!”Sunken Cheeks scowled.
“And like fuckin’ clockwork? Three years later there’s a funeral for the lady and fuckin’ Cam walks out with a goddamn inheritance weighing more than I could earn in three lifetimes! Lad has the gall to go off on a whole ‘tour of the world’ while we’re itching to skewer his philandering ass.”But clearly, Camille was not sporting holes in his body and dead in a ditch.
“Order never came for it though, and when the money ran out, fuckin’ Cam got back here, bought a house right before my eyes, and lives for fuckin’ free, scribbling away without a care in the world. There’s no justice out there, hear? No fuckin’ justice at all for working-class men like I.”Sunken Cheeks was fuming at this point, and probably had another ten minutes of grievances to launch into, if Sebi would stick around. She got the gist of it though, regardless of how much of this 'truth' was genuine.
...
“Ahaha,” Camille laughed, waving away the concerns of the elven child.
“It was simply what I could afford after settling my debts. A humbler place may have been obtainable still in the Adventurer’s District, but hm…”There was a moment of quiet as he selected his painters’ tools, pulling out an easel and canvas. If nothing else, his movements looked real during his preparations. Nothing like the elven court painters of that lost kingdom, but not the movements of a charlatan playing a role either. Reverence, perhaps, was the term for it.
“...well, I’ve less interest in artifice and abundance, I profess. And I’m young enough still to do such silly things, so I’d rather not let my mind stagnate just yet.” Despite his lighthearted nature, his sword still hung from his waist, and the design of his atelier was such that access to the second floor was lost entirely if one were to raise up the ladder. There were movements made for security.
“And please, feel free. A few of my older paintings are up there though; I’d appreciate it if you didn’t peek at them.”As Meisa climbed up the stairs, she could hear Camille speak of his own impressions upon art, professing his appreciation of the contrast and attention given to light and shadow in the works of early Godfall artists, whom had nothing but charcoal and base pigments to display what they had seen in the aftermath of the Thousand-Faced God’s demise. Still too, did he approve of the fragments of religious works that remained after that initial cataclysm, the beauty and meaning behind spiritual patterns, as well as the crafts poured into turning mere glass into translucent gems. He, of course, being a portrayer, was trained in the Selectivist school of art, detailed and unfocused elements were placed together, as if showing a dream where only the most striking elements of an individual’s face were captured in obsessive detail.
The second floor that Meisa arrived upon was only slightly less cramped than the first. A basin of well-water stood in the corner, and she could spot a lidded chamberpot underneath a well-made bed. Light poured brightly from the many windows here; at night, starlight and moonlight must be just as intense. A bundle of somethings stayed in one corner, a blanket draped over them to hide their secrets, while teetering towers of thick, leather-bound books made up a forest for her to navigate through. They were plentiful, the sort that one would find in an aristocrat’s study, and they were well-used as well, dog-eared and worn. To call them dusty would be to do Camille a disservice, but their contents certainly made them tomes.
The histories of nations long-gone or just-born. The mythologies of the Thousand-Faced God, and the theories of the Perishing Star. The studies of mechanical and natural sciences, collected from the cottages of the workers. The observations of the heavens and the clouds, that interplay between weather and superstition. Books on cuisines no longer attainable, and books on crafts rendered obsolete. Philosophies and morality, studies on ethics realized through incidents imagined and real.
In a phrase, books on the world, plundered from the vaults of the rich.
@Asuras@Click This 
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