Fetzen

The Fight for Valeroma

- accidentally posted in the wrong thread -

Blades of the Blood Coast

Lorcan's sleep had not gone exactly well, but to the defense of the unknown... thing... that had made its way into the tavern -- after or before slaughtering a path through the city, that was perhaps --, he would not have slept well even without it. There just were too many discomforting issues at hand such as that the city had started to smell like corruption from the very first contact onwards. A settlement's guards were supposed to be the last individuals to fall victim to egoism and self-justice, but it seemed to have happened here on a scale so large that they, an unwary bunch of travelers with no page in the book of history, could run into it right away.

Speaking of missing pages, the next biggie clearly was the goddamn lack of information. Yes, having a bed for the night and a warm meal to fill one's stomach was a nice thing absolutely, but at what price ? Right: being dragged into some shady underground business with no explanation given why exactly they had to do a job that was urgent. Shouldn't there have been some other poor man to do it way before their arrival ? It smelled like rotten fish, but he didn't even know enough to decide whether he could blame Raddek and his so called friends to play a foul game or if they were, in fact, as 'innocent' as the rest of the party.

Lorcan skipped past the dead body in the streets without spending much attention on it. If things went bad this day, they'd cause enough of a bloodsheet them bloody selves this day. No need to challenge one's urge to vomit right in the morning already... Having listened to Reyvadin's speech with his mighty arms crossed in front of his breast, the Skayleigh set on to say something himself:

"I have to concur with him. Accessing the goods we need ourselves seems to be preferable to dealing with yet another unknown. All we know about any potential smuggler is that he or she will want to have their share of the deal, making things more expensive for us. Also hiring a smuggler is no guarantee that we won't end up having to fight. If we succeed stealing that stuff ourselves undetected...". And now his tone darkened before continuing: "...or at least without living witnesses left behind, nobody will know who and where we are. If we deal with a smuggler, at least one person will."

Winds of Fate - A Thieves' Adventure (Semi-Tabletop)

That bow had cost a considerable lot of coin! However, as Skarsat proceeded away from the stand, it dawned upon him that it would also cost him a decent bit of privacy. His very self was obviously quite well suited to attract some attention by innocent passer-bys, but that almost ludicrously large weapon on his back put up some serious competition for the prying eyes almost immediately. The problem was that it was next to impossible to discern those people looking at him from those rather looking at the bow on his back. It just and felt the same and that feeling was not good. Skarsat was used to stares, but not in such quantity as it could only happen on a very popular market in a very large city like this one.

This whole part of the world just kept feeling a little too populated. The prospect of getting out of here clearly was one of the pros of the sea journey ahead of them, even if it meant sharing the confined space of a naval vessel with a lot of other people for a bunch of days. There were other potential issues about a sea journey, too, but these could be fixed if he'd just do the right thing while he still could...

One of them was to prevent himself from vomiting all other the deck! Skarsat had very little illusions about his compatibility with the open sea for the nonexistence of said compatibiliity had become pretty obvious the last time he had dared to put his foot onto a ship. How many times had he been at sea at all in his life so far ? Skarsat had never cared about counting, but there was that certain memory about it being 'very few'. He clearly needed to do something about, get something against his potential see sickness.

His eyes searched for a merchant that might have the things he needed, but what he found was Solange. Why on earth did that filthy woman have to lurk at the one apothecary's stand that seemed to be the most trustworthy, if not even the only one around here ? He could not just wait here forever until she was gone, if not for the sake of his patience then for the sake of the man in the barrel... Yet on the other hand he could not just rush in there for he was looking forward to pretty much anything except yet another confrontation that would even take place in the public.

Get away from her!

Get away from her, you bitch!

Just... GET... AWAY! Stop talking and start buying before I dump your beautiful visage into the oily waters of this very port!

Finally!

"Oh! Something against sea sickness ? Sure, I have that. So it's true that what some people say, that your kind rarely reaches out for the sea but prefers to stay on land ? Who could not understand that! But you don't think that the waters would be poisonous, do you ? All those stupid rumors!"

Ziva shook her head while presenting her customer a mixture of smiling and laughing. It seemed as if she was trying to bridge over the time she took for her search of the item in question with some bubbly smalltalk. Skarsat listened in while at least trying to fake some interest, but in reality his eyes kept glancing over towards the cart where Neh'miah was still stowed away in some makeshift... disguise.

"Here it is! I'd recommend taking double doses for you, given your look!"

And then she suddenly froze, looking him up and down quite blatantly. "Say... The pretty woman that just walked out here... I know I maybe shouldn't talk about that, but I can't help but say that she mentioned a very big Tork. That doesn't happen to be you, does it ? She said you were starting to like her! Good choice I'd say!" and Ziva grinned.

"How much is it ?" Skarsat snapped back, cutting off whatever words might have spilled out of Ziva's mouth next. She however just silently pointed at a large wooden board where a quite long-ish list of items and prices had been written down with chalk. Yes, she liked to be prepared for all those petty, common questions! Not spending so much time on those just left more time for getting in touch with one's customers!

Yet as Ziva was already busy with how to formulate her next questions in a way that would not come across as an intrusion into one's privacy while at the same time being capable of yielding the answers her nosiness liked, the Tork's giant hand already slammed onto the poor table and left behind a number of coins that -- unfortunately! -- was quite sufficient. He walked away, taking the goods just bought with him in the process.

-----

So it seemed Solange had found her way towards the cart in the meantime. The bad thing ? Well, it was her! The good thing ? If anything such as a lack of breathable air would have happened to Neh'miah in the meantime, he had all right to blame her as well! Still the poor thief had nothing to do with all of this and was to be liberated from his suffering, Skarsat thought.

"If you'll allow..."

Skarsat took a brief look around, checking whether there was anybody looking right now. Then he rammed the palm of his hand so hard against one of the barrel's staves that it cracked, opening up a two small gaps left and right that would allow for some air exchange.

"Should have thought of that right away... This way we can pretend we're taking away some defective barrels along some proper ones and noone will be eager to check for some pricey wine in there for obvious reasons!"

Blades of the Blood Coast

Unfortunately I feel like since my crisis started my memory of my character(s) has been sorta erased. Sure, I know still who they are, but there's no real connection anymore if you know what I mean.

Long story short: I can't promise operation restart will actually take place anytime this weekend. I'm sorry :(

Blades of the Blood Coast

<Snipped quote by Fetzen>

If you would like, we could put your character on hold until you feel you have the time. Would you like that, or do you want to just bow out?

@POOHEAD189

I'd be grateful if you could put Lorcan on hold for a while. I don't want to bow out, in fact I'm profoundly disliking even writing this very message, but I think I just need a break for a few weeks. I'm feeling mentally dead and find it hard to even try to produce good posts.

Blades of the Blood Coast

I'm sorry to say it, but I think I might have to bail out of this. At least for an amount of time yet to be defined. I'm burnt out by real life issues I frankly just want to chainsaw massacre a very particular individual(s) for and feel like I won't have the energy to keep going for the moment.

Blades of the Blood Coast

Lorcan's eyes watched Raddek as he leaned back in his chair and his ears picked up what appeared to be more of a monologue than anything else. No criminal, huh ? And then admitting that he actually was, but still trying to find some relief in the fact that he was not a thief. For the Skayleigh, the attempt felt humble at best, but 'ludicrous' would have been a more appropriate description. So if Raddek was not a thief, what kind of thing had he then done in the past that had got him here that was less serious than being a thief ? Or was it just on the Caelic Isles that murder was considered worse than stealing something, maybe ?

Lorcan found it hard not to continue endulging himself in these thoughts and this even more so when he remembered his own situation: The Skayleigh did not deem himself to be a criminal at all. Someone who had made a grave mistake, yes, but there was a difference between an accident and an intentional killing out of some ulterior motive. It had only been due to... diplomatic issues... that he had ended up here. And now he should dabble with some underground organization that was even more unknown to him than the whole city it was situated in ? Aside from the not so negligible fact that this would only make him susceptible to more accusations even he could no longer deny to be criminal, there was the potential that his lack of experience with black markets and the like would screw up things.

So, to cut a long story short, the half-giant member of the party did not like the idea at all. And yet even before he could try to say anything about it Raddek already announced what felt like a definitive decision to accept the job and get it done. Anyone spending a sufficient amount of attention would notice that Lorcan did not touch his alcoholic beverage. The mood to do so had vanished in a very profound way -- he'd have to deal with that kind of liquid shit soon enough in quantities large enough for sure.

"Given that the city guard does not refrain from openly trying to draw money from newcomers into their very own pockets one should assume that the concept of bribery is more common here. I'm surprised that it does need the help of a bunch of strangers without any coin to keep things moving here." For Lorcan, the conclusion was clear: There was some very dirty work ahead of them, and most likely nobody would tell them it advance. Great.

Blades of the Blood Coast

I'll try to get my post up on Saturday or Sunday. Work has me in its grip still.