Kiyoka

[DarkIntruder]

Roger stared intently at the hooded and cloaked figure ahead of him in the dim tunnel. The individual (Roger thought it was a man, but couldn't be sure.) had dismissed the pair as a couple of harmless fools almost immediately. His mistake. Roger wasn't about to make the same one. The man (Roger decided to think of it as a man, at least until he knew more) was an unknown quantity, and one that Roger was't about to ignore.

Roger turned his thoughts to the situation at hand. He was being chased by murderous thugs, had run into a man who had witnessed the altercation and subsequently led them to this crazy Tour company, and they were now walking through a damp tunnel heading to the basement of the Veracian Mission, the warp gate (At least Roger hoped so. The quicker they left the better.) and then to parts unknown.

Roger turned to Zeeve and, keeping a firm hand on his shoulder and mouth, whispered in his ear.

"Sorry about the rough treatment, but we had to get out of there as quickly as possible, and you seemed about to raise some issues. No time for that. You're coming with me, like it or not. If those Gewehr's caught ahold of you, they'd find out where I'm heading. I'm not going to let that happen. So it's either this or I have to kill you. Understand?"

Zeeve glared at Roger, but finally nodded his head.

"Good. Now, I'm going to let go of you, so you'd better not go beserk, alright?"

Roger let go of the short man, just as the mysterious figure ahead of them called back down the tunnel.

"So, how's the Veracian Mission going to take us popping up in their basement?"

Roger called back to him. "Maybe they'll think it's a demonic invasion from the underworld, and try to purify us!"

[Graybeard]

The round Small One finished his examination of the corpse and stood up, to the extent that "standing up" describes the arising-motion of someone about as wide as he is tall. "Not much to be done here," he announced. "The wounds were fatal instantly, and they're bad enough that if we did somehow manage to revive him, he'd just die of them again every bit as instantly. Somebody definitely wanted this fellow dead." He did not add, "And oh, by the way, this guy was a member of the Gewehr Wraiths, and we have a church policy of not dealing with those scum," but he thought it.

Good, Grope thought, in his place of concealment. He was reaching the conclusion that he'd been impetuous in killing the Small One and wanted this encounter to end with a minimum of fuss and commotion. Consequently, the next exchange down at ground level made his matted black hair stand on end.

"But Father," Sister Margaret said, "these injuries are just bizarre. You and I have seen more than enough death in our lifetimes" -- Sister Eva paled visibly -- "to know that they could not have been inflicted by any mortal man. Who, or maybe I should say what, could have done such a thing?"

Father Egbert fixed her with a stare half angry, half troubled. "Sister Margaret, surely you don't believe in that ridiculous Springheel Jack myth? Or perhaps you were wanting to blame this on one of those elven deities they taught you about in Heresy 101? Or while we're at it, maybe a marauding werewolf? Or a troll?" Grope cringed...

The woman stood her ground. "No, Father, I don't know what I'm thinking here -- except that I think that this man was attacked from above." Crap, thought the troll. "Would you accept my plea to do your shape-shifting magic again, and make a quick reconnaissance of the rooftops? I believe you can do it safely, from a distance, and it would make us all much less apprehensive about the possibility that we're facing something unnatural here. This is Kiyoka, after all; uncivilized country." And a country we were at war with not that many years ago, she thought; it was a good day for people not saying what they think.

Shitshitshitshitshit, Grope thought. This was getting scary. Was he going to have to try to kill all three Small Ones where they stood? With all three being spellcasters -- and he also noticed that Sister Eva had quietly assumed a posture he associated with a skilled martial-arts practitioner -- he didn't like his chances nearly as much as he had with the thugs. But then Egbert sighed and spoke again.

"Alas, I cannot. I require some rest to regenerate mana before I can again cast ... special ... spells. It would take me at least an hour, maybe more. And by that time, whatever evil force killed this man will likely have fled the area, don't you think?" And you two dimwits will have forgotten what you wanted me to do, he thought, but he didn't say that either.

Margaret's body language said that she knew she was beaten, and she didn't like it. "Well ... if you put it that way ..." Grope quietly let out the breath that he'd been holding for what seemed like hours. "But let us go and pray to Luminosita for wisdom in dealing with this frightful occurrence."

Egbert seemed to grow a couple of inches, and Grope realized that he still had trouble reading the Small Ones' body language; the little man had been scared, too, and was quietly delighted to get off the hook. The man emitted a forced-sounding chuckle and said, "Sisters, I will leave the intercession with Our Lord Luminosita to your good offices. I'm sure you are sufficiently devout that Our Lord will hear. Meanwhile, I have another task to attend to. When I rousted that infernal bat-cat from the wine cellar, I could still hear noises in the basement. Surely it's just more vermin of some kind, but I'd better check it out. You know how the cooks and novices are; they'll hear the rats scraping about and think it's a demonic invasion from the underworld." And with that, he and the nuns went inside, leaving the body in the alley.

[Sareth]

"So, how's the Veracian Mission going to take us popping up in their basement?"

Roger called back to him. "Maybe they'll think it's a demonic invasion from the underworld, and try to purify us!"

"I certainly hope not," I replied. "Last guy to try that ate his own teeth."

I was exagerating, of course. I had, in fact, only managed to loosen one tooth. Still, the fellow had gotten the hint. Damn priests. You never knew you were with them. Then there had been the nun before that...

I shrugged that off. It was hardly a productive train of thought, especially as I had just reached a door at the top of the steps.

"So... through here then?" I reached into my cloak and cocked one of my pistols.

[Viking-Sensei]

Lucas returned to the front of the group, now accompanied by what appeared to be a female in nun's garb. As the girl moved, for a second she flickered, or at least her outfit did, revealing a simple yet provocative tunic... and the fact that her skin was a pale shade of blue. A fraction of a second later, the previous nunsly image reappeared, however it was still flickery around the edges, as if an optical illusion that the brain was having a bit of difficulty processing.

"Damn..." Lucas muttered. "Glamour processor must be overheating. Still, Ayiee, let's go! Everybody, follow my lead!"

They opened the door, Lucas now appearing to be less in his travel clothes and somehow more in that of a construction worker's standard garb. "So you see the problem..." A semi-real-sounding female voice came from the mysterious entity Lucas identified as Ayiee.

"Oh, yes, ma'am. The rising damp has gone right through those outer walls, we're going to have to shore up those slate blocks or else this entire tower could shift. My men are done taking the measurements, if you'll just show us the way out we'll get you some quotes..."

[Sareth]

"Oh, you have to be kidding," I muttered. There was no way anyone wasn't going to see through this. I reached under my garments to cock the other pistol.

Still, it beat having to deal with the Gewehr or the Ensigerium. I mean... nuns and priests? Even if they did see through this, what would they do? Pray at us? I shifted to the side, letting the guide and his dolly slip past me, giving a wry smile to those behind me.

[Graybeard]

From his rooftop perch, Grope pondered what he'd seen, and the more he thought about it, the less he liked it.

A Veracian priest who cast distinctly Tsuirakuan magic. A nun who knew something about martial arts. And another nun who had a suspicious bulge under her robes just where a gun might be. Just what were these people? One thing sure: they weren't garden-variety Veracian missionaries. He'd seen missionaries at work in some of the small towns in Farrel that he'd skirted on the way here, and the one thing they had in common was being clueless in the ways of the world. These people ... weren't.

Movement at the far end of the plaza caught his eye, even with the light starting to fail, and he thought he could recognize Curley and George, moving a great deal more cautiously than they had before. He calculated whether he should change his position so he could continue to track them, but rapidly decided against it. Whoever those mercenaries were, they probably didn't pose a threat to his tribe, at least not until they were hired by someone who didn't like trolls. The Veracian Church, on the other hand ... if this outfit was from the Church at all ...

No, he'd stay where he was and watch. He fingered the Many-Fathers-God-Wisdom-Robe prayerfully (hey, this was a house of prayer, wasn't it?), made himself comfortable, and settled in to wait.

[Weirdonian]

'Aaah, I see!' Toivo thought when he saw what Lucas had in mind. Sure, it was a gamble, but what choice did they have at this point? He pinned his hat to his backpack and then searched through his pockets for something that looked technical. All he could find was a jewelers monocle, so he took off his pack as he walked. He pulled out a notepad and a pencil and replaced the pack. He paused a moment to adjust his pack, muttering a few agreeable "Um"s and "Hmm"s and one quiet "OK, then." before picking up his pace and rejoining the rear of the group.

He watched these "friendly" newcomers with a wary but equally friendly eye. Toivo was not well-versed in the ways of city folk, but being an outside observer has its advantages. These two had likely brought a good amount of danger with them into this trip and Toivo would be keeping that in mind. Still, that was no reason to be discordial, so he excused himself as he walked by them and his original, mysterious traveling companion in this dank cellar hall. With his monocle secured in his right eye socket with a squint, and his notepad and pencil at the ready, Toivo put on a serious expression and hoped they were convincing enough to get through this.

[DarkIntruder]

Roger stared at the nun illusion as it passed him. The blue skin was a little off-putting, but if the basement above them was anything like down here, it might be dim enough not to notice. Or so he hoped.

Still, the heavily cloaked man seemed to have the right idea. If this plan failed spectacularly, then another one would be required to get them out of the basement in a hurry. And there was nothing like having a gun shoved in your face to make someone agreeable.

Stepping away from Zeeve, Roger slung his shoulder bag forward and rummaged through it. Moving aside as the blonde man, now sporting a pad of paper and murmuring to himself, walked past, Roger grasped the smooth wood pistol-like grip of the radically truncated double barrel scattergun and pulled it free.

Giving a wry grin and a wink to the hooded pistolero, Roger took up a similar position at the other side of the base of the stairs heading up. Cracking open the breech of the gun, he inspected the shiny brass heads of the two paper cartridges before slamming it shut again.

He leaned against the wall and waited for their guide to implement his plan.

[Graybeard]

It gets dark early in Kiyoka. The agricultural origins of the city make for a work force used to getting up with the sun and pulling the plug when the sun goes down, so traditional timekeeping always had time lagging an hour behind the sun. Furthermore, with magical lighting convenient and essentially free, there has never been incentive to get the place onto the same daily rhythms used in most of the world. It was therefore already past sunset when Small Ones started to fill the plaza at the end of the work day. Grope took advantage of the brief twilight between sunset and the streetlights coming on to reposition himself, and as he did so, he discovered that he'd made a careless, and possibly serious, error.

The front entrance to the Veracian mission opened onto the plaza, not the alley -- a fact that he didn't notice until, in the course of moving, he stumbled across the raised main doorway and almost fell off the roof. Fortunately, the Small Ones below weren't looking up (have these people lost all sense of danger?, the troll wondered) and his clumsiness went unnoticed. But it now dawned on him that he'd been watching a secondary entrance (marked "Mission Staff Only," although he had no way of knowing that), and that there might have been all manner of traffic through the plaza door that he might care about but didn't see. That was unfortunate; any good fighter (and all trolls are good fighters) values situational awareness, and through his careless oversight, he realized, he didn't have any.

He briefly considered whether to retreat to the forest for the night or stay put a little longer and try to figure out what was going on in the building underneath him. After a brief consultation with the Robe, curiosity won; he repositioned himself with a good view of traffic into the front door, while still preserving a partial view of the alley. And he began to notice things.

For starters, there wasn't much traffic. The Small Ones apparently didn't take the Veracian religion very seriously. Only a few nuns and children wearing novices' robes passed through the door into the building while he watched, and when one Kiyokan beggar hobbled to the door on a leg and a crutch, he was unceremoniously turned away by someone just inside the door that Grope couldn't see. Very odd, he thought; if he understood the Veracian religion correctly, tending the sick and the poor was one of the things that courted favor with their incomprehensible god -- as long as it wasn't incompatible with the priests looking all-powerful and cowing the other Small Ones into obedience, of course. So why would a place that looked like an outpost of that religion in a foreign land turn away natives with just that kind of disability? Something didn't make sense here.

He was still trying to sort out the incongruity when there was a woman's scream from down in the alley, and a sound of running feet.

[Viking-Sensei]

Ayiee moved forward through the milling congregation, parting the way for Lucas's travel party with minimal effort. Granted, a few heads turned at the striking figure of a woman (even if it was partially an illusion) in nun's garb... the mission in Kyoka was primarily populated by the too ugly to marry, the too irritating to be prostitutes, or the too old to be viable as wives or lovers, however occasionally a good-looking not-insane woman would wash up on their metaphorical shores looking for a fresh start, so Ayiee's air of illusion was not completely unbelieveable.

"Normally..." Lucas said in a not-that-quiet whisper over his shoulder, "when I sneak out of a town, it isn't my own... but it pays to be prepared. I've been expecting this sort of thing ever since the Wraiths started expanding their operations into Kyoka... my only question was always whether I'd be smuggling out Wraiths that had hired locals or locals that had run afoul of the Wraith."

Lucas also felt somewhat bad for the more-or-less-innocent Toivo, and was just about to contemplate offering him a sizable discount on his somewhat encumbered tour when a woman's scream rose from a nearby alley, followed almost immediately by a deafening blast from the opposite direction.