Farrel- Vengeance in the Mushrooms Woods

[Jack Rothwell]

OOC Continuing from 'The Road to Salaband' thread/OOC

Long after noon, a tired, dishevelled woman stepped out from a tavern and into the grey afternoon of Ester.

The town was a poor excuse of a place a day's ride from the much more industrious Port Lorrel. A place for small businesses, drop outs, criminals and a joke (in the woman's estimation) of a law enforcement agency called the
Falkenrohr. The same organisation who had been the primary authors in her current state of misery. Since she'd left the port she'd had her goods confiscated, she'd been robbed, groped, humiliated and robbed again. The first by a smarmy theif who'd had the audacity, the sheer fucking balls to dismantle her father's gun and throw it onto a roof and the second by a maniac wizard living in the woods who left her minus her sword (her pride and joy) and nothing but the aforementioned theif, constricting vines, 'knockout' mushrooms and a swarm of invasive bugs for company.

She'd been rescued, thank the Gods, as humiliating as that had been, and retrieved her revolver, but those had been the only bright spots in a couple of days which had been about as fun as wisdom tooth surgery in the middle of a stampede.

She was near broke, devoid of nearly all her possessions and full of impotent anger.

And it was time to do something about it.

"It's time for round Goddam two." Jade muttered.

[Jack Rothwell]

First things first.

The Falkenrohr had informed her that her goods would remain in custody before she could move them through a designated trader (another example of their small town tyranny) but they hadn't said anything about the money which was also in her pack. Heavily taxed or not, retrieving that was the priority.

It was a short walk to the miltia's watchtower; the blacksmith found it as lightly guarded as before. Internally she cursed that she didn't have the necessary low morale value to simply draw her gun, shoot the two men at the entrance and retrieve her pack the highwayman way.

"Afternoon miss."

"I've come to retrieve my money." Jade stated, getting to the point. "I understand that your 'noble' outfit has taken it upon themselves to guard my merchandise, and please extend my thanks to your... Captain for his due diligence." What Tom Odd's official rank was she wasn't sure. "I'm willing to accept your 'civil penalty' so I can have a roof over my head tonight." She gave a rueful and completely false smile. "After all, it's hard for a tradeswoman to sell her goods if she looks like she woke up in a ditch."

Which, admittedly, was more or less how the woman had woken up that morning. Jade's clothes were rumpled, her red hair was a rat's nest and her face was an unhealthy cocktail of grime and heavy bags a boxer could use to train with. She reached a hand under her shirt and scratched at the rash the evil, invasive caterpillars had left, presumably at the behest of the wizard she intended to rain hail and hellfire upon in the not-too-distant future.

After a quiet murmured word between the men and an agreement to surrender her firearm into their temporary custody the blacksmith was led inside the ruined watchtower. The interior was hardly more appealing than the entrance; moss covered stones and the smell of damp were a feature which accompanied them into a darkened, circular room bedecked with a pair of cells, a handful of chairs and a desk which the tall boss of the Falkenrohr sat behind. He gave Jade a smile which stopped well short of his eyes as Jade approached.

"Our out of town trader! What brings you our little establishment today?"

Jade sighed, if she had to eat crap it was best not to chew.

"Civil penalties for toll evasion." She said.

"What a conscientious citizen you are." The chuckle behind her from the guardsmen sent a ripple of anger through the blacksmith's spine. "Very well young lady. We'll return your 'fortune' after the appropriate fees are paid, you won't starve under our protection."

The pack was retrieved from a small, padlocked storage room (Jade made a mental note of the design of the lock; hardly class A workmanship) and the lining of it carelessly ripped open by the contemptible 'Captain'. A hefty purse tumbled onto the desk with an accompanying whistle of the present law enforcement. Jade estimated about three grand in there from her down payment from the Black Guard. She also estimated she'd be lucky to leave with half of that in her pocket.

She wasn't.

Some ten dignity-stripping moments later Jade left the establishment with a much lighter purse but a faint ray of hope in her heart. Yes, she'd been fleeced, but at least she had the recourses to carry out the next part of her plan. Moreover, she'd been informed she could accompany the Falkenrohr to the market the following day to begin unloading her goods.

The golem blade was not negotiable though. That was going to be useful later.

Jade sighed and took a left. She had a blacksmith's to find.

(OOC how do you put in a link in text again?/OOC)

[Graybeard]

[OOC: OK, so Khoo, with a possibility of Elke shortly depending on how things go. As for your embedded link, the syntax is
{url=link name}any comments, name, etc.{/url} except that you use square brackets instead of the curly ones. Example: here is the link to Khoo's brief encounter with Eve and Leo. I don't think Jade was present, though. So, enter Khoo:]

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

Khoo's muscles ached as he rose from his mid-day nap, leaving Anna-Lisa snoring in the lumpy bed. Most of the ache had come from the exertions of the morning (including the ... exertions ... that Anna-Lisa had put him through as they woke up and again after lunch -- the girl was absolutely insatiable), but by the Sea God's Fins, was there nowhere in Ester that had a bed that was comfortable?

He still wasn't sure why their Homeland Security "employer," Choubei Masaki, had sent them to this Luminosita-forsaken (hey, might as well swear in multiple languages at once, he thought) town in the middle of nowhere. To be sure, their search for a spy ring had turned up absolutely nothing anywhere else, which didn't surprise him at all, much the contrary. It had been so fruitless, in fact, that it sounded as if Masaki might even be starting to take Anna-Lisa's crazy plan with a bogus dwarven artifact seriously. Khoo had never, never expected that.

Well, whatever; for the moment, he had a blacksmith's shop to find and case, to his limited abilities to "case" anything. That should be easier without Anna-Lisa draped all over him like a strangler vine on a tree. He slipped quietly out of the run-down inn and set off.

[Jack Rothwell]

OOC So Anna Lisa and Khoo are a thing now? Did that happen offscreen? /OOC

It didn't take Jade long to locate the familiar establishment (even after a minor detour to locate an apothecary and a jar of ointment for bug-related rashes), even tucked away down an alley a few streets from the small town's central market. The place was largely unchanged, the same could be said of its owner. The middle aged man who ran the place still sported a gut and a beard which could swallow a squirrel, as he had years before. He turned as Jade entered and met the blacksmith with a hairy, but winning, smile.

"Jade Ermingard! As I live and Breathe! I never thought I'd see you again!"

Maybe for the first time since she'd left her guild the woman felt a little of the weight pressing on her heart lift.

"Flint Crosby." Her smile was wide and genuine. "Good to see you too. Still up to old tricks I see."

"it's my vocation. If I don't work I don't eat."

"Then business must be good." She said lightly, nodding at his waist.

Flint gave a good natured laugh at the jest. Although it had only been for a days about three and a thousand years ago she'd enjoyed working in the older blacksmith's workshop; Flint had a professional but laid back work ethic reminiscent of her father the young woman had found easy to relate to.

"Are you looking for work again? I'm afraid I've hired an apprentice since you were last here. He isn't as talented as you, but he tries."

"Luckily for him, no." She replied. "I was actually looking for a commission this time."

Without further ceremony the blacksmith handed the man a scrap of paper with a list of materials wit upon it.

"Tell me; how are you fixed for air filters? "

[Graybeard]

[OOC:

OOC So Anna Lisa and Khoo are a thing now? Did that happen offscreen? /OOC

Chuckle. That wound up being much of what the "Contest of Miseries" thread was all about. See here, and the next 15 or so posts, for how it all got rolling. Khoo is not entirely thrilled with the idea of him and Anna-Lisa being a "thing," but for the moment, his glands are overpowering his intellect ... and she does a pretty good job of communicating with his glands. So onward:]

Honestly, Khoo had little more business in a smithy than a horse would in a thaumatocycle shop in Tsuirakushiti, for exactly the same reason: the transportation afforded by the shop would be completely alien to the one entering it. However, courtesy of his origins in a tiny fishing village in a minor Tsuirakuan island, he'd at least seen a bit of ironwork, unlike most Tsuirakushitians. Between that and the fact that the one tiny, almost invisible lead that he and Anna-Lisa had picked up while playing detective did involve ironwork, he supposed this wasn't the dumbest thing Masaki could have had him do -- close, but not the dumbest. (Not to mention that it got him away from Anna-Lisa for a few precious minutes.)

He sauntered into Crosby's smithy, trying to act like knew what he was doing (although any observer would rapidly deduce that he didn't), and busied himself perusing some wrought-iron fireplace furnishings as he listened to random conversations in the shop; listening was one of the things he was supposed to do in this job that he was actually pretty good at.

[Jack Rothwell]

Crosby acknowledged the new customer with a `be right with you sir' before answering Jade's question.

"I have the materials right here but you'll have to figure out the filter yourself. What exactly do you need it for? "

"Those mushrooms in the southern woods. They excrete some kind of spores that can knock a person out."

"And why in Na'ar would you want to go there? "

"That's my business."

"Fair enough." Flint replied in even tones as he liberated a selection of leather and steel plates from the selves around the forge. "I must say you've gotten a harder edge since the last time I saw you. Dare I ask what you've been up to?."

"You can ask if you don't mind me keeping quiet." Jade replied. "All I'd say is to avoid Port Lorrel for a while, especially if you're working on any commissions for Lucas Logan."

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Just to keep the ball rolling. I will be intermittent for a few days, but I'm still here!]

Lucas Logan, thought Khoo. Lucas ... do I know that name? He wasn't at his best with names not from the Tsuirakuan culture, but he remembered hearing of a Lucas Ravanel that some of his fellow adventurers had talked about in hushed (horrified?) tones. Ravanel ... Ravanel ... could that mean "logan" (whatever a "logan" was) in one of the languages that Khoo didn't speak?

He thought probably not [OOC: as is indeed the case; no relation between the two Lucases that I know of], but his attentiveness to the conversation between the blacksmith and the bedraggled young woman ramped up by a small notch, just in case.

[Graybeard]

[OOC: So to have a little more to play off of, here's a bit for former NPC Elke, who may be promoted to PC status if circumstances call for it:]

Meanwhile, in Port Lorrel:

At least I'm finally over the morning sickness, Elke thought as she rolled out of bed.

She was used to sleeping alone; she'd done it for more than thirty of her 35 years, and she was perfectly happy not to think about three of those not-alone years from her earlier life. Furthermore, her marriage to John Stagpoole had only lasted a couple of months, just long enough to produce the child with which she estimated herself to be not quite four months along. That marriage hadn't been one of those raging-passion things, either; they'd just discovered that their shared ... interests in a certain project led naturally to "couple" status. Well, that and the fact that they both really, really enjoyed the sex, right up to half an hour before his bizarre, horrifying death.

Still, she did miss him in her no-nonsense, highly professional way, and she had awakened every morning since his death worrying, most uncharacteristically, about raising her unborn child as a single mother. This one was no exception. She'd planned all along to go back to her "job" as a high-ranking member of the Eisenfaust as soon as the kid was born; the big bosses had assured her she could do that. But she hadn't wanted to do it yet. Without John's ... extra income (among other things) from his own, personal-scale smuggling "job," she was going to have to do it now, like it or not.

Well, wishing it otherwise wouldn't make it so. She had a typically spare, ascetic breakfast, dressed, and laid in a few rather unusual magical gadgets in addition to her pistol that she'd brought home from the warehouse yesterday. They probably wouldn't be necessary; the Falkenrohr outfit that she'd been asked to investigate didn't sound like much of a threat, and besides, this was supposed to be a fact-finding outing rather than a hit, which would be left to the people who worked for her. Still, it never hurt to be on the safe side ... particularly now that she was caring for two lives rather than one.

She set off for Ester, her memories of that awful day a couple of months earlier almost submerged beneath the planning for what she would do on this mission; almost, but not quite.

[Jack Rothwell]

OOC I'll get one in tomorrow. Sorry bud, been rushed off my feet lately. /OOC on

[Graybeard]

[OOC: No problem, here's a little more Khoo for you to play off of:]

Crosby's attention returned momentarily to Khoo while he tried to frame an answer regarding Lucas Logan. "What can I do for you?" he asked, more or less politely.

Khoo actually had an answer ready for this. "Oh, nothing much, just trying to find a souvenir for my girlfriend, we're traveli--"

And then he stopped, not just in mid-sentence but in mid-word, as he realized the enormity of what he'd done.

Omigawd omigawd omigawd.

I just called Anna-Lisa my "girlfriend."

I'm screwed.