Goriel and beyond, part 3

[Sareth]

Lillith stretched, giving a small wince. She pondered for a moment. "If I am, that was the first time."

Brad gave Lillith the strangest look at that one. The woman gave him a playful swat. "Oh, stop that," she laughed. "It was probably something in the food, plus the stress." Smiling lips turned down and Lillith's eyes grew dark. "I don't like it here. Not one bit. Did you know they sent one of those getera to 'serve' Brad last night?"

Brad looked extremely embarrassed. "I pled off because of concern for Lillith's health. She seemed to accept that."

****

Jamie glowered over at Tamina, not particularly being a morning person. The glare did not last long. She smiled and snuggled up against her furry companion. "Five more hours?"

"Tamina's finger found a particularly sensitive spot to poke and Jamie lept out of the bed. "I'm up! I'm up!" She looked around, scratching at skinny ribs. "Hey, what did we do with Minudo last night?"

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose rolled her eyes. She knew her cousin well enough to know he wouldn't have availed himself of a getera's "services," but still, even providing them for a newlywed man went well beyond tasteless. She shook her head. "I wonder what the weddings and honeymoons are like in a place like this? No, scratch that, I don't think I want to know."

Truthfully, she was feeling slightly queasy herself. It could hardly be morning sickness; even if she'd botched the Contraception spell (it had been a long time since she'd used it, after all), it would take longer than three days after ... well, afterward for the symptoms to start. No, it was just the combination of a relatively revolting diet (you didn't have to be a vegetarian to dislike what had been served last night, she thought) and a setting that would turn any sensible woman's stomach.

And she was going to have to venture back out into it and play the role of clan chief's wife again.

On that note, she sighed. "Back to business." She turned to Argus. "Any ideas on how to get a lead on the guy we're looking for? Because frankly, I'm at a loss here."

-----------

[OOC: The following assumes that Jamie and Tamina eventually made it outside after waking up, so that these two yahoos could stumble across them. If they're heading in a different direction, this can be retconned...]

Meanwhile, two of the night's customers were leaving the brothel.

"Damn lousy lay," one grumbled to the other. "Bet I get crabs, as if the lay weren't bad enough."

The second man snorted. "Think you'd have done any better if you'd stayed at the mine, buggering the new guy?"

In much of Goriel, that kind of humor would have risked getting a sword run through one's gizzard, but the two miners had been friends for all of their forty or so years. Instead it got a guffaw. "He is kind of a nancy-boy, ain't he?" the first man said. "Didn't say where he come from, but he's soft. I screwed a girl once what talked like he does, Veracian accent I think." He snickered. "She was a lousy lay too."

His colleague snickered in return, as they passed a small figure of indeterminate sex and a -- what was she, a catgirl? Something to be avoided, probably; the Knave alone knew what kind of "girls" there'd been at the brothel that they didn't get to experience. "Yeah, you're right, Veracian probably. Don't make no never-mind to me. Come on, there's rubies to be dug, and a Veracian to be rolled."

"Guess we got a chance at one o' those at least, huh?" the first man chortled. They set off.

[Jack Rothwell]

OOC Minudo? Udo?/OOC

Tamina waved cheerily as they passed the two men and pondered what the day had in store for her.

"Should get Oooo-doh 'fore we go the mine." She said. "Stopped off at a bar at... oh! That one!"

The kobold pointed to a shabby-looking building with a sign hanging above which simply read 'The Watering Hole'. It's entrance was framed by a pair of men who were probably drunk, possibly dead.

........

"Any ideas on how to get a lead on the guy we're looking for? Because frankly, I'm at a loss here."

Eli chipped in his two pennies, even if the question hadn't been directed at him.

"Well we could always find a likely looking suspect and squeeze them for information or... I may have a way to spy on people who might know where our mark is."

[Alberich]

Although Tim didn't like Eli's methods - a fact he carefully concealed - he thought the silka could indeed be useful here. He added his own thoughts - "Before that, why don't we take Boris up on his offer? He knows this country. He might have something. He wants to talk about something and I bet he wouldn't make us wait for lunch to do it. And I think a 'noble lord' like Argus could visit the Duravsky compound socially, and see if we could get a word from Desiree, and Kirassia could, ah, check whether her...grapevine came up with anything else on Blaise. Since that 'sudden death' business sounds like him and all."

He thought they could even split up for these missions but didn't suggest that.

* * *
To his disappointment, Jamie and Tamina hadn't done anything with Udo that evening. But the afternoon had been frisky enough, and he always had his new pocketful of pictures.

Rousing him was easy enough - and he was eager to set off on the day's quest. A trip to the Gibazov mining museum had shown that the mine was at least a day's travel away, maybe longer, maybe longer yet if Jamie kept stopping to get into trouble and set the countryside on fire. But he was fine with that.

[OOC: Jamie, Tamina, and Udo left the brothel in the afternoon; they didn't sleep the night there. Jamie asked whether they should get a room somewhere. Udo wanted to leave town so that Jamie wouldn't burn anything down. Apparently he was overruled since everyone just woke up in town. But they're nowhere near the brothel now.]

[Graybeard]

[OOC:

[OOC: Jamie, Tamina, and Udo left the brothel in the afternoon; they didn't sleep the night there. Jamie asked whether they should get a room somewhere. Udo wanted to leave town so that Jamie wouldn't burn anything down. Apparently he was overruled since everyone just woke up in town. But they're nowhere near the brothel now.]

Right. I had the two miners leaving the brothel in the morning, long after our merry crew, then walking back to the mine, heading out of town. En route they passed the tavern where Jamie and Tamina had crashed. If you don't mind having these two emerge from the tavern just in time to hear those guys mocking the soft Veracian in their midst, no need to do anything different. We have to move the plot along somehow, after all ... /OOC:]

"What is that thing?" the first minor said, tipping his chin toward Tamina; even with their limited (to put it mildly) social skills, it wouldn't do to point.

"I dunno," the other one said. "There's weirder than that in the mountains, though." He chuckled. "Speaking of which, I don't think that Veracia mook is gonna be there when we get back. He don't know how to move in the mountains. Probably got eaten by a night wyrm or somethin'."

The first man chuckled in reply. "Hey, better him than us." They continued toward the edge of town, where horses awaited them.

[OOC: What's a "night wyrm"? Really, I have no idea, but mainly it's an excuse to introduce this new thread regarding "monsters" of the Far North and elsewhere. As Alberich has pointed out, the mines of the Far North certainly seem like places where creepy-crawlies might be encountered, don't they?...]

[Sareth]

If Jamie had ears even half-way similar to Tamina's, they'd have been twitching. She idly patted Tamina. "Go fetch him, will you? I just noticed something." Grinning, she rested her back against a wall and watched the two men walking down the road.

[Jack Rothwell]

OOC I'll just tie this in with alberich's post./OOC

Tamina hurried off and 'roused' Udo with unsurprising ease. The pair emerged from the tavern moments later, the mercenary giving the kobold a piggyback while her delighted squeals filled the morning air.

"Yay! Going on the road again! Oh, by the by, never asked... umm... what's a mine? Is it mine? Or yours? Or is it his?" At this she tapped Udo on the top of his head.

..........

"Before that, why don't we take Boris up on his offer? He knows this country. He might have something. He wants to talk about something and I bet he wouldn't make us wait for lunch to do it. And I think a 'noble lord' like Argus could visit the Duravsky compound socially, and see if we could get a word from Desiree, and Kirassia could, ah, check whether her...grapevine came up with anything else on Blaise. Since that 'sudden death' business sounds like him and all."

"We could do both." Eli interjected. "Maybe 'Our Lord and his Mistress' make nice with Boris while Tim and I see what we can uncover?"

OOC I might be intermittent for the next week or so./OOC

[Alberich]

Tamina was fetching. Udo was fetched.

On the way down, he said, "Oh, 's where people dig up shinies."

Udo didn't come from a world where "mine" referred to things that went "boom." But if they were going to one with Jamie...

[Graybeard]

"Maybe 'Our Lord and his Mistress' make nice with Boris while Tim and I see what we can uncover?"

"Father Boris is the head priest, and more or less ambassador, at our mission," Sister Rose corrected Eli. "He's one of us, not one of them." [OOC: May as well get this out there into public record so the characters know who's who. /OOC:] "Yes, we two can talk to him now, before we go visit Clan Duravsky." The wince as she said that last sentence made it clear she wasn't looking forward to that later part of the day.

A few minutes later, Rose and Argus were in Boris' private office. He's gone native, Rose noted, unsure quite how she felt about that. To be sure, all of the religious appurtenances were fully Luminositan, but the usual furnishings of an abbot's quarters had been supplemented with some local goods. It wasn't just every Veracian cleric, for example, whose office chairs were upholstered with real furs, some of them rather expensive looking. And was that a ruby set into the base of the lamp on his desk? Momentary disapproval flared behind Rose's green eyes. She and her Reformed colleagues felt strongly that ostentatious wealth had no place in the Veracian Church, not while there were poor out there whom it was the Church's ministry to tend (read: feed). Of course, she was aware that some of the Orthodox people didn't see things that way ... and there was the business of cultivating ties to the community, such as it was. (As long as those ties didn't get too comfortable.) Well, it was probably necessary to accept such things. She stepped out of her Lady Cleiviein role, and to some extent, out of the Sister role as well, and into role as Major Nuria-Lucas, on a mission that had some Special Ops dimensions to it.

"Here," she said, handing the priest a sealed envelope bearing a note she'd written on return to the temple. "These are our -- observations so far, nothing particularly notable, other than that band of thugs at the banquet. Looks like we may have got mixed up in some local 'politics,' if that's the right word. I'd really rather avoid that; we have a job to do, and unfortunately, very little progress on doing it. If you could transmit this back to Emerylon, I'd appreciate it." She sat back to hear what was on Boris' mind.

[Drannin]

(OOC: Still here, just been busy lately. Don;t worry about me)

Argus sighed, lost in thought. Truth be told, Goriel was starting to wear thin on him. It was not his type of town, to put it mildly.