Dragon Harem Quest - Or: Saying You Were Gay Wasn't The Conversation-Ender You Hoped For

White Table has the look of a company town, and how do you get anywhere in a company town? You follow the money. Granted you've never actually tried 'following the money' before but it sure sounds effective. You pick a hidden spot to land and descend at a low angle, practically skimming the dusty earth with your talons as you slowly shrink and reshape. You skid to a stop in the shadow of a building and straighten up, scales retreating, horns sucked back into your skull, adjusting the fit of the clothes that just magically spin themselves into being around your now-gangly form. You never paid much attention to the bean-counters back home but you do vaguely recall one, and you turn yourself into a vague approximation of what you think he looked like.

When you stride out into the street you're a tall, rake-thin elf with a carefully-coiffed shock of white hair, a pair of spectacles perched on your arched nose and a conservative navy blue bow-tie at your throat. You're all set to immediately take off for anything office-shaped when you feel something strange. You stop dead in the dusty street and dig inside your jacket, thinking for a moment something somehow got stuck or you made a horrible mistake with the shapeshifting, but no. You just have these... slim leather braces looping around your shoulders and joining in a Y-shape over your back to hold your trousers up. You give them a few experimental plucks with your thumbs, testing out this ingenious fashion invention, only to be interrupted by a gasp of surprise.

"Oh thank heavens, you're finally here! If only I'd known when you were coming I'd have prepared a proper welcome!" a female voice says, and you give a start in the short time before you remember you're supposed to be in disguise. You summon up all the spare composure you can and fake it at least long enough to take stock. The town looks like even more of a dump up close than it did from above, as if the very moisture had been leached out of each plank of wood then every building blasted with sandy gale-force winds for good measure. You watch as a small gaggle of workers, sun-dried and chalk-stained to the point they seem twenty years older, amble across the street and into the blissful shade of the bar on the corner. A few moments later you realise that they were all dwarves, and in your attempt to seem inconspicuous you've picked a form that's a solid foot and change taller than everybody here.

"Oh, yes the town does have ah... a slight situation with its alcohol consumption," the voice adds, following your gaze. "With the state of the wells, fresh water is in somewhat short supply. The workers attempt to solve it by pickling themselves in beer." A soft noise of unguarded annoyance, quickly hidden. "But that shan't be a problem much longer, with the new shipments of supplies I've requested!"

"Mm?"

You finally look at your unwanted conversational partner, and see she's shockingly tall for a dwarf. The workers that filed into the bar would've been pushing it to call themselves 'chest high' but she's achieved the lofty heights of being only a head shorter than you. Her olive skin is flawless - clearly no stints in the mine for this one - but the long curly locks of hair cascading down her shoulders are chalk-white all the same. Her warm brown eyes betray a kind of manic, half-desperate energy, her smile wound just a fraction too tight, exposing a few too many pearly white teeth. She wears a long white dress that is being ruined by the ever-present dust before your very eyes but she at least escapes the worst of the sun courtesy of the snow-white parasol resting against her shoulder. She doesn't even have a beard on that strong jaw - if she ever did, she's absolutely fantastic at shaving.

"You are the representative here to survey the damage, aren't you?" she prompts you, a flash of worry in her eyes.

"O-oh, yes, of course of course," you say quickly, patting yourself down. "Just needed a moment to get my bearings. Very long trip, had to be... dropped off. Not much opportunity to sleep."

"Oh," she says with a compassionate sigh, "That must have been dreadful. Let's get you inside to look at the books in peace, shall we?"

"Y...es that sounds wonderful," you reply. You're racking your brain for character ideas, but as the woman ushers you on and away from the 'hustle and bustle' of the town's main square you realise you're just overthinking this. Your accountant was (or is, is he even still alive?) the most boring man you'd ever met. If you just act insufferably boring you're sure to keep your cover. Actually were the suspenders even a part of his outfit or something you spontaneously came up with during the change? They seem far too adventurous an article to be something he willingly chose to wear. Perhaps he stitched his shirt to his trousers so that he could be forever ready for office hours.

In any case the well-dressed and absurdly tall dwarf woman leads you coastwards to a squat old administration building, luckily not yet swallowed up by the earth itself despite bordering not one but two sinkholes into the chalk. Each one has a sign in front of it saying 'DO NOT APPROACH - DANGEROUS'. There's a pair of miners sitting at the edge of one with beer bottles and cigarettes regardless. The whole way there your guide chatters on and on about what a lovely place the town was in its heyday, and how water and greenery are sure to return to White Table any season now as it leaves its perfectly natural cycle of complete desertification. A brief moment of respite as she fiddles with the keys in the lock, and you're inside in the relative cool of the shade. Of course the lack of airflow is stifling in its own right, but if the woman isn't going to complain neither can you. You almost launch right into the search when you remember you have absolutely no idea what you're looking for. You pause, practically mid-stride, and turn to her.

"I'm sorry, I didn't even catch your name," you say.

"Phaedra," she replies, shaking your hand enthusiastically. "Phaedra Taylor. It would be my pleasure to speak to you regarding any matter in White Table, no matter how small!"

Hm, how to- no this is fine, accountants have to ask all sorts of boring obvious questions. "And you are the owner of the property?"

Phaedra makes an ambiguous noise in the back of her throat, her gaze flicking away from you for a moment. "I am running the chalk mine and attached town of White Table, yes," she replies a moment later. "I'm not the sole owner of the property but I have been placed in charge for the foreseeable future. Its finances are wholly my responsibility!"

"Good, good," you say to fill time. "And the 'damage' you mentioned. Could you tell me more about it?"

"Ah, gladly!" She strides over to a nearby desk and takes a seat with an almost audible flumpf as the layers of dress sit down with her. She doesn't pull up the other chair for you, nor does she notice your slight grimace. You just remain standing. "It was awful, absolutely dreadful. There was some kind of attack from below, you see. A hideous monster, absolutely massive and inhumanly strong to boot! It caused multiple cave-ins in the mine on its way to the surface and completely demolished one of our residential buildings! It even managed to kill one of our employees before it was driven off, the poor soul." She fans herself, probably overwhelmed by the heat more than emotion. "It's a good thing that we all banded together when we did. Who knows what kind of carnage the beast could have wreaked if left unchecked?"

"And you saw this?"

"Oh heavens no, and I'm thankful I didn't!" She presses her hand to her chest. "I was in bed, far from the worst of it, but I was informed of what happened later."

"I see," you say, racking your brain for more leading questions. You point at a random shelf of logbooks. "May I see the records starting from, say, a week or two before the incident?"

"Of course, of course!" She leaps to her feet, only to um and ah over which book exactly is the one you need. You spend your spare time out of sight kneading your temples and staring at nothing, hoping something will come to you. "Aha, here we are!" And in a flash you're normal again, just a regal and imposing figure ready to read some very serious and boring documents.

You crack open the logbook and sit down at another empty desk, resisting the urge to run your finger down the page as you carefully scan the neatly-ordered columns and rows of cramped, cursive script. You're almost immediately struck by a massive, crushing weight of abject despair at the path you've chosen in life, but no time to let that set in - you've got company. So you leaf through and try to look busy, nodding sagely every so often.

"So this... incident," you say. "Could you tell me any more about it? Do you have any idea what might have precipitated the attack?"

"I haven't the faintest idea!" she replies. "Mining was conducted with only the strictest of safety standards, and it isn't as if we could have missed a bull-creature buried in the chalk before we began. Or at least if we had I'm certain Father would have told me before he left." She pauses, then sits up straighter as a thought occurs to her. "You don't think it could have been a god, do you?"

"A poor excuse for a god if it could be driven off by chalk miners," you mutter mostly to yourself, still leafing through the books. At some point between flips of a page the results get... bad. Bad enough for even your casual eye to see it. Profits nosedive. Expenses skyrocket. You see a lot of imports of food and tools, so much you'd think they were throwing their shovels off a cliff and stuffing the sinkholes with meat. You can understand no game wanting to wander close to this unhallowed place but have even the fish deserted White Table? The sea did look that odd colour from the air.

"Your father left?" you ask. "Might I ask when that happened, and the reason for his trip?" Very official-sounding, you're good at this.

"A week before the incident, I should say," Phaedra replies. "He was such a hard worker; a self-made man you know, his father only gave him a small loan of two hundred thousand akçe - his dealings were primarily with the Tanin Sultanate you see - so he changed them to dollars and founded this place. Brought it from strength to strength and then entrusted it to me when he needed to take some personal time off."

There's a slight waver in her voice but she hides it well. There's only a hint of desperation that you'll solve this for her, that someone will finally sweep into town and fix all of it, because the whole thing came crashing down around her ears as hard as anything can crash down the minute the keys were in her hand and what could anyone possibly expect her to do about it? You know the tone all too well. The corner of your mouth curls slightly and flip back through the books. You still don't know what you're looking for really - proof that Takara did this? - but with enough time shooting the ledger a series of thoughtful looks, you find something noteworthy. A pair of entries listed only as 'artefact', first buying it from someone named Petros Chalkias for a pittance, then turning around and selling it to another buyer for a hundred times that.

"You buy and sell artefacts?"

"Of course?" Phaedra replies, and you flinch at the halting confusion in her voice. "Any operation involving mining is invariably going to stumble across certain noteworthy finds, whether belonging to the first civilisation or other, more primitive cultures. Any workers who uncover something of that nature are given a generous bonus to their wages."

You have to admire the business acumen. The bonus is big enough to seem like a dream come true to anyone toiling on a miner's wages, but still a pittance compared to what any motivated buyer could offer. You linger on the page, tapping it twice with a fingertip.

"Could you tell me anything more about this most recent acquisition?" you ask. She leans over to check what you're pointing at, the chair creaking beneath her.

"I think I remember that one, Father was very busy trying to multitask finalising the deal and preparing me to take over but he kept it in his study so I happened to see it once or twice. Just some minor idol of worship made of a cow skull." One second. Two seconds. She doesn't make it to three before the coin drops and her eyes widen. "You don't think it had anything to do with the attack, do you? I-I assure you we had no possible way of knowing- I mean it's not like we can reasonably be held liable for the damages!"

You're not listening to her. You're miles away. You're too busy casting your mind's eye back through your memories, back to the night that Takara just so happened to want to help you steal from your rival. Back to the moment you picked up and discarded a fertility idol made from a cow's skull.

You don't know much about gods, but you know plenty about being stolen from. The sick feeling of helpless fury deep in your stomach, the desire to lay all about you and break whatever's in reach as if that will somehow convey some small measure of your rage to the one who crossed you, wherever they may be. Something was stolen from this god, something precious enough that they arose from their slumber and set off in pursuit of it. Killing... the one who unearthed and sold it? You can't think of any other reason it would kill only one miner and leave. Perhaps even now it seeks Phaedra's father - or, the man having wisely gone far beyond its reach on an impeccably-timed 'retreat', seeks whoever he sold it to.

You found this place by approximating a location based on the beacons of light your map showed. Here you find evidence of a furious god in search of its rightful property, with every reason to head north to the vault where you last saw the skull, broadly similar to the ponderous path that same beacon was tracing when you last possessed the map. The same map that Takara stole, and in their calling-card told you they would use to find lovers...

You can barely contain your excitement. It feels like it's all coming together, the universe aligning to bring your vengeance that much closer. What if this mysterious buyer, this middle-person between Taylor and the Rossos, were Takara themselves? It seems just like them - buy the artefact for ten times what Taylor paid, turn around and sell it to the Rossos for ten times that, only to break in under the cover of your retaliation and steal it back to sell again. Devious enough for a dragon - and oh how hard it is to suppress a cruel grin at the very idea that Takara doubled back only to run right into the god they enraged with their little con. How quickly a backstabbing fox like that must run out of places to turn. Would the god even know, or- no Takara must be able to hide themselves through some magic or another, they seemed powerful from what you saw and heard. All the better. You get to reveal the truth yourself. This is just the big break you were looking for! Trying to find a shapeshifter in an entire continent is one thing, but trying to find a destructive bull-god like Phaedra described is another entirely. Oh it feels like you're alive again, like all the grit and dust and dried-up sweat of travel has been washed away, leaving you clean and refreshed! And even if you're completely wrong you might at least have a new boyfriend in tow when you go home so it won't be a total loss. You-

"Ah, hello?"

You blink with a start. Phaedra's leaning over to catch your eye. You must have seemed like you were completely zoning out to her. You wet your dry lips and adjust your bow tie.

"My apologies I was doing... maths," you say lamely. You rise from your seat all of a sudden. "Thank you very much for your time, all seems in order, yes I think that's all, lovely to meet you, goodbye."

"But Mr. -" Phaedra stumbles over the plea as she realises she never bothered to ask for your fake name. She presses on regardless, leaping from her chair and beating you to the door. "I understand you must be a very busy man with a great deal of commitments but this is-" she glances to and fro, as if checking for eavesdroppers, her head dipping as she continues almost in a hiss. "The very survival of White Table is at stake, and I absolutely must have an answer now. How much of the damage is insured?"

You come to an abrupt stop and stare down at her. Insur- oh that thing mortals turn to when their property is harmed because they can't wreak bloody vengeance themselves.

"I just need to make the arrangements you see," Phaedra adds, quickly straightening up and fixing her hair before plastering on another smile. "It wouldn't do for Father to come back from his trip and see the property in shambles with nothing to show for it, would it?"

"No," you agree, "it wouldn't."

Gods, look at her. The masked desperation, unwilling or unable to see what a pit of a situation she's landed in, what an easily-disposable lost cause White Table is. Her father probably laughed all the way to the bank on this trade. You have to tell her something so she'll move and let you be on your way, but what? Lie to her? Tell the truth? Something in-between? Every moment you delay is a moment Takara and/or the angry god could be getting further away, and the thought makes a vein pulse in your temple.

[ ] Tell her she gets nothing. From what you've been told that's probably the most accurate response from a Plutocracy insurance plan, and she did all but admit that her dad carelessly brought this on them himself. It's not fair, but nothing is.
[ ] Make up some arbitrary percentage of the damages that your fake organisation will pay her. A quick little white lie won't matter, it's not like you plan on being back here anytime soon.
[ ] Tell her the truth. No one is coming to bail her out because that's not what this is about. Her dad knew the price of this deal and he did it anyway because he knew he wouldn't have to suffer the consequences. Tell her in no uncertain terms that trying to do right by him with White Table is a lost cause because he set her up to fail, and if she wants to get something done she should be trying to get out from under his shadow as soon as possible. It'll instantly blow your cover, but truth be told you're dying to say it all the same. [x1.2]