enigma1995
Gentleman Beholder
[X] Azel
I for one are most definitely advocating for his involvement.[X] Azel
So are we going to get Qyburn involved in the takeover of the Citadel at any point? I know it's out of his area of specialty, but I bet his "you thought I was mad" speech would be unparalleled. Sure it'd probably involve lots of mad cackling and end with half the audience as Brain Cylinders, but no one would forget it anytime soon.
Huh, I somehow missed this chapter while I was working on Mereth's character sheet this morning. If the group is in a looting mood, that coin would be an interesting acquisition.The Artisans Pride VIII<< Previous
The last few years had been, all things considered, rather fruitful for Jorga. Back in the day, he had to beg and steal to have something in his stomach, now though, he was a made man with his own shop and quite a few people who respected him. It all started with that strange thing he found in the gutter, looking like a cross between a jellyfish and a dog. Back then, nobody knew what something like this was, so he just grabbed it. Granted, he didn't know any more about what exactly that thing had been now either, just that it was a lot more dangerous then he thought back then.
So he brought the thing to the Citdael, following the rumors on the street that they were paying good coin for strange things. They were a lot more careful about the thing and Jorga guessed that this was why he got webbing between his feet and a patch of scales on his left arm these days, while the Maesters didn't. Small price to pay in his opinion though. He a pouch full of silver for his troubles and with this the idea that made him who he is now. Webbing and scales and all.
Sure, there were others who tried the same as him, but unlike them, he kept to picking up what he could find that was already dead instead of grabbing a club and trying to hunt something in the sewers. He might have clubbed a few people who were nosing around in the places where he could find things most reliably, but that was just how business went. And soon enough, he had enough coin to have others do the ruffling through the gutter and even a few brave idiots who went down to get something fresh.
All the while, he was busy learning to count all the coin he was getting and keeping an ear to the ground where he could fence the rarer things. The Citadel paid well, but some other figures paid better. Nobles and merchants who wanted something fancy to show their ilk. Witches who probably boiled the stuff in their cauldrons for whatever. Even someone who claimed to be working for the Lannisters had knocked on his door once. He had paid a nice hand full of gold for a few crystals they had found in the sewers, so Jorga wasn't really caring if that was true.
Of course, he wasn't doing all this openly. The Lantern Bearers took a dim view of people mucking around with squisher corpses or going around in the catacombs, so officially his shop was selling books, inks, parchments and all that claptrap that interested the kind of people who also liked to play around with squidfaced cats and brains on legs. He himself was pointedly not reading any of these books, even though he had learned his letters in the last year, just to make sure he didn't catch whatever drove his customers to play around with these twisted things.
Over the course of his career, he had thus earned himself a quite finely honed sense of danger and a healthy helping of paranoia. So when the bell over his front door chimed to announce a new customer, he quickly looked over the small group that entered. Some Essosi looking fellow, flanked by an old man on one side and what seemed to be his lover on the other. In the read walked a rather burly looking man that had his entire face wrapped up and a rather heavy looking sword strapped to his back.
That worried Jorga, for his door chime was supposed to give off a birds chirp when someone with magic on him rung it. These fellows looked not as if they had nothing noteworthy on them. That was never a good sign in his experience. Never the less, he plastered a smile on his face and carefully grabbed a very special coin he kept behind the counter. When you spun it on the edge, the side it would fall would tell him if he should try to sell something or to duck back into the storeroom while his own burly associates would take care of things.
The role of the shopkeeper still felt like a mask to Jorga, even though he had played it for so long and so successfully. In his experience, it was equal parts sucking up to the customer and false humility. "Welcome, good sir. What brings you to my humble shop?"
"Greetings to you to, my friend. Jorga, I assume?" The Essosi was rather boisterous and loud, leaning on the counter and grinning broadly at Jorga as if visiting this shop was the greatest thing he had ever done.
For a brief moment, Jorga felt something that made the hair on his neck rise. Something was off about this fellow who was too pale, with too pearly teeth and too perfect hair. Was this a Fey? They had never bothered him so far, even though they allegedly took a dim view of everything related to the sea monsters in the sewers. Before the man had cause to grow suspicious though, Jorga nodded with a polite smile, using the movement to quickly glance at the coin. It was still spinning. His blood froze. That was not supposed to happen.
"Glad to meet you in person," the too flawless man went on. "It appears, according to a shared friend of ours, that you might know the whereabouts of a few rather peculiar items that he sold to you. A few rather rare things, if you catch my drift."
Jorga hesitated, painfully aware that if one these people was a witch, he wouldn't make it to the backdoor in time. He needed a distraction. "Theo?" He called loudly through the shop, but didn't tare to takes his eyes off the man before him. "We have a special customer that needs your help."
A moment later, Theo came out of the door to the side of the counter and things began to happen too fast for Jorga to follow. The warrior of the group before him just vanished, and he heard a strangled scream a heartbeat later. He himself hadn't waited, instead diving behind the counter and trying to run to the other door, but before he had made more then three steps, he fell face first to the ground. His chest was an inferno of pain and he tried to scream, but his lungs refused to work.
"That was unnecessary. We are merely here to talk." Slowly the old man stepped around the counter, his feet coming into Jorga's view, but the shopkeeper was not capable of saying anything in return. The pain was overwhelming, as if his heart was being torn to pieces. "Please refrain from trying to run away again. Would you be so kind?" The old bastard sounded as if he was talking to a child, not caring one bit about the man dying at his feet.
A shaky nod was all that Jorga could manage and not a moment later, his chest stopped hurting as quickly as it started. Painfully, he dredged himself up to lean against the wall, retching up some bile while trying to catch his breath. It took a while before he could speak and it was still painful to do so. "What do you want?"
"The buyer of a few things that were sold to you half a year ago. My friend here will show you what they were." The old man waved to someone on the other side of the counter and then the Essosi jumped on it, then laying down on it and curiously peering down at Jorga.
"I'm afraid Theo is a bit worse for the wear. Our friends don't know their strength, but I'm sure he will be very happy that he has only been mostly strangled to death when he wakes up. Mind, can I keep this fancy rapier he had? I'm not sure if I'm allowed to plunder people when we didn't actually kill them." With this he lifted the silver sheath of Theo's weapon.
In response, the woman spoke for the first time, he voice sounding odd to Jorga's ears. Or that was the panic speaking. "Please get to the point. I'm sure he won't mind if you take the weapon as an apology for his rude behavior."
"Yes. Keep it. I'm very sorry." He pressed the words out as quickly as he could. Jorga didn't even have to lie. He was very sorry to have opened the shop today, let alone having met these people.
The Essosi smiled in return, immediately hanging the rapier onto his belt. "Very kind of you my friend. Now, what we are looking for..." He lazily waved a hand, conjuring up a thick smoke that coalesced into a set of jars.
Seeing what they were filled with, Jorga nearly retched again. He remembered that set. He remembered the nightmares he got from looking at them and wondering what had happened to the poor bastards in them. "If I tell you, you will leave me alone?" The old man nodded without hesitation and even though Jorga didn't really trust these people, he had little choice but to start talking.
AN: In a surprising twist of events, a few low-level Experts and Rogues are not faring terribly well while trying to oppose this party.
The coin is just a 1/day item of Augury. Nothing all that fancy in the grand scheme of things, but it's certainly helpful for a low-level character without spellcaster support.Huh, I somehow missed this chapter while I was working on Mereth's character sheet this morning. If the group is in a looting mood, that coin would be an interesting acquisition.
That's some serious Far Realm contamination going around Oldtown, if short-term contact can cause such prominent mutations. There's no telling how the populace is being affected by all that stuff.
The more I see of the Asmodeus section the more I think it isn't directly him. We might be dealing with his branch, but I bet we're three layers of management away from the guy who writes reports for big red's secretary at the very least.Man, is this how it felt to be the Emperor in 30k where he need to rush through the cruzade and start conquering everything and everyone otherwise everything will fall apart?
I mean, there's the bloodstone emperor to the west that is still more or less unmolested, there's Meraxes/Asmodeus plot that grew fast since we didn't intervene there, there isbest onee-san[/b] The Mother of Thousand Young in Qohor, there's Hellven that can get worse at any minute, the 15th waiting for us in Valryia, and the occasional Daemon and Demon plot for flavor.
It really could just be a tertiary Undersecretary of Soul Redistribution and Waste Management, perhaps an ambitious Gelugon eager for a promotion, moving assets into Slaver's Bay on Asmodeus' behalf. What's been sent their so far might just be it's "petty cash" allotment of deployable Devil forces, discretionary Devils to be spent as needed with little more than passing oversite.The more I see of the Asmodeus section the more I think it isn't directly him. We might be dealing with his branch, but I bet we're three layers of management away from the guy who writes reports for big red's secretary at the very least.
If it does turn out to be him, then maybe he's impatiently waiting for this irritating scheme he hatched involving a particularly scaly cat's paw to take off and get the void off his planet for him.
Personally I'd find " the Asmodeus plot was inside you all along" less surprising than the idea that he's paying us personal attention and not getting exactly what he wants.
... So we've got that going for us at least.
Do we actually need to go on a Cruzade to deal with the Void influence in outer space and in alien worlds?After all, Planetos is just one world among many billions spread across the Material Plane.
Once the City of Brass is conquered and the spoils of war are split between the Imperium, the Peerless Empire of the Shaitan, and the Caliphate of the Djinn, our collective attention is going to turn towards dealing with the Void. And probably the Deep Ones along the way. Everyone hates the Deep Ones. Even the Deep Ones hate the Deep Ones.Do we actually need to go on a Cruzade to deal with the Void influence in outer space and in alien worlds?
If so, we're missing the Titans and the kilometer long spaceships.
Once the City of Brass is conquered and the spoils of war are split between the Imperium, the Peerless Empire of the Shaitan, and the Caliphate of the Djinn, our collective attention is going to turn towards dealing with the Void. And probably the Deep Ones along the way. Everyone hates the Deep Ones. Even the Deep Ones hate the Deep Ones.
Honestly I was as well.The more I hear from Marwyn, the more I'm tempted to call Qyburn over and start plotting a... let's call it a spirited academic disagreement.
It's too bad that stirring up serious shit is either out of our reach, would get us killed, or both. It'd be poetic justice of the best kind to pull an elemental version of what Hell did to turn the City of Gold into the City of Brass on Heaven's Shore. I guess we'll have to content ourselves with stealing Hell's shit and getting paid for it unless the Genies have a lot more weight to throw around than it currently looks like.We should ask the Concordance about any targets we could hit on the upper planes. Nothing like bonding together over destroying mutual enemies.
It's too bad that stirring up serious shit is either out of our reach, would get us killed, or both. It'd be poetic justice of the best kind to pull an elemental version of what Hell did to turn the City of Gold into the City of Brass on Heaven's Shore. I guess we'll have to content ourselves with stealing Hell's shit and getting paid for it unless the Genies have a lot more weight to throw around than it currently looks like.
At least if they manage to take over Slaver's Bay, then Big Red will have to take some direct action.It really could just be a tertiary Undersecretary of Soul Redistribution and Waste Management, perhaps an ambitious Gelugon eager for a promotion, moving assets into Slaver's Bay on Asmodeus' behalf. What's been sent their so far might just be it's "petty cash" allotment of deployable Devil forces, discretionary Devils to be spent as needed with little more than passing oversite.
After all, Planetos is just one world among many billions spread across the Material Plane. Asmodeus might not even turn his full attention toward a world until a continent is under Infernal control or there are multiple newborn gods forming, as in ancient Valyria, to try to corrupt. That doesn't make the situation any less dangerous, though. It actually makes it worse if you think about it, since a significant threat to the region may be nothing more than the scheming of a third rate minion of Hell.