From the Gutter

You can't quite help the incredulous tone in your voice as you and your crew come to a decision on how to split the loot.

"Just to make sure, we're all ok with paying it all off now? No one wants a few more bits so they could just as a complete hypothetical… go to that one spa over in the Dried River District? An important part of feeling good is looking good, right?"

Your eyes meet Ivory Sky's, who mixes a scowl with a shrug but he doesn't say anything.

"Or maybe drop a bit more on the offering plate at the neighborhood temple? I hear there are special services for important donors..."

"It isn't like that," Moon doesn't shout, since you're all still on top of a building near y our heist target, but her eyes are practically burning, "and shut up Brook. This is what we agreed on."

"Ok, ok. I'm just making sure… after all, there is that one private library over in the Garden District with all those beautiful illuminated manuscripts. An entry pass is only like fifteen bits, isn't it?"

Fluttering Bow manages a smirk as you look over at him.

"Is this perhaps an attempt at coaxing us into reconsideration? One wonders if this charade is perhaps because Hidden Vale and the Five Fairies are playing at the concert hall next week?

And here you thought you'd hidden that flyer before anyone could see it. Still, you put on an easy grin at the accusation.

"What a spurious and entirely unrelated claim. I merely wished to ensure that my dear crew-mates were not depriving themselves of some of the better things in life."

"If you really want to go to your stupid costume party thing Brook, I'm sure we can loan you a few bits, we'd even be real generous on the interest… Ivory Sky, help me out here."

"Of course, Moonsilver Fist. We, your loyal crew would happily float you a simple loan of say twenty bits, compounded daily at the competitive rate of five percent. One word and it would be yours for the taking, Whispering Brook."

"Is there no generosity amongst thieves," you lament and three sets of flat stares are all the response you get. So, with a sigh you relent.

"Hmph, fine. We'll be responsible criminals and pay dues first, but if most of the next score ends up going toward promotion I might have to throw a tantrum."

"Well, now that you mention it, Brook, I've heard that a crew of Masks does get access to some wild training courses."

"The kind of challenge that can unlock an edge of almost preternatural skill in those capable of it, at least if the guild logs are anything to go by." Fluttering Bow nods in agreement and twists the knife a bit further, "in fact, for those of us with unresolved issues outside of the guild, Mask is where the formal trading of favors starts to become a currency of its own."

Ivory Sky's voice is a low rumble, "If it is as you say, Fluttering Bow, then perhaps saving for promotion is not the worst of choices."

"Are we going to return to base every night to sip tea and quietly discuss the day's news?" your foot stomps down but doesn't make any noise… oh right, the sound aura thing. "I refuse. The story of youth is taking stupid chances and making dumb choices and I demand the opportunity to do both."

Dead silence meets your proclamation and as your mind flitters back over the words you'd just said, the tips of your ears start to burn in embarrassment. Your hand rubs at the back of your neck and you grin somewhat sheepishly.

"Ahem… well I still say we should enjoy the time we have without expectations or responsibilities while it lasts."

"Histrionics and stupidity aside, I do agree with Whispering Brook." Fluttering Bow's smirk would have perhaps cut a bit worse if you hadn't just decided to sink completely into the awkwardness you were feeling. "We could all probably find a good use for a bit of spending money."

Ivory Sky shifts and the crew's attention turns toward him. "So long as we get promoted within the next few years, I have no complaints about reserving a larger portion for us as individuals."


You struggled to put into words the feelings that were coursing through you as you walked down the hallway to the dorm shared by your crew. Excitement. Relief. Elation. Sadness. Exhaustion. The primary one was easy though: it was satisfaction, and you could see it in each of your crewmates. Satisfaction: in the swaggering, strutting way Moon was walking, in the quiet composure that seemed to radiate from Fluttering Bow, in the confident, almost arrogant way Ivory Sky's head was tilted. Your crew and it was a crew in truth now, rather than just a collection of friends, seems to have been transformed by success.

Maybe in the morning, the weight of that would hit. Maybe then you would feel the responsibility of ensuring that your crew would time and again experience this feeling. Or maybe not. It was, after all, something to ponder when the low thrum of emotion wasn't plucking deep notes in your soul. Or perhaps it was not something to ever ponder at all. A hero plagued by doubt made for a compelling narrative, but did you want it to be yours?

Your pondering of whether or not to ponder other things at a later date cuts off with the arrival of the front door to your dorm. For a long moment, the four of you stand motionlessly in front of a room that would after tonight no longer be your home until finally, Moon is the first to break the silence.

"I think I'm gonna go find something to hit. I'd prefer a moving target if any of you are interested…"

Ivory Sky and Fluttering Bow are quick to offer a shake of the head, and that just leaves you to give an answer.

"Moon, you know I love you, so don't take it the wrong way when I say: I would seriously consider castration before I would consent to be your punching bag for the evening."

"Hah, of course you'd choose that… it's hard to miss something you never get a chance to use." She smirks and lifts a hand in farewell. "I'll see you all later."

With that, your best friend saunters off, and magnanimously you decide to let her have the last word.

"I believe I shall go and see if Azure Blossom is willing to provide immediate cash value on our loot, unless either of you wish to accompany me." Ivory Sky is the next to offer his plans for the night. "If it's acceptable, I will also deposit our dues."

Fluttering Bow once again offers a shake of his head, accompanied this time by a soft noncommittal sort of noise.

"Nah, I don't think I'm up to Azure Blossom's particular brand of flirting tonight," you decline as well, "and if you want to drop dues off, go right ahead."

"In that case, I will go and handle what financial matters we have." Like Moon, he also raises his hand in farewell. "Until we meet again."

You watch as Ivory Sky leaves, seeming a touch more sure of his footsteps than he had been just a few hours previous. It seems that perhaps overcoming that guard had done rather more than you'd guessed in changing your friend's sense of himself.

"I think I will take some time to read through one of those books we just looted. You are, of course, welcome to join me… though I doubt I will be much for conversation." Fluttering Bow offers once it was just the two of you.

"Sure, I think I could use something a bit quieter right now," you accept the offer as the two of you walk into the common room set between your four separate dorm rooms.

While Fluttering Bow pours brown liquor into a pair of cheap clay tumblers, you dig through the sack of non-loot goodies for the books Ivory Sky had found. The tumbler is set down beside you with a dull thunk and you catch a whiff. Seems like the drink of choice was cheap bourbon… without ice, unfortunately, since that was a luxury beyond that available to Cloaks.

A pair of books emerge from the sack and you hold one in each hand, "Looks like we've got a very specific sort of historian here… The Decline and Fall of the Shogunate and Contagion and Response. Any preferences?"

"A book about a plague that nearly extinguished all life in Creation or a piece of propaganda establishing the legitimacy of the Realm… one wonders that authors ever bother with aught but the natural sciences."

"So are you saying you want the book about a time where chaos reined and the living envied the dead or the book about the plague?"

A soft, amused snort is the response you get to that as Fluttering Bow takes Contagion and Response from your hand. "Morbidity aside, I believe I will immerse myself in a time of pandemic."

"I suppose it's the bad old days for me then." Your book and glass of cheap bourbon join you as you sink gratefully into overstuffed cushions of an arm chair. One leg slings up over the side and your drink settles onto the floor after you take your first sip and relax fully, there was nothing quite like the burn of alcohol.


For a time everything is quiet, save for the flip of pages being turned and the clink of tumblers being raised and lowered.

It is into the strife and conflict amongst the mountainous North that the Warlord-

"Do you remember the day I first arrived at the guild?" Fluttering Bow's soft voice cuts through the silence.

Thankful for the distraction, the dry historical tome had almost put to sleep more than once, you look up from the words you had been reading but not really comprehending. Your friend has set his own book face down on his lap in favor of staring deeply into whatever remained in his tumbler.

His words spark a memory and you think back to a boy about your own age, wearing a green silk vest and matching pale yellow pants that had obviously seen better days hesitantly entering the cafeteria for dinner. "That was what, almost three years ago, wasn't it?"

"Almost to the month." Red eyes meet your own for a moment before falling back down. "I never asked, but why did you invite me to join you and Moonsilver Fist?"

"Did I need a reason?"

Fluttering Bow shrugs a bit awkwardly at your response, "I suppose not."

"It's not something I could have put into words when I was younger, but… I think I understand some things a bit better now."

You pause and look down at your own drink, a bit thankful that you were just drunk enough to have this conversation, and then continue.

"Creation has… patterns… patterns on top of patterns. Most of them I can't understand or even really see, but some of them… they're like little pieces of a story. The villain escaping to trouble the hero again and again, the fell beast vanquished as the townsfolk learn bravery, that sort of thing. But it's not like any story is really only one story, you know… that fell beast has its own story too."

You tilt your tumbler up, draining it of the last of your drink and luxuriating in the way it burned down your throat and into your stomach.

"So when I saw you there, wrapped in fear and despair and a burning desire for revenge I wondered what kind of story you would write and I decided that I wanted to see it play out."

"I suppose curiosity is as good an answer as any," Fluttering Bow muses more to himself than to you. "You never asked though, about why I was there."

"I've known Moon my whole life and there's still things she won't tell me… still things I haven't told her. Ivory Sky has his own story to write too, I suppose."

You pause there, savoring with inexplicable senses the way this seemingly trivial moment is poised on the edge of something more, and let the words that would continue this particular moment fall into place. Fall into place and are rejected. If nothing else, friends at least should be spared these cheap bits of narrative manipulation.

"All of that's fine though, life would be kind of boring if we couldn't keep secrets. So instead, let's wait and see if there's a day in the future where all four of us want to lay our cards on the table at the same time."

Fluttering Sky shivers almost infinitesimally and takes a final swig from his drink.

"That's not a half-bad idea. If our collective unfinished business were so easy to resolve, it already would be, so we all probably need to get stronger or smarter or just better."

"I'll drink to that," you raise your glass, look into it and sigh. "Or I would if I could… throw me that bottle would ya'?"

In answer, a bottle of brown liquid sloshes gracelessly through the air before landing on your stomach, having avoided your most coordinated attempt at snatching it out of the sky. Alcohol pours into a clay cup, you sip, and exhale in satisfaction.

"Got any plans for your first day as a full guild member? I've got a bit of official crew leader stuff I should probably get done and then I think I'm gonna spend a bit of time playing in the Drifting Sand Square."

Fluttering Bow marks the page he'd been reading in his book and sets it on the floor before grinning and answering.

"There's a cute baker's apprentice at a shop over in Five Oaks that may enjoy a nice afternoon out. He's been playing a bit coy for the past few weeks, but I think I've figured out a successful approach."

"Hmm, that's not too far away… if you make it to the square, take a look for me. I've been practicing a few new songs and its always fun to try them out for a new audience."

"Anything catchy… something we could dance to? It would be nice to get a feel for what's underneath that apron you know."

You smirk in response to the drunken leer that crosses your friend's face.

"Not really, I prefer looking to touching. I have been practicing with a pan-flute, though, so if you want to dance I can do happy songs. If you'd maybe rather have him cry in your arms… or cry in his, I can do sad songs too…"

"You're almost always playing some instrument or other and I never even thought to ask." An exasperated exhale follows that mumbled statement, "do you even know how helpful music is in charming someone's pants off?"

"Never considered it." You more or less succeed in shrugging despite being sprawled out almost upside down on the chair. "I just like it because you can tell a story without words."

"Well if I my plan works, you'll definitely see the two of us, and a few dances followed by something a bit soulful would probably be just the thing-"

The door slams open on the heels of Fluttering Bow's request and Moon struts in.

"What are you two idiots talking…" she takes a deep whiff and a disapproving glance at both of you and the empty bottles sitting by your chair. "Reeking of booze already? Don't the two of you have anything better to do."

You glance at her sweat stained clothes and raise a sardonic eyebrow, "us reek? Didn't anyone ever teach you to bathe after exercising?"

"And change back into these same dirty clothes, not a chance." Moon scowls at you, "and don't change the subject. I'm absolutely sure there's things you specifically should be doing, oh glorious leader."

You take the chding with an amused smirk, there was after all only one plausible explanation for her current mood.

"Was Stalwart Orichalcum awake and willing to smack you around the sparring floor after all?"

"I don't wanna talk about it," she admits even as she storms past the two of you and in to her bedroom.

"Anyways," you let that not-entirely unusual scene pass without comment and return to the original conversation. "Bring him by and I'll play whatever you want."

"Thanks Brook," he slurs slightly, "I mean…"

"Nah, it's fine so long as I can call you Bow."

"Help me with this baker boy and you can call me whatever you want."

Ivory Sky saunters in through the door that Moon had carelessly left wide open and closes it behind him.

"Well if it's dating help you need. You'll be happy to know that Azure Blossom threw in a one time completion bonus of twenty bits."

Well since everyone was back, perhaps it was time to make a few plans for the next month, but first you need to complete the group, so you call out, "if you're done sulking, put on some clean clothes and come join us Moon. We're gonna figure out what to do next month."

"Yeah yeah, I'm coming," Moon emerges from her room, wrapping a loose linen vest around her shoulders. "And I was not sulking. I was contemplating… you should know that by now Brook."

It was probably better and definitely easier to just let that go. So you did, and started laying out your plans for the month:

[Turn 1 Vote Options]

Whispering Brook has 6 actions that he can use on any of the options below. He can also ask each of his crew members to work on 1 of the options below (with the caveat that training would apply to their abilities rather than Whispering Brook's.)

An example plan could look something like:
[] Example
-[] option
-[] option (crew member's name)

If you want to gain and keep a reputation as a skilled crew leader, you're going to need to train

You're a thief and every good thief needs a target for a heist. So you should probably get on that

With your first successful heist, you're now officially a full member of the Night Runners Guild

The guild provides many things for the up and coming thief, it's merely a matter of going and getting it

The better crew leaders know that they need more than just the things they get for paying dues to the guild.

Chiaroscuro is a huge city with more places than you could ever imagine visiting.