On Fine Bronze Edge
Thirty Sixth Day of Ikomi-hamba (Ikomi Descendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)
The War Market, near the temple of Olweje, is a grim and cheerless place filled with the clank of metal and the sound of raised voices as buyers and sellers argue over the points of not just the blades being offered but also their own. More than once you jump at the sight of a darker presence looming against the grey, most afoot but some mounted also. You catch sight of a pair of Yayar horsemen, their faces an odd mix of Knikut and southerner, but their own arms far more finely made than anything you had seen in the White Lands.
Scimitars, curved, the better to cut fleeing men from behind...
"They are not actually allowed to draw blood here, just bluster and bark," Antonio assures you, catching your unease if not the whole reason behind it.
Shaking off the thought of a war farther from these lands than the stars above, you explain: "It's not that, just remembering some rumors I heard around the camp. Supposedly the Saracen have curved swords, the better to cut down fleeing men once battle had already been decided."
"That's steaming shit right out of the horses ass, you know?" he replies, drawing a neigh of indignant laughter from Silver who is currently trying not to laugh and reveal himself to all and sundry.
"To make the men fight harder, yes," you reply quietly. "Doesn't make the sight of swords like those any less of a knot in my throat." Little in the world more frightful than a battle lost, even when you are only pulling back and not in the midst of a rout. There is always the danger that it might become that if the foe comes 'round a hill or over a ridge.
At that Antonio only nods, though he soon tries to distract you with by asking about the quality of bronze and of armor-craft. Truth be told you know little enough of the working of bronze, much less of the craft of these lands, to give much in the way of counsel, but you are glad to be pulled back into the gloomy streets and away from the far darker memories. It takes you the better part of three hours to find a shop that is willing to deal in Anwa weapons and armor in bulk at anything like decent prices, with most of the merchants calling them all 'forge scrap' and 'pirate's leavings'.
"They damn well did not leave their blades in our keeping willingly!" you find yourself saying to more than one sneering shopkeeper, or perhaps better to say shop tender, for none of the merchants here work mostly on their own accord, but in the patronage of the Great Houses and so they do not need your custom as much as they otherwise might, even when accounting that this is a good time to be a war merchant, more selling than buying.
Everywhere talk of military victories abounds, daring raids on the shore and columns of warriors marching along the shore to put villages to the torch in the lean time before the harvest, but you are all but certain most of it is meant to drum up better prices from you by drumming up concern that the war might end and you would be left with 'scrap'. No doubt once you start buying there will be talk of how the war is sure to last for years and how the foe had been spotted raiding in near waters and 'wouldn't this be a nice piece of armor'.
"How the hell do you manage to keep smiling?" you ask Antonio as the two of you pass a particularly foul mouthed fellow who makes up for the fact that he could afford a shop by being twice as vicious as his neighbors in haggling.
"How do you manage to fight in all that ironwork and not trip over your own feet?" He asks back. "Trick of the trade."
"A secret trick then?" you ask, smiling. You recognize the tone.
"Yes yes, very secret, but I will share it just this once. When a fellow annoys me past bearing I imagine what their faces would look like with a crossbow bolt in the gut."
You laugh and laughter proves perhaps a good omen as Antonio finally manages to sell the pile of armor and weapons that you had brought, piled high in the rented wheelbarrow. Absent the cost for hiring that you make a little more than a thousand Icari, or better to say that is what you would have made if the war market did not have Sunrise Laws. As they are explained to you they are a system by which a merchant who is buying something can earn a small commission by pointing customers at someone who is selling and that way one is more likely to come to the market with weapons or armor and leave with weapons and armor with little in the way of heavy silver being passed around in the open to be a lure for thieves, though as the name implies the whole deal has to take place between sunrise and sunset else the temple of Olweje will not act as a guarantee on the honesty of those involved.
Lost Anwa Armored Coats (x22), Anwa Hide Coats (x7), Anwa Boarding Axes (x16), and Anwa Heavy Maces (x7)
Gain 1,150 gp
Thankfully Antonio does find an armorsmith not only willing to sell the sort of armor you are looking for, but also one who is in the possession of captured Ibanoran armor, cheaper than the solid breastplates favored in the city and only a bit more cumbersome. He has eight sets in all and eight is all you need, and so you buy the lot for only about five hundred Icari more than you had been paid for the plunder of Isele and his fellow rogues.
Gain Bronze Lamellar armor (x8)
Lost 1,656 gp
"Careful that you are not mistaken for a foe, stranger," a voice filled with a strange relish calls out of the fog.
You turn to see a man perhaps five years Antonio's elder, though the age had only started to show in fine lines around disconcertingly cold eyes. He wears upon his belt one of the Yayar blades you had seen before, though from his accent he is a man of the city and certainly it would be strange to see any of the riders save perhaps their lords bearing a cloak of deep purple. Granted you do not know much of dyes that might be found in this world and not the one to which you were born, but you had seen little enough of purple to know that it is remarkable... just as you had heard enough taunts to guess that this one was spoken less with malice and more to gain your attention, or perhaps gain your measure.
At the very least you seemed to have gained a better class of heckler, you think with some amusement.
How do you respond to the taunt?
[] With grace (Rolls diplomacy)
-[] Write in
[] With a boldness (Rolls intimidate)
-[] Write in
[] With wit and cunning (Rolls bluff)
-[] Write in
[] You have no patience for this, leave with Antonio beside you
OOC: Was not sure if I would be able to finish this tonight, hence why I did not close the vote, but I was reasonably sure that nothing too crazy would happen vote wise. 
