Stroke of Fortune
Seventeenth Day of the Eighth Month 294 AC
Coryn Bottoms was used to stupid rules raining down from on high, like a chamber pot upturned from some high kingly seat. He had come to the Deep as an apprentice potter without a master, expecting to earn his bread with with bent back and pained arms. What could you do when your master dies of the blue fever and you without the coin to pain another? Just his luck they needed potters in Sorcerer's Deep, just like they needed smiths and healers and rope makers and carpet weavers and everything else under the sun. It had not been easy to get a loan coming into the offices of the Iron Bank with patched breeches and woolen cloak so threadbare you could almost see daylight through it, but they had eventually taken him at his word.
Being as hard a worker as a man who had looked plague and hunger straight in the eye like the gaping maw of Fleabottom his parents had only just gotten away from, Coryn had taken to rebuilding his life with single-minded zeal. For all that he had not really been expecting to find someone to share it with so soon, he had little more than hopes and prayers to offer a prospective goodfather, or as they used to say down Lime Street, spit in the wind.
The tides that washed on the shores of the city and the ships that sailed them had other ideas. Women as much as men found their way there with little more than the clothes on their backs, and so it had been for his Nohla. She had been running from debt to some merchant fella in the Summer Islands who would not bother looking this far afield for her, or so they both dearly hoped. They fell in love and they wished to marry sooner rather than later for the wait was rather... uncomfortable on both their parts now that they had decided to tie the knot, but it was not as though the likes of them could argue with the orders of the Imperator.
All such thoughts flew from Coryn's head when he heard the loud insistent knock on the door and opened it to find a trio of lawmen. They had found Nohla, he had to signal her to run somehow. But it was too late...
"Who's at the door, sweetheart?" her voice drifted in loud and clear as the door to the storeroom opened with a creak. "Oh..."
The lawman in the middle did not seem to notice the worried look on either of their faces. He glanced down a list on the clipboard he had in his left hand. "Coryn and Nohla Bottoms, of thirty seventh Victory Lane?"
"Yes," the potter replied, as firmly as he could manage. Nothing good ever came of dealing with goldcloaks, and he did not imagine changing them from gold to grey would have really changed much else.
"In the name of the municipality of Sorcerer's Deep, I would like to offer apologies for the delay of your upcoming nuptials. In recompense for any inconvenience or discomfort caused, I am authorized to offer the payment of ten Imperial Marks as well as an invitation to celebrate your union at the side of at least seventy two other couples, and likely more, as part of this glorious celebration..." The man spoke so quickly, in that toneless manner of someone reciting from a script, that for a moment Coryn did not understand what he had just been told, though it might just have been his surprise at the words coming out of the man's mouth.
Nohla snapped out of her shock a lot faster. "Yes, yes, we accept both!"
The lawman to the left immediately took a heavy silver realm out of a pouch on his belt. It was even one marked with the Islands of the Stepstones, the potter realized distantly. He could pay off the last of his debts with this and still have almost a full mark left over.
"And will you be participating?" the man asked, obviously used to the reactions by now.
After taking one look at his bride to be Coryn, nodded empathically. "Yes, we'll be there."
Looks like sometimes it rains silver, too.
The two of them decided to celebrate by going out to the Circle of Battle and watching the preliminary fights.
[] Write in melee lists (Last version of the lists here)
OOC: A bit of a chance to see what street level looks like in SD and also a vote to finally get all of us focused on finishing that list so I cal roll it. Not yet edited.
