[X] The scholarly expeditions delving the buried city in Not Much Sink are always placing contracts on the bounty board to save their sheltered hides from something lurking in the mud-filled chambers and drowned streets. Go answer the latest, which could be a cry of wolf or something worse.
[X] Irontown's sewer system is not very infested, as far as city sewers go. Which means that the recent vanishing of animals and drunk workers is particularly unusual and worrying. Go winkle out whatever's snapping up stray cats and inattentive vagrants, dead or alive.
[X] Go pray before you send her the raven.
It's good to see this again. Time for work, and perhaps meat. Slightly gross meat, but I doubt that Grail would mind.
[x] Great Men's sewers and tunnels, on the other hand, are known for the robust and worryingly intelligent ratwolves, breakback beetles, and other advanced pests they encourage. Yan supplies fighting pits, and would appreciate some new blood, either live adults or viable eggs/pups.
[X] The scholarly expeditions delving the buried city in Not Much Sink are always placing contracts on the bounty board to save their sheltered hides from something lurking in the mud-filled chambers and drowned streets. Go answer the latest, which could be a cry of wolf or something worse.
[X] Go flying to clear your head before meeting her.
Glad to see this back. It's one of my favorite quests!
[X] The scholarly expeditions delving the buried city in Not Much Sink are always placing contracts on the bounty board to save their sheltered hides from something lurking in the mud-filled chambers and drowned streets. Go answer the latest, which could be a cry of wolf or something worse.
Close enough to not-scut work that if Steele is annoyed we can blame it on being just a little late to the board
[X] Go flying to clear your head before meeting her.
[X] The scholarly expeditions delving the buried city in Not Much Sink are always placing contracts on the bounty board to save their sheltered hides from something lurking in the mud-filled chambers and drowned streets. Go answer the latest, which could be a cry of wolf or something worse.
[X] Go flying to clear your head before meeting her.
[X] The scholarly expeditions delving the buried city in Not Much Sink are always placing contracts on the bounty board to save their sheltered hides from something lurking in the mud-filled chambers and drowned streets. Go answer the latest, which could be a cry of wolf or something worse.
[X] Go flying to clear your head before meeting her.
[X] The scholarly expeditions delving the buried city in Not Much Sink are always placing contracts on the bounty board to save their sheltered hides from something lurking in the mud-filled chambers and drowned streets. Go answer the latest, which could be a cry of wolf or something worse.
Stabbing rats in the sewers is the definition of mercenary scutwork, rescuing some overzealous researchers has the nominally humanitarian excuse and the possibility of a decent fight.
[X] Go pray before you send her the raven.
The weather's terrible for flying right now, and it wouldn't do to show up too early. Falling back on old traditions while trying to break off for something new should be interesting at the least.
PRANKING ME? i mean, uh, yeah, check out my work, link in my bio and stuff, haha
[X] The scholarly expeditions delving the buried city in Not Much Sink are always placing contracts on the bounty board to save their sheltered hides from something lurking in the mud-filled chambers and drowned streets. Go answer the latest, which could be a cry of wolf or something worse.
[ ] Go flying to clear your head before meeting her.
sorry but it fuckin wimdy
(and we prayed pretty recently, and also if we go giving the Tribs too much respect they might start getting some funny ideas)
therefore we must
[X] Head to that tavern to wait for her immediately.
like a nervous yoot showing up 3 hours early to a date!!!
edit: im glad somebody else remembered the sky is sobbing with human voices rn, extremely based
er, bio. signature, whatever.
[X] The scholarly expeditions delving the buried city in Not Much Sink are always placing contracts on the bounty board to save their sheltered hides from something lurking in the mud-filled chambers and drowned streets. Go answer the latest, which could be a cry of wolf or something worse.
[X] Irontown's sewer system is not very infested, as far as city sewers go. Which means that the recent vanishing of animals and drunk workers is particularly unusual and worrying. Go winkle out whatever's snapping up stray cats and inattentive vagrants, dead or alive.
[X] Head to that tavern to wait for her immediately.
[X] The scholarly expeditions delving the buried city in Not Much Sink are always placing contracts on the bounty board to save their sheltered hides from something lurking in the mud-filled chambers and drowned streets. Go answer the latest, which could be a cry of wolf or something worse.
[X] Go flying to clear your head before meeting her.
[X] The scholarly expeditions delving the buried city in Not Much Sink are always placing contracts on the bounty board to save their sheltered hides from something lurking in the mud-filled chambers and drowned streets. Go answer the latest, which could be a cry of wolf or something worse.
[X] Go flying to clear your head before meeting her.
Two of the three halfway-interesting contracts grab your attention before anything else. Sewers, you can do. The buried and stinking hallways and tunnels of Old Vespergren are where most Firsts really cut their teeth, and you've stalked through lightless passages and flooded gulches, spearing rats and hunting for tosheroons, and the list of monsters that lurk in Great Men remind you of home. You've chased a ratwolf, wrestled a breakback beetle, learned to tell a hangman lichen from something you can eat. You almost take that one... but then you remember. You're shopping for two, now. Steele's still backing you, for some reason, and you need to keep her happy, for reasons that both your old instincts and your new, concerning, weak-feeling thoughts can agree on. And she seems far too classy for sewers. Those wings would make the little grates hard to work, too. So you regretfully pass up the sewers.
You barely understand what a university is, but it sounds fancy. It sounds important. It sounds city. And Steele is definitely all of those things. Keeping Unchosen safe from stuff they're too weak to fight themselves is half of what you expected to do when you came to the mercenary capital of the world, and it's work that your new partner might not turn her nose up at. So it's that contract that you grab, wishing Yan the usual (luck, a pleasant day, that the gods keep their eyes averted) and ducking around a corner before cracking it open to study its contents.
[CONTRACT OF MERCENARY EMPLOYMENT]
[IASH QOMA, FADING SUN 1009]
EMPLOYING BODY Neverway University REQUESTS BODYGUARDS NOT LESS THAN One (1) OR EXCEEDING Six (6) IN NUMBER FOR [X] Protection, Vanguard, Combat, Heavy Lifting As Needed IN THE LOCATION OF Jaggery Excavation Section 11, Not Much Sink District, City of Iash Qoma FOR A PERIOD NOT LESS THAN Three (3) Days OR EXCEEDING Three (3) Weeks.
COMPENSATION AT UNION RATES PLUS Choice of Non-Essential Salvage TO BE PROVIDED HALF UP FRONT AND HALF UPON COMPLETION
ISSUING CONCERN Sarx Exchange
HIRING BODY Neverway University
SIGNATORIES:
It all seems pretty straightforward to you, but you won't sign anything without double-checking. You stow it back in your pocket and prepare to meet up with Steele. A quick look around shows that the Sarx Exchange keeps a messenger service nearby. Scribbling down a confirmation of work and a request to meet you on the roof of the Exchange, you rent a raven, pin your message to its leg, give it a dried cricket and send it off. That gives you some time to kill before she comes to you, and you can't think of a better use of it than to clear your head. You're still pretty well-stocked from the Scab Palace harrowing, and you don't want to waste any time or money on preparing for a job when you don't know what it entails or if you're even going to take it.
Minutes later, you're sailing above the Sarx Exchange, once more kettling around the thermal of Irontown's factories to get easy altitude. The cold, wet wind is dying down, letting the rising warmth of the fires below begin to dry you out, and you gratefully take it, mindlessly flying in big swooping circles just to feel the hot air below you and the wind in your hair. Your bat seems just as happy to be coasting in the sky, with nowhere urgent to be and nothing urgent to do, and is taking over a lot of the brainpower needed to avoid crashing into anybody or anything, and that leaves you with plenty of opportunity to think...
This is exactly what you wanted all this time. Responsibility. Opportunity. A chance at blood and gold, a reason to keep your blades sharp and your powder dry, your fate in your hands. It's... far more terrifying than they ever told you it would be. It's like dancing along a ledge. But there is that twinkling star in the distance, that sweet, bright chance to become famous, strong, swimming in blood and treasure. And all those things Steele cares about, friendship and truth and interpersonal care, you don't know if they're worth anything but you want to find out. This war has already made you feel terrifyingly divorced from your people, but you also feel exhilaratingly free to do what you want and to get ahead of the competition. So you're going to keep pushing. Keep striving. Keep learning. And if what Vespergren taught you turns out to be holding you back from even greater rewards... well, you never promised them anything but to become more than what you are.
That resolution passes your mind just before Steele passes your bat, a golden streak that cuts through the smoky air and alights as gently as a falling leaf of paper on the roof of the Sarx Exchange. You dive, hair blowing back from the acceleration, and, in an attempt to be cool, jump off the bat, hoping to land on your feet. You hit your ankle wrong and topple over, but successfully turn it into a tuck and roll before springing back up onto your feet, hoping like fuck that that looked at all intentional.
"Hey, Grail," your partner smiles. "That was fast. Got something for us?" Her smile is so pretty. You want to see it every day.
Focus, idiot! You avert your gaze and retrieve the contract, unrolling it with a snap and handing it to her.
"Found the best one I could, thought you should take a look at it before we sign it."
Her eyes flick across it a few times, the rings rotating sharply back and forth, before she nods decisively.
"Archaeology is always interesting, and the Jaggery Excavation has been pretty well-handled so far. Worst-case scenario, we grin and bear it and pull decent coin, and best-case scenario it's a nice palate cleanser before we move on to bigger things."
She produces a pen and signs it with a flourish. You smell a small flare of magic, papery and inky and slightly burnt, as she completes the signature and hands it over to you. With no trepidation that you'd let her see, you add your own signature, and smell another bloom of activated workings.
"The contract's sympathetically linked to another one back in Yan's office, so that it has copies of our signatures, and, if we die, blood or something will appear on its copy so it'll be able to tell," she explains, clearly having seen your nostrils flare at each perceived working.
"Good to know."
The contract is taken and the next few days of your life are now accounted for, with your partner who you desperately want to impress seemingly along for the ride for now. What will you do next?
[ ] Immediately make for the Jaggery Excavation to see what needs doing first.
[ ] Go shopping in preparation for the contract so you can show up prepared.
-[ ] Somewhere Steele recommends.
-[ ] Six-Coins Choi's pawnshop.
[ ] Go pray for success and luck.
-[ ] At the shrine in the Butcher Shop.
-[ ] Find another shrine somewhere in the city. Maybe the other Embassies?
-[ ] Build your own shrine. Maybe Steele will even help?
My beloved pardner is about to drop a Hungerverse project I think you all are going to absolutely love, so please keep an eye on her page! I'll also announce it in this thread, for convenience's sake!
Still between jobs and suffering about it, so any support y'all got, whether a few spondulix in my jars (see signature) or just sharing this work with your friends, is invaluable to me.
I appreciate y'all so much for sticking around with me through gaps and hiatuses, through thick and thin, and I promise I'm in this for the long haul. I appreciate you all like sunlight and rain. I make this world for me, but I share it for you. Without you, there is no Hungerverse.
good question to ask steele while we work together
[X] Go pray for success and luck.
-[X] Build your own shrine. Maybe Steele will even help?
Exposition exposition exposition and also grail gets to talk about something that's personal to her (her interpretation of the Tribulent faith)
[X] Go pray for success and luck.
-[X] At the shrine in the Butcher Shop.
I want to see Steele wrestle with the whole crazy shebang of the vesperganite religion. Too soon to start an offshoot cult, need to plant those seeds of doubt
[X] Immediately make for the Jaggery Excavation to see what needs doing first.
It didn't specify a start time, but we signed the contract and there's nothing that needs shopping for at the moment. Onwards, to discover what a university is.
My beloved co-conspirator Esper's long-awaited Always Faithful has finally hit the stands!
To the north of Iash Qoma, neighboring undying Noster and its legions of the dead, another Free City fights tooth and nail to retain its freedom, and soldiers literally built to know nothing else but war must contend with the burden of both defense and personhood.
War! The nature of a being! Empire! Steel and bone, locked at the edge of the world! If you love romance, adventure and a bloody fight to the end for what matters, this is going to be as dear to you as it is to me. Swing on over and give it a read and a comment, and, as always, stay hungry!
