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>>2252950
You sit atop the crate in the cramped and stuffy ‘headquarters’ of the Redcloaks. Your headquarters too, you suppose, though you hope to change all of that soon. You certainly can’t plot to do what you must as a ragtag group of ruffians hiding in a stolen room. You’re going to need to consolidate your power into a base of operations.
You’ve already sent Alex out to attend to that matter, one of the Redcloaks with her.

As for now, you’ve got naught to do but to tend to the flame and to continue writing your ever-unfinished book. The shadows of the remaining Redcloaks flicker upon the wall and the room is full of a respectful silence. Perhaps not for you, not really, but for what you represent to them and to the fire you have lit. These are sunless children, mostly born after the end of the world.

My best advice to give, upon encountering a golem, is to stop encountering it as quickly as possible. Flee, if you can, and give your all to proteccting-

You frown. That word isn’t supposed to have that many ‘c’s. You cross it out. You stare at the little notebook and then past it, your thoughts drifting off to your foremost companions. Alex and Beatrice are still missing and you don’t know when you’ll see either of them again. They should be safe, safer than you, but the thought still drives you to distraction.

‘Orion! I’m back!”
Alex slams the door behind her, Clement by her side. She;s waving a long strip of paper in one hand, sweat running down her face.
“Ran all the way back since I figured you’d be getting impatient. Have a squiz at this.”

You don’t.
“What is it?”

“Found a middleman who’d wash some emeralds for us. For a good rate too. He lives up in Towers but Clement here says he’s alright.”

“We have a mutual friend of a friend,” the former-clerk Redcloak says. “I wasn’t sure if it would be enough to get an introduction but it seems fine.”

“Yeah,” Alex says. “Only thing is, he wants to see the emeralds before he agrees to anything. Reasonable enough right? And well, he wants to see you too.”

Your blood runs cold.
“Why does he know of me?”

Alex at least has the good grace to look embarrassed.
“Look...I…-I mean, well...He kind of figured out that I wasn’t the boss of this whole emerald deal, right? I didn’t deliberately mention you or anything. But he wants to talk to the boss behind all of this.”

“Which is me.”

“Which is you.”


>This is an important matter. You should attend to it personally.

>The odds of this being a trap is unlikely but all the same, someone else should go and pretend to be the boss.

>Other (Specify)

>>2252952
>This is an important matter. You should attend to it personally.
Yay, contacts!

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HE HAS RETURNED
PRAISE THE LORD OF LIGHT
>>This is an important matter. You should attend to it personally.

>>2252952
>This is an important matter. You should attend to it personally.

>>2252952
>This is an important matter. You should attend to it personally.
Hey Ouro's back!

Right, I've got to go to sleep, so I'd like to bring up a few points about Abe's situation before I do.

If the doctors figure out that we're guilty of terrorism, we're in trouble, and will probably be sent to jail.
If they don't, we can more easily capitalize on our presence at the Thorn, both for Bea and Abe's health, locating the shard, and finding a way for Orion to come get it.

So we want them to facilitate us seeing the shard, not figure out we're terrorists, not guard us, or at least not turn us over to the actual police. We also don't want to be Bad Ended as captive experiments.

The signs saying that we're terrorists is that we have no ID, we're weird, and eventually the old man we spared will be able to describe Bea's face. The sign saying we're not is that Abe is wearing one of their uniforms, with one of their spray-guns.

>Incentives if we're terrorists to not turn us in:
The doctors will have to hand both of us over to the law. They don't want to do that, Bea's special, and Abe would talk.
We have stolen a shard, we don't know where it is, but we can find our friend who does. It's very shiny. If we told the government where it is, someone else would get it.
We're dangerous. Orion busted into the Firecraft Works and beat the Iron Duke. Spinnae ought to understand how dangerous that makes him.
We could maybe make up some story, blaming someone else for our attack. One of the other Sinners, complicated by the fact that Abe knows nothing about them.

>Incentives if we're not terrorists to show us the shard and Thorn defenses:
We might be able to get close to the shard if we can get them to believe that Bea will respond interestingly to powerful sources of light.
We might get free run of the place if we were helpful or seductive.

Dumb idea: Bea rolls dice to get Snake Eyes' attention for a rescue. We don't know why she likes Bea.

>>2252970
>>2252974
It sure wasn't easy, I tell you what. 4chan really wanted to shit itself yesterday.

Vote called, Writing.

>>2253043
>4chan really wanted to shit itself yesterday.
It was more akin to constipation than to incontinence.

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>This is an important matter. You should attend to it personally.

This isn’t likely to be a trap, you suppose. It’s much more likely that this ‘middleman’ just figured out that a street rat like Alex didn’t come into wealth entirely through her own volition. That’d be easy enough to see even if she hadn’t slipped and made reference to you. Emeralds are hardly commonplace.

“That’s sensible,” you tell her. “Give me a moment and I’ll be right with you.”
You swing yourself off the crate and back into a standing position, your body creaking with a dozen small and minor aches. You wrap yourself in your repurposed brown cloak, though to be perfectly honest, there’s not much you have left to cover up. Your breastplate and your helmet were both rent and left behind in the Consortium and the rest of your armour isn’t as attention-grabbing. Your burgundy cloak, your symbol of office as a Lamplighter, was destroyed as well. Perhaps it was for the best. You would not have let go of it otherwise..
You sling the bundled up lamp across your back, shouldering an ever-present companion before wrapping up the emeralds and putting them back into your pocket. A green glint in the firelight as they pass through your hands. Treasures of the earth, unwillingly given, now turned to the purpose of light.

That just leaves your weapon. You’re going to be incognito today, you probably can’t cart around anything too obvious or frightening.


>Just your sword will do.

>Take a fairly nondescript halberd. People will see it but they won’t know it.

>Take the Duke’s tail. Nobody will know what it is.

>Other (Specify)

>>2253064
>Take the Duke’s tail. Nobody will know what it is.

>>2253064
>>Take a fairly nondescript halberd. People will see it but they won’t know it.

>>2253064
>Take the Duke’s tail. Nobody will know what it is.

>>2253064
>Take the Duke’s tail. Nobody will know what it is.
>Wrap it up.
We anime now.

>Just your sword will do

It's not something we're best with but it's easy to conceal, and we really ought to not be looking for fights anyways.

The pro and con of bringing the Duke's tail are the same: It can be used as evidence we killed the Duke.

>>2253108
He never left his tower though, it's not like anyone would recognize him.

>>2253129
True, but he had lots of workers, people who've seen him. Word gets around, especially among information junkies, movers and shakers.

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Interlude

“I understand your suspicions, up to a point. I employ a fair few witches and I employ ones powerful enough to bridge the chasm with enough work. But why would I do that? What’s my motivation here?”

The Inspector-General sat back in the chair and steepled his fingers. His uniform was still covered in frozen clumps of dirt but his host’s cleaning bill was not his concern. Thawing out in the absence of his old master, specks of black loam shook free with his every action.
“Motivation isn’t my concern.”

“Really? Startling words to hear from this city’s Inspector-General.”
The man sitting across from the Inspector worded the title as if it meant more than it did, as if it wasn’t something that was simply bought and sold. He was a man of middling height with a kindly look and streaks of gray running through his short and curly black hair. Despite those streaks, he didn’t look nearly as old as he should. His suit was well made but simple and lacking in ornamentation and all in all, he didn’t look much like you’d expect the true master of the Barrow Burroughs to look at all.
When the Inspector had first entered, he had not been himself. But now he was and the Inspector, in the interests of being polite, carefully averted his gaze from the shapeless thing looming behind his host..
“More tea?”

“Thank you but I will abstain.”
Dirt was still lingering upon the witch’s tongue. And despite its origin he’d make no effort to wash it away.
“I’m not here to find out why. My mistress simply wants me to see all of her fellows and speak to them on this matter. There are outsiders in this city-”

“A Lamplighter, I know. And a failed old heretic of a witch too. You might say a little bird told me.”
The master of the Sable Imp Fellowship takes a long sip of tea. He slurps it down noisily, at odds with the otherwise high-class air.
“But alas, I find myself once again concerned with whys. Now why would she send you out on this roundabout foolishness?”

The Inspector wasn’t listening. Something the man had said just a bit before had well and truly derailed his train of thought, no, sent his train of thought toppling from the sky-rail and smashing into an aerial street below.
“A failed witch?”

“That is what my informant said, yes. Is something the matter? You look as if you belong to the Guild’s part of the Burrough all of a sudden.”

“I’m fine,” the Inspector lies. “Do you have any idea of who might have assisted them in crossing the chasm?”

“No, I don’t. Or at least, I don’t think I did until a few minutes ago. But either way it is of little importance. These outsiders will fall and the pond will ripple for a time but all such ripples fade. It will be as if they had never been. I strongly doubt that their will be any matter of importance as a result of their actio-”

“Letter for you sir!”
1/2

>>2253144
The Inspector is still staring into the middle distance as his host attends to his secretary.

“Sorry about that, Inspector. You don’t mind if I read this do you? It seems to be somewhat urgent.”

“Go ahead.”

Almost a minute passes.
“Hrm. I’m eating my words today.”

“What was the letter about?”

“A matter of importance regarding the outsider’s actions. Significant importance.”

Vote called, writing.

>>2253147
we're fucked, but in a way that was worth it.

This update turned out a little bigger than I thought it would be.

>Take the Duke’s tail. Nobody will know what it is.

After a moment’s thought, you choose to take the Duke’s severed tail with you. The trophy of battle is springy, flexible and strong after all and while it might attract attention, you doubt many will know what it is. You wrap up the tip all the same with what canvas you have left, trying to give it the appearance of a more regular halberd, albeit one with an unusual haft.

Ales stares at the tail as you walk out to meet her.
“A bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

“Would you know what this was if I had not told you?”

“Not as such, no. I guess not.”

“Then it’ll do. Even if the news has spread by now, it’s pretty unlikely that anyone will jump to the conclusion that someone they see in the street is carrying his severed limb.”

“But why bring it in the first place?”

“A reminder.”

“It’s pretty crook, honestly. I can get behind that.”

And with that, you are on your way. You and Alex leave the stolen hideout and take to the busy streetsprawl of the Mazes, Clement trailing behind the two of you. Both he and Alex stow their red tokens of allegiance before following you out, stuffing them into their coats.

“Won’t those be an issue if you are searched?”

“I think you would be a much bigger issue,” Clement says. “With what you bear on your back and all.”

“It’s my burden. I won’t give it up or leave it behind for any circumstance.”

“Of course,” he says, a glint of zealotry shining in his too-young eyes. “I’d never suggest you do.”

“Orion doesn’t have to worry about being searched,” Alex says. “Could you imagine? If he is, he’ll just ignite and burn his way out through anyone that tries.”

You shake your head.
“I’d rather not, if I don’t have to. Now where is this middleman of yours?”

“Up. Way up, really. We’ve got some walking to do.”

There is a tense feeling in the stifled air amidst the crowds of the Mazes now, one that wasn’t quite there before. You can hear people talk. Something happened at the Consortium. The officials won’t talk about it yet but everyone knows. The details of just what occurred run and mix freely upon the palette of rumour and during the first ten minutes you have to have eavesdropped upon a hundred different possibilities. The Duke was dead, the Duke was missing, there had been an explosion, the Duke had gone rogue, this was all just some sort of stunt, someone had heard of something going wrong in the Firecrafting Works, no, that can’t be right, my second cousin just got employed there-
It goes on.
And through it all, a single constant undercurrent.

What’s going to happen to the flame? What’s going to happen to us?

You don’t have an answer for that yet, not one you can currently afford to give. Alex just purses her lips.
“It’s not our fault,” she says, more to her than to you.

1/??

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>>2253361
“That’s what we’re going to tell them later right?,” Clement asks. “You two were talking about it. We’ve got to remind these people just who took the fire away from them in the first place!”

“Yes,” you say. “I just removed the stopgap. It’s time they addressed the cause.”

“Still,” Alex continues, whispering. “Better not let our involvement in this get known. Or not proven at any rate. People aren’t going to be thinking right.”

The crowd is broken up by a man in an unfamiliar uniform and a battered old breastplate with a badge around his neck. Some sort of officer of the peace. That brings your thoughts back to what you had faced within the Duke’s quarters.
“Alex. When I was making my escape, I fought an imp.”

“Did you kill it?”

“For now, yes.”

“Good!”

“That’s not the point. It acted as if it was some kind of officer or law official, just like that man before. But it worked for the Consortium!”

“Yeah, what’s weird about that?”

“It’s not literally the government of this place, is it?”

“No, it’s just a really rich company. But...are the government supposed to employ watchmen where you come from, Orion? That’s a bit queer.”

“That is what it is. Is that not the case here?”

“The Senate technically has the ultimate mandate over all law enforcement,” Clement butts in, evidently more knowledgeable on law than Alex. “But it would be ridiculous to expect them to employ them. How would they afford that?”

Your own sparse knowledge of civic matters is being tested to the limit here. You dig through thirty year old memories.
“Taxation, I imagine.”

Alex looks blank.
“What, from the city itself? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Law enforcement is divvied up,” Clement tells you. “It’s called the Collective Public Order Act and it’s very old. Anyone listed on it has the authority to run their own law enforcement agency through the part of Dis allotted to them. That’s how it’s always been.”

The name of that absurd law is vaguely familiar to you. Have you seen it before?
“Then who was that watchman we just saw?”

“I think that’s a for-hire organisation.” Clement says. “Though i don’t know the specifics of those ones exactly. They’ve got a certification on the Act and whoever owns this block probably hired them. The people you encountered in the Consortium would have been Consortium security. They enforce the city’s law in the Consortium and the area around it.”

“Those stuffy Blackcloaks are like that too,” Alex adds. “Only they trample about anywhere as long as it involves a lamp. That’s why I was freaked when you grabbed me, I thought you were one of them come to nobble me for stealing.”
The three of you pass a lamp as you speak, half embedded in the corner of the street and raised almost to the street-ceiling above you. It burns with soft green flame. Soon it will be dark and empty.

2/?

>>2253365
You think about it for a moment more.
“This is not how it is done outside.”

“Don’t Lamplighters outside do the same kind of thing?”
Clement seems genuinely interested.

“That’s the Church. That’s different. How do you stop one of these Public Order signatories from just doing what they want?”
‘
Alex shrugs.
“You don’t? The law ain’t any of my business anyway, never stopped me from living my life.”

The claustrophobic three-dimensional labyrinth of the Mazes slowly gives way to the urban canopy of upper Dis, patches of perpetually twilight clouded sky shining through the gaps between streets and bridges as vast towers rise from the urban undergrowth.

“It’s good to see the sky again,” Clement says. “I’ve been down under for the better part of a month now.”

“You were with us just yesterday,” Alex interrupts. “When we were fucking with the pipes and the sky rail. We saw all the sky then, we were practically in it.”

“That doesn’t count. I was too busy trying not to die.”

“A job well done though, eh?”

“Which tower are we looking for?”
You pay little heed to their small talk.

“Low Fawlsy,” Alex says.

“The twin tower to the one I used to work in. That’s why I was knew enough to introduce her.”

‘And where is that?”
None of the towers nearby are particularly fancy, mostly just vast pillars of stained brick. The glinting silver Second Age towers you saw when you first crested the wall are a long way off still.

“Right. I forgot you don’t know where that is. Just follow me.”

You follow Alex along the streets of the upper Mazes and up into the lower floors of a tower that she assures you is not Low Fawlsy but connects right to on a floor closer to your target than just walking up to him.
“Plus it lets us avoid Floors 23 to 27 of Low Fawlsy and trust me, that’s a good thing. Really gone to shit.”
You’ll have to take her word for it.

Thirty floors of climbing along the tower’s central stairwell later, Alex leads you to what is unmistakably a train station embedded halfway up the tower, filled with the various and blasphemous denizens of Dis. The rail extends out into the air in both directions, one rail leading straight to a tall stone tower covered in artistic crenellations.
“That’s Low Fawlsy there. Now if it was just me I’d just run along the sky-rail to get it since I don’t think any trains are coming but given what’s at stake, I don’t think we should risk falling or getting got by the law.”

Now that she mentions it, you do see occasional people scurrying over the sky-rails suspended between the towers, running along them as if they weren’t a narrow stretch of ground with no protection from the abyss of distance on either side.
‘We’ll just take that bridge instead. It goes to another tower but that tower bridges to Low Fawlsy on the same floor so we’ll just pass through.”

3/??

>>2253370
A good deal of walking later and you finally find yourself stepping off the bridge and onto the 35th floor of Low Fawlsy Tower. Behind you, a local jumps off the wall of the bridge entirely as a shortcut to grabbing onto an open window in the 34th just below and hauling himself in.
“What’s the point of that?”

“No point. He’s probably just robbing the place.”

The interior of the 35th floor is a dense one, subdivided into hundreds of small closed off buildings with cramped streets criss-crossing between them. Alex directs you to a small stairway carved into the side of one building that takes you up to a door at the very top with a sign reading ‘General Purveyor And Agent’.

“Adrian!,” Alex calls out as she pounds on the door. “I’m back and I brought folks!”

The door opens just a crack, a chain being pulled tight. A moment later you hear the chain being pulled back and it opens all the way to reveal an older man, what’s left of his graying hair pulled back into a thin ponytail and a pair of blue-tinted spectacles hanging on a chain around his neck.
“Come inside, come inside,” he says quietly. “For the love of earth and all who live on it, don’t just loiter on my front porch!”

You decide to ignore that blasphemy and walk inside, all four of you standing within a cramped room with a desk, two chairs and a wooden door in the back. Adrian takes a seat behind the desk, leaving barely any room within the office for the three of you to stand.
“I take it you’re the one who sent me this ruffian?”

“Yes.”
There’s no point denying it at this point.

“Good. Let’s make this quick. I’m always on the lookout for certain kinds of gemstone, you see. Emeralds?”

You withdraw the little bag and let them spill on the desk. Blasphemer or not, you can respect a total lack of small talk. Adrian takes out a glass scope of some kind from a drawer and places it over his eye, rolling the emeralds around in his hand as he inspects them.
“These are...These really are very fine quality. Well worked. I know it’s not my place to ask but…”

“You’re right. It is not.”

“Right. Well give me just a little time.”

You sit in painful silence as he inspects every emerald individually, pulls up a ledger and scribbles in it indecipherably and then starts examining the emeralds again.
“Yes. I think I can do you a good price for these, you won’t find it anywhere else.”

“Full value?” Alex asks eagerly.

“How am I supposed to make a profit? But close. I have a client right now who pays an exorbitant amount for certain gems.”
He scribbles quite a bit more down in his ledger before tearing a page of it away, placing it atop another sheet of paper and writing on it quite furiously.
“Just making copies, just making copies. Paperwork.”

4/5

>>2253372
He inspects the lower page before placing it into an envelope within his desk. He then passes the original piece of paper across the desk to you.
“I think you will find this a worthwhile price.”

You stare uncomprehendingly at the number. You don’t really know anything about Dis’ currency so you have no idea if this is a good deal or not. You do your best to look shrewd.
Clement looks over your shoulder and whistles. Spurred on by his reaction, Alex does the same and is somewhat more verbose about it.
“Well fuck me!”

You look back at Adrian, staring him in the eye.
“That will be sufficient,” you say in a level tone.

“I thought it might. And…”
He hesitates.
“Here.”

“What’s this?”

“I don’t get where I am without knowing a good deal of people. Clients, you might say. And one of them asked me to give this to you. I have not looked within it and I have no desire too, so please, open it elsewhere.”

“To me?”

“In a fashion. Now this business is concluded. Take your emeralds with you, I’ll have the money ready in three hours time.”

You stare down at the envelope. It’s thick and written on the front, in elegant looping text is:
From An Ardent Admirer And Would-Be Benefactor


>Do as he advises and simply open the envelope outside.

>Rip the envelope up right here and now. This can be nothing good.

>Press Adrian for all he knows about this client. All of it. Use force if you have to.

>Just stow the envelope for now. No need to inspect it.

>Other (Specify)

>>2253377
>Just stow the envelope for now. No need to inspect it.
There's a time and place for everything. Now it is neither.

>>2253377
>Do as he advises and simply open the envelope outside.

>>2253377
>Do as he advises and simply open the envelope outside.
>Other (Specify)
Wait around nearby.

>>2253377
>Do as he advises and simply open the envelope outside.

I hope this isn't a witch-bomb or something, fuck

>>2253377
>>Do as he advises and simply open the envelope outside.
the letter is going to burst into flame

>>2253377
>>Do as he advises and simply open the envelope outside.
Ask the redcloacks to stand a few paces away though

wait, is outside....in public? Where tons of people could see the letter potentially burst into flames?

Vote called, writing.

>Do as he advises and simply open the envelope outside.

“We’ll be back in three hours.”
And with that, the three of you are turfed out back onto the cramped street outside, the envelope still in your hands.

“Don’t worry,” Clement says. “That was a very fair price and should be good for what you need it for.”

“Forget about that!” Alex exclaims. “What’s up with that letter? Have we been found out already? How? How?”

“Don’t panic.”
Your words ring a little hollow when you consider the fact that perhaps panicking could very well be the correct and appropriate response. How did they track you down using a middleman you’d never spoken to before? And who were these people in the first place? Are they Sinners?

“It says that they are an admirer of yours.”
Clement inspects the envelope.
“And possibly a benefactor? That would be a fantastic help, considering what we need right now.”

“Too helpful if you ask me,” Alex says. “What are the odds, that there is someone powerful enough in this city who is on our side and can find us just like that?”

“But if it’s true then think of what we could do with it?”

“Probably just trying to con us.”

You raise a hand.
“If it were our enemies, it would make more sense to send an assassin than a letter. Whatever their motivations, they really want to speak to me.”
With all your witchfinding experience, you know of no feasible way a witch or imp could hurt someone through a letter. Some sort of poison perhaps?
“Nevertheless,” you add. “I will open this somewhere private and nobody is to touch the letter itself with their bare skin or breathe while I open it.”

“That’s a bit worrying, you saying that.”

It doesn’t take long for you to find an alcove you can duck into, still on the same floor of the tower. The street outside is not totally empty but the people of Dis barely spare a glance as they walk past, all wrapped in their own little worlds. To be in Dis is to grow accustomed to eyes. You cannot escape them for long.

The letter, once all precautions have been taken, is a single sheet of folded paper. The writing is the same as that on the envelope, curly, solid black and cursive to the degree that the entire text slithers down the page as almost a single conjoined thing. The ‘i’s are also a little strange, each one dotted twice. Clement assures that if this is scribework, it is a very expensive one.

1/3

>>2253642
To the dear Sir or Madam with the cut emeralds of exceeding quality,

I must admit, that is a rather unwieldy opener isn’t it? Please forgive me my excessions for I am somewhat excited to speak to you face to face. Letter to face. I have always been what you might call a ‘fan’ of your work and I have long admired your ideals. I’ve been following your work for some time now, both home and further afield and I must say that it sets my frail heart a’flutter.

I am aware that you may not trust me and rightly so but if I may just be granted an audience, I am sure that I can provide greatly for all your needs. In addition, I believe I have information concerning a few scattered baubles that you are greatly interested in. So interested, in fact, that you have come all this way for them!

I ardently await your attention,
Madame

“That’s a weird letter,” Alex says as she reads over your shoulder. “It almost sounds like she’s proposing something indecent.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” you growl. “I’m more concerned with the fact that there’s no address or name!”
And, though you will not say it yet, with the ‘baubles’ that have been so casually name dropped. There’s only thing that can refer to. How can they know?

“Yeah that’s odd. How are you supposed to even meet them like they want?”

Opposite the two of you, Clement crouches and peers up at the backside of the letter. He clears his throat as he does so.
“Flip it over.”

You do so, revealing that the letter hadn’t been written on an ordinary piece of paper as you had initially thought but rather on the backside of a thick piece of stationary. The other side is some sort of poster, mostly taken up by an illustration of a veiled woman wrapped in a Second Age style bridal gown. The artwork is mostly thick black outlines and white but a thick black stain of ink is smeared across her lower body in an artful way that somehow manages to strike you as incredibly indecent.
There is nothing else on the sheet, no words or anything beyond the illustration.
“What is this supposed to mean?.”

“Uh,” Alex says, who looks somewhat shocked.

“That’s the symbol-, I mean the sign of the Paper Bridesmaid,” Clement tells you. He seems no less surprised.

The Paper Bridesmaid? That name rings a bell, of sorts. A faintly stirring memory concerning that hideous imp brothel that you had the misfortune to visit upon your arrival to Dis. Did you hear it then? You know you heard it somewhere.
“And what is that?”

“It’s a brothel!”

“A pleasure house,” Clement says, correcting Alex. “They do trade in those kinds of things yes but I’m given to understand anything goes there. Gambling, drinking, dining, etc.”

“And you two know about this place?”

2/3

>>2253649
“It is rather legendary,” he continues. “It’s well known as the finest purveyor of its kind in the entire city. All other ones are just well, a reflection. People tell stories about it, I mean, there’s a reason why they call those kinds of boasts ‘bridesmaid tales’, you know?”

“I have never heard of that in my life nor do I wish to consider what boasts of which you speak of.”
Your voice feels somewhat stiff.

“All the same. I hear it has half of an entire tower taken up just by itself. It’s very high class. Mythical, almost.”

“Yeah,” Alex says. “Which actually makes this letter really really weird. What the hell does it have to do with anything?”

“Oh, I imagine it hears quite a lot.”

Alex is right, this is possibly the last kind of address you’d associate with your mysterious letter. But it’s quite obviously a sign of where this ‘Madame’ wants to meet.


>You might as well. They clearly know a lot and leaving them alone would be no less dangerous.

>Burn the letter. You’ll have nothing to do with this house of sin.

>Send someone else in your stead. This really seems like Beatrice’s kind of job.

>You’ll not answer the invitation just yet but perhaps you could scout this place out. See if you can get the drop on your mysterious informant.

>Other (Specify)

>>2253655
>>You’ll not answer the invitation just yet but perhaps you could scout this place out. See if you can get the drop on your mysterious informant.

>>2253655
>You might as well. They clearly know a lot and leaving them alone would be no less dangerous.

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Sorry fells, but I think I have to rest for a few hours now. I'll be back with more updates later today.
Voting will remain open until then! For an hour at least.

>>2253655
>You’ll not answer the invitation just yet but perhaps you could scout this place out. See if you can get the drop on your mysterious informant.

>>2253655
>You’ll not answer the invitation just yet but perhaps you could scout this place out. See if you can get the drop on your mysterious informant.

>>2253655
>You might as well. They clearly know a lot and leaving them alone would be no less dangerous.
We fell in their in full armor, so we may as well go in something less conspicuous.

>You might as well. They clearly know a lot and leaving them alone would be no less dangerous.

>>2253655
>You’ll not answer the invitation just yet but perhaps you could scout this place out. See if you can get the drop on your mysterious informant.

We have to go for it. We're becoming too known, too fast. We have to build up power even faster.
This woman is an information broker, we need her onside or dead ASAP.
However, we need leverage, as we have none other than brute force. She'd likely just use us as a decoy or a pawn, sending us after her enemies before selling us out.

>>2253655
>You might as well. They clearly know a lot and leaving them alone would be no less dangerous.

Speaking of people knowing things they have no business knowing, the Barrowmaster shouldn't have known that Bea was a failed witch, and the Secret Admirer shouldn't know about our exploits Outside.

>>2254397
How the fuck does the imp guy know about Beatrice actually?

>>2254421
>How the fuck does the imp guy know about Beatrice actually?
That's not the Imp guy, he's at war with the SIF. The Barrowmaster is trying to keep people in the ground, the Sable Imp Fellowship is resurrecting them.

Couple of possibilities:
Snake-Eyes up and told him, leaving the Witch-Inspector out of the loop.
He's got spies with Snake-Eyes, and she told someone.
He's got Zeno's imp. Zeno's imp blabbing to everyone would explain both.
He's a mindreader.

>>2254429
I think we can rule mindreading out. The Inspector didn't know Beatrice was involved with the Lamplighter, he just thought she was a witch his boss was interested in.

>>2253365
My god, it's actually cyberpunk.
And we're shadowrunning

>>2253655
>You’ll not answer the invitation just yet but perhaps you could scout this place out. See if you can get the drop on your mysterious informant.
>We need to get Bea and Abe out first though.

>>2254453
Ohhh, so that's why he was shocked!

It does narrow it down slightly, now we know that the Barrowmaster learned it from someone who know that Orion and Bea were together.

(Poor Abe, btw. Nobody cares about him.)

>>2254429
>That's not the Imp guy, he's at war with the SIF. The Barrowmaster is trying to keep people in the ground, the Sable Imp Fellowship is resurrecting them.
How do you figure that?

>>2254479
Thread 15
>The wall he is resting against is the back wall of a small crypt, the little building half-sunk into the soft soil beneath it. Before him was a massive frozen vortex of black loam, a great valley of the rich soil with the upper reaches dotted with gravestones and tombs. The Inspector hadn’t run thoughtlessly from the golem, he had done so knowing that one of the other people he had to interview was both relatively nearby and able to save him.
>This was the Barrow Burroughs, a district of Undertown, a great hole of soft soil that sinks down into the darkness out of sight. It is the traditional territory of the Last Guild , the gravemen and gravewomen who are more cultists than craftsmen. They paid worship to the Old Powers and so would give a witch shelter but it was not them who he had come to see.
>The Guild were collectors and sealers of corpses, intent for reasons unknown for every corpse in Dis to be locked away in their perpetual crypts. But they do not hold sole dominion over the Burroughs, just the upper reaches of it. The Inspector’s business was with he who ruled the very bottom depths and was, in fact, the Last Guild’s most mortal enemy.

>>2254479
>>2254501
Though, looking at this again, yeah. We're talking to the Sable Imp Fellowship, not the Guild.

I was out of it for quite a lot longer than I thought I would be but whatever. Vote called and update in an hour or less maybe.

How many of the seven do we know?
>Consortium (ded)
>SIF
>Last Guild
>Tangle Workshop
>the people the inspector works for
that leaves two. The other thing mentioned when we first arrived was
>A dome built atop a series of other towers, buildings ruined and broken so that it can be wedged into the cityscape. And above it, a tall rectangular clock-tower with twelve bells and an immense clock that claims it to be five minutes to midnight. The hands do not move.

>>2254711
>Last Guild
I'm not sure they have one. We seem to be visiting the SIF, not the LG.

I'm pretty sure there's someone in the Senate, and there's the guy who makes potions.

>You’ll not answer the invitation just yet but perhaps you could scout this place out. See if you can get the drop on your mysterious informant.

You think on the matter for a few more minutes. The fact that an enemy who knows who and where you are would have a much easier way to dispatch you then simply luring you into a trap remains as true as it was when you first raised it. But that doesn’t make this any less suspicious. Whoever this ‘Madame’ is, they’ve no doubt got ulterior motives for these summons. And while you acknowledge that you cannot leave someone who knows such things alone, you’ll not walk into a baited trap with so eager a step either.
“We shouldn’t answer this just yet,” you tell them. “Not before we find out who this person is and how they know what they know.”
If they are even a person in the first place. It could just as likely be some kind of witch.

“They signed off with ‘Madame’. Doesn’t that imply that they are the owner of the Paper Bridesmaid itself?”
Clement examines the peculiar handwriting once more, as if searching it for clues.

“Anyone can claim that,” you say. “No, we need to investigate this first and considering what they know, we need to do it now.”

“What? Visit the Bridesmaid? Ourselves?”

“Do you have any idea what that might cost?”

You look back upon the emeralds and beyond them, at the coils that seem to be constricting around you all the while. The powers of Dis have begun to move. You can no longer afford to be still.
“We have money.”


>The simple way is often the best. You’ll pay a visit to the Bridesmaid under the guise of regular customers. You’ll do your best to stomach it while you find out about this mysterious informant.

>There is no need to enter the Bridesmaid itself. You can inspect the outside of it, the streets and sky around it. Should you make your move, you don’t plan on going through the front door.

>This is something that should wait until you have Beatrice and Abe back.

>When next you meet with Adrian, interrogate him on the nature of his clients.

>Other (Specify)

>>2254731
>This is something that should wait until you have Beatrice and Abe back.

>>2254731
>>The simple way is often the best. You’ll pay a visit to the Bridesmaid under the guise of regular customers. You’ll do your best to stomach it while you find out about this mysterious informant.

>>2254731
I'm still pushing for meeting them straight.

>>2254731
>>There is no need to enter the Bridesmaid itself. You can inspect the outside of it, the streets and sky around it. Should you make your move, you don’t plan on going through the front door.

>>2254731

>This is something that should wait until you have Beatrice and Abe back.


I cannot let this happen without Bea being there. I need to see that interplay.

>>2254731
>The simple way is often the best. You’ll pay a visit to the Bridesmaid under the guise of regular customers. You’ll do your best to stomach it while you find out about this mysterious informant.

>>2254731
>This is something that should wait until you have Beatrice and Abe back.
Primarily because each additional minute they remain at Tangle Workshop is more risk.

>>2254765
>I cannot let this happen without Bea being there. I need to see that interplay.
That sounds so embarrassing. I don't think Orion would appreciate it.

>>2254737
Just pick the most direct option given, it's a bit unfair to pick something that lost the last vote.

>>2254771
>Primarily because each additional minute they remain at Tangle Workshop is more risk.
Talking to the info broker is the best way to get information on the Tangle. Do you have any better ideas? Want to assault the Thorn directly?

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I'm going to sleep. When I wake in the morning, I'll call the vote and start writing.

The letter writer is the snake eye witch.

>>2254731
>The simple way is often the best.

Just for once I'd like to have an adventure without Beatrice fucking something up or having to step in and make sure she doesn't die. Plus it's such a detour.

>>2254899
She's going to use the emeralds to make golems

>>2254731
>>When next you meet with Adrian, interrogate him on the nature of his clients.

>>2254731
>This is something that should wait until you have Beatrice and Abe back.

>>2254784
Sleep well.

>>2255180
>>2254899
>The letter writer is the snake eye witch.
>She's going to use the emeralds to make golems
Snake Eyes is the Inspector-General's boss. The Golemist is the Inspector-General's former teacher. Two different people, as the Golemist was insulted by him leaving her for the other.

I really don't think it's worth waiting for Bea and Abe, we know nothing about them, have no idea what's going on with them. Checking in with the Madam who knows more than she ought could help us a lot on that subject. Bea needs time to recover, anyway.

Updates will resume in an hour!

>>2254846
Nice.

>>2254733
>>2254765
>>2254771
>>2255208
>This is something that should wait until you have Beatrice and Abe back.

>>2254734
>>2254766
>>2254766
>>2255026
>The simple way is often the best.

We have a tie.

>The simple way is often the best. You’ll pay a visit to the Bridesmaid under the guise of regular customers. You’ll do your best to stomach it while you find out about this mysterious informant.

>>2254731

>The simple way is often the best. You’ll pay a visit to the Bridesmaid under the guise of regular customers. You’ll do your best to stomach it while you find out about this mysterious informant.

Apologies for the delay. Stepped on my ankle the wrong way.

>>2255476
As a fellow owner of weak joints I feel your pain. I went for a run today and now I can barely walk

>The simple way is often the best. You’ll pay a visit to the Bridesmaid under the guise of regular customers. You’ll do your best to stomach it while you find out about this mysterious informant.

“Are you sure about this? What if they turn us away?”

You look around as you fix your tie as best as you are able. The suit you bought isn’t a bad fit but it’s not quite wide enough at the shoulders for you. The three of you had waited for Adrian to acquire his funds and you had turned the emeralds into blameless money, a small collection of those strange holed coins that the people here hold in high regard. From there it had been a simple matter to find a relatively upmarket tailor just a floor higher who was willing to sell you ready-made clothes more suitable for someone visiting the Bridesmaid. Fortunately, for as wild and eclectic as the everyday fashions of Dis, it would seem that a good Second Age-inspired tuxedo remains as much in fashion in Dis as it did back home.
It’s still ill-suited for you but you’d rather something you are vaguely familiar with over any of the strange homegrown outfits of Dis. Even if you don’t have the first clue on how to properly affix a tie.
“The money will speak for us. From what I’ve seen of this city, it will be enough.”

Alex looks doubtful, wrapped up in a tight-fitting suit of her own. She’d considered a dress but had told you that she’d rather not be wearing a dress if she had to make an escape. You’re not sure how you feel about that. It’s somewhat indecent of her but no more so than what she already does and on some level, you are thankful that you don’t have to look at her in whatever scandalous thing these people would consider a proper dress. Her dull orange hair has been combed back enough that it only falls over her face some of the time.
“We must look ridiculous,” she says, pulling at her own bowtie. “And these colours are awful. You should have let me get the red suit.”

In addition to being a far cry from the solemn formal outfits of your past, the red suit had struck you as being far too on the nose. No point in asking for trouble.
“What do you mean?”

“These things were made for Second Men, weren’t they? I’m sure black and white looks good when your skin is sparkling gold or whatever, it’d contrast. But we aren’t so we don’t. I look like a….a railway station.”

You never thought about that but you suppose it must be different for someone who has grown up in Dis, spending their entire life amidst the detritus of earlier kinds of Man and more importantly, amidst Dis’ ideas of those previous ages being superior. It’d never occured to you to ever feel shame or wistfulness over being born a Third Man. You are God’s chosen people.
“Looks sober. I like it.”

“Looks like dirty cement.”

“Cement is holy.”
You finally get the tie right.
“I didn’t take you for one who would care about appearance."

1/??

>>2255646
She appears reflexively angry for a moment before shrugging, her face contrite.
“Right. The mere look of things, right? That doesn’t matter in the face of a righteous cause!”

“Yes, that too. But I meant in other ways, considering what you usually wear.”

“You take what clothes you can get in the Mazes. S’not like I had a choice. But I wouldn’t want to be too gaudy, would I? That wouldn’t be right in the eyes of God, he doesn’t care about that stuff. How do women dress where you are from, Orion? What’s the proper way?”

You are saved from what could have been an awkward conversation on a matter you know precious little about by Clement’s arrival. He’s also suited up though with a somewhat longer coat and his hair tied up in a bun that he assures you makes him look like some sort of scribe or personal servant.
“Are we ready?”

You take a deep breath and center yourself. You must be strong when you step into this parlor of sin.
“Yes. Remember not to fall behind or let yourself be tempted.”

“Tempted on what? Burning the whole place down?. Now that’d be a target and a half.”
Alex actually looks thoughtful.

“Save it until after I learn about the writer of this letter.”
You have no objections to putting such a place to the torch but it is not your mission nor your duty. Better to show people that they have no need of it.

The three of you take the train from Low Fawlsy, standing out a little but considering the eclectic crowds, not too much. And as the train heads further and further uptown, the dissonance grows lesser and lesser. The silver towers loom in the distance but your destination is not with them.
As the train crests a particularly high point in the sky rail, though not high enough to get near the dangerous predator-haunted smog clouds, you spot a curious location that you have seen before. It was when you first arrived.

It’s off in the distance now but you can still make it out quite clearly through the dirty air. A tall rectangular clock tower, it’s face lost to distance, and below it a large metal dome wedged in amidst a thicket of smaller towers. You tap your finger against the glass and get Alex’s attention, though you speak in low tones.
“What is that?”

“Hm? Uh.”

“It’s the Senate Hall,” Clement intrudes. “The Senate meets there every day, year round. It is completely sealed off from the rest of the city. Nobody has entered or exited the main dome in decades I hear, save the directives that come out and the news that goes in.”

“That can’t be right. How do they get new Senators?”

“I don’t know. The Senate is endless.”

“And what’s that clocktower? The first time I saw it, I think it was telling the wrong time.”

“That’s not any old clock, Orion. Don’t you recognise it? It’s the First Clock.”

2/??

>>2255647
Your eyes widen. You have heard of it, how would you not? The vast mechanism designed by the Wheel God before he was God, the teller of time that sprung into action the very moment after his ascension pinned time down and fixed the solar calendar into place. It’s holy, not in the way that the satellites are or in the way the thing inside your lamppost is...it’s a direct craft of divine hands.
“And it has stopped, hasn’t it?”

“When the sun broke, or so I’m told. No clock may toll in Dis, not legally anyway.”

“What?”

“Yeah they banned ‘em.” Alex says. “Was a big hubbub ten years ago I think. If stopping the Fourth Age was worth desecrating God for, not even that which just represents time is allowed. Bonkers, innit?”

“I hear about one who still has-,” Clement begins but it is interrupted by the sound of the train slowing, the blaring of the horn and the metallic screeching of the brakes.
“Ah, nevermind. We are here.”

The railway station isn’t nestled in any particular tower but is a vast open-air plaza instead, suspended between a square of four stone towers by a network of iron bridges and supports. Walkways run in every possible direction. And away from the square, there is a wide and thronging bridge that leads to a delicate spire of concrete and brick. What use its foundations and lower levels are reserved for is unknown to you for starting with the level that you, the station and the bridge are on, and then continuing for all thirty floors of the tower above, is the Paper Bridesmaid.

Pennants of solid white stained with black hang from the windows above walls decorated with hanging greenflame lanterns that jostle on delicate silver chains, their blasphemous half-light prism’d into a hundred different hues by tinted glass. Where the pennants and lanterns do not hang, they instead frame a vast copy of the illustration seen on the back of your letter, the Paper Bridesmaid herself presented in the light of the hundred different hanging lamps that sway in the breeze around her titanic visage.
Before the main entrance doors are a pair of large silver statues of what must be ancient artwork of the Second Age, as both figures have impossibly elegant proportions. The man stares out with blank silver eyes at the crowds below him. The woman hides her face in her hands but otherwise accentuates her figure, one that to the eyes of a Third Man, seems outright exaggerated. The waist is actually thinner than the chest or the lower body! How would such a top-heavy creature even function?

As Alex feared, the three of you stand out here. Your clothes do not fit perfectly and amidst the colourful blasphemies that people call fashion, you are a most stodgy trio. But even then, when you get to the ranks of hardfaced men and women wearing the white-and-black suits of the Bridesmaid, the coins that Clement shows is still enough to let you pass.
3/??

>>2255649
Something about the uniform of the security here strikes you as familiar, though you can’t remember where.

Beyond the front doors is a red-carpeted annex with marble stairs that lead both up and down and beyond even that, a vast gambling hall full of the sounds of clattering dice and the stench of a thousand different delicate and sinful things. Fortunately, the people here do not appear to be engaged in the primary sin you had come to expect from a ‘house of pleasure’, such things must be on the other floors, but decadence of an almost carnal nature still reigns supreme.
Waiting staff pass around trays of drinks, leaves and powders of an iniquitous variety and the gamblers, as they sit at the tables for every game imaginable, do not even pause their play to partake. Men and women hang off each other and one another in indecent fashions, pairing off at the end of games and retiring to private booths at the far end of the hall. A vast intake of dishevelled people are constantly entering and exiting the hall in a vast flow from the stairwells, carrying scents and signs of the other sins the wanton Bridesmaid has to offer.

And the games! You do not understand them at a glance, they transform into a meaningless whirl of colour right before your very eyes. Coins are exchanged and scraps of paper but the games are mostly fought and lost over thin metal chips, each one stamped with the image of the Bridesmaid. You are sure there are vast fortunes here, properties and lives being traded away with the roll of a dice or the flick of a card. The tokens make it less clear, obscuring what is won and lost.
But regardless of the game, regardless of the fortune, one thing is clear now that you have passed through the first blast of confused first impressions. Beneath the scents of sin, beneath the swirling cloud of incense in the rafters, this hall smells of nothing more than human sweat and pure essential desperation. It reeks of it, like a fine rot, as if to tell you, this is where sacred human life is weighed against chance and is found wanting.
There are a lot of people with a lot of chips at each table but you can see no winners. No winners except perhaps the face printed upon the tokens that are clutched at by the fortunate and the desperate alike.

‘Can I help you, sirs? Ma’am?”
A man has materialised by your shoulder. Lost in the sense-gorging display of a single gambling hall, you did not see or hear him approach. You refrain from throttling him.
“You are new here, are you not? You can come this way to get your money exchanged and if you want to play different games or drink or eat or fuck, I can guide you to a higher floor. This is just the basic stuff.”

The casual frankness of his demeanour is both uncomfortable and disarming, as is the notion that this is ‘basic’. What competition of base decadence is this?

4/5

>>2255652
>Tell him that you are fine just staying in the entrance for now. This is likely suspicious.

>Get some chips and start playing, just to blend in. A minor sin for a righteous cause. Once you’ve established yourself, you can start asking questions of the other patrons.

>Ask for a dining floor instead. It cannot be worse. It cannot.

>Ask about the different games.

>Ask for a more carnal floor. This should give you some privacy.

>Split up. Assign your companions to snoop around higher floors while you remain below.

>Show him your letter.

>Other (Specify)

>>2255654
>Split up. Assign your companions to snoop around higher floors while you remain below.

>>2255654
>Show him your letter.
Let's just cut to the chase here.

>>2255654
>Show him your letter.

>>2255654
>>Split up. Assign your companions to snoop around higher floors while you remain below.

>>2255654
>Show him your letter.
Subtle - we are not.

Vote called. Writing.

>>2255654
>>Ask for a dining floor instead. It cannot be worse. It cannot.
i want to vote for this just because it sounds like Orion
>Show him your letter.

>Show him your letter.

You would rather not spend more time here than you have to. You’ve never been comfortable in crowds and that it goes a thousandfold in this sinpit. What would you gain by wasting your hours here save folly? It makes sense to you now. This room only holds the witless victims of the Bridesmaid, trapped forever in her coils. They’d know no secrets of this place.
If you wished to learn of a farm, would you really ask the livestock?

No, you decide, better to just get this over and done with. If this alerts your informant then so be it. It’d still be better than having to wade around this place a moment more.
“Here,” you tell the official, thrusting the letter at him to display the symbol at the back. “I was given this and told to come here.”

“Orion!”
Alex’s voice is almost a squeal and Clement’s is no better. Apparently neither of them expected you to do this immediately.

“I’m getting this over and done with,” you tell them. “Now, have you any idea of this?”

The man squints as he reads the serpentine handwriting.
“No name? That is strange? It looks like an invitation from one of our long-term residents, up in the higher floors. But they have no identifying information, not even a room number.”

“Couldn’t it also be from one of your...staff?” Alex asks.

The man’s face grows stern.
“I should hope not. They’d know better than to pull something like this. Here, come over to the closed exchange booth and I can ask around.”

“Thank you.”

“Customer service is always our motto, good sirs and ma’am.”

“Does customer service include dismissing this hall as ‘basic stuff’. I wasn’t sure if you actually worked here.”

The man makes a dismissive gesture.
“Oh, I saw it in your expression sir. You were standing before the Equitas Hall and yet your face was so stern! Distasteful, almost. Here is a man, I told myself, who is interested in far more serious games. Was my judgement incorrect?”

You were unaware that you had been glowering at this place at all, though you suppose you should count yourself lucky that it was mistaken for the sneer of the true connoisseur. The idea of even pretending to be a snob in such decadence is an unpleasant one however.
“I-”

“A remarkable insight,” Clement says, cutting you off before you even begin to speak. “And yes, Mr Orion is not here to play children’s games. My employer only seeks real excitement.”

“Of course, of course,” the man says. “I knew you to be a man of refined tastes the moment you stepped in, oh, and your ladyfriend too. Excellent choice of outfits too if I may be so bold. Now just follow me and I’ll get this negligent invitation sorted out and then, perhaps a few floors up, they have some pit-”
1/3

Rolled 1, 1 = 2 (2d1)

>>2255840
ouro, what are you trying to pull here?

>>2255835
“Another bad roll!”
The man’s next few words are cut off by a bass rumble from a very large man sitting across the very long table at the edge of the hall, the table that the four of you are currently walking past. They are throwing pairs of black wooden dice for some sort of game and the man is geasturing at his most recently thrown pair, both of which have come up ones. The two solitary white pips stare up at you in a way that reminds you of unpleasant memories.
“Snake eyes,” the dealer says smoothly.

An interesting coincidence for sure but-

“Me too!”
The woman standing next to the man is leaning over the table now, her tuxedo indecently buttoned. She’s staring down at her own dice. Two little white eyes surrounded by black.
“That’s the third roll in a row!”

A horrific sense of claustrophobia suddenly sets over you and you pick up the pace, almost walking in front of the official leading you, driven by an unknowable fear. You remember those eyes.

The calls of the gamblers are attracting attention and you can see the security dotted around the floor, dressed in impeccable white and black suits like the Paper Bridesmaid herself, look up and take notice, their eyes hidden beneath peaked caps. Human eyes are affixed to the table and to you and none of them are more dreadful than those eyes that helped guide you to Dis, the ones you first saw as knucklebones in a pot of dirt.
But that witchlore, one that you turned to your own use, only works when rolled on dirt! It cannot be here! It cannot see you!

You pass the table.

“Hah! Bad luck fellas. I got a pair of fives!”

The voice lets you relax, tells you that it was nothing but coincidence. And then you look back, your eyes catching the dice almost immediately. They are both showing 5 on top. But only because the side of each dice with just one pip are directly facing you instead.
Something cold and hideous runs down your spine and you stop walking. The hall feels smaller than before. The clatter of the every rolled pair of dice seems to grow louder and louder into a clickering din that drowns out all speech, all screams, all thought. And in an ever-widening circle around you, something is watching you. Something that has seen you before, seen you from somewhere deep within the reflective sides of each polished die, the eyes behind the eyes of each solitary pip paired with its twin. The clicker clatter feels almost rhythmic, a thousand bones of something old and dead rolling and clicking together.
“Where am I?” you ask.

And then the din fades and the spell is broken as a man in white and black tears the invitation letter from the official’s hands. He stares at you but you look past him.
“The Mistress wants to see you. Please, come this way to the elevator.”

2/3

>>2255845
“Wait, which mistress?,” the man who had been speaking to you is both confused and a little afraid. “Which floor?”

“The highest one. And he comes alone.”


Chapter Eleven: The Belly of the Beast


>Agree. It’s too late now and you must know about the ‘baubles’ this letter promises.

>Agree but only if you can take at least Alex with you.

>Demand to know what is going on.

>Flee!

>Unveil the lamp post.

>Other (Specify)

>>2255855
>>Agree but only if you can take at least Alex with you.
There are seriously no breaks on this train. Even after the train exploded, WERE STILL GOING

>>2255855
>>Agree but only if you can take at least Alex with you.

>>2255855
>Agree. It’s too late now and you must know about the ‘baubles’ this letter promises.
wtf is alex gonna even do if we bring her?

>>2255901
learn. And she better learn fast. We're not really bringing her around to DO things as such, but Orion's not suited for a lot of things that need doing, and Alex seems more viable to build up than Abe.

>>2255855
>Agree but only if you can take at least Alex with you.
If we just jumped into a boss fight we need as much help as we can get

Vote called, writing.

>Agree but only if you can take at least Alex with you.

You find your voice a moment later, perturbed that you are so perturbed in the first place. Haven’t you faced down witches, ghouls and golems? You have fought every loathsome breed of the earth’s children. There is no need to become unmanned over the movement of a few dice. But it is disturbing all the same and, as far as you can tell, neither of your attending Redcloaks even noticed it happen.
“I will come,” you say. “It was what I am here to do. But on two conditions! I keep everything on me. And i do not go alone.”

The white-and-black man does not look impressed.
“The Mistress does not make requests.”

Your thoughts drift to the snake eyes and the dice that have followed you since that day on the outskirts of Augustine. The dice that you yourself have used to your own advantage, forever pointing towards some great snarl in the earth that winds fate around itself.
“She will for me. And if she won’t, I will leave.”

“No you won’t! She has demanded an audience!”

“Try me.”
You look him in the eye and silence falls for three long seconds as the din of the gambling hall continues unabated all around you.

“Fine. But just one.”

“I wouldn’t have asked for more.”

And just like that you and Alex are hustled past the exchange booths and into a carpeted elevator, one that looks like much more comfortable than those of the Consortium. Once a machine you’d never before soon, they are starting to become mundane surprisingly quickly. The white-and-black man steps in with the two of you and pulls the door’s shut. Where the rest of the elevator is a wood-panelled and cozy looking box with it’s own glimmer of greenfire, the door is that of a cage.

“Orion,” Alex hisses beneath her breath as your guide presses a button marked ‘30’. “What’s going on?”

The man inserts a key into a slot beneath the uppermost button and with a turn, the elevator starts to ascend. It moves slowly at first but picks up speed at a rate made alarming by the metal grille of the door allowing you see to flashes of the floors beyond. At first what are coherent visions of decadent displays of carnality and excess blur with the speed to become disorienting flashes, tiny glimpses and each glimpse a separate realm of sin.

“Not here,” you hiss at her. “Just be ready and bear witness when we reach the top.”

1/3

>>2256108
A hall draped in a carpet of naked moaning flesh, bodies twisting amidst one another.

A row of pits surrounded by spectators, chips clattering to the ground as they are passed around. You can’t make out what they are clustered around, just the blur of small things fighting and a spray of blood.

A darkened room ruled by a vast phallic machine rising from the middle like a distorted pillar, bloated bags of vapors hanging from its branches as crowds suckle greedily on industrial nozzles.

A hall full of private booths and pathways, each figure veiled in fine silk.

A scream.

An empty hallway bare of paint with just a single wooden door at the far end.

A gambling hall just as before, twin to the first you visited. Enormous fat pythons lie across the games tables, gnawing at the ecstatic gamblers.

An awaiting display of paramours, none of them human.

A stable of people-shaped animals but more horrific, the people-shaped people who are there by choice.

A glimpse of what looks like an abattoir, the ground covered in blood-smeared gambling chips.

It all blurs together and a moment later you cannot remember what of those visions you actually saw as the elevator ascended and what was merely dreamed out of incoherent flashes of colour and shapes as the elevator screams up towards the zenith at a terrible speed.

It comes to a stop and you don’t notice the slowing at all, nor do you feel the usual effects. The attendant pulls the door open. There is a powerful stench of something dry and dead.
“Your stop. I will not be following you.”

When the two of you step out, the elevator descends back into the pit.

The highest floor of the Paper Bridesmaid is what must have been, in brighter times, an enormous sunroom. The doomed roof is covered in elaborate windows in the shape of flowers, dotted around the sides so that no matter the time of day, at least one would direct the sunlight into the room.
Each one is filled with the gray half-light, the sunlight of the new era. You can see it, cracked and empty, drifting past the window between smoggy clouds.

The walls are lined to doors, passages that radiate out from this central sunroom like spokes in a wheel. An intentional reference to the Wheel God’s sigil? It doesn’t matter now.

The perpetual twilight doesn’t reach far beyond the edges of the large circular room, leaving the interior full of hunched and shadowy shapes.

You take a step forward and something crunches beneath your boot. It’s an empty snakeskin, discarded and desiccated. The stone floor is carpeted with them, moulted brittle shapes packed together in a layer at least an inch deep.
Every step you take is a crunch.

“This is unholy,” Alex says and, as the acoustics of the room pick up her voice and echoes it around far louder than she intended, clutches her hands over her mouth. “What is this?”
The last three words are uttered in a whisper but that doesn’t help. The walls still speak them back.

2/3

>>2256112
“The what, I am unsure of,” you say and your words are followed by a dozen fading echoes. “But I think I know who.”

“Who?”

A shadowy lump in the center of the room stirs, the silhouette in the corner of your vision changing. An upthrust head.


>”Sinner! I have come to take back what you stole. I don’t know why you called me here but that is non-negotiable!”

>”Our letter-writer, I assume. Not exactly what I expected when I wrote it. Well? You wanted me here! You got me here. What is it?”

>”Snake Eyes. You saw me back in Augustine, didn’t you? You saw the whole foretelling. Is that why you called me here?”

>”The Paper Bridesmaid herself. I assume she has a business proposal.”

>Attack!

>Unveil the lamp post.

>Other (Specify)

>>2256115
>”Snake Eyes. You saw me back in Augustine, didn’t you? You saw the whole foretelling. Is that why you called me here?”

>>2256115
>>”Snake Eyes. You saw me back in Augustine, didn’t you? You saw the whole foretelling. Is that why you called me here?”

>>2256115
>”Snake Eyes. You saw me back in Augustine, didn’t you? You saw the whole foretelling. Is that why you called me here?”

File: darnit.jpg (40 KB, 600x600)

40 KB JPG

>”Our letter-writer, I assume. Not exactly what I expected when I wrote it. Well? You wanted me here! You got me here. What is it?”
>Not exactly what I expected when I wrote it.
>when I wrote it
>I wrote it
>wrote

God damn it. That should be 'read' not 'wrote'. Rest assured, Orion did not secretly write the letter this whole time.

>>2256115
>>”Snake Eyes. You saw me back in Augustine, didn’t you? You saw the whole foretelling. Why would you call one who walks with the light here?”

>>2256115
>”Snake Eyes. You saw me back in Augustine, didn’t you? You saw the whole foretelling. Is that why you called me here?”

>>2256138
"I must kill all the witches!"
"No, Orion. You are the witches."

Vote called, writing.

>>2256190
Then who was phone?

>”Snake Eyes. You saw me back in Augustine, didn’t you? You saw the whole foretelling. Is that why you called me here?”

How you identify the inhabitant of this room to Alex is also going to feature as your introduction to them as a whole. This is your first meeting after all, face to face if not eye to eye. It’d be easy to speak aloud your suspicions of them being one of the Sinners who slew the sun but unless you want to attack them right away, that approach isn’t any good. Best to remain at least a little polite to the madame of this den of horrors but not foolishly so. Let her know that you know exactly what her game is.
“The snake eyes in the dice. You saw me back in Augustine, didn’t you? You saw the whole foretelling. Is that why you called me here?”

The sound that fills the room sounds like sandpaper rubbing together as something invisible adjusts its bulk. Then comes laughter, a polite and practiced kind. The voice that follows it is feminine but with a deeper tone than most.
“I would have thought a ‘thank you’ to be in order first?”
Unlike you and Alex, whose voices are forever trailed by a dozen weaker echoes, there is no echo whatsoever on this one. Every word sinks into a sudden silence and is then lost.

“What?”
’what? What? What? What?’, jeer the echoes.
“I don’t owe you anything.”

“If you say so. But what about the bridge? Didn’t you think it was odd that it had been raised just for you?”

“What is she talking about?”
Alex looks confused.

“And you’re trying to tell me that was you? Can you prove that?”

“Not with words. But consider this. Who else could have known of your approach, of the Lamplighter and the witch? Who else would welcome you? You have me to thank for that way across the chasm.”

She has a point. You tread ever closer, empty snakeskins being ground to shreds with every footstep.
“What would you gain from doing this?”

“Didn’t you read the letter? I want you, Orion. I want your strong arm, your chiseled jaw, your burning dream.

Where once you were disturbed, the voice’s word choices now just have you bemused.
“I don’t know what you’re trying but stow it.”

“You really are no fun. Then how about this. I want your faith, I want your stupid blind devotion, I want your wanton brutality, I want your flame and I want it to ravish this city. That’s a little less flattering but more truthful, don’t you think?”

“You saw the foretelling,” you say. “You know what, and who, I am here for. That is what I am here to do and nothing else.”

“Good, that’s very good. Because I want nothing more than to let you hunt them down! Take their useless burning shards! Kill as many as you can find and never stop until their blades find their breast and you are snuffed out! That is why I raised the bridge for you.”

1/3

>>2256371
“Even if I were to accept that you did it, you will find no gratitude. I don’t have thanks to spare for a creature of darkness.”

“Really? I feel bad for the witch that follows you around then. You’ve replaced her lately, I see. Interesting. Is it just until she escapes from the Thorn or is this more of a long-term hire?”

“What do you know about that?”
Your stave is in your hands as quick as blinking, the canvas around the tip fluttering away as the tail bucks in your hands.

“Oh put that gruesome thing down. Don’t threaten me with the corpse of a friend, it’s impolite. And I suppose we better talk freely. Step closer, I will prepare a light.”

A dim green spark flares up in the center of the room as you advance, Alex hesitantly following a few steps behind. You can hear the crunch of her making her way through the errant skin.
The large silhouette in the center of the room is lit by green half-light, revealing itself to be a mighty clutter of riches, a treasure pile all hoarded together. There’s the metal glint of gambling chips, most of them buried by thousands of the holed coins of Dis piled up roughly around small statuettes and shrouded paintings resting up against them still in their frames.
In front of it all is a battered old couch, next to which rests the dented green lantern that had just been lit. These two mundane furnishings stand out in high contrast not just to the pile of treasure behind them but to the woman atop them.

Alex gasps behind you as she sees what you see.

It’s the Paper Bridesmaid in the flesh, an exact replica of the illustration on the letter and upon every gambling chip. A woman in tattered paper-white bridal clothes right out of the Second Age, even if her veil is tattered and lets you see just the palest glint of eyes beyond. The bottom of the dress is stained black and is torn, revealing her leg below the knee in scandalous fashion. She is lounging across the couch as if she was born there, a living breathing vision of a defiled saint.

2/3

>>2256377
Only...that’s not all there is, is there? The Paper Bridesmaid is real, too real, but she is also two things at the same time. You’re not sure how to explain it to yourself save for the fact that when you stare at her, you see two separate things. It’s...A faint memory stirs, many decades old, of a time before you were ever a Lamplighter. You had still been a child in the city back then, even though you can no longer remember that city’s name. You had been taken to a ragged fair once and there had been a man there with a magic box that you could look into and see a different picture depicting scriptural events every time you clicked the button. It wasn’t magic of course. It just had a lantern inside of it and every time you pressed the button, an internal wheel pulled another translucent picture in between the viewing port and the light source.
Only you had accidentally fallen while pressed up against it and you’d broken something inside of it. Then when next you looked, you had seen two of the translucent plates jammed up together against the light so the two holy scenes had overlapped bizarrely. Both present and both unreal.

That is what it is like to lay eyes on the Paper Bridesmaid.

In one eye, she is the fallen bride just as described. In the other eye, the couch is occupied by the head of a vast white and mottled-black serpent whose body extends across the treasure hoard and disappears into darkness. The two images overlap one another and both feel just as real as the other. When the woman raises her hand, you can hear the stiff leather of the couch creak. When the serpent moves, you can hear its sandpaper-skin rasp and you can see a disturbed coin fall from the heap and to the floor. The two of them pass through each other as if they were both ghosts.

And as the woman sits up and the serpent rears, you look into their eyes and see far more layers than just two. There are the glints beneath the veil. There are the large cat’s-eye slits of the serpent. There are the white dots surrounded by black in the gambling hall. There are the faded marks set into old bone of the knucklebones rolled out upon the soil in Augustine. And then you tear your eyes away because that procession continues inward forever.

:”Let us speak frankly,” the apparition says, the jaw of the serpent moving in time with the flutter of the woman’s veil. She remains single-voiced as ever despite this with not even an echo.
“I want you to do your best at killing all of my oldest and dearest friends.”


>”I still don’t understand what you get out of this.”

>”You spoke of certain baubles. Tell me of them.”

>”What is your relation to the Sinners?”

>”What ARE you?”

>No. There will be no bargaining with this creature.

>”Why did you raise the rail?”

>”How did you find me?”

>Other (Specify)

>>2256383
>”I still don’t understand what you get out of this.”
>”You spoke of certain baubles. Tell me of them.”
>”What is your relation to the Sinners?”
>”What ARE you?”

>>2256383
>And after? Would you offer your life willingly, or do you intend to buy it with your....bauble?

"And if I succeed, and comolete my mission, you slither back into the Earth, hising away from the sun's light? That holds no truth. Or more likely you wait until the others have fallen, and then strike me down to take a hold of this blasphemous city in it's entirety."

>>2256383
>”What is your relation to the Sinners?”
>”You spoke of certain baubles. Tell me of them.”

File: flakesnake.png (11 KB, 636x405)

11 KB PNG

I'll be resting for an hour or two. Vote will remain open until then.

>>2256383

>>2256403
Seconding

>>2256383
>”You spoke of certain baubles. Tell me of them.”
>”What ARE you?”
>”How did you find me?”

Wow! That was a doozy. It was definitely a mistake to bring Alex with us. She's a hostage now.
We should try to set the First Clock moving again, stick a motor in it instead of using the Sun to get it ticking. Symbol of rebellion, of the loss of the Sun.
I didn't think that Snake-Eyes was the only one who could anticipate us.
If Orion would not bargain with the iron traitor, why is he willing to bargain with this woman?

>>2256383
>What's your name, witch?
>Why do you want the others dead?
>Who are they?
>And after? Would you offer your life willingly, or do you intend to buy it with your....bauble?
>Be ready for a lunge at Alex.
>Tell me about Bea and the Thorn.

>>2256577
A little quick on the draw there aren't you?
You realize that the first clock runs on Prophesy Time, and that forcefully moving it is just as blasphemous as forcefully stopping it?

>>2256580
I don't think it would be. Starting up the clocktower so everyone could see? Orion would see it as a symbol of the Sun coming back, Dis would see it as a symbol of time starting again. It would polarize the city, cause factions to form, fights to start. The ones who want time and the Sun back, and the ones who like the clock stopped and the Sun gone.

For this purpose, Orion would consider it holy.

>>2254846
(If I can make a request of Tegaki Anon, could we have a 'No step on snek' Ancapistan Dis flake snake? Maybe with a stopped clock on his head?)

Vote called. Writing.

>>2256586
Look, you want to start up the clocktower again. A clocktower that:
>Presumably did not run on a motor before, and therefore is not designed to be used with a motor
>Using people who are barely even educated, let alone capable of mathing this out
>On something as extremely subtle as a landmark looking slightly different
>And when the blackcloaks arrive to stop it, both what they do and the fight that would ensue could damage it.
I get it, a life is more important than some clock, but for such rampant paranoia over Alex's safety, you sure don't give a shit about the safety of one of the most holy monuments that we know.

It's too bad she's being so cagey, I'd ask her who she's married to.
Snake-Eyes probably isn't Agatha, the Senate contact. Different handwriting, no name.

>>2256688
>>Presumably did not run on a motor before, and therefore is not designed to be used with a motor
True, but an expert with motors ought to be able to use the right amount of power so it doesn't hurt the gears.
>Using people who are barely even educated, let alone capable of mathing this out
Yes, we'd need an expert.
>On something as extremely subtle as a landmark looking slightly different
Subtle? Would you not notice the symbol of your city looking different? The point of the stopped clock to them is that it's stopped. It starting again will be very noticeable. Especially if we light a Lantern nearby.
>>And when the blackcloaks arrive to stop it, both what they do and the fight that would ensue could damage it.
No need for a fight. We can just set it up and leave.
>I get it, a life is more important than some clock, but for such rampant paranoia over Alex's safety, you sure don't give a shit about the safety of one of the most holy monuments that we know.
In the Snake's position, snagging a hostage is a hope of staying alive. It's perfectly logical.
No harm ought to come to the First Clock.

>>2256692
>We can just set it up and leave.
excuse me? What makes you think they wouldn't golem crunch the motor? All they need to do is sit around until the witches arrive, and now you've fucked the tower. That's hardly enough time for people to notice, the ones that aren't buried in floors upon floors of walkways don't even look up.

>Stay your attack for now.
>Question her on who and why.

“What’s your name, witch?”

The veiled woman shakes her head, passing right through the giant serpent’s lower jaw.
“If I have a name, it is unspeakable by human tongues and cannot be transcribed by any alphabet. If you must address by a name, Mistress or Madame is preferable. And witch? I can’t be a witch. Look at this.”
The woman raises her gloved hands. Despite her choice garments, she appears to be a Third Man under it all. Both of them are shaking as if they were diseased and continue to do so until she places them back in her lap.
“Witches have agile hands. Do these look like witch hands to you? Or if you take the other point of view, I don’t have hands at all. A snake may be the thing most unlike a witch in that regard.”

“What are you then?”
As always, your voice inspires several echoes. This time however, the creature speaks before they have fully died away. With the first syllable of her voice the echoes of your question die away in an instant.

“I am the Paper Bridesmaid, Madame and proprietor of the business of the same name. A citizen of Dis, born and bred in Undertown.”

“No games. What are you?”

“A creature of darkness. How boring. Is that the answer you seek?”

“Are you an imp?”

“Now you’re just getting insulting. I am no imp nor witch nor long-forgotten troll. I am no goblin nor gremlin nor dead man. I’m not an extremely queer ghoul or golem and a duskwalker just plain wouldn’t make sense. But nevertheless, lest this leave you at a loss for ideas, I am very definitely a child born of the earth, creature of darkness and all-round loather of light. All that good stuff.”

“I thought I said no games.”

“Play no games, win no prizes. That’s generally the rule in this kind of establishment. Are you going to try and smite me now?”

Your hands tighten around the Duke’s tail. “This might be your most effective temptation yet.”

‘Wait, Orion! There’s so much we need to know!” Alex takes another step forward and almost slips on the loose skin.

“Relax. I have no intention of purging it now, despite its taunts.”

“It? That is a poor choice of words. I’m more of a woman than your companion there.”

“What is your relation to the Sinners? And why do you want them dead?”

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business,” Alex mutters.

“Now that’s a much more effective question! I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of me in no time with efforts like that, that’d be exciting. And Sinners? Are you using that term the old woman used in the divination? I’m glad to have been present in such a formative moment for your quest!”

“What?”

1/??

>>2256712
>excuse me? What makes you think they wouldn't golem crunch the motor? All they need to do is sit around until the witches arrive, and now you've fucked the tower. That's hardly enough time for people to notice, the ones that aren't buried in floors upon floors of walkways don't even look up.
It's a CITY LANDMARK. Of course they'll see it. And you're forgetting that we can light it up
Yes, they can absolutely crunch the motor, so? It'll be on for five minutes, more if we wreck the entrance. That will be enough to get people to talk about it, to get annoyed about it.
And they're not going to destroy the tower, it's their symbol too.

>>2256717
“I’m a big fan of your adventures, if you don’t mind me saying. Probably your biggest as long as you don’t count your hanger-ons. It’s a shame that the witch couldn’t make it, I particularly enjoyed her business with the sky rail a few days ago. And that other fellow you picked up, he’s felt my gaze before too. Regrettably he had his shirt on at the time.”

She’s avoiding the question.
“Answer the question.”

“I was getting to it. Sinners? Well, I’m afraid it is a relationship that time has since soured. We were all so close once.”
You mean to interject at this point, to question the ‘We’ in that statement but your lips just move soundlessly as she talks, your voice as easily quashed by her own as the echoes are.
“Blood brothers and sisters, bound together by a shared unholy purpose. I really believe that any of us would have once given their life for any other of us. Particularly in that last final trek. Why else would we split it so evenly? But darn it all, it’s not as it was in the old days when the sun was freshly slain. That is the fate of all friends, Lamplighter, and you should remember that. Now we are competitors. Alack! They’ve all taken their baubles and have done all sorts of horrible things with them and now when we see each other, we can know only prey. I really would like it if a few of them just died! Good job with the Duke, excellent start there, I don’t even need his fire to live so I’m good.”

“Bu-” you start to say.

“Hush.”
And you are hushed. The Bridesmaid’s voice drowns out all others. In the corner of your eye you can see Alex trying to tell you something but her words have been stolen away.
“Now where was I? Oh yes. I first became aware of you when that old bint called forth my attention with her divination. The fate that is spun within the earth belongs to me. I saw her and I saw her divination and I saw you and the witch. And here was an opportunity! A magnificent holy warrior of a kind I had honestly thought extinct. Worn down by years and harsh lessons in a world no longer his own but with a spark of hope that burns eternal within his breast. He wants to kill my friends, I want to kill my friends, why not lend him a hand? So I built the bridge and I fouled up the investigation of said bridge and now I’m offering my help to you. Not my direct help but as long as you want to kill my friends, I’ll grease the wheels. I’ll supply information, money, property, whatever little things you need to pursue your glorious duty.”

“Why?”
You are finally able to get a word in edgewise.

“I believe we have already covered this, Orion.”

“Not that. Why do you want me to succeed? Do you want the return of the sun?”

2/??

>>2256720
“No! I hate the sun! Happy I helped kill it, no regrets. But here’s the real point of interest. You’re not going to succeed. You’re going to kill a few of us and then everything will catch up to you and you’ll die. You can’t win! But you will burn brightly before you die and I would like to help you burn everyone else.”

“But she’s got one!,” Alex blurts out! “She’s got a shard of her own! Just take it from her!”

“She’s right. What’s stopping me from just killing you and taking yours?”

“Basic manners and a sense of intelligence for one. This tower is full of my employees. What are you going to do after you kill me, jump out the window? And I may not go down quite so easily. Isn’t the offer of my help and information alone enough for you to promise to choose me last?”

“No.”

“At least you’re honest.”
The massive snake head withdraws back into the treasure hoard for an unknown purpose, leaving a loop of its coils to creak down atop the couch where the veiled woman, in another point of view, is sitting.
“I have a few morsels you might enjoy. Firstly, recall the other elements of that prophecy. You have two brothers. Brothers in sunlight not in blood. They carry what you carry and for the same purpose. And seven sinners who await you at the end of the world. You’ve been a little fixated on the Sinner part but don’t forget the Brothers! There are two others like you Orion, righteous bearers of the flesh of God, and at least one arrived here before you did. I know this because I was there to see him fail.”

“What? Who is this? What happened to his shard?”

The Paper Bridesmaid waves a finger in a cajoling manner, her whole hand shaking in the process.
“That’s all you get for free. Want the information? Play the game! And just to spice things up a little more…”
The serpent moves again, sending cascades of old coins and bloodstained chips to the floor.
“Do you know the value of treasure? I am asking a rhetorical question I intend to answer immediately, I see you attempting to answer me and I will not allow it. You can’t eat it. It won’t romance you or whisper sweet nothing in your ear. It usually can’t kill your enemies, unless perhaps it is dropped from a great height. It certainly won’t kill your friends. Wealth exists purely to show other people. To display! The whole Paper Bridesmaid itself, the place and not the person, is a means to this end. It’s useful in other ways but really, whether it be gold or flesh, where’s the value in anything if you can’t put it on exhibition? And yet, for the past thirty years, I have been subjected to a treasure I can never show to anyone.”

3/??

>>2256721
The snake re-emerges with something in its mouth. It is a long metal pole with a glass lantern hanging from it by a silver chain, not unlike those that adorn the outside of the tower. But this glass is not unlike that of the central lamp-posts themselves and it is of a strange tinted kind you have never seen before. Tinted so dark that the thing within it is barely just a glimmer. And yet, the post on your back responds! It cries out!
“Here it is. One of the objects of your desire. And what were you saying about temptation?”
The snake rears back slightly, as if attempting to goad you to lean uselessly forward in response. You almost do.
“These are the rules for the game. I will help you out for now in small ways, I will give you certain information and I will help you escape notice. If you kill one of my friends, I will give you further information. And I will give you this! For free!”

“You’d just give it up? I don’t believe you.”

The veiled woman shrugs, the serpent performing the same kind of motion. “Why? What value am I supposed to place in this thing again? I am of darkness, I have no sentimentality towards light. Anything I could do with this thing is repulsive to me. Can’t even put it on display. It has more value to me as a prize in this game than it has ever had before.”


>Agree to her terms. You can use her for now.

>Push on it a bit more. She gives the shard to you NOW.

>Attack! You just need to knock the lantern free from the snake’s mouth!

>Disagree on every aspect. You are not her tool.

>Other (Specify)

>>2256722

>Agree to her terms. You can use her for now.

>>2256722
>>Attack! You just need to knock the lantern free from the snake’s mouth!

>>2256722
>>Push on it a bit more. She gives the shard to you NOW.
I have no reservations right now for leaving her for last. Information we can trade for temporary peace.

>>2256722
>Agree to her terms. You can use her for now.
On two condiions:
>More info about the Thorn and the Doctor.
>Have her agents intercept all the Thorn's info about Abe and Bea being terrorists. All evidence, internal paperwork should be disappeared, all government interface should be intercepted.

If we fight her, we may have no possibility of finding out what happened to the two others

>>2256735
>If we fight her, we may have no possibility of finding out what happened to the two others
We'd find the one who failed, the new one would have to find us.

>>2256722
>>Push on it a bit more. She gives the shard to you NOW.
>We don't need her money. Only assistance with extracting our allies from the Thorn.
We can kill her for the shard when we want. She knows the only value she really holds is on the Brothers.

>>2256719
I vehemently disagree on how much people care about a landmark.

>>2256735
>>2256736
We will find the one who remains. The light will guide us.

>>2256736
>We'd find the one who failed
By which I mean, one of the Sinners probably knows who killed him.

>>2256737
>We don't need money.
Money helps. Money buys transportation, bribes, secrecy, gunpowder, motor experts.

>I vehemently disagree on how much people care about a landmark.
They cared enough to ban all clocks in Dis. They definitely care about the symbol of their triumph over God, the symbol of time stopped forever.
>“When the sun broke, or so I’m told. No clock may toll in Dis, not legally anyway.”
>“What?”
>“Yeah they banned ‘em.” Alex says. “Was a big hubbub ten years ago I think. If stopping the Fourth Age was worth desecrating God for, not even that which just represents time is allowed. Bonkers, innit?”

>That's hardly enough time for people to notice, the ones that aren't buried in floors upon floors of walkways don't even look up.
It can be seen from very far away.
>It’s off in the distance now but you can still make it out quite clearly through the dirty air. A tall rectangular clock tower, it’s face lost to distance

>>2256722
>>Agree to her terms. You can use her for now.

>>2256743
Oh yes, money helps. I'm declining the money for more character/whatever reasons, because we KNOW the money comes from letting the gambling and whoring continue.

The rulers care. The people? A giant clock that doesn't even tell the time right isn't going to affect their daily lives.

I'd like to argue a bit for the-
>Have her agents intercept all the Thorn's info about Abe and Bea being terrorists. All evidence, internal paperwork should be disappeared, all government interface should be intercepted.
-I added into my vote. Abe's and Bea's biggest problem is that there is evidence out there that will sink them. That evidence will percolate through the Thorn.
If there's a possibility that Miss Casino, Blackmail and Hookers can abort that process, we should ask her to do so. It will enable Abe and Bea to just walk out once they're healthy, will allow them to stay unguarded.

>>2256722
>Push on it a bit more. She gives the shard to you NOW.
No harm in trying.

She will start plotting our downfall as soon as we make a deal, but let's pretend we don't realize it.
We will need to take her out though, and we need to start planning it right now. Can we just bring the whole tower down somehow?
We also need to determine what exactly she can and cannot see. Does she know about our falling star? If not, we'll need to save it for her.

>>2256747
I can agree with that.

>>2256746
>Oh yes, money helps. I'm declining the money for more character/whatever reasons, because we KNOW the money comes from letting the gambling and whoring continue.
I get you, but we're a Witch-Finder. Morally grey is what we do.

>The rulers care. The people? A giant clock that doesn't even tell the time right isn't going to affect their daily lives.
I'm hoping to goad the rulers into doing something about it, forcing the people to group up and hit back. Forcing people to talk about it.

>>2256749
>Can we just bring the whole tower down somehow?
As we are now, we simply can't bleed Bea enough for that. We'd need to purchase and setup facilities to start making explosives, and what with how good her snake-eyes are at spying, the plan would be fairly predictable. Whether she would actually interfere is a question, though, since it counts under preparations to go kill other Sinners.

>>2256749
>She will start plotting our downfall as soon as we make a deal, but let's pretend we don't realize it.
Pretending we don't realize it really won't work, lol. She's expecting us to betray her, we're expecting her to betray us...

We can definitely bring the tower down with the falling star, but I'd rather save it for the Golemist if we can.

I think our best bet is to use her money to buy a flying machine or a climbing machine. Shortcut to the top of her tower.

Or we can now truthfully tell the others that Snake-Eyes sent us, start them openly warring against each other. Too bad we didn't keep the letter.

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My energy has drained away and I am too tired. I will go to sleep soon and continue this thread in the morning. The vote will remain open until then.

She said in her letter with the double-dotted 'i's,
>I have long admired your ideals.
Was she lying? Or does she just like
>'A magnificent holy warrior of a kind I had honestly thought extinct. Worn down by years and harsh lessons in a world no longer his own but with a spark of hope that burns eternal within his breast. '
She's a cynic who admires heroes, it's great.

>>2256780
Vote count:
3 for agree, 3 for Shard Now!, 2 for Thorn help, 1 for attack.
One of the agrees is attached to one of the Thorns, as is one of the pushes. One of the Thorns says money is not wanted.

>>2256780
night ouro

>>2256722
>Push on it a bit more. She gives the shard to you NOW.

I get that shards are shiny, but she says she'll give it to us after our next kill anyway, so we should focus on making sure that Abe and Bea are going to be okay first. We need the Thorn's paperwork disrupted so that they stay free. This is time-critical.

>>2256792
The shard is the only thing we can definitely get if we just kill her. For her, it's the least valuable chip to bet with, so it wouldn't actually be much of a loss as a token of goodwill.

>>2256813
She knows how important it is to us, and may make us choose between it and messing up the Thorn's paperwork.

My main point is that securing Bea and Abe immediately is more important than getting the shard immediately. I'd be happy to ask for both, but if it's a question of either getting the shard later and keeping B and A free or getting the shard now and having to battle through the Thorn to free them, the former is better.

>>2256821
I can see that, although that's why I was willing to let go of the money.

>>2256823
Yup. You're not the one I have to convince, though, we already agree that this negotiation should include info+sabotage on the Thorn.

>>2256722
>Agree to her terms. You can use her for now.

>>2256722
>Push on it a bit more. She gives the shard to you NOW.

IF she wants to help us kill the others, fine. Not like we plan on letting any of them live.

>>2256722
>Agree to her terms.
>Push for the shard now.
If anything, the interludes tell us that it's not a trap in the sense that others are in on it. This could be highly beneficial and we're going to accomplish the same thing anyway, might as well get some help. If we have to kill her later on, then that's fine. But let's milk this.

>>2256717
>“Are you an imp?”
>“Now you’re just getting insulting. I am no imp nor witch nor long-forgotten troll. I am no goblin nor gremlin nor dead man. I’m not an extremely queer ghoul or golem and a duskwalker just plain wouldn’t make sense. But nevertheless, lest this leave you at a loss for ideas, I am very definitely a child born of the earth, creature of darkness and all-round loather of light. All that good stuff.”
What is she?

>They’ve all taken their baubles and have done all sorts of horrible things with them
Resurrection and medicine and keeping people warm is horrible? You'd think she'd approve of Marcel, the Iron Duke's wealth at least.

> I’ll supply information, money, property, whatever little things you need to pursue your glorious duty.
Think we could spin this into a contact at the Thorn? We could really use someone up there under our thumb. We could also have her bribe the old man who saw Bea.

>>2256952
she could just be a not-so-dead god. None of them would really approve of green fire, and they're a-okay with no more humans.

>>2256722
>Agree to her terms.
>Push for the shard now.

If anything, it will help us take the others down. After all, she doesn't want the show to end too soon right?

>>2256957
I concur with this sentiment. While we don't really know how powerful a living god was, I think we can be rather sure that an ancient thing that crawled up from the center of the earth is reasonably a god.

Thus we won't even be close to hot enough shit unless we get...I'm going to guess every single shard, and the other brothers of light, whoever they are. Liquid and Solidus Orion, if you will.

That and certain mythology that hints towards it, but that's not in setting and thus will be discounted.

>>2256596
We'll see. I actually have a pretty big list of things to do at the moment; that meme had been sitting for a good few weeks before I bothered to touch it up and make it done.

>>2257141
>I concur with this sentiment. While we don't really know how powerful a living god was, I think we can be rather sure that an ancient thing that crawled up from the center of the earth is reasonably a god.
Imps climb up from there too, as do trolls. I don't remember where gargoyles come from. All the earth gods are dead. I think we can take her, especially since we know she keeps her shard muffled. She's weak to sun, she probably can't witch-sign. Fighting a giant snake who has up-to-date intel on us and can override voices and possibly other stuff is going to be a boss fight, no doubt about it, but it's still doable.

>We'll see. I actually have a pretty big list of things to do at the moment; that meme had been sitting for a good few weeks before I bothered to touch it up and make it done.
Thanks for considering it.

Vote called. This thread resumes in an hour or whenever the update is done.

>Agree to her terms.
>Push on it a bit more. She gives the shard to you NOW.
>Ask for help concerning the Thorn.

Your eyes are fixed upon the lantern as it wobbles haphazardly from the serpent’s mouth. How can you not be? Another fragment, another piece of your divine quest and it’s practically within reach. Would you bargain with a child of darkness for it? Of course! Towards this cause, any means.

“How’d you know to write that letter?”
Alex throws you a look as she speaks. She’s trying to buy time for you to think this over.

“I learn a lot of things and it’s not just from pillow talk. I have a lot of eyes and ears and one of them, even as they were trying to cover up the Duke’s death in any way possible, told me of what had happened in his quarters and that, among other things, a set of emeralds had been pried loose. I immediately told them to cover it up and tell nobody. I have a vested interests in gemstones, I adore them. Glinting treasures of the earth given form where no sun will ever shine. I have a lot of contacts among legal and illegal purveyors of the stones and I sent all of them that letter and the instructions to give it to anyone who is trying to sell emeralds of a certain quality grade. Marcel was very particular about his stones.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?,” Alex asks. “Anyone could get that letter! Doesn’t it give your whole plan away?”

“It is bad sport to play a game with no chance of losing. It is the same with your suddenly mute Lamplighter here. I’m gambling on the short odds here, the idea of him dying but dragging a few of us down with him is almost certain what is going to happen. But he could triumph entirely. It’s theoretically possible. I’m afraid chance is on my side here however.”
The woman leans back up against the couch, her head phasing right into the giant serpent’s throat and not emerging.
“If anyone else shows up with an invitation, I’ll just eat them.”

Alex takes a step back.
“You eat people?”

“In every possible meaning of the word, yes. But that is just the way of this place. It is the nature of vice. It drives you to consume even as it in turn devours you. Would you like me to eat you?”

“Why would I want that?” Alex asks.

“You both have a terminal lack of imagination.”

“Enough,” you say, conscious of the fact that you can only speak because the Paper Bridesmaid stopped. “I need you to understand two things. Firstly, even if you give up your shard to me, nothing you will ever do will make up for what you did..”
You look up at the darkling sky.
“After all else is done you will pay for your crime in the only way you can.”

“Agreed!”
She sounds less taken back than you had been hoping. In fact, she almost seems excited.
“These stakes are accepted. I’m betting on you dying after all, it only makes sense that I should ante up.”

1/2

>>2257686
“Secondly, you will give me that shard now! You know that I will kill your ‘friends’ regardless, I don’t need the incentive. Give it to me.”

The snake leans back with the lantern still in its mouth.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. This isn’t just incentive to do your holy and heroic duties, you know. This is also incentive not to turn around and kill me for being an awful sinning monster. I’m under no illusions, even before you just said what you did. It breaks my poor maiden heart but I know you’ll never be swayed to my side despite how inherently loveable and incredible I am.”

“I’m more inclined to kill you when you still hold it. Give that shard to me and among your little group, you’ll be the least of my worries. You were just saying it had no value to you!”

“But you have value to me and this has value to you. I could probably ask you to do all kinds of stupid things to get this and you’d agree as long as it was easier than killing me. I’m not really inclined to give it up immediately. Can’t you just let yourself rest upon my strings for a moment more?”

“No.-”
The rest of your sentence is cut off as the Paper Bridesmaid groans, silencing echoes and voices alike.

“Isn’t all the theoretical help and information I’m going to give you worth enough as an advance. But actually...I have an idea. It’ll be entertaining. You see Orion, I think I know what help you will ask from me. It’s about the Thorn right? You have friends in there. And let me tell you, you don’t know the half of what Spinae’s brood gets up to. It’s really just no good! So if you want this shard you can have it right now...but if you take it, I will take a mumchance stance on all topics relating to Workshops, Tangled or otherwise. Not a single word!”

You stop. You had indeed been planning on gaining her assistance with them. Are you willing to pay this price?

The serpent leans down in front of you, the bottom of its head now scraping against the skin-littered floor as it dangles the tinted lantern just out of reach. Now that it's white-and-black head is so close you can spot strange and hideous scars down the side of its throat, one on either side just before the base of its head.
Behind it, the veiled woman extricates herself from sharing the same space.
"Here's the lantern. Have it."


>Abe and Beatrice can take care of themselves. You’ll take the lantern.

>The shard will have to wait. You’re fine getting it later if you have to.

>Why can’t you have both? Is there some other price you can pay to just get both right now?

>Other (Specify)

>Abe and Beatrice can take care of themselves. You’ll take the lantern.

We can have a bit of faith in them. It's legit a free shard; long term, it's a much better boon than information.

...so long as we don't get murdered because we don't know enough.

>Why can't you have both?Do not fuck snek

>>2257701
>Abe and Beatrice can take care of themselves. You’ll take the lantern.

>>2257701
>Abe and Beatrice can take care of themselves. You’ll take the lantern.

>>2257701
Hold on, did I miss something?
I thought we'd get the lantern either way and the decision was between the shard now and no advice or advice and the shard later, how do Abe and Bea come into that?

Voting to take the shard later in any case

>>2257726
It did occur to me that I didn't make her initial offer as clear as it could be. She was offering to give you the shard after you killed another Sinner, same as her information about your 'brother'.

>>2257701
>The shard will have to wait. You’re fine getting it later if you have to.

>>2257728
Yes but why would taking the lantern stop us from recovering Abe and Bea?

>>2257701
hmm, well that's not a HUGE surprise.

I guess money really isn't enough of a concern for her to be enough, but....wait.
>>The shard will have to wait. You’re fine getting it later if you have to.
>But getting her help with Abe and Beatrice itself requires us to trust her. Let the advance be something...cheaper. Show her the things we found in the Iron Duke's secret room. Ask what she knows of the person or the objects.

>>2257739
It wouldn't, so far as I can tell. It would just mean potentially diving in there with little information, or potentially delaying their rescue should they need it. Risk management.

>>2257686
>“In every possible meaning of the word, yes. But that is just the way of this place. It is the nature of vice. It drives you to consume even as it in turn devours you. Would you like me to eat you?”
>“Why would I want that?” Alex asks.
>“You both have a terminal lack of imagination.”
You're killing me, Ouro.

>The shard will have to wait. You’re fine getting it later if you have to.
>We don't just need information, we need the Thorn disrupted.

>>2257739
>Yes but why would taking the lantern stop us from recovering Abe and Bea?
It won't, but the Thorn might figure out that A&B are terrorists. That will make our lives much harder than they have to be. Madame's help will make extracting them and the shard easier.

Previous notes about A&B:
>>2253037

>>2257753
>>2257754
Oh wait no I'm retarded and forgot that the shard is inside the lantern for a moment
Carry on then

>>2257701
>>The shard will have to wait. You’re fine getting it later if you have to.

>>2257701
>Abe and Beatrice can take care of themselves. You’ll take the lantern.

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Vote called, writing. Also I just noticed that someone else archived this thread for me (and did not archive it under Dog Days) so thanks for that, kind stranger!

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>>2257836
Actually, disregard that. I'm newly tired again and I just noticed that it's a tie and not, in fact, the option I was writing for. Vote is reopened and will remain open until I wake back up later today.

Possibly quite a bit later. Sorry.

>>2257701
>You'll take the lantern.

I'll take that gamble. Plus she wants the Tangle Workshop gone. She'll inevitably provide cover while we figure our own way around.

>>2257701
>>The shard will have to wait. You’re fine getting it later if you have to.

Rolled 2 (1d6)

Alright I'm awake and you guys have tied it again. Are you really so determined to leave a decision like this to chance?

Evens, you take it. Odds, you don't.

>>2258615
Not what I wanted, but always interested to see how this goes. Glad your hiatus is over for the time being.

Apologies for the delay.

>Abe and Beatrice can take care of themselves. You’ll take the lantern.

You make your choice. You have faith that Abe and Beatrice will be able to take care of themselves. They’ll have to. You can’t pass this up. You hold out your hand.
“I’ll take it now. This buys your life.”

“A hard bargain for sure. I won’t tell those two if you don’t.”

As the snake speaks the last word, the lantern-pole rolls out of its mouth and falls towards the floor! You dive for it and catch it just before it hits the ground, snakeskin scattering everywhere as you slide across the stone.
The tinted glass is warm beneath your hands, even through your gauntlets. It rolls in your hands and with shaking fingers, you undo the clasp.

“Don’t open it in here!”

It is too late.

Searing light floods your vision and holy pain wracks your hands as you unroll your lamp-post and then, under the light of three burning stars, you join them together to mingle and grow strong. The sun is reborn if only for a moment.

You can’t see anything, your field of vision a patchwork of blooming scar-colours but you can hear Alex drop to her knees. You can hear her weep. And then, suffocating all other sound, you can hear the Paper Bridesmaid curse.
“Fuck! Put it away!”
Her voice doesn’t silence the burning hiss of the lamp however. In fact, you can barely hear her at all. Your ears are open only to the voice of God.


>Holy power rushes into you!

>Choose one Flame Rite or Benediction to improve.
>Ignite Weapon
>Detonate
>Self-Ignition
>Immolate
>Benediction of Warmth
>Cleansing Benediction
>Purging Benediction
>Benediction of Succour
>Cauterise Wound
>Benediction of Relief

>>2258750

>Benediction of Relief

We want to stop relying on Dis' services to heal ourselves or our allies. This is a step to self-sufficiency.

>>2258750
>>Ignite Weapon

>>2258750
>Benediction of Relief

>>2258750
>Benediction of Relief

>>2258750
>Ignite Weapon
PURE POWER

>>2258750
>>Benediction of Relief

We get messed up, like, a LOT.

>Benediction of Relief

Maybe next time we can boost Succor or Cleansing for better bliss or anti-golem effects.

>>2258750
>Benediction of Relief

>>2258750
>>Self-Ignition
I think setting ourselves on fire is a good way to fight the snake.

Vote called. Writing.

>UPGRADE: With the Spark fuelling it, additional Wick can now be dumped into the Immolate after casting it as well as before.
>When active it counts as a constant source of fire for the purposes of Flame Rites, one with a maximum Wick of 8 that is recharged at the same time as you recharge your wick. It can also be consumed entirely to summon Belle.
Do we lose the boost on our Immolate if we summon the Wax Saint?
Does 'consumed completely' mean 'using up all Wick in the Spark', or does it mean 'Spark is gone forever?'

>Benediction of Relief

-Benediction of Relief-
Cost: 2+ Wick (Requires Light)
Taught to you by Belle
This blessing fuels the body and soul of those it touches, piecing them together and making them whole. The target of this Benediction has their natural healing process vastly improved and considering that Third Men already possess a healing factor, that can mean quite a lot. Additional Wick can be burned before the spell is cast to increase the blessing’s power. When used on creatures of the Dark this slowly dissolves their flesh.

>With this upgrade, additional Wick can now be used to fuel this Benediction after casting it as well as before. This stops you from ever performing an inadequate Relief, provided you have the Wick.

>In addition, Benediction of Relief is assigned a Power Number. Select a number from 1 to 6. Whenever you roll the dice for an action undertaken by someone who has been recently blessed by this Benediction or whenever you roll to use this Benediction as a weapon against a creature of darkness, every legal d6 that lands on the Power Number refreshes your Wick by 1 point.

>1
>2
>3
>4
>5
>6

“Shield that thing! My poor eyes...But no matter. With this the stakes are set and the deal is sealed. Know my sight for the blessing it is and curse it no more!”

>In addition to this, you also receive Witchfinder’s Last Lesson. This is an upgrade like that of your Spark or your Ducal Firecrafting, something that is independent of the upgrade system for Flame Rites and Benedictions. With Witchfinder’s Last Lesson, whenever you roll at least 2 1s in a roll, you must immediately pick a Witch-Lore from a list and learn it.

>>2259095
>6

>>2259082
Summoning Belle would destroy the Spark forever. Losing the Spark won't stop the Immolate upgrade however. It used the Spark to upgrade itself but now that it is, it can't revert.

>>2259095
> 3

>>2259095
>>4

Changing my vote to 4. This is not a vote worth getting stuck on.

>>2259095
>4

>>2259097
>Summoning Belle would destroy the Spark forever.
While getting rid of our amazingly useful 8/8 Wick- without which we probably could not have survived the Duke- would be painful, having Belle here to help use would be great. She's astonishingly powerful with Benedictions, which can involve compulsions, illusions, healing, buffs, area effects. She was able to lay a compulsion Benediction on Bea to sing a hymn, without Bea or Orion noticing anything was wrong. She's a great actor, exactly the sort who could walk into the Thorn and come out with everything we want in it. And that's without a sunshard, which we can give her.

If it ever comes down to it that we have to play that gambit, when we're out of Wick and need a savior, Belle's a good one to play.

>>2259163
I'd say we shouldn't treat Belle as a last resort. We should plan and prepare the summoning in such a way that it achieves as much effect as possible.
Probably use her on one of the last Sinners.

>>2259183
I think Belle should help with the golemist, while the Starfall is used for a Sinner who lives higher up in the city.

One meteoric Fuck You is powerful, but we can only kill one thing with that. Belle layering on multiple aoe effects combined with multiple sun power sounds more effective for fighting the sheer volume of golems.

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Sorry for that delay, I was asleep. There'll be no more updates today I'm afraid but I will do some when I wake tomorrow. I know today's updates were scattered and slow. I hope you enjoyed it regardless.

>>2259189
Belle might be useful against golems, as Benedictions are good for dissolving curses, but our own Cleansing Benediction will only dispel curses from children of light.

I also don't know that her AOEs will be powerful enough to work on golems.

>>2259189
Are we sure Dinu's Skull is too deep to penetrate to?

>>2259196
These will be golems being chipped away by sunshard light, so I can only hope that Belle can manage something.

Because it's not so much that I don't trust a meteor's firepower, but its precision in getting all the way down to Dinu's Skull and sniping the Sinner/her biggest golem. We're not exactly masters with that radio thingy.

"An enemy of Dis is at large. A Lamplighter with a fallen shard.”
“And? Does she plan on enlisting my help? If so, she better her drag herself from her throne and slither before my feet personally."
DAMMIT, OURO!

>>2259199
>Because it's not so much that I don't trust a meteor's firepower, but its precision in getting all the way down to Dinu's Skull and sniping the Sinner/her biggest golem. We're not exactly masters with that radio thingy.
Bea was able to aim the satellite at a specific spot along a railway track, she can hit a giant skull. Even so, we're not aiming at the Golemist and her largest golem, we'd be aiming at the skull and everything around it within a diameter of a hundred feet.

We should ask the Bridesmaid what her part to play was in killing our God. I can't think of any use for a giant snake.

By the way, here's another clue: There was a map with concentric circles and a line showing a path. That map was of either the sun or of the Senate. Either way, it was copied from an old book. We're looking for a historian or a librarian for one of the Sinners.

>>2259209
The train is a big guy. And I don't like the effectiveness of just randomly hitting the skull and picking off what's left compared to Belle laying on dem benedictions.

>>2259221
My guess is that the sunlight blocking material that was used to hold this newest shard, and by extension the hand that crushed the sun, is made out of molted snakeskin.

>>2259196
We should bring out Belle when we seize control of part of the city openly. Her ability to lead the faithful will be invaluable as a force multiplier.

There's how many shards left? We have 3 now, the Sinners 5, and we have two brothers in Faith out there. If we can be a beacon for them, then we don't have to keep fighting ALONE like we have been.

We can only get stronger with more shards, they don't even empower the forces of the Witch's or their dead Gods.

But they empower us. When the Flame is strong enough to be fought under openly? To strong to wield, but strong enough to stand against the dark?

Strong enough to be shared among the faithful, each a flame waiting to be kindled against the dark. Small alone, but potentially many of them.

>>2259235
>the hand that crushed the sun
There was a hand? I thought all we knew about the actual process was that they all journeyed to the center of the sun, and Marcel was the only one who could touch the shards, thanks to his new body and his trained Wick.

I really don't want to lose our 8/8, but the best time for Belle is now, the information-gathering stage. She's a spy, not a fighter. Bending light, taking other forms, compulsions...

It's kind of funny we killed Marcel when he promised to give us information if we let him live, but are letting the snake live in return for info. Seems we're harshest on Flame Artists with functioning Wicks who've betrayed humanity.

>>2259259
Fuck traitors.

The difference is a giant fucking snake thing is something we would like to kill, but is too dangerous to go at without more preparation.

>>2259262
We can take her. We've got a Lantern and full Wick, we took out an iron dragon. I think she'll be easier than Marcel was. However, we've made a deal.

>His information might have been greatly useful but you won’t purchase it with leaving him alive. Nor will you make a deal with him and then break it.

We really should have just let him live. We needed his info more than his death.

Thread will resume in an hour. Actual time might vary.

>4

You wrap the shining lamp-post back up before your hands are further burned. And now that the moment has passed, your vision slowly returns to normal. You are lying upon the dry and rotten snakeskin with the bundle in your arms. Frail twists of smoke rise from the floor as discarded scales smolder upon proximity. And before you is the monster that rules the Paper Bridesmaid.

“Ah, to burn,” the veiled woman says with an almost wistful tone as she covers her hidden face with shaking hands. “I hate it.”
In another viewpoint, the scarred serpent has recoiled from you, both eyes wide open and unable to close.
“But still...was it as good for you as it was for me?”

“I could kill you now.”
The thought was certainly crossing your mind with increasingly regularity.

“You will not.”

“I’ll keep our deal, monster. But only because there are greater sins I’ve yet to punish.”

“What a nice thing to say. Congratulations on becoming my creature. Now pick up your companion before she gets tears all over my decor.”

It looks like Abe and Beatrice might be on their own for now.

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You slowly open your eyes, soft half-light not enough to hurt but still enough to wake. You are used to bad mornings and to wake with the taste of blood in your mouth is nothing special to you. You’re used to waking with a headache or with a queasiness or even with just an omnipresent rasping pain as your very blood plots to kill you.
You aren’t used to waking up and feeling refreshed, blood or no blood. What the fuck is going on here? Something’s wrong.

You are lying in a bed- Another thing? When was the last time you even slept in a bed as comfortable as this? It must have been back in Sacrament. Sacrament before-
You bite back the bile of bad memories.

The pain is there but it isn’t that bad. You don’t even feel that sick. You feel...alright. This is how you know that something awful is going on. You open your eyes again.

You are lying in a bed in a small room, a room carved seamlessly out of wood so smooth and dark that it’s almost black. A round window out into the shithouse that is Dis is by your side. There is a table by your side with three bottles sitting there. You can smell the tonic, that lovely sooth-all. That explains the lack of pain you suppose. Someone’s been dosing you up while you sleep. There’s a door in the opposite wall.
You are alone.

You raise a hand to your face. Gray skin and the faded purple of a bruise. An engorged vein stands out like a ragged worm. Someone’s wrapped the tips of your fingers in bandages, probably just to stop you from leaking out from beneath your fingernails. Your other hand is wrapped up in a cast. You don’t even remember breaking your wrist but you guess you did.
You’re also not wearing the clothes you came in with. Someone’s stolen them from you and dressed you instead in...not much, to be honest. A thin white gown. Is it easier to take you apart when you’re wearing this?

You take a swig of tonic without thinking and immediately feel better, a still unfamiliar sensation. But whatever they’ve done to your body, they can’t give that same peace to your mind. You fucked up. You really fucked up. You were so damn eager to prove something that…

A glint of metal seen through a haze of blood and pain. The headless steel giant with claw upthrust…

It had felt pretty good. Your blood had sung. But it had sung a dirge. Your name is Beatrice and there’s no fucking way you should be alive right now.

Story of your life.


>Wait, didn’t you come in with someone else? Where are they?

>Look out the window. Where are you?

>Call for someone.

>Drink all the fucking tonic. You love that shit.

>Get up and try to walk out.

>Other (Specify)

>>2259952
>Wait, didn’t you come in with someone else? Where are they?
>Look out the window. Where are you?

>>2259952
> Wait, didn’t you come in with someone else? Where are they?

>>2259952
>>Wait, didn’t you come in with someone else? Where are they?
>>Look out the window. Where are you?

>>2259952
>Other

>Where's the gun! Where's my gunpowder, shit!

>>2259952
>Wait, didn’t you come in with someone else? Where are they?

>Look out the window. Where are you?

I know how much people just adore random POV swaps in this so consider this a belated christmas present. Also, I have stuff I should be probably doing later today so I'm going to try and go a little faster for this.
Vote called, writing.

When we leave, we should send someone to go pick up one of the letters to the stone fences. We've got a ruffian or two who could get the job done. We want a bit of proof the Snake's a traitor to the other Sinners, just in case we need it.

>>2259947
>discarded scales smolder upon proximity.
Well, the snake wasn't brought along for her defense against the sun.

>>2259952
Rise and shine~
Time to get as good as possible and do what we can to keep from being locked up.