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>>4931101
You tried to chase after him, but by the time you made your descent, father was long gone, and you had no idea where he went. You scampered around a bit, looking for him in and around the Midden, but nothing came of it. Back up in your rooms, you took stock of what father had taken with him, hoping to find some sort of clue as to what he might be doing, from what was missing. That did not help, as he took just about everything – beyond the most basic of domestic sundries all that he left was two rusted stilettoes, very little food and absolutely no money. There was the Life-Loom, the Glyphery, and his Fetish-Foundry, all cordoned off upstairs, as well as a bench set aside for mundane crafting, but besides making the most basic of constructs on the Loom, those were all well beyond your ability. There were books that he had collected, and journals that he had written up there too, but the books were all in a language that you did not recognize, and his journals were all in a cypher that you did not know. Finally, there was his old remediation, cleansing and interrogation implements, but what was not absolutely useless to you was either seventeen years expired, or potentially hazardous to someone as Strange as you are.

Finding yourself baffled, you simply retreated back to routine, waiting for father to return. And now as this, the fourth and final day drags to a close, your worry is becoming more and more akin to dread with the passage of each hour. It does not help that you spend your days digging graves and handling bodies. All you do is stew in your stifling cloak and your stifling mask, with only your thoughts and the dead for company –

Which reminds you, you are supposed to have help here. Two other Spotted Cloaks, Vaclav and Smil, were assigned alongside you to the South Burying Ground for this week. There here somewhere, they helped dig up the topsoil, but the second you hit bedrock, the two of them loaded up their wheelbarrows and headed over to the exhume pile. That must have been twenty minutes ago now! Fray them! Today is payday, and if you are not able to get this grave at depth, square and plumb and mow the grass in the Old Section by the end of the day, then the South Sexton might just refuse to pay you for this week. Which is an issue, because you ate the last of what little food was left yesterday. With everything else ‘on your plate’, the last thing you need to worry about is starving.

Your immediate impulse is to head over to the exhume pile and drag them back here. But you are worried that the minute you leave for the pile, the South Sexton, who is also around here somewhere will show up, see an unattended, unfinished grave, and throw a fit, which means that you will definitely not get paid this week. Alternatively, you could simply try to work harder and faster, to cover for the dallying duo until they get back. And if it comes to it, there are other ways to make money.

>>4931110
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>It is frustrating, but with an entire week’s worth of pay on the line, you cannot afford to take any risks. Work harder, work faster, and work alone.
>You are worrying about nothing. Both about the South Sexton showing up … and about your father. All you need to do is run over to the pile and bring those idiots back to the gravesite.

>>4931112
>It is frustrating, but with an entire week’s worth of pay on the line, you cannot afford to take any risks. Work harder, work faster, and work alone.

>>4931112
>You are worrying about nothing. Both about the South Sexton showing up … and about your father. All you need to do is run over to the pile and bring those idiots back to the gravesite.

While we wait for a tie breaker, I figured that it would be appropriate to give some basic geographic references, so everyone has an idea where places are, relative to each other. First, there is Scrimshaw Mount, which is both the name of outcropping (imagine a much wider and stouter version of Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower, surrounded on three sides by the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, and on the fourth, by the sea) and the port city that is being built on top of all of this. Most of the city is on top of the Mount, in what is called the Promontory, or the Prom, but there are two narrow harbors, on both sides of the outcropping; Cleanport and Stickport (commonly called ‘Stinkport’). Cleanport is reserved solely for merchantmen and passenger ships, as well as warehouses and cheaper accommodations, while downwind, Stickport is the Mount’s working waterfront, where the whalers, oilers and fishermen have their berths, where all of the cities heavy industry is remanded, and in a lonely corner, where the Midden is located.

The Midden is a compound built around a cluster of ruins from an earlier, failed settlement, where all of the workers in unclean professions – sanitation, animal product processing, and those who touch the dead (excluding priests and undertakers, who are sanctified) – are forced to live, for the safety and comfort of the rest of the city. In the Mount, workers in these unclean professions are called ‘Lepers’, possibly because the first person the Port Authority, the governing body of the Mount, ‘compelled’ into an unclean profession was a Leper. Nearly everyone sent to the Midden either has some disease (usually degenerative, contagious or both), though some are sent there as punishment. The reasoning behind sending the sick and weak to work in unclean environments is largely theological; as the primary religion of the Mount, the Reformed Priests of the Patternmaker hold that deformities and chronic diseases are indicative of weak or compromised moral fiber, and as unclean professions are believed to compromise moral fiber (and the soul itself), the logical call was to protect the relatively unblemished by further sacrificing the all-ready compromised.

Okay, so at the time of me posting this, it has been just about three hours. I'm going to go get dinner, and when I get back, if there isn't a tiebreaker, then I guess I'll just roll for it.

>>4931112
>>It is frustrating, but with an entire week’s worth of pay on the line, you cannot afford to take any risks. Work harder, work faster, and work alone.

>>4931394
>ISIS
What a fucking tag to land

>>4931394
Alright, there is our tie breaker. Writing!

You are not one hundred percent certain that it is the best call here, but in the end, you decide to just keep working. And if you are being entirely honest, Vaclav and Smil are not that much help anyway. You are not sure what exactly is wrong with Smil beyond just being small and stooped, as he is a recent arrival in the Midden, sent there a fortnight past. Vaclav on the other hand, has been there for sixteen years, as long as you have been alive, making him one of the longest serving residents, and everyone knows he has the Masticating Pox. It’s a particularly nasty affliction; after it covers you in tender, bright scarlet pustules, each the size of an eighth-talent, it goes to work on all of the cartilage in the body, slowly but steadily pulping it into nothing. But despite the degenerative nature of the disease, Vaclav has always been a hard worker, and even though you have been working with him in the burial yards for years now, you have not seen any signs that the Pox is slowing him down. That being said, it is not like you are really looking for those signs. You and your father keep the rest of the Lepers at arm’s length to avoid catching anything … and to ensure that the none of the other Leper’s catch on that neither of you are sick, at least, sick like them.

You and your father, are Strange – that is to say, you have the Strangeness, sometimes also known as the Magician’s Madness. Now to a magician, a magical object, or an inert material, like lead, the Strangeness is not a problem. To everything else, it is dangerous. An inanimate object or substance exposed to enough Strangeness can spontaneously change material properties, or in some rare cases, completely transmute. Your father, who had worked as a Cleanser and then as an Inquisitor before having his magic inadvertently activated by your mother, told you some horror stories about areas that had been so thoroughly contaminated by the Strangeness that the very air itself had become Strange, and how an entire Cleansing team had once been suffocated to death when the air in a room all at once turned to rolling yellow smoke. And while the effects might not be as dramatic on living beings, they could be just as dangerous. The physical changes were a real mixed bag; sometimes the body was just twisted and deformed with carcinomic growths, other times it would be improved – bigger and stronger, or sleeker and more comely. The mental changes on the other hand were all bad news; if it had a brain, the Strangeness could drive it mad. Sometimes into a vicious, aggressive frenzy, but more often into a pseudo-schizophrenic paranoia. But the worst part was that the Strangeness can spread itself, so wherever it is present, there is the risk of a runaway feedback loop forming, an endless loop that if left unchecked will chew reality into pieces.

>>4931627
As one might expect, people, animals and objects affected by the Strangeness, especially magical people animals and objects are treated as ‘destroy on sight’ through out the civilized world. It is unlikely that Vaclav or Smil or anyone else in the Midden would ever catch on to you and your father’s condition, but the two of you have not made it this long by taking unnecessary risks. To tell it true, you really do not take any risks – as evidenced by your unwillingness to leave the gravesite to find those two slugabeds. You suppose you should not be that frustrated with them; unlike you they actually have serious medical issues. Even though you do this work daily, you have a hard time imagining do it with a debilitating disability … is that redundant? Father would probably know, but you do not want to peek into that pot of worms before –

“Sty? You back here still?”

You recognize that young, childish voice. It’s Ralx, the firstborn son of the South Sexton. His father is of a mind that he should eventually succeed him in his position, which is why he is at the South Burying Grounds right now instead of being tutored at home. Despite this gloomy upbringing, the boy is surprisingly upbeat, polite and pleasant; in short, he is everything that his father is not. It is to the point where you cannot help but wonder if the man’s wife gave him horns. The boy barely even looks like him.
Still in the grave, you stand up, taking the opportunity to haul out another few handfuls of exhume. Ralx finally either sees you or he hears you, but either or, he hustles his way over to you. Not for the first time, you wonder if he knows you are a woman. Given your height, your voice is fairly deep, and getting deeper still; and muffled as it is by the gauze and the lead-lined mask that you wear over your face, it can pass as a man’s to all but the most decerning ear. He’s never addressed you as such, so you doubt it, but there are times where you have caught him looking at you inexplicably. While being stared at is part and parcel of being a Leper, you have never seen him glance at any of the others like he glances at you. It cannot be your figure – while it is continuing to become more and more distressingly feminine as you get older, wearing the Spotted Cloak turns everyone into canvas hogsheads. Perhaps it is your gait? You are not sure about that either. Hmm.

“I’m just getting the foot of the grave to depth, young master.”

“Oh, that’s okay, I’m sure your friends can do it. Father asked me to attend to the hedges by the rear entrance, but I can’t reach the top bits.”

>>4931628
What! The hedges? You trimmed the fraying hedges last month – it should be half a year before anyone needs to take a shear to them. Either the sexton has completely forgotten that you had already done it, or he knows, and is just trying to get his son out of his hair … and does not care at all if it means more work for you. It is a moot point though – if he ordered the hedges trimmed today, then you need to trim them today, even if they do not need it, and you’d be barely taking anything off. Ohhh ...this has become a problem. You were fairly certain that even with Vaclav and Smil on their sabbatical behind the exhume pile, you could finish this grave and mow the Old Section before the end of the day. But the grave, the Old Section and the hedge; now that is a tall order. It is certainly possible, but it will be difficult. Alternatively … if the hedge would not look any different after being trimmed again, then whose to say that you did not trim it again today? Just Ralx – and if you can convince him to pretend that the two of you did do the hedge, then that would be a massive load off of your shoulders. Another even more devious possibility would be to tell him to do what he could reach while you finished the grave, then you would do the ‘top bits’ yourself later … but in actuality, just leave it as is.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Attempt to do everything – finish the grave, mow the Old Section and now trim the already trimmed hedge by the rear entrance. [Requires Rolling]
>Attempt to convince Ralx to lie to his father about having trimmed the hedge today. [Requires Rolling]
>Tell Ralx to start on the hedge straightaway, and lie to him that you will take care of the ‘top bits’.

I'm going to get some sleep. When I wake up, I'll close this, rolling for a tiebreaker if necessary. I know not much has actually happened yet in the quest, but I wanted to take some time to explain a bit about the world, and more importantly, I want to establish what a typical day is like for our girl. Anyway, good night, and thanks for playing.

>>4931640
>>Attempt to do everything – finish the grave, mow the Old Section and now trim the already trimmed hedge by the rear entrance. [Requires Rolling]

>>4931640
>Attempt to convince Ralx to lie to his father about having trimmed the hedge today. [Requires Rolling]

>>4931640
Other: Convince Ralx to fetch your absent helpers to finish the grave, and then help him with the hedges once he returns

Rolled 3 (1d3)

>>4931829
Alright, I can accept that write-in. So, as I said, I'll roll for tie breaker.

On a roll of 1: >>4931649
On a roll of 2: >>4931816
On a roll of 3: >>4931829

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Okay, so now we need some rolls. For this Quest, I'm going to use a modified version of Forgotten's 3d100 system.

>DC 21: Anything lower is a failure.

>No Passes: He refuses outright, insisting that you do exactly he says. Perhaps he is his father's son after all.
>One Pass: He refuses, insisting that you go to the exhume pile to fetch the two of them.
>Two Passes: He begrudgingly accepts, though he is not particularly pleased about it. Or with you, for that matter.
>Three Passes: He accepts without complaint, and you proceed exactly as you planned.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2), then you automatically fail this test, and as you are failing to convince him, his father comes looking for him.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99), then you automatically pass this test, and you find a valuable bauble hedge.
>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.

>Please, may I have 3 rolls of 1d100? If you have rolled, and more rolls are needed, if you wait 20 minutes, you may roll again, as many times as needed.

Rolled 60 (1d100)

>>4932021

Rolled 14 (1d100)

>>4932021

Rolled 58 (1d100)

>>4932021

>>4932071
>>4932067
>>4932028
>Two Passes: He begrudgingly accepts, though he is not particularly pleased about it. Or with you, for that matter.

"Of course, young master. Just ... could you go to the exhume pile, and tell Vaclav and Smil that they're going to need to finish the grave on their own?"

The boy looks confused, and a little surprised that you did not just immediately do as you were told.

"But Sty ... when they come back from the pile, they'll know they have to finish the grave on their own because you won't be here, right?"

He is right, of course, but the question is when exactly they plan on coming back. Already, they must have been gone for forty minutes. Did they fall asleep? Did something happen to them? You do not want to throw them under the wagon by telling Ralx that they are taking some sort of marathon break over there, but by asking him to go fetch them, you already sort of are. You try, and sort of succeed at stifling a sigh. If you keep this up, you are going to find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place - worse, you fear you will find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place without any money and a still-missing father. Just ...

"Young Master Ralx, please ... I, uh - this corner, I'm almost done with this corner. Please just let me finish the corner, while you go tell them, and then I'll do the hedges with you."

At this point, the boy does not look confused anymore, he looks suspicious. Suspicious of you - and while his suspicions have nothing to do with the true nature of your condition, having someone, anyone, look at you like that, especially someone who knows you, is always unnerving. For several seconds, you think that he is going to ask just what the Hell is going on, but thankfully, he decides against it.

"...Fine."

No doubt he does not appreciate being left in the dark. Or being ordered around by a Leper. But with a lick of luck, you managed to diffuse this situation without resorting to lying or taking any risks. Unnecessary or otherwise. You resume your work on the bedrock with renewed vigor, and the tooth-pick is a blur in your hands for the next minute and a half, as you do as much of the rough work of the excavating as possible, leaving the less-strenuous finishing work for Vaclav and Smil. When Ralx returns, with the two Lepers in tow, you cannot help but glare at the pair. Smil wears a mask, similar to yours, so you cannot see his expression, but Vaclav, who just wears a nose-strap over his missing nose has the good grace to look embarrassed. You step out of the grave as they climb in, and without a word, you are heading off.

>>4932237
The silence remains unbroken as the two of you stop by the landscaping shed to pick up the shears, the little ladder and the tarpaulins necessary for the trimming. In fact, no one says anything until the two of you arrive at the rear entrance, when Ralx comments, seemingly to himself, that the hedge looks like it has already been done. Biting back several caustic remarks directed at his sot of a father, you just nod and get to work on the crown of the hedge. As you start your trimming, you remember how when you first started working in the South Burial Ground, you could not reach 'the top bits' of the hedge just as Ralx cannot now, even with the big ladder. But the hedge is only seven feet, six inches high - and you are already pass six feet, four inches yourself. You are not done growing either - perhaps one day you will be tall enough to trim the top of this hedge with only a step stool.

It is a silly thought, but it is a pleasant distraction from your worries about food, money and your father's safety. And as you make good time, shuffling yourself down the length of the hedge, your mind and your eyes begin to wander. And from your elevated vantage point, you see ...

>I'm going to take a quick break for lunch. In the meantime, someone please roll a 1d6.

>On a roll of 1: Scavenging sea birds flocking to a nearby roof. Did something die?
>On a roll of 2: Overhead, is that an Albatross? Quick, make a wish! (Bank one Reroll)
>On a roll of 3: Sainted Spool, that's a Magcake! Maybe it will land nearby?
>On a roll of 4: The Drunk Duck, a public house right across the street is closed. What happened?
>On a roll of 5: A canteen wagon selling roast Pigeon. Pattern’s Peace, that smells good.
>On a roll of 6: Was that a Swan that just landed in the pond behind you? You have always wanted to try Swan.

Rolled 1 (1d6)

>>4932239

>>4932243
Alright, writing.

>>4932239
… further down the street a flock of what appear to be Hook Gulls, coming and going from the top of a mansard roof. Seeing the odd seabird on a roof is not uncommon, especially considering how rare trees are on the Prom – but for so many to be so concentrated, that is certainly unusual. Your first thought is that perhaps they are nesting there, but the more you think about it, the less sense that makes. The house the roof belongs to, a handsome three story affair give every appearance of being lived in. Not only would the Gulls avoid laying eggs so close to humans, if you lived there you would not just let a bunch of winged, screaming shit-machines just move in on top of you. The first thing you would do would be to run off the birds and cook their eggs. Which means … are they eating something? But what the Hell would there be on a roof to eat? A bird or a rat, or something, but that would not draw a crowd like this. What would be big enough to draw -

A body. Your father’s body.

That unbidden thought shocks you so much you actually drop the shears, and they fall between the hedge and the cast-iron perimeter fence. You have to climb down off the little latter, then get down on your hands and knees to reach under the groomed bottom of the hedge to grope around for them. You need to focus – you are letting your fears get the best of you. Even if it is a body, and that is a big if, then what are the odds that it would be your father’s body? He is not even overdue yet, the only reason you have let yourself get this worked up is because he said your name. Your real name. Keep this in perspective. Keep everything in perspective. Father always said that you think and act like a man, and this – this is not the time to prove him wrong. Suddenly you manage to find the shears, and the bit of effort required to draw them under and then through the hedge provides a welcome respite.

Standing up, you take a series of deep breaths, as deep as your mask and the gauze around your face allows. You move the ladder a few paces ahead, mount it once more, and resume your needless pruning … as well as your worrying, though it feels less desperate and more constructive this time. Setting aside any personal fears here, there is objectively something odd happening on that roof. Just so you do not needlessly worry about anything, you would like to find out what is going on, and you can think of several ways to do that. The most direct would be to convince Ralx that all those Gulls nearby could soil the South Burying Ground, and that the two of you should proactively look into it. You could just wait until you get back to the Midden, and then ask the Lepers assigned to Animal Control what it was – but that is making the assumption that they are going to be called out there. If they were not, then you know where the house is … and you know how you father sneaks out of the Midden.

>>4932515
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Try to convince Ralx to investigate the mysterious flock of Hook Gulls [Requires Rolling]
>Wait until tonight to ask the Animal Control Lepers about it, and if they do not know, or are unable to provide sufficient intelligence, then consider sneaking out to see it yourself.

>>4932517
>>Wait until tonight to ask the Animal Control Lepers about it, and if they do not know, or are unable to provide sufficient intelligence, then consider sneaking out to see it yourself.
The kid is already upset with us, best to leave this alone since that roll might be pretty difficult. I don't see much risk in it, but you never know.

>>4932899
>>4932517
So I'm going to bed, but I'm not going to close the vote yet. I'll leave it up until morning. And if it turns out to be a tie, then I will roll for it.

>>4933092
good night brother, coke anon reporting in
thanks for running, i hope things are going okay for ya and am looking forward to collapsing coming back

>>4932517
>Wait until tonight to ask the Animal Control Lepers about it, and if they do not know, or are unable to provide sufficient intelligence, then consider sneaking out to see it yourself.

>>4932517
>>Wait until tonight to ask the Animal Control Lepers about it, and if they do not know, or are unable to provide sufficient intelligence, then consider sneaking out to see it yourself.

>>4932517
>Wait until tonight to ask the Animal Control Lepers about it, and if they do not know, or are unable to provide sufficient intelligence, then consider sneaking out to see it yourself.

>>4932517
>>Wait until tonight to ask the Animal Control Lepers about it, and if they do not know, or are unable to provide sufficient intelligence, then consider sneaking out to see it yourself.

Writing.
Also, good to have you back, cokeanon.

>>4933439
Are we HUEG or is our height quite normal in this world?

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You continue to watch the Hook Gulls coming and going from the roof, as you try to come to a decision. At least a minute passes before you resolve against trying to get over there right now. After all, it is not just a matter of convincing Ralx that your sepulchering duties extend to the roofs near the South Burial Ground, you would need to convince whoever lived there that they did too, which would presumably be a harder sell. And of course, you could see the South Sexton getting upset at you taking that sort of initiative with his first-born. So, then the smarter play would be to wait, to wait until tonight, when you are back at the Midden, and ask the Lepers that are assigned to Animal Control what they know about the birds. Even if the people living there were not home, or for whatever reason did not want to draw attention to the situation on their roof, no doubt one of their neighbors would request aid, worried about the birds soiling and otherwise blighting their houses. And if no one knew, or if you were satisfied with the answers that you got, then you always have the option of sneaking over there.

Having resolved yourself to a course of action, you feel better about everything – not that much better, mind you, but better. The rest of the hedge trimming does not take long, as you expected, and before you know it, you are finished with the mowing in the Old Section. As you head over to the gravesite, to see how those two slackers have made out, you cannot help but notice the generally ‘scruffy’ condition of everything around here. The grass is seriously thinning, and the old-style tent graves, while still standing, seem to all be in a state of disrepair, with gaps showing in between the slabs and their headstones askew. You feel almost obligated to say something about it, but you know that it would upset the South Sexton, and that if he did decide to resume proper maintenance of this area, it would just be a lot of work for you and everyone else assigned here.

You are pleasantly surprised to see that Vaclav and Smil are almost completely done with the finishing work – it seems your focus on doing the more strenuous rough work was the right call. While you are still sore about their sabbatical, at this point, you just want to get this done and get back to the Midden, to ask around about those Gulls and wait for your father to return. With your help, what little remaining work goes by quickly, and you are able to complete everything asked of you by the time that Giotto rings in the seventeenth hour. Once you get all of your tools secured in the shed, the three of you make your way to the back porch of the Sexton’s house, set just to the side of the main entrance.

>>4933483
None of you are allowed on the porch, let alone the house, so you just stand around waiting for him to come out. It is a good while before the Sexton pokes his head out a window to scowl at the lot of you. And then ten minutes pass before he actually leaves his house … to go out and check your work. After another ten minutes, and having found nothing worth complaining about, he finally returns to pay you. As is customary when giving money to anyone in an unclean profession, he does not directly hand you the money – you must hold out your cupped hands, and let him drop the money in. While he is paying Vaclav, he speaks to the three of you for the first time today.

“There will be an internment tomorrow – and I personally knew the deceased. I expect you all to look as presentable as you possibly can.”
He counts out your weekly wage, drawing the eighth-talents from a pouch, and then drops them in to your hands. The copper shine of the thirty coins cheekily winks when they shift in your palms as you draw them to your chest for a closer look. But as he moves to pay Smil, a thought crosses your mind. Your father was assigned with you and the dallying duo to the South Burying Ground this month, and before he left on the job (or as far as anyone else knew, ‘fell sick and retreated to his room’) he worked two days this week. Should you ask the Sexton for another ten eighth-talents, your father’s pay for two days work?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Ask for his money, as he is ‘sick’. [Requires Rolling]
>Do not ask for his money.

>>4933483
Average height for a fully grown man is five feet, six inches (as it was during the 1600's - early 1800's). As our character is a fifteen year old, still growing girl, already at six feet, four inches, I'd say she qualifies for HUEG.

>>4933510
>Ask for his money, as he is ‘sick’. [Requires Rolling]
A bit of a risk but if we have to go on the road soon we'll need all the money we can get

>fifteen year old,
>still growing
>already at six feet, four inches
Holy shit that's HUEG even by today's standards

>>4933510
>>Ask for his money, as he is ‘sick’. [Requires Rolling]

This is going to be a tough one, so only take your best shots!

>DC 41: Anything lower is a failure.

>No Passes: For your insolence, he docks your next paycheck the ten eighth-talents, just because he can.
>One Pass: He does not even acknowledge that you said anything, and just moves down the line to Smil.
>Two Passes: He pays out, on the condition that you and your father agree to do unpaid overtime work in the Old Section once he returns.
>Three Passes: He begrudgingly gives you what he owes your father without any conditions whatsoever.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2), then you automatically fail this test, and he demands to see your father tomorrow.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99), then you automatically pass this test, and he accidentally overpays you.
>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.

Please, may I have 3 rolls of 1d100? If you have rolled, and more rolls are needed, if you wait 20 minutes, you may roll again, as many times as needed.

>>4933510
>Ask for his money, as he is ‘sick’. [Requires Rolling]
Pay the man his due!

Rolled 53 (1d100)

>>4933826

Rolled 72 (1d100)

>>4933826

Rolled 55 (1d100)

>>4933826

>>4933867
>>4933855
>>4933838
>>4933826
"Begging you pardons, Master Sexton, but my father - he worked two days this week before he fell ill."

The look he gives you is sour enough that without realizing it, you take half a step back, and start holding your breath. He looks like he is about to say something - in fact, he looks like he is about to start yelling at you - but instead, he just huffs once or twice, counts out the ten eighth-talents, and drops them in your palms. He moves along to Smil, repeating the process for the last time, then he stomps off, quite clearly still aggrieved. Perhaps you should be worried that you have clearly upset him, but you are so shocked that he paid out that you cannot find it in yourself to worry - about that, at least. Fraying Firmament, you have forty eighth-talents! You know that it is not that much, but not only is it more than most Lepers make, it is more money than you ever have had personally at any one time. Father's work is expensive, between continuing it and feeding and clothing the two of you, he needed your weekly pay and tips as well as his own. He did let you keep any money you found - but when he left this time, he took what little you had managed to save that way too.

Still flying high from your unexpected success, you, along with Vaclav and Smil leave the South Burial Grounds by an access door just to the left of the cemeteries main gate, which has already been closed, locked and barred for the night, as is required by law. The same law establishes curfews, and the curfew for everyone in a Spotted Cloak is the eighteenth hour - which is fairly soon, considering how long you had to stand around waiting for the South Sexton to pay you. Not soon enough that you need to run, or that you could not squeeze in a quick detour to pick something up - after all, this is one of the few small windows of time where you have freedom of the city. Even the food that is left in the markets at this hour is better and liable to last longer than the food that the Port Authority puts up for sale in the Midden, and after a long day, you could really go for some proper food. Or, if you wanted to surprise father when he ... hopefully comes home tonight, you could buy a whetstone and oilcloth, fix up the stilettoes that he left behind. Beyond that ... you really cannot think of anything else you would want to do, besides seeing father, of course, and perhaps finding out what was going on with that roof. The best way to do either of those things would be to head straight home. Anything else? Oh, you could take the opportunity to ask Vaclav and Smil just what the fray they were doing behind the exhume pile for the better part of an hour.

>>4934009
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Swing over to a real market, and see what is still left. [Prices Vary]
>Find a hardware store, and buy the whetstone and oilcloth to repair the stilettoes. [1 to 3 eighth-talents]
>Talk to Vaclav and Smil, and ask just what the fray they were doing behind the exhume pile.
>Hurry home - for all you know, father could already be there, waiting for you.

>>4934011
>Find a hardware store, and buy the whetstone and oilcloth to repair the stilettoes. [1 to 3 eighth-talents]
weapons might come in handy soon

>>4934011
>Talk to Vaclav and Smil, and ask just what the fray they were doing behind the exhume pile.

>>4934025
>>4934023
As I still have time to write tonight, I'll give this vote another thirty minutes before closing it and rolling for the tiebreaker.

>>4934011
>Swing over to a real market, and see what is still left. [Prices Vary]
but if it ends up being a three-way tie,
>Find a hardware store, and buy the whetstone and oilcloth to repair the stilettoes. [1 to 3 eighth-talents]

Okay, so as it is a three-way tie, Hardware it is.

File: Hardware.jpg (51 KB, 700x414)

51 KB JPG

Rolled 3 (1d3)

Your wide strides soon outpace your two fellow Lepers, and soon they disappear behind you as you draw closer to the Mount’s perimeter fortifications and the Landward Crossroads. For today’s descent, you take the Chip, a natural and relatively gentle valley in the Mount which has been graded and terraced, to allow people and carriages from the ports below to make their way up to the Prom by switchback. Nearly all of the terraces in the Chip are developed, filled with the buildings, shops and homes of artisans and merchants who are unable to afford property on the Promontory but can afford something nicer than the accommodations offer in either of the harbors.

You have decided, that as a surprise to your father, you will restore the two stilettoes he left behind to good working order. To do this, you will need to buy a whetstone and an oilcloth, and while you could probably find one cheaper elsewhere if you looked, at the moment, you do not have the time, not if you want to get back to the Midden before your curfew. There is no way to know for sure just how much time you have, but you would guess that you have about thirty minutes or so left.

But to your surprise, it is actually a bit more difficult to find the kind of store, at least without leaving the switchback and venturing down one of the terrace streets. You are already halfway down the notch before you find a store advertising any hard wares, but it appears to have gone out of business. And then the second store you find that looks promising slams and bars its door in your face as you approach. You are almost all the way to Stickport before you find a third store, and once you make it clear that you will stay outside and well away from their merchandise, they are willing to take your money – considering that you are a Leper, that is far from a given.

As you wait, you overhear snippets of conversations and gossip coming from visitors waiting for an outdoor roastery to get tonight’s meat on a spit. There is nothing in all of their talk about those Gulls, and for that matter, there is nothing that could have anything to do about your father. Really, most of it is just personal affairs, but there are some interesting nuggets about ships arriving and departing in the ports, news about Cimmaroon raiding parties attacking mining and logging camps on the frontier and possibly threating settlements, and how one frontier-regional governor, Prince Heydrich II Boiohaemum continues to ignore Imperial edicts and tradition as he prepares a military response against them. Also, there was a royal kidnapping, which would be much bigger news if the Principalities were not absolutely lousy with royalty from all over the Empire … and shocking news if royal kidnappings were less of a yearly occurrence then they are. Still, it is kind of sad – the girl, one of the royal Prunuses, is just twelve years old, and royal kidnappings typically do not have happy endings.

>>4934662
While he might not be personable to those wearing Spotted Cloaks, it is good to know that there is a merchant willing to do enough regular business with Lepers that he needs his own purse for all of their money. The rest of the way back to the Midden, you preoccupy yourself by trying to figure out what exactly all of the other Lepers are buying from him. By the time you have walked through the planked over morass that is the Stickport and entered into the Midden, you still do not even have a guess. Setting aside further speculation, you head over to the plaza, where the Port Authority has set up their open-air market and cafeteria. The redolence of greasy, warm food in the air really awakens your hunger, and you are thankful that for the sake of your budget, you concluded your business with the merchant before roasters got any meat on that spit. Of course, with a communal meal like that, odds are they would not sell to you anyway for fear of upsetting their other customers, but still …

As you look around at the offerings, as well as the relatively limited selection of groceries made available to you, you notice a Leper with a red Animal Control sash, leaning against the plinth for a statue long since destroyed. As you think about making your way over there, and introducing yourself, you notice Vaclav queuing up for the clam chowder. If you were so inclined, you could get in line behind him, and pester him for answers. Or, you could just get in line somewhere else, and actually buy food. Then again – maybe you should go home, and see if father has come back yet.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Introduce yourself to the Leper with the Animal Control Sash [No Cost]
>Interrogate Vaclav as you the two of you queue for clam chowder [No Cost]
>Take the time to purchase some food [Prompts Secondary Vote]
>Head home, hoping father has returned [No Cost]

>>4934722
>>Introduce yourself to the Leper with the Animal Control Sash [No Cost]

>>4934722
>Interrogate Vaclav as you the two of you queue for clam chowder [No Cost]
yummy clam chowder!

>>4934722
>Interrogate Vaclav as you the two of you queue for clam chowder [No Cost]
Food and news

>>4935005
>>4934782
>>4934765
Closed and writing.

File: This is definately clam c(...).jpg (683 KB, 1920x1080)

683 KB JPG

You queue up right behind Vaclav in line. While you do not have much of a reference for these things, you have heard it said around the Midden that what is served here is closer to gruel with chunks of clam in it than a proper clam chowder. That being said, this is the only semi-regularly offered free meal that has any meat in it, so it is predictably popular. Once the line starts moving, you loudly clear your throat to get his attention. He shuffles around to take a look behind him – perhaps his neck is too stiff to turn?

“Who … oh. Sty.”

For now, all you do is stare at him. Or rather, you just point your face at the man, and let your mask do the staring for you. After a moment or so, he shuffles back, to face front towards the vats of the questionable chowder. But surprisingly, he is not saying anything. This is not typical for him – usually you cannot get him to stop talking. Just as you are ready to worry about something else, Vaclav finally decides to explain himself.

“I was a real cur today, wasn’t I Sty? I’m sorry. Smil had some questions for me about the Midden, and other Lepers, and I just started rambling away.”

You can believe that easily enough; Vaclav is overly talkative and Smil is still a relatively new arrival. He’s been here what, less than three weeks? No doubt being condemned to a life of unclean and strenuous labor is a serious shock to someone. Maybe he just now got to a point where he is comfortable asking Vaclav questions. As you are pondering this, Giotto and his baby brothers ring out for the eighteenth hour, and the guards by the palisade gate stir – they will not close the gate until the servers and grocers are done here, but the curfew is now in effect, and Lepers are not allowed to leave or be outside of the Midden. You turn back to Vaclav to see him shuffling around once more.

“I know this is not much, but your father is sick, and you deserve it for picking up my slack.”

He extends a copper eighth-talent to you, which you accept without hesitation. A lifetime of hard living has taught you never to refuse or question the charity of others. But as you gently pluck the coin from his outstretched hand and put it with the others in your pockets, bringing your total up to thirty-eight, something he said begins to bug you. After brusquely thanking him, you ask him something.

“When you were telling Smil about all of the other Lepers, what did you say about father and I?”

“Ah … only what I know. That he is a big, quiet man, raising a bigger, quieter daughter.”

>>4935170
Something about all of this is seriously beginning to rub you the wrong way. You look around the plaza, but you don’t see Smil – or for that matter, the Leper with the red Animal Control Sash that might have known something about the flock of Hook Gulls on that roof. So as the two of you reach the front of the line and are served, you cannot help but ask the aging Leper another question.

“Do you know where Smil is? I … want to let him know that there aren’t any hard feelings.”

“Mm mph mm.”

Once Vaclav finishes swallowing his first few mouthfuls from the earthenware bowl, he takes another shot at answering you.

“I don’t actually. While we were in the Chip, he went off on his own – said he needed to pick something up. But it’s the eighteenth hour now, he has to be somewhere around the Midden.”

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Look around the Plaza and the Midden for Smil or the Animal Control Leper.
>Even if the Grocers have not left yet, they might be running out of things. Head over there to take a look at there offerings.
>Head Home, hoping father has returned.

>>4935171
>>Even if the Grocers have not left yet, they might be running out of things. Head over there to take a look at there offerings.

>>4935171
>Look around the Plaza and the Midden for Smil or the Animal Control Leper.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>4935540 roll of one
>>4935180 roll of two
Okay, I'm going to roll to the tiebreaker.

Alright – going to do another roll, and then I’ll have this one up for an overnight vote, a relatively difficult one.

>DC 51: Anything lower is a failure.

>No Passes: You do not see Smil or the Animal Control Leper - you will have to continue your search later.
>One Pass: You see an Animal Control Leper (you are not certain if it is the same one you say eailer) talking to one of the guards by the palisade gate.
>Two Passes: You see someone you are almost certain is Smil leaving the plaza, very, very quickly.
>Three Passes: You see both an Animal Control Leper and Smil. You have to choose who you talk too.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2), then you automatically fail this test, in a way that wastes quite a bit of time.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99), then you automatically pass this test, and you may speak to both of them.
>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.

Rolled 45 (1d100)

>>4935680

Rolled 52 (1d100)

>>4935680

>>4935792
>>4935774
If either of you two are still around, you can roll one more time, if you like. I guess I should put that with the explanation of the rules on Criticals.

Rolled 9 (1d100)

>>4935680
I'll sacrifice myself and roll this die, even though I havn't particiapted in this quest

>>4935907
Nice to have you along, anon.

Okay - you will have the chance to speak to the Animal Control Leper. It is much later than I expected, so I'm going to just outline this one, and I will have the next post up in the morning.

Vaclav bids you farewell, and moves off towards the grocers, slurping down the questionable chowder as he goes. You have yet to touch yours, because despite feeling ravenous a few minutes ago, your nerves are coming back and your appetite is leaving. Before you invest the minute or two necessary to choke this grisly gruel down, you would like to clear a few things up – and that means talking to Smil or to an Animal Control Leper who knows something about those Hook Gulls on that roof. If at all possible, you would like to talk to both of them, but you do have limited time before the grocers run out of food.

Unable to get a good view from the center of the old plaza, you move to the edge and start walking around the perimeter instead, scanning the crowd. There are not a lot of Animal Control Lepers, and even though you have spent eight years here in the Midden, as you spent the whole time in relative isolation, with father, you do not know any of them personally. And as Lepers may remove their Spotted Cloaks once they are inside the Midden, that means that most of them are no longer identifiable to you by their red Animal Control sash. So, finding one of their number at the drop of a hat is a fair tall order. But finding Smil would be an even taller order, for the exact opposite reason. Smil is still a relatively new arrival, and you have never seen him not wearing the Spotted Cloak and his mask – which is not that uncommon. You would say that about a third of all of the Lepers never remove their cloaks in public, and that most of the ones that wear masks – like Smil – never remove them in public either. Which means all you have to identify him by is his slight, stooped frame, which is not that uncommon amongst Lepers either. Still, you are determined to find some resolution to something today.

It takes two circuits around the plaza before you notice a Leper wearing the Animal Control Sash in a quiet conversation with one of the guards at the palisade gate. At this point, you have given up talking to Smil tonight, so you sit down to wait until you have the chance to speak with this one. Realizing you still have the chowder in your hands, you pull up the hood of your cloak to completely conceal you, then you remove your mask and enough of the gauze wrapped around your face that you may eat. By the time you have licked the bowl clean, the discussion between the guard and the Leper is clearly winding down, so you reaffix the gauze and put on your mask, once more. But you draw towards him, your eyes suddenly and unexpectedly get blurry – and then when they clear, he is covered in Strange Stains.

>>4936475
‘Strange Staining’ is typically the first scarification glyph that a Witch performs on themselves or receives from their master, and arguably it is one of the most important and useful bits of common magic. Your received yours from father, who being excellent with glyphs, managed to etch it subcutaneously, on the muscle instead of the skin, so it cannot be seen or detected with any standard dosimeter. It hurt like all Hell, but as the first step of standard procedure for investigating a suspected Witch is to strip them naked and inspect every square inch of them for anything suspicious, the pain was worth it to hide your glyphs. If you ever do get caught, it could be the difference between life and death by mitigation.

The glyph itself is very, very simple. If you are within six feet of something that is Strange, or that has been contaminated by the Strangeness, it will appear to you – and only to you – as if it was covered in stains, stains that change color from white to gray to black and back again. The glyph is one of the few scarification glyphs that is always on; it can be temporally dispelled by focusing on the stains, but as soon as you stop focusing on them, the spell resumes, and the stains will reappear. For a spell that is always active, it is relatively low cost. When active, the area around the glyph becomes a little more sensitive than it usually would be, and the strain of it running constantly in the background, siphoning your magic might take a few months – a year at most – off of your life. There were supposedly ways to externally power scarification glyphs, so they do not shorten your lifespan, but those techniques had been lost in the early purges, shortly after the Strangeness appeared two hundred and sixteen years ago. Rediscovering these techniques was one of the things that father was working on, actually.

As you get the Lepers attention, you take a minute to look closely at the distribution of the Strange Stains – but not to closely, or you will accidently dispel them. As far as you can see, it limited to his boots and his gloves, and a little bit on the forearms of his cloak. Thankfully, the contamination does not appear to be strong enough to spread any further, as his boots, which judging by how quickly the colors are changing on the stains are the most contaminated, are not staining the ground underneath him.

“Excuse me, you’re in Animal Control. Were you called out today, to a house by the South Buring Ground, on account of some Hook Gulls?”

The man is cloaked, but not masked, and you can see surprise plainly on his unmarred, thoroughly normal looking face.

“For sure – for sure I was. What do you know about those Gulls?”

“I’m a gravedigger, assigned this month to the South Burial Ground. I saw those seabirds flocking over there while I was trimming a hedge for the Sexton, and I was wondering what possessed so many of them to go to that one house.”

>>4936477
“I wish I knew. Was the oddest call I’ve been on in a long while. And it wasn’t even on account of vermin, either. The family that owned the house was renting rooms on the third floor out to some University student. But when we knocked on his door – the only way through to their attic and roof was in his rooms – the place had been completely cleared out. And apparently, he had all sorts of books and chests and whatnot. The owners had no idea how he could’ve managed to sneak all of that out without them noticing. When I finally got up to the roof, the buggers all just took off. They weren’t nesting, they weren’t eating anything – they were just there sitting and shitting and squawking. It’s … I don’t know. Something is not sitting right with me. I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is, it ain’t right. The whole place just felt wrong, somehow. Honestly, I’m thinking about mentioning it to a priest during Ablution tomorrow night. It sounds crazy, but maybe they need to get an Inquisitor over there to take a look.”

A University student? You know that father has professional friends at the University, but you don’t know if they are also Witches, or he is just selling them things and bodies he steals. The presence of the Strangeness in an alleged University student’s rooms could be evidence for the former, but it just as easily be a complete coincidence. But before you do anything else, you should decide what if anything you should say to this hapless fool. If he does get the Inquistors involved, then you have no doubt they will properly mitigate the room, eliminating any further risk of contamination – though they would inevitably mitigate him as well, which even at the low level of exposure that he received can be fatal. If he says nothing, then … well, you are not exactly certain what will happen. It would depend on how Strange the rooms and the roof has become. And the Gulls. You really do not have much of anything to go on here, but you would be willing to bet that whatever magic was happening there in the rooms was being performed on or dangerously near those Hook Gulls. The Gulls could be Strange already, potentially spreading the Strangeness all over the Mount. That would be bad on its own, but what would be worse is if the Inquisitors started a Hunt, combing the city for Strangeness. If they did, then there is a chance that they would somehow accidentally find you and father.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Do not say anything to direct him one way or another. You MIGHT have a CHANCE later to advise him either way. Or your might not.
>Tell him to trust his instincts and tell the priests tomorrow during Ablution. The Strangeness will be contained, and the Inquisitors will only be searching for the mysterious University student. However, the Animal Control Leper may be killed or seriously injured by the mitigation process.
>Shrug it off and downplay everything. There is a chance that contamination from the rooms or the Gulls continues to spread around the Mount, and with it a chance that the Inquisitors mobilize into a Hunt. But there will be nothing to tie you to the rooms or the Gulls if the Inquisitors get involved.

>>4936484
And I noticed that I am getting it wrong a lot, so in case anyone cares, the name of the cemetery is the South Burying Ground. Sorry for any confusion.

>>4936484
>Shrug it off and downplay everything. There is a chance that contamination from the rooms or the Gulls continues to spread around the Mount, and with it a chance that the Inquisitors mobilize into a Hunt. But there will be nothing to tie you to the rooms or the Gulls if the Inquisitors get involved.
ACAB, no sense in getting the poor sap killed.

>>4936484
>Do not say anything to direct him one way or another. You MIGHT have a CHANCE later to advise him either way. Or your might not.
contaminated birds sounds bad but I also don't want to send the poor lad to his death. Let him make the call.

After rereading the update (and finding about half a dozen typographical errors - whoops) I realize that the language that I used to describe how the glyph works might be kind of confusing, so I figured I'd put out a clarification.

When I say that 'the glyph is always on', it would have been better to say that 'the glyph is constantly drawing power'. And when I talk about the glyph being 'active', I mean that you are within the six feet of whatever is Strange. Just figured I'd make that distinction - so no, the area around the glyph is not always a little more sensitive then it usually would, that is only in the when the spell is active. Going forward, in describing spells, I will try to keep the language that I use consistent and clear.

Also, and I really should have mentioned this in the actual update, as the spell is being cast on the eyes, it can only work if you can see the Strange object. Reflections are okay, but otherwise, you have to be looking right at it.

>>4936484
>Tell him to trust his instincts and tell the priests tomorrow during Ablution. The Strangeness will be contained, and the Inquisitors will only be searching for the mysterious University student. However, the Animal Control Leper may be killed or seriously injured by the mitigation process.

Rolled 2 (1d3)

On a roll of 1 >>4936524
On a roll of 2 >>4936735
On a roll of 3 >>4937085

You really do not know what to do here. The room, and the Gulls should be mitigated to prevent further contamination, and to eliminate the risk of a feedback loop from forming. But from what you have seen, you do not believe it is necessary to mitigate this man, as it looks as if he never even made direct skin contact with any Strangeness. You doubt that he has more than two of three times the typical background dose of the Strangeness, if even that. Such a low dose can dissipate on its own over time, and while the exposure might have placed this sap at a moderately increased risk for some types of cancers years down the line, any Leper worth their sale should have made their peace with the prospect of health issues soon after donning their Spotted Cloak. Of course, if the Inquisitors got involved, they never just leave him alone, and settle for throwing his contaminated clothes into a Leadfire. No, they would insist on a mitigation, for him, and probably the family that owned the place as well. Mitigation is a brutal process, and it can be fatal even with just the background dose of Strangeness that most things naturally have. You do not want any part of sending that man, or that family to their deaths at the hands of those zealots. So, you cannot just tell him to talk to the priest about it. But you do not want to be responsible for those Gulls going around spreading the Strangeness everywhere they land, everywhere they shit by convincing this fool to not talk to a priest.

In the end, you decide to let the man make his own decision. Maybe if you see him again before Ablution tomorrow night, you will have another opportunity to influence him one way or the other – but right now, it looks like he is leaning towards talking to a priest. With a bit of a sick feeling in your stomach, you bid the potentially doomed Animal Control Leper farewell, and as you head away from the palisade gate and back into the plaza, you do your best to put him and the family from your mind and focus yourself on your own immediate problems. Namely your father, and your food situation. Now, for all you know, father could be back by now, waiting for you. You were planning on buying food, perhaps a bit better than your usual fare, to celebrate his return, but now that you think about it, you wonder if he will need the money for something else. His work is very expensive, after all.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Head home immediately, to see if father has returned and if he expects the money.
>Head to the grocers, to stock up for the next week on food and training material.

>>4937747
>>Head to the grocers, to stock up for the next week on food and training material.
Well, he was off stealing something very valuable, right? Sure, he might have expected this week's pay to be taken into account on his return, but assuming he has been successful, then there shouldn't be too much of an issue if we spend a little in the market.

>>4937747
>Head home immediately, to see if father has returned and if he expects the money.

>>4937747
>Head home immediately, to see if father has returned and if he expects the money.
Lucre travels lighter than food.

>>4937867
>>4937782
>>4937754
Closed and writing!

You decide to head home immediately, to see if your father has returned. If he has, then no doubt he either expects the money, or would want to be the one deciding what exactly was being purchased from the grocers. You hustle your way out of the plaza, dropping off your empty earthenware bowl as you pass by the chowder table, making your way further into the shoddily repaired ruins and equally shoddily built shacks and cottages of the Midden. Close to the center of all this squalor, sitting in front of a smaller and quieter plaza, is the Midden’s Not-Temple. It was built as a temple though, by the original settlers here, about forty years ago. The issue is that those original settlers were in the thrall of the icon-worshiping “Right-Thinking” Priests of the Patternmaker, and as the those Wrong-Thinkers ruin the sanctity of their temples by venerating worldly fonts, the Reformed Priests of the Patternmaker hold that the Wrong-Thinkers temples are about as holy as a tannery. When the Faith claims one of these sham-temples, after the Iconoclasts do their jobs, good Reformed believers everywhere will refer to the cleansed building as a Not-Temple, so to not impugn the sanctity of a Reformed temple with a comparison. Commonly, the Faith reuses these buildings as schools, hospitals, or orphanages – it is rare for them to completely abandon one, as they did with this one.

You and your father live in the old belltower. The bell had been removed presumably destroyed by the Iconoclasts, and the wooden stairs up the tower had long since been cannibalized for firewood by other Lepers, leaving a few rooms in the belfry itself completely inaccessible. Or so everyone thought. Father could climb like a goat, even without the assistance of magic, and he had been teaching you the skill long before the two of you hid yourself amongst the Lepers. There were two different climbing routes up the inside of the tower, to the trapdoor that father installed all those years ago, and another five routes up to the belfry on the outside. Tonight, as you normally do, you took one of the inside routes. While the climbing was slightly more difficult on the inside than it was on the outside, in here, you do not need to worry about the wind or the weather … or other Lepers gawking at you as you made the five-story ascent. To be entirely honest, the climbing was not that difficult at all. You still take it seriously, of course, but after making the climb at least twice a day, for the past eight years, there is not any real sense of danger anymore. Which, of course, is dangerous in itself. But you are aware of this, so you force yourself to not climb any faster than you normally do, and more importantly, to take the breaks at the half-way and the three-quarters marks to ensure that your strength is sufficient the whole way through. Of course, between the daily climbing and the almost daily manual labor, your strength is much, much more than sufficient for this.

>>4938228
The only time that the ascent is difficult is when you have things to bring up, and you and father built a winch for that right underneath your front – or rather, your bottom door. You make it to the platform for the winch, climb on, and then unlock the trap door. For a moment, you pause, then you push the thing open and draw yourself up into the belfry.

“Father, it’s … it’s Sty. I’m home. Are you?”

No response. You go to his room, thinking to find him resting there. He is not. You go to your room, thinking you might find a note from him. You do not. You look all over the belfry, for any evidence that he has been here and left. There is none.

While it has not been the four whole days yet, it will be in a little more than five hours. And the painful truth is that if he is not back by the end of these four days, then he might not be back by the end of the week. He might not be back ever. You might be on your own for the rest of your life. And worst of all, you may never know why.

To your immense shame, you start crying. You take off your mask and practically tear off the gauze around your face to rub angrily at your eyes. This is not the time for crying! No, this is the time for planning. But what are you planning for?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>You are going to wait for your father, while protecting his work and his equipment here in the belfry. Which means that you are going to stay in the city, and the Midden, as Sty the Leper. For as long as it may take. To make that work, there are some things that you will need to do. The first order of business will be to obtain anesthesia, strong binds and lifting oil …
>You are going to follow his instructions for you to the letter. If he is not back by the end of the week he gave himself, you are going to leave the city – and likely never see him again. You will start preparing for your POTENTIAL departure immediately. To that end, you will need things that you cannot afford with thirty-eight eighth-talents. Luckily enough, you are quiet, an accomplished climber … and if it comes to it, in possession of two soon to be rust-free stilettoes …

>>4938230
>You are going to follow his instructions for you to the letter. If he is not back by the end of the week he gave himself, you are going to leave the city – and likely never see him again. You will start preparing for your POTENTIAL departure immediately. To that end, you will need things that you cannot afford with thirty-eight eighth-talents. Luckily enough, you are quiet, an accomplished climber … and if it comes to it, in possession of two soon to be rust-free stilettoes …
It sucks but he wouldn't have told us to do that without a damn good reason

>>4938230
>You are going to follow his instructions for you to the letter. If he is not back by the end of the week he gave himself, you are going to leave the city – and likely never see him again. You will start preparing for your POTENTIAL departure immediately. To that end, you will need things that you cannot afford with thirty-eight eighth-talents. Luckily enough, you are quiet, an accomplished climber … and if it comes to it, in possession of two soon to be rust-free stilettoes …

>>4938230
>You are going to follow his instructions for you to the letter. If he is not back by the end of the week he gave himself, you are going to leave the city – and likely never see him again. You will start preparing for your POTENTIAL departure immediately. To that end, you will need things that you cannot afford with thirty-eight eighth-talents. Luckily enough, you are quiet, an accomplished climber … and if it comes to it, in possession of two soon to be rust-free stilettoes …

>>4938355
>>4938554
>>4938870
Okay, so while that settles the question of what poor Chlotsuintha is going to do next, there are four other questions to consider here. There are other things that need to be worked out, but these are the most important.

Question one: Of your father's work, what do you try to take with you? The collection of crafting tables, notes, journals and books, as well as the old Inquisitor gear are a lot to move, but if you devoted the next three days to preparing for the move, and hired, purchased outright, or stole a horse and a wagon, then it should be possible to take everything with you. Alternatively, you could take just what you could carry of the notes, journals and books or the disassembled components, needles and instrumentation of the Life-Loom, which is the only magical crafting table of the three that you have any real practice with. Or, you could take nothing at all beside essentials and domestic sundries with you.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Take absolutely everything with you
>Take as much of the books and writings as you can carry
>Take as much of the Living Loom as you can carry
>Take nothing but essentials and sundries

Question two: If you are leaving anything behind, either by choice or inability to move it, what will you do with it? You could simply leave it untouched, as you suppose it is possible that father could be back later, and he could be expecting to take his work with him on his own flight from the city. You could try caching everything you take with you personally, so you could recover it later, though doing so would quite a bit of time and effort. Or, and you hate to even think about it, but you could destroy everything left behind, to prevent it from being discovered and misused.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Remaining articles are left alone
>Remaining articles are (attempted to be) cached
>Remaining articles are destroyed

Question three: Should you try to leave some sort of indication as where you have gone, in case father does eventually come back? The message could be something that you know only he would understand, in a place that only he would look. Or should you just completely give up on the idea of ever seeing him again?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Leave secret message
>Leave no message

Question four: Should you continue to go to work? While pretending to be sick and not doing your shifts in the South Burying Ground would give you more than enough time to move everything, you are worried that doing so will draw unwanted attention towards your belfry, making it more difficult for you to sneak things out. Or that the South Sexton will make a stink about you and your father not showing up, and someone will come to try to check in on the two of you.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Work all three days
>Work tomorrow and the day after
>Work just tomorrow
>Don't work anymore

>>4938937
>Take absolutely everything with you
>Remaining articles are left alone
>Leave secret message
>Work tomorrow and the day after

Will be rough but should minimise suspicion and mean that even if someone is able to reach the belfry they won't find anything particularly incriminating

>>4938938
>Take as much of the books and writings as you can carry
>Take as much of the Living Loom as you can carry
>Remaining articles are destroyed
>Leave secret message
>Work tomorrow and the day after

>>4939015
>>4938939
I figured most of the disagreement would be over what you take with you. As this is an important enough vote, I'm not going to roll to tiebreak this one - though as we are no longer being bumped, I will start 'advertising' new posts in the QTG, so hopefully, this does not take too long.

>>4939084
>Take absolutely everything with you
>Remaining articles are left alone
>Leave secret message
>Work tomorrow and the day after
The stuff we have is priceless and probably damn hard to find without connections we do not possess. We practice, as QM said, a dying craft. The knowledge here is possibly the last copy in existence. We cannot destroy it.
Regarding the last part, do we get a chance to reconsider working the day after tomorrow evening, depending on our progress ?
Also, live-room or living-room ?

>>4939122
Yes, I think it is perfectly fair to be able to change your mind, based on circumstances that may arise. Locking you into a decision would be too close to railroading for my tastes. And thanks for the catch there, it is Life-Loom, not Living-Loom.

I'm going to get a snack, then set down to write. Chlotsuintha is going to have a busy night tonight, one way or another.

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Under the onslaught of your angry rubbing knuckles, your tears dry quickly, but you do not feel any better once you are done. Some part of you has always preferred being Sty the Leper, instead of Chlotsuintha the Witchlet. You would never tell father, as he would no doubt take it as insolence – a sentiment that you at least partially agree with. Still, while things here in the Midden have been far afield from what any sane man or woman would consider ‘easy’, your life here was such an improvement from the constant running and hiding that took up the first seven years of your life, that you are sadden by the very real prospect that it is going to all end in three days’ time. But you need to keep moving forward, and focus on your future – Chlotsuintha’s future, not Sty’s. And your future centers around learning and mastering magic. To that end, your father’s work and equipment is invaluable. You cannot leave so much as a piece of it behind, no matter the expense and no matter the danger, either. Moving all of it would require some sort of transport – perhaps a ship? No … the number of people in close proximity to the equipment, the risk would be too great for contamination, or someone taking a peek. Your escape should be made overland, with a horse and a wagon – you should head to the frontier, or perhaps even leave the Principality all together and strike out into Cimmaroon Territory.

Once you have figured out where you are going, you can spend some time to figure out how it would be safe to leave father a note as to where you (and all of his things) have gone, if he does return to the belfry after your departure. You push worrying over those specifics aside for now – because whatever you do in the next three days, you are going to need to eat regardless, especially if you are still going to be doing your shifts in the South Burying Ground. For that, you are going to need to go to the grocery, before they all pack it in for the day …

Or maybe not.

Your father has been stealing to feed you and fund (and supply) his work for as long as you can remember. It was the way things were for you; some fathers worked for their money, your father stole. Truly, it was not a matter of you having lost any moral compunctions about stealing from other people – or in the case of graverobbing, stealing other people – it is more like you never really had any such compunctions to begin with. And over the years, he had taught you more than a few tricks of the trade, though some of those tricks are years out of practice – for example, you have not pickpocketed anyone since you moved to the Midden and became Sty. But rusty or not, you have already come to terms with using those skills to fund and supply your flight from the Mount, so why not start now? Why buy overpriced surplus or soon to spoil leftovers, when you can just steal better foodstuffs to feed yourself for the next three days?

>>4939477
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>First off, Father is still not overdue yet, he could come back, so you would need a week’s worth of food, not three days. Secondly, should you really be taking unnecessary risks like this? Buy what you can afford, and only steal what you cannot.
>The thirty-eight eighth-talents is going to be nowhere near enough money to cover everything that you are going to need to move everything AND reestablish yourself. Just save them for a stormy day, and plan on supplying and outfitting yourself completely through theft.

>>4939481
>First off, Father is still not overdue yet, he could come back, so you would need a week’s worth of food, not three days. Secondly, should you really be taking unnecessary risks like this? Buy what you can afford, and only steal what you cannot.
Minimise risk for now though it will probably mean having to steal more later we will hopefully have a chance to practice some of our skills by then

>>4939481
>First off, Father is still not overdue yet, he could come back, so you would need a week’s worth of food, not three days. Secondly, should you really be taking unnecessary risks like this? Buy what you can afford, and only steal what you cannot.

>>4939513
yup. great point. we can start small with just food, although in this setting i get the feeling that the punishment would still be harsh if we were caught regardless.

>>4940212
>>4939576
>>4939513
Alright, consider this one closed. I'll get to writing.

You decide that it would be for the best if you eased yourself into larceny and steal only what you could not afford to buy – which would be just about everything, to be honest, but you could afford the next few days’ worth of food. Aware of how little time you have left before the grocers begin packing up, you exit the belfry through the trapdoor, and you make your descent down the belltower. Just as you did on the ascent, you have to force yourself not to rush, or to make reckless moves. Once your feet are on solid ground, you hustle your way back to the plaza by the gate. As you head over, you notice straightaway that a lot of the crowd from earlier has dispersed, possibly because everyone has already eaten, or possibly because there is no more food. Hoping that it is the former, you practically run over to the grocer’s tables.

Luckily, they are still there, though the food they are selling … it is almost enough to make you change your mind about not stealing. But as you have already made up your mind on that point, you push such thoughts aside. Still – at this point, there is no fruit left, or vegetables. Nor is there any cheese, or eggs, or butter, though the grocers in the Midden rarely have cheese or eggs, and are even less likely to have butter. The meat is all gone too, though there is some fish left. Besides that, there is bread, hardtack, olive oil, faggots for kindling and light cooking but no real firewood, sea salt … and a lone cask of ale, as well as three skins of Retsina, a wine from the south of the Empire. There is a market for it here, in the Principalities, because the few wineries that have established themselves locally cater to the middle and upper classes, and unique among alcoholic beverages, Retsina can be stored and shipped without completely spoiling. Unfortunately, the wine tastes like pine pitch, no doubt a primary ingredient of the preservative.

Now, normally, you could not be forced to drink Retsina, much less pay for the “privilege” to do so, nor would you buy ale, though you find it much more palatable. But you are going to need to drink something, and the water that father magically purified is only going to last you through tomorrow. There are public pumps, but you have been hearing horror stories about them for years – everyone who can buys wine or ale to drink instead of risking that water. It is alright for bathing and even food preparation, but … you have never actually drunk water that father had not treated first. You do not know exactly how he does it, but you could attempt it, take a few guesses. Alternatively, if you bought the faggot, you could boil the water – father had explained to you that boiling liquids does help cleanse them. Of course, you could just break down, and buy the Retsina – as bad as it tastes, to your knowledge it is not a threat to your health. Or … it is just three days, how bad could drinking the public water for three days possibly be?

>>4940331
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Commit to either buying the cask of Ale (6 to 7 eighth-talents) or three skins of Retsina (5 to 6 eighth-talents).
>Commit to buying at least one faggot (2 to 3 eighth-talents) to boil the public water.
>Commit to buying at least one purse of sea salt (1 to 2 eighth-talents) and one flask of olive oil (2 to 3 eighth talents) to attempt a magical purification. [Note: Using the Life-Loom requires working material (in this case, the public water), a catalyst (salt) and a source of fuel (oil, faggot, or yourself)]
>Do not buy anything – plan on just drinking the public water for the next few days.

>>4940332
>Commit to buying at least one faggot (2 to 3 eighth-talents) to boil the public water.
If I understand correctly, we have no way of knowing if the ritual fucks up. Boiling is a safer solution, and will probably get rid of any non-strange risks.
Also, what is rainfall like in the area ? Don't we have rain-catchers or the like ? Even if it isn't pure, somehow, we could still try boiling and avoid standing in line for the pump, which means more time.

>>4940332
>>Commit to buying at least one faggot (2 to 3 eighth-talents) to boil the public water.

>>4940349
You got the idea. The purification spell would have three failures - partial, complete, catastrophic (or four, counting critical-catastrophic for rolls of 2 or 1).

In this case a partial failure would see not all of the water would have been purified. In complete failure, none of the water would be purified. For both partial and complete, you would not be able to tell, even after drinking the water. You would only learn of a failure several days later, when you would awake, feeling sick to your stomach. But for a catastrophic failure, you would know immediately, without drinking the water, as you would have reversed the process inadvertently, and attempted to purify the oil or the wood and burn the water as fuel. The result would effectively be a magical grease fire and two gallons of very unstable Strange water. I don't even know what I'd do for critical-catastrophic, probably have something happen to the Life-Loom that you need to fix or work around somehow.

The actual game mechanics for this ritual would be one roll of 1d100 with three DC's. But in this case, because you cannot distinguish success or partial/complete failures, the DC's for partial and complete would be listed as 'DC ???'. The whole thing would look something like:

>Please roll 1d100. [Please don't, actually, this is just the example]

>Critical Success; DC 99 and higher. In addition to purifying the water, you notice that successful purification has a specific catalyszation rate. From now on you are able to identify when water has been purified, and when it has not.
>Success; DC ??? and higher. Congratulations! You have successfully purified the public water.
>Partial Failure: DC ??? and lower. Unfortunately, not all of the water was purified this time around.
>Complete Failure; DC ??? and lower. Unfortunately, none of the water was purified this time around.
>Catastrophic Failure DC 10 and lower. You got the spell backwards, and your attempt to purify the olive oil by burning the water as fuel has resulted in a magical grease fire and two gallons of very unstable Strange water.
>Critical-Catastrophic Failure DC 2 and lower. No only did you cock it up by getting the spell backwards, you have managed to burn out one of the capacitors on the Life-Loom. Until it is repaired or replaced, any Witchery on this device receives a -4 malus.

Anyway, I'm going to leave the vote up a little bit longer - maybe another hour or so - just to give other people the opportunity to participate.

>>4940332
>Commit to buying at least one faggot (2 to 3 eighth-talents) to boil the public water.
We should look into stealing some more potent liquor at some point, mix a little of that with a bunch of water should make it fairly safe

>>4940393
>>4940352
>>4940349
Alright, closed and writing.

After some deliberation, you decide to cleanse the water using mundane methods. Of course, simply boiling the water is not as good as magically purifying it, but for the next three days, until either you have to leave, or your father returns, it should not be a problem. To boil that water, you will need at least a Little Faggot, though you could get a Big Faggot instead. Besides that, what else?

Food:

Staling Emmerloaves: bread made from Emmer, a cereal grain. Tasty enough on its own, but better with salt, or olive oil, or eggs, or even butter if you could find it. Each cost 2 to 3 eighth-talents, and can feed one person for one day.

Supply of Hardtack: a very hardy biscuit, made out of flour, water and a pinch of salt. Very cheap and extremely long lasting. Produced locally to provision the Imperial Fleet and the Merchant Marine, though surplus is sold to the urban poor. The ‘two week’s supply’ being sold here costs 12 to 13 eighth-talents, and will feed one person adequately for five days. Though it can be stretched to the advertised two weeks, this is not advisable, especially for those who are still growing or engaging in strenuous physical activity.

Trio of Salted Chub Mackerel: gutted, cleaned mackerel, heavily salted to preserve it. The salting will make it noticeably more difficult to use any leftovers for practice on the Life-Loom. The trio costs 3 to 5 eighth talents, and can feed one person for one day.

Trio of Smoked Jack Mackerel: gutted but not cleaned mackerel, smoked to preserve it. The smoking makes it slightly more difficult to use any leftovers for practice on the Life-Loom, though there is much more to work with as these have their heads still attached. The trio costs 4 to 6 eighth-talents, and can feed one person for one day.

An entire Eel [only one available]: an eel. You know nothing about eels, but besides its gills being slit, this one is completely intact, leaving you with lots of material for some more advanced practice on the Life-Loom. It is also large enough to feed one person for two days. This specimen costs 11 to 12 eighth-talents.

Fuel:

Olive Oil by the half-gallon: used to flavor food, and fuel lamps – as well as spells. A half-gallon costs 2 to 3 eighth-talents, and has 16 charges.

Little Faggot: useful for kindling, light cooking – and in a pinch, fueling spells, though they are not as efficient, and produce slightly more Strangeness than Olive Oil. A Little Faggot costs 2 to 3 eighth-talents, and has 8 charges.

Big Faggot: useful for kindling, light cooking – and in a pinch, fueling spells, though they are not as efficient, and produce slightly more Strangeness than Olive Oil. A Big Faggot costs 5 to 6 eighth-talents, and has 16 charges.

Catalysts:

Small Purse of Sea Salt: used to flavor and preserve food – as well as catalyze spells. This Small Purse costs 1 to 2 eighth-talents, and has 16 charges. Once empty, the purse may be reused.

Rolled 2 (1d3)

>>4940475
The roll on this posts indicates which way the price breaks. If the price has a range of 3, (say, 3 to 5), then if it is a 1, the price is a 3, if it is a 2, the price is a 4, if it is a 3, then the price is 5. If the price has a range of 2, (say, 11 to 12), then if it is a 1, the price is an 11, but if it is a 2 or a 3, then the price is a 12 - this is done to reflect the scalping the grocers are engaging in here.

You have thirty-eight eighth-talents to spend, and you need to at least feed yourself for the next three days. Also, if you want to practice any magic, then you need to at least get some salt, and should consider buying Olive Oil, as it is twice as efficient as sticks are as a fuel source (a spell that would require 1 charge of Olive Oil for fuel would require 2 charges of sticks).

>What do you buy?

>>4940481
Staling Emmerloaves x3
Trio of Salted Chub Mackerel x3
Olive Oil by the half-gallon
Little Faggot
Small Purse of Sea Salt x2

>>4940491
That comes to thirty-one eighth-talents, leaving seven left over for a stormy day.
>>4940349
Realized I overlooked your question, apologies. There is a steeple on top of the belltower, which would hamper rain collection through gutters to the point that Chlotsuintha's father never considered it a worthwhile use of his time setting it up - anyway, as long as he's been living in the Midden, he has had the MC with him to do errands and chores for him, so he really doesn't care about how much time it takes, so long as the water was there for when he wanted it.

I'm going to leave this up for another two hours or so, and if there are no complaints, I'll just go ahead and close it. If someone else does have another idea, of course, I'd be willing to leave it open for longer.

Alright, closing and writing.

Not wanting to dally with dusk soon approaching, and all sorts of opportunities for work opening up with it, you make a series of snap decisions on what you want, and quickly make your purchases. Between the Emmerloaves and the Salted Chub, you should be good for the next six days – or three if father does return to you. The little faggot of Sticks and the half-gallon of Olive Oil will be useful, for cooking, cleansing, and a bit of magic. Same goes for the small canvas purses of Sea Salt, and once you have used them all, you can reuse the purse for something else – even though the pair of them look as if they were made from old sailcloth, the canvas still feels sound in your gloved hands. You tuck them away, and just barely manage to fit everything into your pockets; you have quite a few of them, between the ones you have sewn on the outside and inside of the Spotted Cloak and the pocket-jerkin you wear underneath it. With your purchases stowed away on your person, you retreat once more back to the belltower of the Not-Temple. The ascent up is slower than usual, a further precaution you take when climbing encumbered. Just as much because of the slight shifts in your center of mass as it is because of your increased weight.

It is unlikely that father made it back in the few minutes that you were gone, but you cannot help calling out to him once more as you enter the belfry from the trapdoor. As it was before, he is not here, nor is there any evidence he was, when you spend a quick minute or so looking for it. Resolving not to forget yourself to your emotions again, after you unburden your pockets, you head straight over to the supplies of water that you keep in the kitchen area, to double check what you have to work with. There is an opened cask of water that father had purified, which looks to have less than a liter of water left in it, two casks of untouched public water, and eight empty casks. These casks are non-standard, with a twenty-liter capacity, they are ten liters shy of the smallest standard size, the ‘blood tub’. You do not know why that size is called blood tubs, or for that matter, you do not know why you know that a thirty-liter cask is called a blood tub. You do not even know where father found a dozen non-standard casks, but they have been doing good work keeping your whistles wet for all these years.

>>4940713
Continuing to move along, you pull out a kettle and a flint from the meagre collection of domestic sundries you just sort of keep stacked in the corner. Before proceeding any further, you look over the cast pot, to make sure that there is no Strangeness to it, that it has not be used for anything except food. Once you are satisfied that you are not going to inadvertently contaminate your drinking water, you unwrap the faggot, and pull out enough sticks to get a fire going, then you haul one of the two filled casks over to the fireplace. After starting the fire with the flint, you fill up the kettle with water, then carefully place it on top. Looking at the size of the kettle, compared to the size of just one of the casks, you know that this is going to take a bit of time, and a lot of the wood you just bought. But that is not going to be a problem tonight – you have a lot to think about. You grab those two stilettoes, the whetstone and the oilcloth and start cleaning, while you plan out how you are going to get yourself and your father’s belongings out of the city in just three days.

While it is certainly tempting to just say ‘fray it’ and try to steal everything you need to fund your flight from the Mount, you know that it probably not going to be possible with the time that remains to you. At this point, you think you would be best off making one big heist, and to then use the talents to buy whatever you need, only stealing again if it is absolutely necessary. And that touches upon an added layer of complexity in all of this, as you know no fences and have no time to track any down, you have to steal talents. Anything else – besides the supplies you need – is worthless to you right now. So, what manner of place has a lot of currency on hand? Banks and Custom Houses do, but … that is almost certainly biting off a bit more than one fifteen year old woman can chew, at least on her first time around. Something slightly less dangerous, like a gambling den, or a popular theatre … perhaps a merchant ship that has just come into port, or is just about to leave it. A place that has to have a lot of talents on hand, but not the tightest security …

>>4940714
>Please choose ONE of the following to ‘stake-out’ tonight. You will get a chance to investigate at least one more location tonight.
>Father actually told you about a gambling den once. Located above a shoemaker, it was called the Plucky Poulaines. Why not head over there, and prepare to try your luck?
>The whole reason Scrimshaw Mount was settled was because it sat on a straight, where nearly all of the trade to and from the Principalities must pass through. There are always merchantmen coming and going. Just look for one that is preparing to sail in a few days.
>There are a handful of theatres here, both on top of the Promontory and in Cleanport. Why not go and see if one of them is putting on a big show over the coming weekend. If they are, maybe you will go. And just maybe, you will get more than ‘culture’ out of it.
>You are going about this all wrong. Instead of one big job, you should be looking at doing a bunch of smaller, safer jacks. Become a one-woman crime wave to pay your way out of the city.
>Write-ins are accepted for any place that has to have a lot of talents on hand, but not the tightest security that would make sense in the setting. Subject to my approval, of course.

>>4940723
>>You are going about this all wrong. Instead of one big job, you should be looking at doing a bunch of smaller, safer jacks. Become a one-woman crime wave to pay your way out of the city.

>>4940723
>The whole reason Scrimshaw Mount was settled was because it sat on a straight, where nearly all of the trade to and from the Principalities must pass through. There are always merchantmen coming and going. Just look for one that is preparing to sail in a few days.

I came in late for the pantry vote, is it still possible to exchange some staling bread for hardtack? Bread will go bad rather quickly.

>>4940804
I was worried something like this was going to happen.
I don't want to revisit closed votes, but considering the circumstances, I'm willing to say that if we eat just the bread for the next three days, it will be all gone before it starts to go bad. You okay with that?

>>4940771
>>4940804
This one is a fairly big vote, so I'm going to way until there is a majority. When I get a minute, I will "advertise" it on the general, though.

>>4940723

>Father actually told you about a gambling den once. Located above a shoemaker, it was called the Plucky Poulaines. Why not head over there, and prepare to try your luck?

First time posting ITT, extremely hopeful that this quest doesn't die. Setting seems awesome - I have lots of questions.

>>4940723
>place that has to have a lot of talents on hand, but not the tightest security
Any place like a guildhall or the like that might have have a stockpile of coin for payroll?

>>4941149
Glad to have you along anon, ask away and I will answer!

>>4941249
Well, yes, even a relatively new city like the Mount would have about a dozen 'greater' guilds, with political influence and three dozen 'lesser' guilds without any. And while guilds typically don't have payrolls, they do certainly collect dues, payments and fines from members. The issue I see with targeting the guilds for larceny is that this is that there are established banks in the city, so I'm not sure if it makes sense for the guilds to keep any serious money on hand. If you have any ideas, I'd be more than willing to entertain them.

You know, I think this is some sort of personal record; a four way tie. I guess it means I'm doing a great job of balancing the choices, right?

>>4941328
Alternatively anyone like a gang backed moneylender, if they're relying on fear of reprisal as their main deterrent it still works for us as we'll be gone before they work out whodunit

>>4941328
I chose gambling den because drunk men make easier marks. Also they probably won't bat an eye at a newcomer if we decided to infiltrate "publicly."

IC Question time-

What do we know of Cimmaroon territory?

Do we have access to primitive maps and or general geographic knowledge?

Based on our knowing that boiling water purifies water, are magic users generally more "scientific" in their approach to life? Are Magic users the alchemists/scientists of the setting?

How powerful are Cleansing groups like Inquisitors? Ultimate political power a la 40k, or fucked up levels of under the radar religious power like Spanish Inquisition?

How common are situations like ours, like a couple people hiding out with outlawed abilities existing hidden in society?

Why are birds a strong indicator of Strangeness?

Is the setting totally OC?

Do we know how relatively capable our father is compared to other magic practitioners?

What does/can a Life Loom do?

Are there fables of powerful magic users who have disrupted societal norms in a significant way?

Would we be hunted to death if established powers knew of our lives?

Feel free to not answer all at once if this is too much.

>What do we know of Cimmaroon territory?
Of the territory? There is farmland to support a number of large towns and even small walled cities near the rivers, everywhere else it is just primeval forest. There are about a dozen and a half "kingdoms" in the territory, but they are closer to tribes or city states than a proper kingdom.

>Do we have access to primitive maps and or general geographic knowledge?
We have geographic knowledge of the area surrounding the Mount, and general geographic knowledge of the western half of the Principality. Maps exist, but as they are handmade, usually on commission, they are expensive and rare.

>Based on our knowing that boiling water purifies water, are magic users generally more "scientific" in their approach to life? Are Magic users the alchemists/scientists of the setting?
Magic users are much more knowledgeable about the sciences than the average person, and they can be nearly or more knowledgeable than formally educated people, assuming it is in a field of interest. For example, your father is interested in creating fully autonomous, self-sufficient constructs, and in rediscovering lost techniques in scarification gylphery. So he knows a great deal about anatomy, botany and biology, nearly as much as an expert in one of those fields would. On the other hand, he is not particularly interested in fetishes, so he is much less knowledgeable in metallurgy and the instrumental sciences than a metallurgist or an instrumental scientist what we would call an engineer would be. And all of this effectively answers your second question; no, there are scientists and educated people who are not magical.

>How powerful are Cleansing groups like Inquisitors? Ultimate political power a la 40k, or fucked up levels of under the radar religious power like Spanish Inquisition?
They are in between the two, but much closer to the Spanish Inquisition, as they are a relatively secular instrument of the Faith. That said, the Inquisitors and even the Cleansers underneath them all have Imperial Immediacy, typically reserved for honor guards, high ranking functionaries, and religious officials. It is a privileged status where the recipient is reports to only the Emperor himself. They still have to follow and enforce Imperial law and edicts, but they can ignore local authority with complete impunity. So they do not have political power, but they are uncommonly independent members of what is still a feudal society.

>>4940950
Sure boss, sounds good!

>>4941249
I think the line of thought is good. Someone who would have a lot of (illicit) cash at hand, without being actually involved in organized crime. Someone like a corrupt guard or official maybe?

>How common are situations like ours, like a couple people hiding out with outlawed abilities existing hidden in society?
Very uncommon. Inquisitors and Cleansers have been working non-stop since the Strangeness seemingly just appeared two-hundred and sixteen years ago, and they have gotten very good and tracking down and culling anyone with latent magical abilities who doesn't know how to hide them. But still, people manage to slip through the net, especially in rural settings, and sometimes really, really remote villages will grudgingly accept the existence of a 'Woods Witch', so long as they are far enough removed from everyone else, and they are exceptionally helpful.

And there are some magic users that are kept around in the cities as well. I didn't draw that much attention to the connection, but God is called the Patternmaker here, phrases like 'Sainted Spool' and 'fray' are used ... and there is a magical object in the belfry called the Life-Loom. Before the Strangeness arrived, there were Priests who were magic users, weaving incredibly efficient healing spells - available to any of the faithful who could make it to a temple. Once the Strangeness came into the picture, the Faith destroyed all but a handful, deciding that they could keep a few under lock and key for themselves and adequately 'devout' (read as generous) practitioners. To operate the Life-Looms, they need magic users, so they keep a number of them around, in a comfortable captivity, ignorant of all but the most basic spells. These captives are most* of the descendants of the Faith's original Life-Weavers.

Finally, there are the Mitigators. Most of the time, Inquisitors and Cleansers are able to turn the tide against a magic user simply with numbers - the Witch is almost always on their own, against an entire Hunt, usually between eighty to one hundred and twenty men (or even more if they feel it is necessary). That should not be too surprising, as very little what would be considered 'combat magic' survived, and apparently it is a matter of debate how much even ever existed. But there are times where a Witch or a magic user it just too strongly entrenched somewhere, or they do know some powerful spell, and a specialist needs to be called in. A specialist that knows magic. Those are Mitigators - children that were picked up by the Inquisitors for having latent magical abilities, spared from mitigation and trained in counter-magic. To prevent them from learning any other magic, and becoming a threat, they are always disposed of after their first mission.

>Why are birds a strong indicator of Strangeness?
It is not the birds specifically, it was their behavior. There was no apparent reason for them to flock to that roof, but they were. It indicates that they were exposed to Strangeness, and it has begun to twist their minds, make them behave differently and inexplicably.

>Is the setting totally OC?
Well, I guess that depends on what you consider totally OC. There is a lot of inspiration taken from Darkest Dungeon and Dishonored, but I didn't take any characters or locations from it. Those were all home-brewed.

>Do we know how relatively capable our father is compared to other magic practitioners?
We know that our mother, who we barely remember, was a much more accomplished Witch than father.

>What does/can a Life Loom do?
Life Looms create simple living constructs out of provided adequate flesh and material, or it can be used to heal/edit existing life provided adequate flesh and material. The purification ritual mentioned earlier would be editing the bacteria present in the water to clean it for you. Once they ran out of toxins to feed on, they would have starved and died, leaving it safe to drink.

>Are there fables of powerful magic users who have disrupted societal norms in a significant way?
Oh, more than fables and more than societal norms. History before the Strangeness is rife with War Witches - warlords with magical powers, many of whom went on to found kingdoms. Some of which still exist today. And before the Strangeness became a problem, it was extremely common for magic users to be the ones advancing scientific knowledge in their respective (or associated) fields. Typically, in the process of developing new spells, they would discover things about ingredients that they were using, things that mundane scientists could not.

>Would we be hunted to death if established powers knew of our lives?
Definitely. Doubly so, considering that our father was an Inquisitor who managed to hide his latent magical ability for years under their nose. Triply so, considering that he ran away with a Witch he had been assigned to investigate, and then knocked her up.

>>4941395
There would definitely be one out there, though they might be a bit hard to find.

>>4941517
Well, you do not know if he is corrupt or not, but the South Sexton certainly does try to 'nickle and dime' or rather, 'eighth and fourth-talent' Chlotsuintha.

Anyway, it sound like we are going to be taking a look at the guild halls. I need to get some sleep, but I will post in the quest general when I get the next post up. Thanks for a great run today, everyone!

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The stilettoes are actually easier to clean that you thought, but the more time you spend with them, the more you wonder just how effective they would be as weapons. The two of them are ‘pin-stilettoes’, meaning that they sheathe their blades in their hilt, until it is time for a fight, then you pull the blade out. It can … sort of lock in place? At full extension or completely closed, the knife will keep itself in position – it needs to be pulled open or pushed shut. But when it is at full extension, if a thrust ends up pressing into the back of the blade, or the blade was not at full extension, then it seems that it would be relatively easy for the blade to be pushed partially closed. There is also the issue that neither of the two blades have guards on their hilts. It is not a matter of being unable to catch and block an opposing blade that worries you, it is your hands that you are worried for.

While most of your time as a Leper has been spent working in the graveyards, there have been months where you were assigned to retrieve and clean bodies. Most of your charges died natural deaths, there were a few who had been killed in duels, and you had noticed that the hands on the bodies of those that fought with knives without guards had injuries on their palms and fingers, where after a thrust, their hands had ridden up, on to the blade of the knife. The more ostentatious your two stilettoes had a fairly sizable notch right under the pin, so you supposed that knife was safer to use, but the more understated one had a much more lethal look to it blade, despite being an inch shorter. You are beginning to think that father had a good reason for taking every weapon he owned except these two with him, but you stop yourself before you can waste any more time on fretting. They are what you have, and hopefully you will not even have to use them.

By the time you are done grousing and groaning over the blades, you have also finished boiling an entire cask worth of public water – and blown through half of your faggot in the process. Of course, the upswing is that you have four days’ worth of mundanely cleansed water now. You take the remaining water that your father purified, and pour that into a large flask, then you haul the three casks – two empty and one full – back over to the corner with the others. After putting out your fire, you open a window in the wall that father built to close in the balcony, so you may confirm what you already know; that night has fallen on Scrimshaw Mount. The stars are bright tonight, bright as they ever are over this city, and even though your soul may by frayed by your work for these last eight years as a Leper, or by the work you will do tonight as a thief, for the first time in days, there is no unease in you at all as you take a minute to stare into the Great Pattern of the Firmament, and through his work, into the face of the Maker.

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>>4941888
You, along with just about everyone who worships the Patternmaker, believe that the Strangeness is the Great Trial of the Third Age, that it was placed into the world to challenge those who had become overly dependent on magic, and to make people stand on their own two feet once more. Where your beliefs differ from the mainstream is over what this Trial means specifically for magic users. Most faithful hold that the Strangeness means that magic users* are now unclean, and just flatly condemned, but you and father believe instead that you have a personal role to play in this Great Trial, to remain humble and wary of the powers that you can call upon. Before the Third Age, magic was seen as a blessing, and the two of you still see it that way.

*There is an important distinction here, that I want to highlight. Actions by humans are what is seen as unclean by the Faithful, not objects or animals. Graveyards and corpses are sanctified, but gravedigging and corpse handling is unclean, and the work of untouchables. Of course, not all of the distinctions are so cut and dry. While the revulsion at processing animal products means that leather workers are considered unclean, furriers are not – partially because fur looks to be less processed than leather (even though that is not necessarily the case), and partially because furriers typically have much more money than leather workers.

After a minute or so of silent contemplation of the Firmament, you offer up a whispered prayer on behalf of your father before closing up the window and heading out, carrying only a bundle of clothes to change into and the stilettoes, stowed one in each boot. Hopefully, they will remain there for the whole night. By the time you are back on solid ground again, you have made up your mind as to your target – you are going to see if you can a Guild. You know there are probably about fifty different guild halls in the city, and you have a general idea where some of them are. At the very least, you know what a guild hall looks like. And you know that guilds collect money - dues and payments and fines – from all of their members. Surely, they would not put all of it straight in a bank? Oh! Now there is a thought …

But before you start down that path, you are going to need to get of the Midden first. There are several ways out of the Midden undetected, but one of them puts you out in the storage room of a guard house, and another involves going through the sewer, so those are for emergencies only. The way you intend to leave the Midden is through a series of interconnected buried basements, accessed by a private well, located in the middle of a shell of an old villa. However, as you approach your chosen egress, to your surprise you see two Lepers, neither of which you recognize, and both still cloaked having some sort of argument in the ruins. A loud argument.

>>4941890
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>The night is still very, very young. Hide yourself somewhere nearby and wait them out.
>Try your hand at scaring them off by tell them they are waking people up, which is probably true.
>Maybe this would be a good time to practice some sneaking? Neither of them are looking at the well. [Requires Rolling]
>You do not want to deal with this shit … which means you are going to be dealing with actual shit. Take the sewer route instead.
>You were going to do some fairly dangerous prowling tonight anyway, why not get an early start on it? Take the guard house route instead. [Requires Rolling]

>>4941439
Oh, and on topic of inspirations, Mr. Wong's Swamp Lord Quest is excellent. Heavier on the RPG elements and lighter on the crafting, but I'd say it is the best fantasy quest that I have read on here yet - though I have not gotten around to reading Forgotten's Black Company.

>>4941899
>>Try your hand at scaring them off by tell them they are waking people up, which is probably true.

>>4941899

I am a big fan of Swamp Lord Quest. That setting and tone kick ass.


>Maybe this would be a good time to practice some sneaking? Neither of them are looking at the well. [Requires Rolling]

If we can try to listen in to get a feel for the argument topic before/while we sneak, that would be cool.

>>4941899
>Maybe this would be a good time to practice some sneaking? Neither of them are looking at the well. [Requires Rolling]
Good opportunity to practice imo

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>>4942181
>>4941982
>>4941971
Alright!

>DC 26: Anything lower is a failure

>No Passes: They see you climbing into the well, and the have a lot of questions for you. You will have a choice, to try to talk yourself out of it, or to run away.
>One Pass: They see you sneaking towards the well, and they have some questions for you. You will have a choice, to try to talk yourself out of it, or to run away.
>Two Passes: They hear something moving around and then down the well, but they cannot see you. Depending on how crazy things get tonight, they might mention this to someone - or not.
>Three Passes: They remain oblivious. No matter how the night goes, no one will have any suspicions about this random, dried up well...

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2), then you automatically fail this test by being seen and identified as you climb into the well. You will have a choice, to try to talk yourself out of it, or to run away.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99), then you automatically pass this test, and you find a lucky tenth-talent down here, which gives you a single-use re roll.
>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.
>You are STRONGLY encouraged to roll again after fifteen minutes if more rolls are needed, to keep the quest moving.

Rolled 52 (1d100)

>>4942233

Rolled 64 (1d100)

>>4942233

Rolled 60 (1d100)

>>4942233

>>4942367
>>4942363
>>4942276
>Three Passes: They remain oblivious. No matter how the night goes, no one will have any suspicions about this random, dried up well...

Good rolls. I'll get to writing the next post. It should either be up overnight or first thing in the morning.

Why are you hesitating here? If you are scared off by two Lepers, then how can you possibly hope to break into and jack guild halls tonight? No, you are not scared of them, or scared of being discovered by them, you are confident in your ability to remain unseen, in spite of your size. But … after a life spent in hiding, you have become risk adverse. Considering how dire your situation is, you are comfortable saying that your typical abundant caution is a good thing. Unfortunately, unless you are willing to leave the Mount with nothing by the clothes on your back, abandoning or destroying your father’s life’s work in the process, you are going to need talents, and to get those talents, you are going to need to take risks. Pretty serious risks. Some of which may be life and death. You take a quiet, shallow breath, to steel yourself, and then from your vantage point, hiding behind a shack across the street from the ruin, you survey the scene.

The two Lepers are standing just inside what was the exterior wall of the villa. You can see both of them – one completely, but just the upper body of the other. Both of them are looking at and arguing with each other, and they seem to be getting louder every minute, to the point where you are almost able to understand them. After looking behind you, to make sure no one is coming, and then scanning the street, to make sure that no one is gawking or glaring at the pair yet, you fully commit yourself by breaking cover, and quietly move across the street to the ruin.

“…can I possibly do about it now?”

“You can pay me back for my share of it, that’s what you can do – a third of that vial was to be mine!”

“What?! That’s like a fortnight’s worth of wages!”

“I know – so how’d you think I feel about having spent that, with nothing to show for it?!”

There is not an immediate response to that, you quietly hold where you are. Once the conversation starts up again, you will continue around the perimeter of the ruin, then you will cut in and head straight for the well. It does not take long for the battle to rejoin, and after taking a second to look back at the pair to make sure they were only looking at each other, you resumed your prowling.

“Look, I’m sorry, and believe me, when she wakes up, I’m sure she’ll be very sorry too.”

“Oh? You’ll make sure of that?”

“…If that’s what it takes, then yes. I can make sure.”

“I want to watch.”

“Man alive, you serious?”

Judging by the silence that followed as you kept making your way around the shell, he was.

“I can’t do that. She won’t like taking a beating, but she’ll accept it, on account of her knowing that what she did was wrong. But she won’t accept an audience for it.”

“She won’t have a choice.”

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>>4942506
“She most certainly will have a choice, she can make the choice to leave my poor, rotting ass – there are thirty-four women in here for all four hundred of us, and with no priest willing marry Lepers, they can just come and go as they please. As it is, I’m risking losing her by laying hands on her at all.”

You have reached the best point to cross over into what was the courtyard. Rubble and darkness should screen you from their sight at this point, but you make a point of checking on the pair one last time before squinting down at the path between you and the well, to make sure that there is not anything noisy to step on, or anything that poses a risk for tripping. As you break cover and stalk your way over to the well, the conversation resumes, slightly quieter, but still loud enough to hear.

“First off, if you don’t lay hands on her, I might just lay hands on you. Second, there is still the issue of the fifty eighth-talents that I gave you for my share of the laudanum. And third, there are thirty-five women in Midden. You forget that taller of the two bats is one.”

Who are the two bats? They are obviously Lepers, but you have never heard of ... oh. Never mind.

“I know she is, I counted her. There are thirty-four women.”

Having reached it completely undetected, you descend into the well completely unseen and unheard, with the sound of the duo loudly reciting the names of all of the lady Lepers so they can determine who has the right count echoing above you. Despite the annoyance of having to listen to and hide from them, you did get two somewhat valuable nuggets of information in exchange; that someone is selling controlled substances like laudanum to Lepers, and that your profile in the Midden might be quite a bit higher than you thought.

As the well is almost in complete darkness, and you are not as familiar with it as you are with the belltower, it takes you a full ten minutes to get to the bottom of the shaft. The bottom, but not the end – the shaft continues at almost a perfect right angle further inland, to where the groundwater is less likely to be mixed with seawater. As you enter into the spur and find yourself in what is now complete darkness, you realize you still need to make a decision as to which Guild you are going to snoop around first.

>>4942511
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Money-Lenders Guild: A guild for the Mount’s bankers, moneychangers, and binder-brokers. One of the Greater Guilds, arguably the most influential. You think that they are the most likely to keep serious money in their guild hall of all of the guilds, because how would they decide which member’s bank they put the money into? Of course, the security is probably on the level of an Imperial Fortress, and that is not even considering the safe.
>Chrurgeon’s Guild: A guild for the Mount’s healers, sawbones and medicine-makers. One of the Greater Guilds. There are a lot of healers in the city, partially because of the University’s Medical School, partially because of all of the guild’s Journeymen working as Ship’s Chrurgeon’s. And as far as you know, all of them make good money, so it stands to reason that their guild makes good money off of them, right? But you are not sure how much - if any - of that money remains in their guild hall.
>Sailmaker’s Guild: A guild for the Mount’s sailmakers. One of the Lesser Guilds, though a larger Lesser Guild. Scrimshaw Mount is a maritime city, and in every maritime city, there is a Sailmaker’s Guild. You feel with all of the ships coming and going daily, that there must be some money in their hall, surely. And considering the relatively lower status of this guild, you hope that it translates to weaker security.

>>4942512
>>Chrurgeon’s Guild: A guild for the Mount’s healers, sawbones and medicine-makers. One of the Greater Guilds. There are a lot of healers in the city, partially because of the University’s Medical School, partially because of all of the guild’s Journeymen working as Ship’s Chrurgeon’s. And as far as you know, all of them make good money, so it stands to reason that their guild makes good money off of them, right? But you are not sure how much - if any - of that money remains in their guild hall.

>>4942512

>Chrurgeon’s Guild: A guild for the Mount’s healers, sawbones and medicine-makers. One of the Greater Guilds. There are a lot of healers in the city, partially because of the University’s Medical School, partially because of all of the guild’s Journeymen working as Ship’s Chrurgeon’s. And as far as you know, all of them make good money, so it stands to reason that their guild makes good money off of them, right? But you are not sure how much - if any - of that money remains in their guild hall.

How adept are we identifying the usefulness of labeledand or unlabeled chemical vials? I'm figuring there will be some of those in the healers' guild.

>>4942512
>Chrurgeon’s Guild: A guild for the Mount’s healers, sawbones and medicine-makers. One of the Greater Guilds. There are a lot of healers in the city, partially because of the University’s Medical School, partially because of all of the guild’s Journeymen working as Ship’s Chrurgeon’s. And as far as you know, all of them make good money, so it stands to reason that their guild makes good money off of them, right? But you are not sure how much - if any - of that money remains in their guild hall.
Even if we don't find money drugs are also portable and valuable

>>4942606
>>4942570
>>4942530
Alright, consider this closed. I'll get to writing.

>>4942570
Not very adept. What we do know about healing is almost all magical.

>>4942606
Good point about the drugs, but the issue is finding someone to sell them to.

By the time that you have made your way out of the spur and into the interconnected basements, you have both left the Midden and decided that you are going to head to the healers, for a different kind of check-up. All in all, you do not have a particularly positive view Chirurgeons. Not only are they partially responsible for deciding who is sent to the Midden, once you are wearing the Spotted Cloak healers avoid you like the plague. The few Lepers that are willing to seek out and ask for help from the men who condemned them are not just refused, they often are punished on top of it, for risking the health of such critical professionals. There are rare times where Lepers are taken off of their shifts and sent to the healers, but instead of being treated, they are used as living specimens for presentations, or as testers for medicines. Really, it is … well, you are no Greenglen Jack, you need no justification to steal from someone – but, at the very least, if you do end up jacking them, then you are not going to feel bad about this, not in the slightest.

You reach the end of the abandoned basements that the palisade to the Midden was built over. The next basement, accessed through a secret passage, actually still has a building on top of it. So, before you go any further, you will need to change. In the darkness, you take off everything that would identify you as a Leper, the mask, the gloves, the cloak. You make a point to set the mask down carefully, but when you toss aside the cloak, you are surprised by the loud thump that it makes. Blindly pawing your way through the thick canvas, you are surprised when you find the flask of the leftover purified water. You could have sworn you left this with the cask of water you cleansed, but it is just as well that you have it with you, because you know a really neat trick. It is a neat enough trick in fact, that you cannot believe you did not think to take the water with you. Well, here is hoping it was the first and the last mistake of the night.

Back to getting changed. You pull off your boots and socks, and then pull down your breeches. You do not like it one bit, but since your flowering, your height and your bust have grown the point where you cannot reliably pass yourself off as a boy. You know there are ways to bind breasts, and if you were able to figure out how to do it, you might be able to pass yourself off as a tall-but-effeminate man, but until you do, you are going to have to wear a dress in public, when not in the Spotted Cloak. Cross dressing is considered both venereal and contrary, held to almost be as bad as homosexuality. A Leper lass might get away with it, as it is assumed her soul has already been doubly compromised and it is hard to tell the men from the women at a glace when everyone is dressed up in the Spotted Cloaks, but a young woman would never be able to walk down the streets in man’s clothes without being harassed, arrested or worse.

>>4942820
Your pocket-jerkin and your shirt have to come off too, though once you get the skirt on, you will flip the jerkin inside out, so none of the pockets are showing, and put it back on. As you finish stripping down, and really get a feel for the moisture in the air and on the stones under your feet, you cannot help but feel ridiculous. Despite your commanding height, your build is still that of a woman. A very fit, capable woman, who happens to be six feet, four inches, but the build of a woman none the less. The muscles that you have are lean – tight, but lean. Your body seems much more preoccupied with growing curves than growing strength, and you will be the first to admit that it frustrates you. You think of the two stilettoes in your boots, by your side, and you wonder how you would fare in a fight, even with the advantage of surprise.

You shake your head, and as you dress in the dress, you push such thoughts aside. Whatever you do here tonight, and the next two nights, you have no choice but to do well, to succeed at – to win. There simply are not any other options. Leaving behind everything that would identify you as a Leper in the darkness, on the ground, in this basement, you pass into the next one after checking to make sure it is clear. You make another check as you climb up the bulkhead steps. Once satisfied that no one is there to see you, you quietly open up the bulkhead, and enter a gloomy back alley, which you follow out to the Upper Boardwalk. To your left is the palisade of the Midden. Ahead of you is the sprawl of Stickport. And to your right, is the rest of the Mount, overlooking the straight. You turn to your right, and make your way over to Cleanport. You make good time, only passing a few people. Their stares were beginning to fray your nerves a bit, so you pulled up the hood you had stitched on to this dress. The yellowing canvas of the hood and the lining of the pocket-jerkin does not pair well with the stained and patched gray wool of the dress. But you find comfort in the slight cover of the hood, and it makes the time it takes you to over to Cleanport and the Chirurgeon’s Guild Hall all the more bearable. Once you get to the side street where the hall is located though, you witness something unexpected. Given the lateness of the hour, you had expected to find the place locked up for the night, but it seems that the lights inside are still on, and even now, as you stand here, you can see a pair of men entering through the main door.

>>4942821
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>It was already going to be difficult enough getting through watchmen and whatever other security they had, but having the hall crawling with healers will make it too difficult. At least for tonight. Come up with something else.
>While the place being lousy with healers might make this trickier and more dangerous, it seems to you that with (presumably) so many guild members present, it is more likely that there actually are talents to steal in there now. Get going!

>>4942823
>>It was already going to be difficult enough getting through watchmen and whatever other security they had, but having the hall crawling with healers will make it too difficult. At least for tonight. Come up with something else.

I vote we lay low and observe for a while before making a decision one way or another.

>>4942823
>>It was already going to be difficult enough getting through watchmen and whatever other security they had, but having the hall crawling with healers will make it too difficult. At least for tonight. Come up with something else.

Looks like we are going to try something else after all.

A few minutes, and I will get up another post.

This ... this was not expected. Or welcome. While by your estimation, the presence of more guild members in a guild hall increases the likelihood that there are talents in the building to steal, it also means that it is going to be significantly more difficult to get those talents. Standing down the street from the place, you can feel your resolve to break-in falter, and falter hard. The level of danger present here, paired with the uncertainty that there even is anything to steal inside - it is a consummate non-starter. You might be willing to accept the level of risk here, if you were certain that there was going to be money in it for you. But this is a guild hall, not a bank. Even if you think it is more likely that there is money present right now because of all of the members inside, that does not make it a guarantee. And to take such risks, when there is no guarantee that there is a single eighth-talent in the entire building - it just seems heedless and unsound.

Perhaps you could just wait a little bit, and see if the healers start to come out? No, no you do not like that idea either. There is only so much time, and no doubt there are better opportunities elsewhere.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Try another one of the Guilds.
>Reconsider looking into one of the ships in Cleanport.
>Reconsider searching for a theatre with a premier over the weekend.
>Reconsider tracking down the Plucky Poulaines and trying your luck.

>>4943243
>Reconsider looking into one of the ships in Cleanport.
I liked the ship idea to begin with. I bet we're not an awesome swimmer. Also if we come across any fancy folk walking solo we can just rob they ass.

>>4943560
*an awesome swimmer

>>4943243
>>Reconsider looking into one of the ships in Cleanport.

>>4943653
>>4943560
Alright, consider this one closed. I'll get to writing immediately.

You spend another minute looking at the Chirurgeon’s Guild Hall, but if anything, the place seems to be getting more active as you watch, not less. When another few men – members of the guild, you presume – show up at the front door and are let in, your mind is made up. The building is simply too busy for an admitted novice like you to risk, without any definitive promise of talents. Your mind is made up; you will not attempt this jack, not tonight at least. So, now what? Hmm … as you are already in Cleanport, why not take a look at some ships? At the very least, there has to be money on a merchantman, right. Permitting yourself one last look, you turn on your heel and head to the wharves, idling wondering why the hall was buzzing like a beehive this late at night.

Your long legs and their long strides mean that you make excellent time, and in less than a minute, you are at the waterfront. The wharves in the Cleanport are properly lit, unlike those in Stickport, so here and there you can see the odd man-along-the-shore still at work, loading and unloading ships determined to leave on the next tide out, but for the most part, the waterfront sleeps. Giving you the feeling of being a fox in a henhouse. The only question is … which hen? You are not completely unfamiliar with ships, as you came over to the Principalities on one, but beyond what is common knowledge about them, you are unfortunately ignorant. While there is no doubt in your mind that all of the ships have valuables aboard, you are not sure which ones are the most likely to have the talents that you are looking for.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Look for the biggest merchantman that you can find. It stands to reason that the bigger the ship, the wealthier the operator, and the wealthier the operator, the more talents on board, right?
>Look for a smaller sloop, something that belongs to smugglers. It stands to reason that those operating outside of the law cannot rely on banks, so they must keep their wealth with them, right?
>Look for a foreign merchantman, newly arrived in port. It stands to reason that a foreign vessel would not have accounts with banks in the Principality, and that if they wanted to buy anything here, they would need to have talents on hand.

>>4943869
>Look for a foreign merchantman, newly arrived in port. It stands to reason that a foreign vessel would not have accounts with banks in the Principality, and that if they wanted to buy anything here, they would need to have talents on hand.

Robbing foreigners is an old recipe for success

>>4943869
>>Look for a foreign merchantman, newly arrived in port. It stands to reason that a foreign vessel would not have accounts with banks in the Principality, and that if they wanted to buy anything here, they would need to have talents on hand.

>>4944033
>>4943890
Closed and writing.

You prowl along the waterfront, avoiding the islands of light from the flickering lamps. Cleanport stretches on for quite a while, so you have time to mull over what manner of ‘hen’ you are hunting for tonight. Further away from the Promontory, more and more foreign ships are interspersed in the berths, many of which under queer flags that you do not recognize, and you find yourself thinking that almost paradoxically, a foreign vessel would be your best bet to find your countries coins. That idea grabs hold you, and the foreign ships that you pass now are looking more inviting, even as their designs become queerer and queerer. As you continue your weaving walk outside of the light, you find your mind wandering a bit, wondering just how far some of these vessels have traveled, just to get here.

But your walking and your wondering are both abruptly halted when you see a handsomely built ship, flying a Tartessian Starburst – one of the few foreign flags that you can actually identify. Fortuitously, there is a wheel-crane parked on the wharf that it is berthed at, comfortably out of the light from the lamps. You move on over to it, and after checking and double checking that between the darkness and the presence of the other ships, you are being adequately screened from sight. Once you are satisfied that you will be safe in doing so, you scramble up over the wheel, careful not to accidentally kick-shift the mechanism into operation, and then you climb up to the tip of the crane’s boom, to give yourself the best possible vantage point of the ship.

There is no movement beside the shifting of the ship itself, no sounds beside the lapping of water and the creaking of wood. You assume that nearly all of the crew are taking advantage of shore leave, but that does not mean the ship is completely abandoned. No doubt the captain and the officers of the ship, and perhaps some of the most critical crew members are still on board, to ensure that nothing happens to the ship – and that nothing happens to them. But even with the presume presence of the ship’s officers, you still feel much, much better about the prospect of robbing this ship then you did about the Chirurgeon’s Guild. So … if there are any monies on board, then they would be in the captain’s quarters, right?

>>4944866
With your basic knowledge of ships, you know that the captain’s quarters are typically located towards the rear of the ship – the stern – and this ship seems to have a small balcony on its stern, sitting above its rudder, so if you had to guess, that was where the captain would be, and the captain would be with the strongbox. Now, to most thieves, a strongbox would be a serious problem – but you are not most thieves. You have three glyphs; Strange-Stain, Hide-Eyes which you use to hide the Strangeness of your true blank eyes, and to pass yourself of as a diseased Leper, and Cold-Touch.

Cold-Touch allows you to freeze about half a liter worth of water (or any liquid with a similar freezing point) for about twenty seconds, so long as you are touching some of that water. Father has been experimenting heavily with freezing magic for all of your fifteen years. As he is interested in creating highly advanced flesh-based constructs, magic that allowed him to preserve flesh is invaluable to his work. Obviously, freezing something for only twenty seconds was not particularly useful in preservation. Or in much else, honestly. Apparently, the glyph was developed to be ‘parlor magic’ – an entire informal school magic that was very easy to learn, flashy by nature, would cause little strain and provide no value; the explicitly stated purpose of this magical ‘school’ was simply to impress and entertain friends, dinner guests and wide-eyed serving girls. Father found a way to make it useful though, by developing a casting technique for the Cold-Touch glyph that he called “the Ice Lockpick”.

The cast works like this; you dip your little finger in water, stick as much of it into whatever lock you want to open as you can (even just a bit of the tip can be enough, the more in the lock, the better), then you active the Cold-Touch glyph. The water on your finger freezes, and you pour more water over your finger into the lock. The water freezes into the tumbler channels of the lock, forcing the mechanism into the proper position, as if the key was actually in it. Then you turn your finger as if it was the key, continuing to pour water on it as you do so, to ensure that you do not snap any of the teeth of the ice-key off in the lock. It is not flawless – if the lock is too small, exceptionally rusty, or exceptionally stiff, the technique might not work. Worse than that, it does produce Strangeness, both in the water that you use and in the lock that you open, which are both fairly difficult to deal with. But father insists that the trick has been able to defeat almost ever lock he has tried to pick since he developed the technique, and the five times you experimented with it, you were able to get it to work three of them. And you are certain you can do better with more practice.

>>4944867
You check to make sure you still have your flask of water with you, and when you find it still secure on your belt, you allow yourself a smug little smile. Ready to go, you dismount the crane, and head towards the mooring lines. For an experienced climber like yourself, it is not even a challenge to get to the balcony of the presumed captain’s cabin – though on reflection, returning to the wharf like this, hanging under the rope, hopefully with pounds upon pounds of talents – that might be a challenge. But right now, all you need to worry about is getting those pounds upon pounds of talents. It takes half a minute, maybe less for you to reach the other end of the mooring line, and once you reach the ship, hanging from the gunwales you make you way over to the balcony, moving along until you are just above the railing of the balcony. You feel a bit awkward, legs dangling – in a skirt, no less – but as you focus on the task at hand, the embarrassment you feel fades away.

After positioning yourself, you shift your weight from hanging by your hands the gunwale to balancing on your feet on top of the balcony’s banister. Once you have a feel for the motion of the ship, you let go of the gunwale, and then quietly as you can slide to the bottom. There is a fairly impressive sixteen-paned door, flanked by some matching sixteen-paned windows. The door does not have a lock, but it is barred from the inside. It is unfortunate, but it is not that bad – you can see through the leaded glass panes of the door that the bar is just wood, and that it is not even an inch thick. You are puzzled by the for a moment, but then you realize they went with such a thin bar, because anything thicker or not in wood inevitably would have ruined the look of door. Suppressing laughter, you evaluate your options here. Looking at it, you can see that you could slip one of your stilettoes through the door and saw your way through, though that is not without risks and will inevitably take quite a bit of time. Alternatively, you could get on the ship properly, and find another way into the captain’s quarters. Assuming everything goes well, it will be a lot quicker – but it will be harder to escape if you are discovered on the ship.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Remain on the balcony and saw your way through the wooden bar.
>Sneak on the ship and find another way into the presumed captain’s cabin.

Sorry this one took so long to get up. Also, 'sixteened-paned doors' is this world's version of French doors.

>>4944870
>>Sneak on the ship and find another way into the presumed captain’s cabin.

If it's such a puny bar, is brute force an option? A little noisy but much quicker.

>>4944870

Can we see anything else through the door or windows, like the location of the Captain's desk/bed, cabinets, funny looking rugs concealing trapdoors?

I just want to gather as much info as possible while fully undetected, so we can grab and go once we're in.

>Remain on the balcony and saw your way through the wooden bar.

Chip a stiletto against something hard to give us a more saw-like blade. Even one chip will dramatically improve the sawing.

>>4944984
Yes, I suppose it is - but kicking the door in would likely wake up the captain. We would roll for that, and I'd probably have to set a pretty high value.

>>4945026
Well, there are no rugs, and you can see no trapdoors. There are some cabinets as well, but they appear to be filled maps and navigational equipment. You can already see the captain's bed from where you are. As for the chipping the blade, assuming the 'saw through the bar' choice wins the vote, we can do that to hurry things along.

So, as usual, we have a three way tie. I will leave this up a little longer. If you are reading this and have not voted in >>4944870, please do!

>>4944984
Changing to
>>4945026

>>4945147
Alright, that's what we will be doing. I'll get to writing.

Deciding to saw your way through the woefully inadequate wooden bar, you reach into your boots and pull out both of your stilettoes, hold one in each hand and consider which one would be the best for this job. Obviously, a stiletto is not a saw … but if you were to deliberately make a chip in one of the blades, then you might have an easier time working your way through the bar. The stiletto you have in your right hand is much more ornate then the one you have in your left, and it has the notch in lieu of a guard on the hilt unlike the other one, though going by just the blades, the one in your left hand looks superior. After a moment of consideration, you decide that your best bet is to chip the plainer stiletto you have in your left hand, and the nicer looking one in good condition, so you could sell it, if you absolutely needed to. You return that stiletto to your right boot, and then spend the next minute trying to quietly chip the blade of the other stiletto. When you are finally satisfied with the chip that you got, you walk up to the door, slip the blade between the paired doors, and you begin chewing away at the bar.

While you do not make “quick” work of it by any stretch of the imagination, it is quite plain that the chip in the blade significantly is significantly speeding up the process. With any luck, you will be able to properly repair – or if necessary, replace – this blade before the chip can become a serious problem. As you draw towards the bottom of the bar, the blade becomes harder and harder to move. Normally, at this point, you would simply snap it, but considering that you are trying to keep quiet here, that is not an option. By your guess, it is another minute and a half before you have managed to get completely though. You withdraw the blade from between the doors, pass it to your off hand, and spend the next five seconds or so flexing your fingers. Now, all that remains is to open the door – which is not necessarily going to be easy. Just because the bar has been cut through, that does not mean that it is not longer a problem. The bar could still somehow jam the door, or one of both halves of it could fall out of its brackets and clatter on the floor. So, you take your time, and ease just one of the doors open, keeping your eyes glued to the remains of the bar.

Your heart is in your throat the entire time, but you manage to open the door without any further issues. And just like that, you are inside what can only be the captain’s cabin. There is a large square table straight ahead of you, surrounded by chairs and covered in nautical maps that are written in a language that you cannot read. To your right, is a what passes for a large bed aboard a ship, complete with a softly snoring occupant. There are cabinets, along the walls, that seem to be filled with more maps, navigational equipment, and … looks like medicine, personal effects, sundries, things like that.

>>4945323
Besides that, there is a wardrobe, wall mounted weapon racks, a few secured sea chests, a decently sized cask … and a massive steel strong box, bolted to the floor and the wall of the ship. It is big enough that it looks like the ship had to be reinforced around it.

But just as you are about to skip over to it, the good luck you have been having here peters out. There is no keyhole! You can see the handle to open it, but you cannot see the fraying keyhole! Glancing over your shoulder to check that captain is still sleep, you quietly stalk over to the box, and look it all over, hoping that you somehow overlooked it. You did not. There is no keyhole on this strong box, only a series of strange, concentric … dials, you think they are called? As Strange-Staining has not activated, you know that this is almost certainly a non-magical object. So, from what you know from your limited knowledge of the instrumental sciences and strongboxes, you can deduce that because the dials are close to the handle that opens the box, the dials must be what opens the box. Does that mean the dials are some sort of … integrated key?

If it is, then maybe you could try Cold-Touch … what are you saying? You have never seen anything like this before. If you could take your time, experiment, sure, perhaps. But you are under the gun here. You do not have enough time to puzzle this out, which means that you need to convince someone else to open it instead. And thankfully, you do have two ideas – two absolutely insane ideas.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Ask the captain to do it for you. Put a blade at his throat, show him your blank, Strange eyes, and lay your hands on him while you have Cold-Touch active. As he does not know that is the extent of your powers, with any luck he will think a powerful Witch has come to rob him, not some desperate Witchlet who barely knows any spells. If you go this route, you may have to hurt or kill the captain – and if you do not kill him, then you have been seen.
>Set the ship on fire. Logically, if the ship was on fire and at risk of sinking, then at some point, the captain would surely try to move the money off of the ship. So long as you are lying in wait inside the cabin when the strongbox opens, you will have your chance. If you go this route, there is a chance that you do not need to hurt or kill the captain, and that you can remain unseen. However, this is not guaranteed, and obviously, fire is a fickle, fickle thing.

>>4945326

>Set the ship on fire. Logically, if the ship was on fire and at risk of sinking, then at some point, the captain would surely try to move the money off of the ship. So long as you are lying in wait inside the cabin when the strongbox opens, you will have your chance. If you go this route, there is a chance that you do not need to hurt or kill the captain, and that you can remain unseen. However, this is not guaranteed, and obviously, fire is a fickle, fickle thing.

>>4945326
>Ask the captain to do it for you. Put a blade at his throat, show him your blank, Strange eyes, and lay your hands on him while you have Cold-Touch active. As he does not know that is the extent of your powers, with any luck he will think a powerful Witch has come to rob him, not some desperate Witchlet who barely knows any spells. If you go this route, you may have to hurt or kill the captain – and if you do not kill him, then you have been seen.
setting the ship on fire is certainly not the more "humane" choice, someone is bound to get it. I would however prefer to just put a knife to his throat and save the strange shenanigans, they will bring too much heat.

>>4945384
>>4945337
Considering that is a pretty important vote, I'm going to wait for a tiebreaker. Hopefully, we get a third vote in here sooner rather than later, I would like to try to squeeze out another update.

>>4945326
>Ask the captain to do it for you. Put a blade at his throat, show him your blank, Strange eyes, and lay your hands on him while you have Cold-Touch active. As he does not know that is the extent of your powers, with any luck he will think a powerful Witch has come to rob him, not some desperate Witchlet who barely knows any spells. If you go this route, you may have to hurt or kill the captain – and if you do not kill him, then you have been seen.

I would suggest "borrowing" something off the weapon rack to keep with us as well and at east hiding the rest, especially considering we don't have anything better than knives at the moment, we can always ditch it overboard as we leave if we feel we can't take it with us too.

>>4945337
>>4945384
>>4946236

Alright. We will not being setting the ship on fire, we will not be using Strangeness and we will be grabbing something more impressive from the weapon racks to intimidate him with. Happy rolling!

>DC 41: Anything lower is a failure.

>No Passes: Despite the weapon at his throat, he tries to raise the hue and cry.
>One Pass: Even though you are at his throat, he does not move from the bed.
>Two Passes: He does get out of bed, quietly, and though he is scared, he is also alert.
>Three Passes: He gets out of bed, whimpering in his foreign tongue.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2), then you automatically fail this test, and several of the ship's officer's burst into the room before you can do anything else.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99), then you automatically pass this test, and he has some rings on his nightstand that you take for yourself.
>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.
>If you have already rolled once, after ten minutes you may roll again.

Rolled 16 (1d100)

>>4946554

Rolled 38 (1d100)

>>4946563
YOU FUCKING IDIOT WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO ROLL YOU FUCKING CRETIN WHY WHY WHY

>>4946554
rollard

>>4946565
>>4946563
If either of you are still here and brave enough, you may roll again. Do not worry that much, even if you fail this third roll, and he tries to call out for help, you still have a chance to fix this quietly, so long as you do not roll a 1 or a 2.

Rolled 83 (1d100)

>>4946554

>>4946598
ty 4 not being an unlucky bastard like me and >>4946563

File: Borrowed Smallsword.jpg (33 KB, 1600x663)

33 KB JPG

Those dial-things have figuratively and physically stopped you in your tracks – after moving over to the strongbox to investigate them, you have not moved, beyond, of course, rocking along with the ship. You know that you are not going to be able to open this box, and you know that you are going to have to either convince or trick the captain to do so. If you tricked him, by lighting the ship on fire, then there is a chance, admittedly a slim one, that you could pull off this heist completely unseen. But the fire – there is too much of a risk. To the crew as well as the captain (who you are well aware that you might have to kill regardless), but most importantly, yourself. For the fire trick to work, you would still have to be on the ship, to get to the strongbox when the captain opens it. There is a powder room somewhere aboard to supply the ship’s guns, and no doubt stocks of pitch and oils for illumination and maintenance. If either of those caught, your little trick could end up being the death of you. Which means –

You are going to have to get him to do it. This means, unless you are going to kill him, you are going to leave a witness. If there is a witness, then there is a chance that you get caught, and if you get caught … setting aside whatever the courts would rule, which can vary wildly, then you could be discovered as a Stranger, and mitigated. Which for a Witchlet such as yourself would be fatal. Can you leave a witness? Can you kill an innocent in cold blood? You do not know. Honestly, you do not know. But to get the money, he is going to have to be the one to open the box, which means … circles, you are thinking in circles. Focus! You need to scare him – and to that end, you should borrow a scarier weapon. You lurch over towards the weapon racks mounted on the wall, and in the gloom of the cabin, you examine the selection. There was one that caught you eye, a smallsword – you think it might be a bit longer than usual. The brass of the hilt was a bit dull, but beyond that, it seemed to be in flawless condition. You do not see a scabbard for it, which means that it was probably taken as a trophy.

With your better weapon selected, you fold and then pocket your chipped stiletto in your jerkin. Then you head over to the bed, it’s only occupant still softly snoring. The fifteen or so paces that it takes to get you to the bedside feel like the quickest you have ever taken in your life. You do not like this, you do not like any thing about this. But Sty the Leper is going to die in three days, if her father does not show up. If you do not want to die with her, then you must pay. Pay the price of being Chlotsuintha the Witchlet. Without you even realizing it, the borrowed smallsword is at his throat, and the captain begins to stir underneath it.

>>4946758
“You keep quiet. Everything will be fine if you keep your mouth shut.”

His eyes snap open and focus immediately on you. You can see him tense up and shift slightly under the sheets. There is confusion and fear in his eyes, as well as hint of anger.

“You are going to open the strongbox for me.”

The second you said ‘strongbox’, he noticeably tensed up a little bit more. Good – you were worried that he did not understand you. But when you order him out of the bed, he does not move. You repeat yourself, with just a little bit more volume. Still, he refuses to budge. You get the feeling that he is waiting for you to screw up, so he can try to overwhelm you. What do you do?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Try to pull him from the bed.
>Try to scare him using the smallsword.
>Try to scare him using Cold-Touch and your eyes.

>As I want to get at least one more update out tonight, voting will close at 7:15 pm EST. I will roll for a tiebreaker, if I need to.

>>4946763
>Try to scare him using the smallsword.
draw some blood to show were serious. Strange stuff should be a last resort because then we would have to end up killing him, and I really don't want to start the quest off by killing some merchant for coin.

>>4946763
>>Try to scare him using the smallsword.

>>4946763
>Try to scare him using the smallsword.

Alright. I will get to writing.

You are tempted to try to pull the reticent bastard out of bed, but to do that, you would need to bend over the bed a bit, which could give him a bit of an advantage if he decided to fight you after all. For a moment, you seriously consider scaring him using your magic and the threat of the Strangeness, but that does not seem like a good idea either. There is always going to be a tiny chance that you are somehow linked to the jack here, and while being pursued as a thief would be bad, being declared the target of a Hunt would almost certainly mean your death. With those option out, that leaves you just the smallsword to get him out of the bed. Conscious of your hand starting to tremble a bit, from the weight of the blade at extension, from the previous strain on your hands from sawing through the bar, and yes, from your increasingly fraying nerves, you do your best to steady yourself, hoping that the swaying of the blade can just be written off by the rocking of the ship. Once you have pulled yourself together enough, you pull back the blade, feeling the contours of the man’s throat push back against it as you do. The tip of the borrowed sword now lies right in the hollow of his throat, and as you rest it there, you notice that drawing the blade back did actually cut him. Well … it is probably for the best.

“I know you understand what I am saying. So, the last fraying time – you are going to open that strongbox for me, or I will make you gush like a tapped cask, you hear? ”

Perhaps it was you actually drawing blood, or it could have been the simile, but either way, the captain finally starts to silently comply with your commands. He tenses a bit more, shifts in the bed, then moves to get up, slowly and steadily, and even as you withdraw your blade a dozen or so hairsbreadths, you keep your eyes riveted on him – aware at all times of where his hands are, where he is in relation to the rest of the room. And at an absolutely glacial pace, you make your way to the strongbox. You are careful to deliberately position both him and you, with your back to the sixteen-paned doors, and him as far away from the weapon racks as he can be while still able to open that fraying steel box of his. He kneels in front of the thing, at an awkward angle, to accommodate the smallsword you have at his neck, and then starts spinning the smallest dial back and forth. After a couple of spins, there is an audible click, and he presses on it, until it is flush with the second of the three concentric dials. He repeats this process exactly for dials number two and three, except on the third dial, that one is pulled out instead. This time, there are a series of clicks, then a loud pinging – which in the near silence of the cabin sounds as loud and as fierce as ball of shot ricocheting off of metal plate.

>>4947947
By comparison, the actual opening of the box is whisper-quiet. Inside of the strongbox is a number of removable trays. From your current angle, you can see that while a number of them filled with papers, several clearly have some manner of gold and silver bullion in them, though you cannot tell at the moment if they are talents or foreign monies. You put the question to your captive.

“Are there talents, Imperial talents in there?”

He nods, and then hesitatingly removes one of the lower trays, one that you thought only had paper in it. The drawer does turn out to be mostly paper, but surprisingly, those papers are all written in Reichtongue, the Empire’s standard language. There are berthing slips, trade-licenses and records of payments and purchases from all over the Empire and the Principality mixed in there, as well as quite a few bundles of letters. The letters are surprising – citizens and subjects of the Empire that were inclined to keep up long distance correspondences would typically entrust their mail to an Imperial packet-ship, not some foreign merchant. For this ship to be carrying so much mail, the captain must be exceptionally well respected and connected in Imperial ports. Besides that, there are documents for bank accounts with one of the Empire’s larger banks … but thankfully, there were loose talents mixed in at the back of the drawer – and not just tiny silver four-talents, or the thicker and larger twenty-talents, but a few golden hundred-talents as well. You have done it! This is more than enough to buy what you need to escape the city and establish yourself somewhere safe. And if father does come back, then you know he’ll be so proud of you, finally pulling your weight. You smile at that particular thought, then when another thought takes you, you have to fight the urge to laugh. Earlier today – well, at this point, it would be yesterday – you were over the moon when you had forty eighth-talents. And now you have … well, a lot more than that, certainly. You can count it later.

But before you can count it, before you can even take it, you should decide what you are going to do with the captain. You do not want to kill a respectable, innocent man like him – not in the slightest. It is just not in your nature. Now, if he had tried to attack you after you woke him up, tried to pull a hidden weapon from the strongbox while you were distracted, or even tried to call for help, then maybe, in the heat of the moment, you could have killed him. But this is different. This is completely different.

>>4947951
This is killing an unarmed, kneeling man in his sleeping shift. Of course, this is not to say that he does not pose a threat to you – while you are certain that he did not see your blank eyes, as if he did, he almost certainly would have started panicking, he has been looking at you this entire time. He might be able to give a half-decent description … and of course, as you are wearing a skirt, no doubt that the Thief-Taker Guild will go looking for a woman. And how many six foot, four inch women are living in the Mount?

If you are leaving the Mount, it will probably take more than three days for them to think to check the Midden, but if father does come back to you, and you end up staying here in the city, then that could be a real problem. Of course, the Thief-Takers do not have anything approaching the authority or privileges that the Inquisitors do. They need to prove to a legal authority that the people they are turning in are the guilty parties, unlike the Inquisitors, they must abide by the rules and restrictions placed on them by local authorities – and only in very rare circumstances are they allowed to kill on sight. Furthermore, many of them are susceptible to bribery, and they almost always work alone or in pairs, as opposed to the Inquisitors and Cleansers, who will send at least eighty men to destroy a Witch. If the Thief-Takers were looking for you, it would be a complication, but as long as you were not caught with these talents, and you did not confess to anything, then they are powerless, even if they do track you down.

So, can you accept those risks? Or … are you going to … refuse those risks?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Accept the risks.
>Kill the captain.

>>4947955
>Accept the risks
force him to jump ship though, to cover our retreat.

>>4947955
>>Accept the risks.

>>4948018
Do you mean take him off the ship, and then release him elsewhere, or force him to jump into the harbor?

>>4947955
>Kill the captain.

It ain't fun.

>>4947955
>Accept the risks.

I just caught up. Interesting setting and premise, QM.

>>4947955
>Accept the risks.
We aren't a monster at least not yet. We should still bind and gag him though

>>4948025
I mean let him jump into the harbor. Alternatively tie and gag but that sounds harder. I guess he's a good swimmer, he can jump.

>>4948417
He can still raise quite a ruckus in the water

>>4948511
Yeah. Just gut him like a fish, IMO.

It's not like we're calm right now; our blood's pumping. It's the right choice and I can see even a kind person making such a rash decision considering the circumstances.

>>4948514
>Just gut him like a fish,
Even if we do go for ruthlessness this is a bad idea if we're going for quiet, stabbed people make a LOT of noise unless you manage to fully take out the throat on the first hit

With 5 votes in, accepting the risks has a commanding lead. There does seem to be some disagreement over what exactly to with him, so I'll put it to a secondary vote.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Try to tie him up. [Requires Rolling] The better you roll, the longer you keep him quiet.
>Make him walk the plank. Him failing in the water will make a great deal of noise.
>Take him off the ship, and release him later. [Requires Rolling]

>>4948523
We have a bleeding knife against his throat. He's toast. If he's thrown into the water, he's going to scream like hell, alarm everyone, and then be able to provide a fucking witness statement about that absolutely MASSIVE teenage girl who tried to rob him.

>Verification not required.

Rolled 88 (1d100)

>>4948526
>Try to tie him up. [Requires Rolling] The better you roll, the longer you keep him quiet.

>>4948526

>Try to tie him up. [Requires Rolling] The better you roll, the longer you keep him quiet.

Happy with the way votes have gone while I was away.

>>4948526
>Make him walk the plank. Him failing in the water will make a great deal of noise.

Alright, with four votes in; two for tying him up, one for walking the plank, and one vote of ... would it be consider an official abstention or a vote of no confidence? Anyway, we are going to do our best to tie up this guy. Considering we have never done something like this before, it is going to be difficult (though taking him off of the ship would actually have been harder) I have limited time to write tonight, so if you have rolled, wait fifteen minutes, and if more rolls are needed, please roll again, because I want to maintain at least one post a day. Oh, and I forgot to say to >>4948188, thanks, and welcome aboard.

>DC 38: Anything lower is a failure.

>No Passes: He gets loose as you are tying him up, forcing you to make a difficult decision.
>One Pass: He gets loose while you are in the middle of the robbing the strongbox, forcing you to make a difficult decision.
>Two Passes: He gets loose while you are leaving the ship, complicating your escape.
>Three Passes: He gets loose long after you are left, ensuring a safe and smooth escape.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2), then you automatically fail this test, and he manages to get his hands on a weapon.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99), then you automatically pass this test, and you find a valuable bauble.
>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.

Rolled 96 (1d100)

>>4948931
Good luck, anons.

Rolled 62 (1d100)

>>4948931

Rolled 61 (1d100)

>>4948931
Second roll, gotta head out for second covid shot now.

>>4948961
>>4948982
>>4948987
Good work lads. maybe the solution wasn't murder after all

Good rolling everyone- I will ger to writing!

Things are desperate, but … they are not that desperate. Whatever threat the Thief-Taker’s Guild poses to you, it is nothing compared to the danger of the Inquisition and their Great Hunt. So as long as you keep playing it smart, and your luck continues to hold, you should be able to keep on surviving – without marring your immortal soul with tears and rents. But you are not inviolate, not by any stretch. Some sins are no more than thoughts, such as seriously considering killing a man for personal gain. There are extenuating circumstances, of course – but when you die, you are the one being judged, not your circumstances. As hard as it may be to live in at times, the world is just as the Patternmaker wishes; an unending series of trials and challenges. All of that being said … while there are sins that are held to be irredeemable, murder is not one of them. With enough penance and good works, it can be overlooked – though as that penance would involve submission to worldly authorities for your crimes, you would have to rely on good works alone to get back into the good graces of your Maker.

You look at the captain, still kneeling by the strongbox, still with your sword at his throat. Fearing that you were going to kill him, you were consciously trying to avoid looking at his face, focusing on his body and your sword at his neck. In retrospect, probably not the best idea, but if you did kill him, you did not want him haunting you, after all. But now that you have decided to accept the risks, and let him live, you allow yourself to look him in the eye. He’s young for a captain, perhaps in his thirties. Mousy brown hair, a long, thin face with high cheekbones and uncommonly sharp features – unusual looking, but not unattractive. He is not trembling in fearing, but by the same talent, he has not committed any rash acts of heroism either. He seems the cautious type, which explains this puzzle strongbox … but it does not explain the puny bar of the balcony doors. Maybe he does not own the ship, and was forbidden from making alterations like that? Seems silly, but it is the only thing that you can think of that makes sense. Whatever, it is time to tie him up. Without any rope on hand, you will have to improvise by using his bedding for binds. You draw your chipped stiletto in your off hand, and wordlessly march him back over to his bed. You tie his feet together, then his hands, then have lay down on the bed – after switching out the sword at his throat with your stiletto – and bind his feet to his hands, and then his neck to the frame of the bed. Finally comfortable that he is secured, you remove the stiletto from his throat and gag him. You contemplated covering his head with one of his pillowcases, but instead you decided to put one inside the other, and use it as a bag for your loot.

>>4949221
The actual stealing part of this robbery is the easiest bit. It takes less than a minute to clean the bullion out of the strongbox into your inside out pocket-jerkin and your improvised bag, even with you stopping every few seconds to check to see that the captain is still restrained. In the end, you even feeling comfortable enough that you decide to take the smallsword with you – though of course, at the first sign of trouble, you are going dump it. On the way out to the balcony, you notice a silver snuff box sitting on the seat of a chair around the center table, and on an impulse, you decide to steal it as well. As you reach the balcony, you look back one last time. The captain has started to struggle a bit at his binds, but it looks like they are going to hold. You feel the urge to say something to him, to apologize for this … but after thinking about it for a moment as you savor the sea breeze, you decide against it.

Getting off the ship is slightly more involved than getting on, largely because you are encumbered with quite a bit of weight. But you are an excellent climber, and as you can set your own pace as you are not being chased or pursued by anyone, you manage without any difficulty, and soon the ship is disappearing behind you as you make your way out of Cleanport. You are not completely in the clear, though – you are a preposterously tall woman with a sword at her hip and pillowcase full of coins – even the most naïve would peg you as a thief, and some civilian might raise the hue and cry if they saw you, or at least report you later at their convenience. So you stay as far away from the main streets, sticking to the alleys wherever possible. And it is in one of these alleys that you escape back to the Midden is derailed, when unexpectedly, your eyes get blurry and your Strange-Stain glyph activates.

The scene in front of you was not just some incidental contamination from an unstably Strange object or being, this was clearly discharge from a spell.
Thankfully, it does not appear to be unstable or capable of spreading, but this is a lot of Strangeness – and as there are no telltale signs of natural dissipation, you can comfortably say that the spell here was cast as recently as a week ago . This portion of the alley, smothered in the shifting stains looks like the belfry would after father had been practicing his craft. He would mitigate the Strangeness of course, and by the time he was done, the place would be as mundane as lead. In the middle of the contaminated portion of the alley, there is a small rear window on one of the buildings, that conspicuously does not have any stains, which means that either the window was replaced since the spell was cast, which was possible … or that the whoever cast the spell was in the building, casting it into the alley. It is also possible that the window was open during the casting, but you cannot know that without looking for contamination inside the building.

>>4949228
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>This is clearly the work of a Witch. Father is a Witch. Maybe you can find him, find him and help him, if you take the time to investigate this? Him being late mean that he is almost certainly in serious trouble. You do not know what exactly you could for him, but … this could end up being the last chance you ever get to reunite with him.
>While you do not know about any other Witches (besides your father) in the Mount, that does not mean they do not exist. And even if this was father – he is supposed to come to you, not the other way around. Just … forget you saw this.

>>4949228
>Write-in: Take note of this location to come back to later when we are not laden with the funds we desperately need to conduct our escape.

If there is a chance that we can find someone that knows our father or that participated in his escapades then it is worth while to pursue this lead. Just...later.

>>4949480
I'll accept this write in, but be warned your timetable is already really tight. 'Later' might come at the expense of something else.

>>4949680
When I say later, I don't mean later tonight. I mean another day. Just to be clear.

>>4949480
>>4949680
>>4949731
Could we stash our stolen goods in the tunnel and then come back to examine the area?

>>4949480
+1

>>4949782
I'm fine with this too. If other anons are also okay with it than this seems like a good compromise.

>>4949782
We can go with this, but be warned, you do not have infinte time. With all the time you took to get out of the Midden, get to the guild, then get to the wharves to find this ship, you have less than three hours until your shift starts.

If you want to go with this, instead of the provided votes, or the other write-in, respond to this post.

>>4949811
As long as we don't take too long here, or rest /stay inside through the next curfew to recover / prepare / sleep we should be fine.

I'm also going to assume that we don't have more than a few days after the priest gets told for a hunt to be established, if we're lucky we can scope out the rented out room for activity while we're at out shift(s) so we can figure out how long we have, as well.

>>4949480
+1

>>4949811
Do we have all the requisite funds we need to make our escape? I can't imagine we need more if we have a bunch of gold coins and bullion. If so then we shouldn't need to do any more stealing and all we need to do is pay for the transportation of our magic stuff and maybe buy some useful tools and supplies for the road.

>>4949812
As far as the prospect of a Hunt forming, it is not guaranteed. It depends on if that Animal Control Leper decides to tell one of the priests, and that priest decides to pass it along. That said, for a port city the size of the Mount, there are about a score of Inquisitors and Cleansers here on assignment, watching for any signs of the Strangeness. So there is no 'travel time' to account for. Now, when moving against a Witch, they would wait until they assembled a Hunt, but at this point, they are just working on environmental contamination - they will not just sit around and wait while the Strangeness spreads. They will get to work, immediately.

>>4949815
Money is no longer an object, but unfortunately, there is one thing that you need that you cannot buy, not on such short notice - Flameless Lifting Oil. It is difficult to manufacture, so difficult, in fact that it is only made to order. You will have to break into a refinery and steal some - more on that later, but the short version is that you are going to use it to get your father's equipment down from the Belfry in one piece. Besides that, you are absolutely correct.

Anyway, I'm seeing general support for the stashing, so I am going to go ahead and consider this closed. I am not ready to write quite yet, but I am tentatively expecting to get two posts up today.

>>4949832
I think "make a mental note and move on" is still one vote ahead actually.

To say that this is ‘serious’ would be an understatement, a comical understatement. Someone has been casting magic, practically in the open, and not mitigating the mess they made. It is a sure sign of either incredible carelessness, or incredible desperation. Father is many things, but he is nothing if not cautious. If this was him, then he was desperate. Was he attacked? Well, actually, if your suspicions about the window pan out, then this would make more sense as an ambush. An ambush that he did not, or could not clean up after. Presumably planned and executed on the spot. Was he chased here? Did he manage to get ‘the drop’ on someone?

While it is not outside the realm of reason to assume that this was father’s work, a good Witchlet never jumps to conclusions. Made prematurely, they can be dangerous, sometimes even lethal, when dealing with unknown magic – or Inquisitors, for that matter. If father were here, he would tell you as much. Come to think of it, if he were here, he would probably throw a fit over you so much as thinking of looking for him. If he wanted you to know where he was, or wanted what little help you could offer him, he would have either told you where he was going to be, or brought you with him in the first place. But you cannot bring yourself to abandon a potential lead like this, knowing full well that this could be the last chance you ever get to reunite with him. And as he never explicitly said not to come looking for him, mad as he might get, he would not punish you for this. He was good like that – so long as you tried your best to follow his instructions, both as his apprenticed Witchlet and his daughter, there were no sharp lessons, except in cases where you did something that risked your life or your cover. And even if this did qualify as one (or both) of those exceptions, between potentially never seeing him again and potentially upsetting him, the choice here is obvious.

>>4950200
Anyway, as you were getting at, there is no reason to assume that this has to have been your father. He is probably not the only magic user besides yourself in the Mount – in fact, you are almost certain there is another; the mysterious University student who rented and presumably contaminated those rooms on the third floor of that house with the Strangeness, along with the Hook Gulls. But, depending on what clues are inside the building – which appears to be a relatively unremarkable residence, you might be able to tell if your father was the one that cast the spell. Possibly, it would depend on the actual spell, of course, and what if anything was left behind, but … you just want to know that your father is safe. That … nothing has happened. Even if you still have to separate, you just need to know.

There is part of you that wants to break into the place right now, but as it is, you are already seriously encumbered by swag and sword. You will be better served if you drop your ill-gotten gains off, then return here some time later. You make note of house’s location, and then you backtrack a bit to take a slightly different route, bypassing the Strangeness in the alley - on the off chance that it is actually capable of spreading. After the detour, you continue on your way out of Cleanport and into Stickport. It is not going to be much, but you want to get some sleep. You have a full day’s work ahead of you, including an internment, then after that, you are going to have to somehow find some flameless lifting oil, which probably means you are going to spend the tomorrow night – tonight, actually – breaking into refineries, looking for it. Using it is the only way to get father’s benches out of the belfry without dismantling the equipment on them entirely. And as the equipment is precisely calibrated, you simply do not trust yourself with reassembling and recalibrating everything correctly. If done improperly, you could ruin the efficiency of the benches, damage them somehow, or even render them utterly and permanently inoperable. That had happened to father quite a few times when he was building and tuning the benches, forcing him to start over from scratch.

You are still in Cleanport and still thinking about those failed benches when you realize you can hear faint footfalls, behind you. Without looking back, you instinctively turn into side alley, as you hear those footsteps speeding up and drawing closer. But your heart drops into your stomach as you realize that this alley is a dead end, surrounded by buildings. What do you do?

>Please pick ONE of the following:
>Try to escape the dead end by climbing up onto one of the roofs.
>Try to escape the potential pursuer by hiding somewhere in the dead end.
>Try to escape the potential pursuer by relying on your long legs to outrun them.
>You have a sword, silly! Prepare to defend yourself.

>>4950204
>>Try to escape the dead end by climbing up onto one of the roofs.

>>4950204
>Try to escape the dead end by climbing up onto one of the roofs.

>>4950204

>Try to escape the dead end by climbing up onto one of the roofs.

Play to our strengths, I guess.

>>4950204
>Try to escape the dead end by climbing up onto one of the roofs.

wall spider mode engage!

This is pretty unanimous. When I get to my computer in a little bit, I will write up the next update.

Climb. Climb your way out of this. Even if it makes a scene, you will be able to get away from whoever is following you by getting onto the rooftops. You spare only a split second to look for the best possible route up the buildings, and to push back your hood enough to hold the smallsword in your teeth once again. It will be a bit harder to maneuver this with the sword than the return trip on the mooring line, but you are not about to abandon your best weapon while you are being pursued. Once your route is planned and your blade is secured as well as it is ever going to be under the circumstances, you begin your ascent. When you reach the eaves, you realize that you can no longer hear the footfalls of your pursuer. But when you take a moment to look over your shoulder as you haul yourself up to the safety of the roof, expecting … actually, you do not know what you were expecting. It certainly was not no one.

Squatting like a gargoyle, you fill your hand with the sword, and scan the dead-end alley underneath you, figuring that whoever was behind you is simply hiding right now. Well, if they are, they are doing an excellent job, because as far as you can tell, no one is in that alley. As you look for them, in the back of your mind, you are wondering who exactly they are. Now obviously, you look suspicious – and that is not even taking into account the concealing hood you wear, or the pillowcase of bullion and the sword you are carrying. And you think that it is notable that whoever was tailing you did not utter a single word. A guard would call out to you to stop – as would a concerned citizen. But someone that was trying to follow, or worse, ambush you would not. Now you are getting really worried. Perhaps your shy friend here was just some lowlife that saw the pillowcases and figured they would be able to overcome you easily enough. But what if someone was watching over the house where you had just encountered the Strangeness? What if that person was now following you?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>This is one of those problems that you should just run away from. If you can just lose your tail by the time you reach the Upper Boardwalk in Stickport, then you should be free and clear.
>This is one of those problems that you cannot just run away from. There is still time before you need to start your shift at the South Burying Ground. Making sure that you are not being followed is the best use of it.

>>4951016
>This is one of those problems that you should just run away from. If you can just lose your tail by the time you reach the Upper Boardwalk in Stickport, then you should be free and clear.

We're planning on leaving anyway, unless they value any of the stuff we can't get down from the belfry, or the books as long as we take the money with us to our shift(s) they can't actually stop us from leaving without confronting us.


Hurting someone here risks losing the head start we need to get stuff down from the belfry safely so jeopardizing that probably isn't a good idea, though we may well have just tipped them off to the fact that we can climb.

>>4951016
>>This is one of those problems that you should just run away from. If you can just lose your tail by the time you reach the Upper Boardwalk in Stickport, then you should be free and clear.

>>4951016
>This is one of those problems that you should just run away from. If you can just lose your tail by the time you reach the Upper Boardwalk in Stickport, then you should be free and clear.

>>4951247
>>4951058
>>4951049
Another unanimous vote. I will get to writing.

Well … wherever your new friend is at the moment, you are certain they are not on the rooftops with you. That is a positive development, at least. So is the fact that you are no longer cornered in that dead-end side alley. Looking around as you draw yourself up, the slate and shingle roofs of Cleanport stretch out in front of you, looking almost inviting in the pre-dawn darkness. It has been years since you have done any roof running, but you always enjoyed it as a child, especially the few special times that father went along with you. Roof running was fun, but roof tag was even better. It was good practice too – not just for climbing and running, but on how to move both quiet and quick, how to stay hidden from prying eyes, how to think on your feet and most importantly, how to take a fall properly, without getting seriously hurt. After taking one last look, to see if you can find whoever was after you, you head off … to nowhere in particular. The last thing you want to do is lead whoever was following you back to the bulkhead in the Upper Boardwalk of Stickport, so you take the time required to run around randomly, vaulting across alleys and weaving in between chimneys, until you are satisfied that any pursuit has been well and thoroughly foiled. Taking a break to catch your breath while you lean against an uncommonly tall cupola, you make the flustering observation that as you suck in air, your breasts are noticeably heaving, even under all of the weight of the fully loaded pocket-jerkin and the bulk of the dress. Frustrations about your femininity aside, one thing that you should spend some of your swag on is some new clothes. The only thing you really feel comfortable in is your Spotted Cloak, and if you are no longer going to be a Leper, then you probably should not even bring it with you, much less wear it. Of course, you probably are not going to be able to convince any tailors or seamstresses to make you breeches, and as you doubt that you will be able to find anything in your size second hand, that means more dresses … if you can even get one made in time.

Once you have caught your breath, and confirmed that the coast is clear, you get off of the rooftops and back on the ground. You are taking things a bit more cautiously than you were earlier, after you left the ship, and as such, you are taking a bit more time, but before long, you are easing yourself into the bulkhead, and then through the secret door. Your cloak and your mask are right where you left them, siting in the complete darkness of the abandoned basement. Dressing and undressing is kind of complicated under these circumstances, but you have managed before and you manage again. In the process, you stow the pillowcase of bullion and the scabbard-less smallsword under the Spotted Cloak. Everything secured, you proceed through the abandoned basements, into the spur and then finally, up and out of the well.

>>4951840
The first thing you notice is that the sky has gotten marginally brighter – dawn cannot be that far off. As you stealthily make your way back to the Not-Temple, you wonder if you should even bother going to bed at this point, out of the fear that you would sleep through the start of your shift. You still have not made up your mind when you enter the belltower and see the crumpled body of a Leper on the flagstone floor. For a moment you think that it is father lying there, and you about to break down and lose it before you realize that the body is of an average height - too small to be your father. Still feeling stick and scared, you draw near, and take a look at the remains. The first thing you notice is that this Leper is not wearing their gloves – and it hits you: they were climbing, and they fell. Were they trying to break into the belfry? Did the manage to break into the belfry, only to fall on the descent? But before you can worry about that, and what they might have seen and done up there, you need to make a critical decision. Do you try to hide the body and obfuscate the scene, or do you leave them there so you can pretend to find him when you come down for the start of your shift?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Use the winch to lift the body into the belfry, then do your best to clean up or hide the blood.
>Stash the body somewhere else in the Midden, then do your best to clean up or hide the blood.
>Leave the body where it lies. When the guards ask, say they must have been trying to rob the belfry.

>>4951842
>Leave the body where it lies. When the guards ask, say they must have been trying to rob the belfry.

There are no marks that would indicate we killed them, so it should be fine.

If we do choose to hide the body, please don't choose to hide them in our tower, someone may see us lifting him, I don't want a dead guy directly associated with us. If we get spotted in the dark hiding him elsewhere in the Midden then big deal, it's dark out still, and location isn't associated with us.

>Root through their pockets real quick just in case there is any sign they are an associate of our fathers'.

>>4951842
>Use the winch to lift the body into the belfry, then do your best to clean up or hide the blood.
we only need to avoid attention for two more days. If that means living with a goddamn body so be it. Put him in a bag with sawdust or something.

>>4951842
>Use the winch to lift the body into the belfry, then do your best to clean up or hide the blood.
I would like to see if we can try to confirm that the cause of death was actually falling.

Question is, how good is the winch? Human body is super heavy and is awkward to position with the weight distribution. How difficult would it be to actually heave him up in one piece?

>>4952139
Pretty sure it is what would have been used to lift the Bell that was in the belfry, so it shouldn't have any problems.

>>4952190
>>4952139
A good question!
As mentioned earlier, the winch was installed by your father, primarily to lift up the casks of water up into the belfry so they may be magically purified. It should be sufficient to move the body.

You go back and forth on it for a while, but in the end, you decide that your best bet is to accept the relatively minimal risk that you are seen moving the body, and hide it in the belfry using the winch. As tempting as it might be to just pretend to discover it when you leave for your shift in the morning, the attention that a body would bring scares you. What if after you told the guards, they wanted to speak to father about it? What the Hell would you do then? Pretend he is unconscious? What if they called that bluff, and demanded you bring him down on the winch, or bring one of them up on it. And even if they did not insist, even if they did even not ask to speak with him, that does not change the fact that reporting this would draw so much attention to you at a time when you need to keep a low profile. Any which way you slice it, the risk of being seen hauling the body up is smaller than the risks associated with reporting the body.

Having resolved yourself to this course of action, you quietly put down your improvised moneybag, your bundled street clothes, and your sword. The next ten seconds or so are spent furtively glancing around and straining your ears – looking and listening for anyone. Once you are as satisfied as you can be that there is no one present to witness this, you start your ascent. On the way up, you catch yourself about two dozen times, either moving faster than you should, or trying to take shortcuts. You have to force yourself to approach this ascent as if nothing was the matter. When you finally reach the winch platform, you carefully climb on it, and once you are as comfortable as you ever are going to be on it, you pull the cord that hangs through the trapdoor above you to remotely disengage the mechanism’s stops.

Suddenly the cord slips from your grasp as the platform descends underneath you, swaying and lurching with the occasional groan. Were you not so scared by the presence of the body, you would probably be getting scared by this descent. Father insists that the platform is safe to ride down like this, but he is not as big as you are, and the small wooden frame of the platform feels awkward and flimsy underneath you. Despite all of this, you are somehow able to make it back to the ground without your nerves fraying into oblivion. You load the body, the bullion and the swords onto the platform. And while there is quite a bit of blood where the body was laying, luckily the flagstones in the floor are not mortared, so you spend half a minute prying them up and flipping them over. It is not perfect – anyone who bother to look closely could see that flagstones had been flipped, not to mention that your trick here did nothing to dispel the smell of blood, but it is better than nothing.

>>4952228
Not wanting to dally with a body, you start your second ascent, which feels as if it was quicker than the first, though you still forced yourself to take it safe. You open and climb through the trapdoor, and you use the winch to haul the platform all the way up, right into the belfry. After unloading everything, you lower the platform to its usual spot, right beneath the trapdoor, then reengage the stops. Before you allow yourself to sit down, you look around the place to check to see if father is back, or he has been back and left. When, as you might have expected, do not find him, or any sign of him being here, you finally allow yourself to flop down on the floor. Pattern’s Peace, what are you going to do?

>Please choose ONE of the following:
>Whatever time remains between now and the start of your shift, it would be best spent asleep. The body is will still be here once you get back ...
>Truly, there is never any succor for the Stranger. Investigate the body, to the best of your ability. For starters, make sure that all is as it seems ...

>>4952230
>>Truly, there is never any succor for the Stranger. Investigate the body, to the best of your ability. For starters, make sure that all is as it seems ...

>>4952230
>Whatever time remains between now and the start of your shift, it would be best spent asleep. The body is will still be here once you get back.

We need to put in a good showing today so sleeping now would be wise, since we may need to stay up latter tonight.


The body should be able to be left alone safely.

>>4952230
>Truly, there is never any succor for the Stranger. Investigate the body, to the best of your ability. For starters, make sure that all is as it seems ...

This should only take a few minutes unless the prompt actually indicates that we intend to use magic to investigate it.

Even if going to sleep wins, I'd suggest at least making sure that the person is in fact dead and rooting through their pockets briefly.

>>4952230
>Truly, there is never any succor for the Stranger. Investigate the body, to the best of your ability. For starters, make sure that all is as it seems ...

quick search, then rest

Okay, I'll get to writing the next update.

After checking to make sure that nothing was taken from the belfry, you decide that as much as you would like to just pass out right now, you know that you should take the time to investigate the body … and for that matter, it would be a good idea to get it out of the room where you keep all of your food. You are unwilling to take the corpse up the narrow stairs to the second level, and you feel uncomfortable about leaving a corpse in your now officially missing father’s room, so you take the remains into your room, putting them as far away from your bedroll as you possibly can. It is dark in your room still, dark enough that for this you go get a lamp and fill it with some of your olive oil.

Back in the room, with everything situated, you offer up a quick prayer on behalf of the deceased, and then a slightly longer one on your own behalf, asking the Patternmaker to take pity on you, and for him to protect your immortal soul against the fraying corruption that is caused by touching and working with the dead. Feeling a little bit fortified by that prayer, you undress the mortal coil, starting with the mask. The man’s face that you reveal is not known to you, but you would not know most Lepers by their faces. You would probably have a better chance of identifying him if you could hear him talk, or watch how he carries himself while he walks. Of course, that is not possible anymore – you probably will not know who he is until someone is reported as missing.

The back of his head is all smashed in, and blood and brains have slipped out of his skull and into the hood of his Spotted Cloak. Judging that most of his clothes are only fit for rags or burning, you pull out your chipped stiletto, and cut him out of them. Once he is naked, you stuff some of the ruined fabric underneath him, to guard against leakage, and rifle through all of the pockets that you can find. The first thing you find is the missing gloves – he must have taken them off for the climb. Those gloves, along with his boots, stockings and his mask are the only unsoiled articles, but of them, only the mask would have a chance of fitting you – and yours is specially modified anyway. Even so, you separate them from the rest of the rags, and you keep searching.

There is a stub-club, a small self-defense weapon typically carried by those who cannot afford proper blades, although this one seems unusually well made, as it has been lacquered black, and has a contoured leather handle. Besides that, the only other thing you find in the pockets are two cork stoppers and a bunch of glass shards. That confuses you for a minute, but then you remember what those two Lepers in the ruined villa were arguing about – a vial of laudanum.

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>>4952783
It would explain it, but … the Leper that got high-hatted by the other Leper’s woman mentioned that he paid fifty eighth-talents for a third of the vial – which is pretty steep, as weekly wages run between twelve and thirty-six eighth-talents for Midden, excluding the specialist leatherworkers, who make substantially more. But then that would mean that this dead Leper was carrying around three hundred eighth-talents worth of laudanum, in addition to that presumably expensive stub-club. With that kind of money to throw around, perhaps he was a leatherworker …

Wondering if he was under the influence of laudanum while he attempted the climb, you look at the shards of glass you have pulled from his pocket, and after not seeing any evidence of liquid anywhere on them, you pull off your glove and carefully run your finger over some of the glass. It is cool to the touch, but you would say that it feels pretty dry. You cut open the pocket, and look for any signs of spilled laudanum, but you can see or feel no signs of dampness or staining. You do not have any experience with the substance, so you do not know how long it takes to dry, or if it does stain, but if you had to place a bet on it, you would say that the vials were empty when they were broken. For one crazy moment, you consider cutting open the body to look for the stuff inside, but you realize that while you have a good command of anatomy, you are not a Coroner Leper just because you spent a week and a half assisting one once because their helper had fallen ill. You would not know what laudanum looks like after it has been ingested.

While you are thinking about the body, you inspect the wound on the back of the head. The fall could not have been that far, as all but the back of the skull is still intact. Now that you look though, the neck and the upper back have been broken as well. At this point, you are almost certain that this man did fall to his death, as you originally assumed, but as you sit there looking at him, you realize that you cannot see anything wrong with him, besides of course being dead. You check him over the best you can twice more, but you are unable to find any signs of disease on this man, meaning that he must be one of the unlucky few sent to the Midden as a punishment. That narrows down who he could be significantly, but even so, you are not going to bother trying to identify him – you will just wait until someone is declared as missing.

You feel pretty proud of yourself for what you have been able to deduce here, in such little time. The little lamp is still going strong, and you are about to extinguish it and try to catch what little sleep you can, when it occurs to you that this time might be better spent “taking care” of the corpse. Obviously, you cannot keep it around forever, and you think you have a way to cleanly deal with it using the Life-Loom.

>>4952786
>Please choose ONE of the following:
>As much as you do not want to leave a dead, naked man in your room for an entire day, you would rather take this time to get some sleep – though perhaps you will sleep in father’s room instead.
>As much as you want to go to sleep, you should deal with dead man, his clothes, and his belongings as soon as you possibly can. With luck, everyone will be pulling their weight today at work, so you will not be working as hard as you were yesterday.

>>4952786
>>As much as you do not want to leave a dead, naked man in your room for an entire day, you would rather take this time to get some sleep – though perhaps you will sleep in father’s room instead.

We do need our sleep, and the corpse should last until our return.

>>4952798
>As much as you do not want to leave a dead, naked man in your room for an entire day, you would rather take this time to get some sleep – though perhaps you will sleep in father’s room instead.

>>4952798
>As much as you want to go to sleep, you should deal with dead man, his clothes, and his belongings as soon as you possibly can. With luck, everyone will be pulling their weight today at work, so you will not be working as hard as you were yesterday.

there were two guys fighting about laudanum. if this is guy 1, guy 2 might know about his plans of breaking into the bellfry and start making inquiries. We do not want to be caught sleeping next to a dead body.

>>4953493
Inquiries? Like what? If he checks it out himself and finds the body without being caught by us, then he has to explain to the authorities how he knows there is a dead body in our home. If he asks the authorities to check it out without going himself then he has to explain why it is worth their time which could expose his own illegal activities. If he asks around from locals he may find someone who spotted us moving the body, but that will take time and we'll be gone soon. If he asks criminals to investigate us, then maybe that could fuck us, but at least we'd be dealing with thugs wanting to know why this guys buddy is dead and not the local police element.