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Of those three explanations, the only one that holds any water is the attempted Mitigation or Remediation. You just can’t shield boots like that, and it does not make any sense to make completely irregular portions of a sole of a boot out of an inert material like lead. So it seems that someone correctly deduced that the boots were Strange, at managed to at least knock down some of that Strangeness. To be sure, you don’t need the Mysterious Arts to Remediate or even Mitigate something – and people who do not have some equivalent to your Strange-Staining Glyph can correctly deduce that something is in fact Strange. Those poor, damned Coroners managed to do that, for all the good it did them.

Still …

Without even realizing it, you are turning to head into the public house. Upon realizing this, you hesitate for a moment … until you realize that even if those boots might have been too small for your father to have been the one wearing them, he has professional friends, living in Scrimshaw Mount. It is possible that one or both of these men could be one of them.

That is all it takes to settle it. You set your back to it and haul your cart up over the public houses stoop, and straight through its front doors. There is a bit of vestibule, so as long as no one comes in behind you, as long as you stay here, you figure that no one can see you. Immediately before you is a common dining room, larger but with notably fewer customers then there were at the Blue Boy. That suits you fine though, just fine! You don’t even want to think about how poorly things went there, not to mention how much worse things could have gone, for fear of distracting yourself. You can’t have that – and you cannot get complacent like you did back in the Blue Boy as well.

After a few solid seconds of agonizing over it, you decide that you better get a room before you continue to follow those footsteps. No matter what you do, you are going to attract a lot of attention, so it behooves you to establish your right to be here by taking a room for the night. More than that, if you were just to start wandering through this place with a creaky cart and alarmingly squeaky boots, you might get asked to leave for being a nuisance - or worse, they might call the Guard. Having settled on that, you turn to an even more pressing decision; should you arm yourself before setting foot in the common room? The sleeves of this dress are tight on your wrists, tight enough that concealing a blade in there would be difficult, if not impractical. Similarly, the Oilers that you are wearing have straps to keep them watertight, but that means that they are not particularly well suited for stashing knives in. The apron you are wearing does have pockets, but they have the opposite issue - they are large, and deep, to the point that you would have to fish around a bit for the pin-stiletto. Or your wand if you wanted to go that route.

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But setting aside how you would carry the fraying thing, there is the equally pressing question of how you are going to get your hands on it, as right now, it is buried somewhere, deep in the cart. No doubt, it would be much easier to just forget it ... but can you? For all you know, the two men that made those prints could be sitting in that room right now, and it is possible that they could have some means to 'see' Strangeness, either a Glyph like yours, or something like the hermaphrodites like the Inquisition uses.

And right now, you are still Strange.

If the roles were reversed, and you were in their shoes - or rather, their boots - and someone covered with Strangeness just strolled into the room you were in, you would be wondering if they were a Witch, or at least were in service of one. And you would be seriously considering making the first move. Now, there is a lot of conjecture here. First off, you don't know if they are even in the room. More than that, you don't know if they have anyway of detecting Strangeness. But are you willing to take those bets?

The floor creaks, and you damn near jump straight of your skin. Even once you realize that it was the floor above you, your heart doesn't stop hammering away. Fraying Hell, you need to calm down.

Deciding that you need to move now before you start making a scene here, you leave your knives and your wand where they lie. You are going to find the proprietor, or whoever is running the place, and you are going to have to weave some tall-tale, just like you did with the Cobbler. If it worked for you with him, then you have to believe that you can make it work for you here too. Of course, you were able to speak to the old man alone - which you cannot count on here. Would the Cobbler have still sold you those men's boots and stockings if there had been witnesses? Probably not ... but all you are doing here is just renting a room for the night - nothing scandalous or untoward, right? You take a series of deep breaths in an attempt to steady yourself, but to be quite honest, you don't find them particularly fortifying. The prospect of walking through the common room, potentially revealing yourself to the men who made those prints is simply too harrowing.

You take one last, longing look at the bundle on your hand-cart, right where you figure your knives are stowed, and for a second, you start to reconsider the whole thing … but before you can get yourself too far down that path, you shake yourself out of it. Straightening your back, and pushing your push-cart into motion, you head out of the vestibule and into the common dining room. As you had feared, you might as well have had a herald announce your presence with all of the ruckus your boots and the carts are making – squeaking and creaking respectively. And while you were spot on in your first impression of the room being mostly empty, right now, everyone in here is staring right at you.

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As much as you want to, you cannot allow yourself to advert your eyes and look at the floor – for fear that someone might think you were looking at the prints. So, trying your best to keep yourself from shivering, you force yourself to stare back. The first thing you notice is that the custom here looks notably rougher than it did at the Blue Boy. More than that, there does not seem to be a bard, or any sort of entertainment playing here, and there certainly isn't anyone that you would stake as a merchant, foreign or otherwise. If you had to guess, you would say that these men are all sailors of some stripe or another – save for the proprietor behind the counter, with the kitchen bustling behind his back. Besides him, none of them stand out in any particular way, though of the seven men here, you can see that four of them are sitting together.

Two pairs.

One by one, the men start to look away, until everyone but one of the pair in the back have returned to their meals. Pattern's Perdition, are those the men? You cannot see any footprints with Strange-Staining at the moment, but they are sitting well outside of the Scarification Glyph's range. If they had just walked to their seats along the back wall, or by another entrance ... it is possible. Neither of them has taken their eyes off of you, either. Fray it all, is that because you are staring at them like a struck veal-calf, or is it because they -

With a hearty thud, you smash your cart into an inconsiderately placed table, and once again, everyone in the room is looking at you. Your cheeks blazing red and feeling as if you are on the verge of tears, half out of fear and half out of embarrassment, you force yourself to look away.

You can still feel the room's eyes all over you though, making you feel naked and vulnerable. And of course, it is not just out of the fear that among these men there is someone who can 'see' the Strangeness by one means or another, there is also the concern that one of these presumed sailors has heard the description of the prowler that knocked down the Euthyphro and trussed her captain up like a pig. Still, you have to take what little heart you can - none of these men here have made a move against you. If they actually had recognized you for what you are - a Strange Witchlet and a thief (technically, a pirate) - then they would have set themselves upon you at the first opportunity, wouldn't they? No, no. As much as you wish it didn't, that rings hollow. You are still relatively close to the front door, and for all you know, you might be walking straight towards another exit. A smart foe would hold steady, waiting until you got into tighter quarters. It is just like father always said - if all you can count on is others being foolish, then it is you who are the fool. Maker's Mercy, you miss him terribly. Why couldn't he just have taken you with him?

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After what feels like an eternity, you finally make your way to the counter, where the aged, fleshly-looking man you have taken to be the proprietor sits, sharpening a quill over some ledger. It is only when you set the push-cart down and let go of the handles that you realize just how tightly you were gripping it, and how clammy and sweaty your hands - and the rest of you - has become. Hoping to push past that, as well as the sensation of eyes roaming up and down your back, you do what you can to compose yourself, partly by just breathing, and partly by distracting yourself with mentally running through the story that you are going to feed him - which will be basically the same one that worked wonders on the dry goods merchant. But before you can get a word out, he starts the conversation.

"So you got too big for the beds, and the mistress kicked you to the curb - is that the way of it, now lassie?”

"Wha - "

"Well, disregardless, we don't need no more help here. And even if we did, my wife is of a jealous bent. Sorry."

What in the Heights of Hell? Setting aside that he is not making a lick of sense, this conversation has gone and charged right off of a cliff. He has even started to turn his attention back to his ledger. Damn it, the sooner you get out of this common room, the better. Just … keep talking.

"Sir, I'm already employed - I'm just looking to rent a room for the night, for - "

He interrupts you with a grunt, squints his eyes at you with a new, and thoroughly unsettling look, then sets his quill and penknife down on the counter.

"Employed, hmm? Self-Employed? You know, I should stop you right there, say that this isn't that kind of house, that we don't want your kind of custom, or the reputation that comes with it. And that should be the end of it. That is what my dear father-in-law would want me to do, may he find the Wisdom, and that is certainly what my wife would want me to do."
Suddenly, his mouth breaks into this leery, animalistic grin.

"But that bastard is stuck on the Heights – if he is lucky - and my wife is in Princeport. Its a good place for her. She can make anywhere more miserable just by her being there, but with the ‘Port, that place is so damned miserable already no one will notice her going an’ making it worse.”
He pulls a key out of a pocket, glances at it, then slaps it down on the counter.

"Fourth room on the left. Go get yourself situated. Whenever Bertram gets back with the shopping, I'll be dropping by to collect, and then to discuss the terms and conditions of your stay tonight. Until then, you don't make it with anyone, you understand?"

Pattern's Perdition! This ... this doughball of a sot thinks you are some manner of streetie! But as hard as you are seething, and as much as you are offended, you have stumbled into most of what you were after without any effort at all. You wanted to get out of the common room as quickly as you can - well, here is your out.

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More than that, you wanted a reason to be in the public house, and a room to stash the cart in, and you got both of those now. So long as you are able to finish your business here before this Bertram gets back, everything should be fine ... though no matter what, you have absolutely no intention of 'making it' with anyone here, least of all him. Unfortunately, this does mean that you are not going to be able to store your cart here while you head to the Liveries, but it is probably for the best to find another public house for that – one that doesn’t have Strange footprints leading straight to its front door. Still ... it equally galling and inexplicable as to why this louse-laden cad thought that you were ... that sort of woman. Maybe you should stick with your original plan, after all?

No, no you can’t. As scandalizing as the assumptions of this long-in-the-tooth trencherman might be, you cannot afford to look a gift horse in the mouth. And more than anything, you need to get out of this common room. Trying to keep your composure, you snag the key off of the counter, and start to turn away without another word ... until you think better of it and decide to ask when this Bertram is going to be back - obviously, so you can conclude your business in this house and have quit the place before that time.

"I-if I may, when is this, this Bertram g-"

"Haven't the foggiest."

Of course he doesn't. It takes a great deal of willpower to not let your brow furrow and your shoulders slump in defeat at that, but you try ... as you figure that if you were to make it obvious that you really wanted to know, this gutter-gate gargoyle might just puzzle out that you do not intend to keep your end of this disgusting "bargain". Your business with him concluded for now - and hopefully forever - you gather up your push-cart, and make your way towards the section of the house where the lodging is located. Almost immediately, Strange Staining picks up the footprints. In fact, for all you know, you were standing right on top of them at the counter ... a disconcerting thought, even though they clearly are not communicable.

However, as you approach the hallway where your room is, the two sets of footprints turn away and head up a set of stairs. It is only when you get to your room does it occur to you that there was no third and fourth set of footprints heading down the stairs. Pattern's Perdition - if the men responsible for those prints are still in their damn rooms, how in the Heights of Hell are you going to be able to do this? But before you can go and disenhearten yourself, you manage to get a grip on yourself. First, find the fraying room. Then figure out how you are going to get inside. And then, and only then, worry about who – or what – is actually in the room. Don't let yourself get mired and bogged. You must move quickly and decisively here, lest the men with the Strange boots, or – Firmament Forbid – the proprietor get the better of you here.

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You get to your door, set the cart down and allow yourself a surreptitious glance – first over your shoulder to make sure that you have not been followed here, and then around the hallway to make sure that you have not overlooked any Strange stains. Once you are as satisfied as you are going to be under your current circumstances you unlock the door, noting with some surprise just how smooth and well-oiled it feels. Honestly, given what you had seen of this establishment – the name of which you still don’t know – you half figured the locks were going to either be broken or just for show. Instead, they are well-made and well-maintained … which funnily enough means that they are more vulnerable to an Ice Lockpick with your Cold-Touch Scarification Glyph. So long as the lock that you need to pick turns as smooth as this one, and has a comparably sized keyhole and keyway, then you should definitely be able to get this to work.

You haul the cart in, then close and lock the door from the inside. Alone, you allow yourself a strained sigh of relief as you look over your room. There is a moderately lumpy looking bed pushed right up against the wall, with a simple nightstand by the head, and a well-worn sea chest by the foot with a lock that is clearly not original. Presumably, the key to this room will open the chest as well. Besides that, there is a tiny fireplace, and to the left of it, a simple wooden table, with a really uncomfortable-looking stool and a chamber pot tucked underneath, and a washbasin on top of the table – bone dry.

It would be too much white luck for it to be otherwise. There aren’t any towels either. The only other thing in the room is a decent looking Arachne-woven Devotional hanging on the wall. This slender tapestry pictographically depicts the life and the Glory of a Saint as a font of worship and intersession … but to your deep shame, you cannot recognize which Saint. Your mother taught you your basic prayers, and you have been saying them your whole life – and while serving as a pallbearer, you have gotten to listen to the verses in funerary services – but beyond that, you have never actually had a copy of the Compendium to read for yourself, or written Devotionals about Saints or anything else, or even histories of the Priests, or secular commentaries. And you can count the number of times you have actually been to a proper service in an actual Temple on just one hand.

Father always insisted that it was not safe to set foot in Temples, as Inquisitors and Cleansers go to the services on Titheday, and in some places, the local Chapterhouse is adjacent to or even part of the Temple complex. All of this is true, to be sure, but … you have been Mysteriously blessed, and on top of that, you have been blessed again with exceptional stability. Even before this latest string of Trials, you have had nagging doubts that you haven’t been demonstrating your gratefulness properly. Now …

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You cannot think about this stuff now. You have to keep moving.

But before you can do that, you need to change. In a matter of minutes, you are going to be sneaking around, possibly even climbing – a prospect that you are not looking forward to with your battered and bruised arms. Of course, your life is effectively at stake here … and while your dignity may already have been forfeit by pretending to be a prostitute, it –

Suddenly you notice the window, a slit, scarcely wider than your arm. There is absolutely no way that you – or anyone else – could ever hope to squeeze out of that. If you get cornered in here … Maker’s Mercy, did he place you in this room specifically? With your skin positively crawling, your hands fly as you undress yourself as quickly as possible, intending on getting out of this room as soon as you possibly can. But as fast as you move, you are thinking even faster. What happens if you get cornered in here? How are you going to get the cart out of the public house without him seeing you leave? Have you walked into a trap after all? Losing your nerve for just a second, you rush to the door, to check to make sure that you have not been locked in here.

When the handle moves freely, and you can open the door without issue, you actually shudder in relief. Still, there is no reason to tarry here. You finish getting your dress off of you, then you look down your legs at your Oilers. Considering just how much noise those things make, you decide that you would be better off wearing the used footwraps. You never actually intended to wear them, but with the way your luck is running black lately, if you were to go barefoot, you would probably manage to get fraying gangrene from a splinter. It takes a little bit of doing to get them out of the cart … and substantially more than a little bit of doing to get them to stay on your feet. All your life, you have worn boots with stockings or serbula without. Eventually though, using the existing creases, you are eventually able to approximate the proper folds. As you tuck your stockings inside of your Oilers, you quietly pray that your folds – and the wraps themselves – hold up long enough for you to conclude your business in this den of iniquity.

Spooked as you are by the prospect of getting stuck in here, arming yourself is no longer a question. You will take your knives, of course, but If this does come down to a life and death situation, and there is a fight between you and one – or worse, both of the men … no, you just are not comfortable or confident enough to bet everything on your pair of pin-stilettoes carrying the day. After all, your experience with blades begins and ends with chirurgery, and what’s more, these are folding knives. With that in mind, you definitely are going to be taking the wand with you. Hopefully you don’t have to turn it on anyone.

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Setting aside the risk of killing the target, there is the chance that you expose yourself as a Witchlet. Still, with everything set against you, you figure that you cannot afford to not carry it. So you clean the Socketing Needle as best you can with one of the rags, then you get it set back into the crook of your left arm, grimacing and wincing as it slides home. Flexing and pumping your arm in the vain hope that doing so might settle the needle into a more comfortable seat, you do your best to turn your attention to your right arm – the dominant one. For a moment, you consider carrying one of your pin-stilettoes in your right hand, concealed by the apron … but then you decide against it. Using Cold-Touch is going to require two hands anyway, one to hold the working material and one to cast with – and the wand itself is best used with both hands free, one to hold it and the other to salt it and switch out the fuel nodules. If you practiced, you might get to a point where you could swiftly and steadily catalyze and refuel a wand single-handedly, but you are far, far afield of reaching such a proficiency.

Satisfied with your arming and increasingly conscious about your nakedness in the cool but stale air of your room, you pull the Domestic Dress back on, grimacing and wincing all over again as the tight sleeves and tighter arms of the dress press against the Socketing site. The crook of your arm was already a little tender from the previous Socketing, but the way the wool of the dress tugs at the wand’s Conduit, jostling the needle deep in the meat of your left forearm … it is enough to make you grit your teeth in pain.

With the wand just dangling out of the sleeve, you get the apron back on, then you rummage for the fuel nodules. On the off chance that someone breaks into the room while you are away, you take all of them, along with more than enough salt to catalyze the wand and any other casts you might have to perform, wrapping it up neatly as you can in the rag that you used to clean the Socketing Needle off in. Now with all of the nodules and the wand on your person, you have left nothing behind that could implicate you as a practitioner of the Many Mysteries … with the possible exception of the salt, especially the stuff that you recovered from your work in the alley. But short of dumping all of that salt out through the slit window, there really is no recourse against it. Besides, if someone does manage their way into your room here, you have to assume that unless they are specifically looking for a Witch or a servant of a Witch, they will be more interested in the talents and your mundane purchases than an unusual amount of salt.

And on that note … as it seems that you might have to buy working material to use Cold-Touch, you take some of the change that you got from your transaction with the dry goods merchant. As an additional precaution, you take a few of the largest denomination talents with you as well.

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You certainly don’t intend to leave your push-cart behind here, but if you find yourself on the bleeding edge, then as painful as it may be, you must be ready to walk – or run – away. Having a few of the largest denomination talents with you will ease some of that pain. You would take every last one of them if you could – precluding all of the pain, instead of just a portion – but there is the risk that so many coins start clinking together at the worst possible moment. And there is there is how much they would weigh to consider as well, as well as how that weight would sit on you if you had to do any climbing. You do your best to distribute everything you have in your apron evenly, which is not quickly or easily done, as the fuel nodules are best kept separate from the salt, even wrapped up as they are. The knuckle sized nuggets of Mysteriously cultured flesh are nothing if not delicate, after all. But after fussing around for what was no doubt too long, you are comfortable that you have the lot of them safely and comfortably situated, along with everything else.

As much as you want to get the Hell out of this room, you force yourself to take a deep breath and rack your brain, thinking long and hard on if there is anything else that you should take, anything at all. After a few moments, the only thing that comes to mind is the slip from Festive Fabricians, lest someone get their grubby hands on it and use it to track you down somehow. Gingerly, you stow the thin strip of paper into your apron, letting it rest right on top of the rag-wrapped salt. Before you pack the cart back up and finally quit this room, you decide to throw on the Hooded Red Riding Cloak. It does not need to be said that the bright, almost garish red is not ready-made for sneakery, nor does an apron twin well with a hooded cloak … but in the end, the concealment that it offers cannot be gainsaid, either for your wand, or for your eyes.

As at ease as you are like to ever be under the circumstances, you repack the cart, hiding the talents – and the men’s clothing – as well as you can under the bulk and weight of the sundries. You leave the footlocker untouched. After all, if someone is able to defeat the lock on the door, and assuming that the lock on the locker is the same, what protection will the chest provide? All you would have done is made it easier to rob you by putting everything of value into one place.

That does not mean you aren’t ill at ease about leaving the rest behind, unattended – in a room that the bletted rotter presumably has a master or a skeleton key for. After making sure that you have your key, that nothing suspicious is poking or peeping out of the bundle on the push-cart, and that the door is locked behind you, you finally depart, with no doubt in your mind that you have tarried here much too long.

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Though as you begin to retrace your steps through this den of iniquity, back to the lecherous leech to ask him for some water for the washbasin to wash up with – that you would actually be using as working material for Cold-Touch – another potential course of action occurs to you. If you were somehow able to get your hands on the master keys that he no doubt has, you would not need to assume the risk of casting Cold-Touch in the middle of a hallway. All you would need to do is to pretend that you locked your key in your room, and he would surely have to fetch the master or masters to unlock it again for you – effectively bringing the key or keys right out to you for you to swipe at your leisure.

To be sure, it is a tall order. But you are no whobody to sneakthievery. You spent years picking pockets before you and father came to Outremer. Perhaps you are a little rusty, but even so, isn’t it less of a risk, less of an undertaking than the unmundane alternative? Even if everything goes flawlessly with Cold-Touch, your eyes are going to be glowing white for at least a couple of minutes. And that is not even considering the how much of the Strangeness that Cold-Touch produces and dumps into the working material over the course of the reaction. And that is Strangeness that you cannot count on yourself having enough time to or privacy to Mitigate or Remediate away. If it turns out that one or both of the men that made the prints is in some manner or other able to ‘see’ the Strangeness, surely once they return to their room – assuming of course, that they aren’t in there right now – they are going to notice that there is a bunch of the Strangeness pouring out from the inside of the lock on their door. Or doors. For all you know, they could be in separate rooms, which would make using Cold-Touch even more of a pain. But either way, you cannot count on having enough time to deal with the Strangeness that Cold-Touch produces, and if you do end up leaving it behind, then it is going to be painfully obvious that someone with Mysterious blessings investigated that room.

Of course, that is not to say that pick-pocketing the proprietor is a great option – or even a good one. It goes without saying that if anything goes wrong with the lift, then you are truly and certifiably frayed. Or if he notices that the keys are missing while you are using them, then unless his brain is as small as his stomach is large, then he should be able to deduce that you have played him to show you where they were kept. On that point, if you wanted to keep him from ever finding out that made off with them, then you would have to figure out how to return them to him without eliciting too much suspicion. But now that you think about it, is that even possible? Or at the very least, something that you can safely assume you can do?

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What if he doesn’t keep the master or masters on his person, but on a peg somewhere, and after fetching them and opening your door for you, allowing you to lift them off of him, he goes straight-away to put them right back? You would be out of time, near immediately. The thought of you stuck in a room, just like yours, with the proprietor on the other side of the door – and no other way out … it is enough to give you shakes and shivers.

Not to mention the libidinous lout would no doubt involve the Guard if he smelled out your deception, and even if you were somehow able to get away, completely clean – a tall order – with your pushcart and everything on it – an order taller still – there are good odds that someone would connect this bit of sneakthievery to the Euthyphro knock-down. In the end, all you might wind up doing here is giving the Guard a better description of you to disseminate. Perhaps that is the way to go about considering this. Look at how both options could go wrong, and then ask yourself what – or who, rather – are you more afraid of? The proprietor and the customers of this house, along with the Guard … or these two potential practitioners of the Many Mysteries?

When it comes to the two men you tracked here, regardless of where they might be at the moment and what they are capable of, you have the initiative – and more importantly, the Wand of Head Knocking. If you were to only allow yourself mundane means to crack that lock, and anything were to go wrong, the initiative would be against you. More than that, there is no way to tell when the charmless and toothless rake would realize the key is missing – and so, no way to figure how much time you have. Still, the thought of attempting to perform an Ice Lockpick out in the open in the middle of some hall is daunting enough that you are still considering pick-pocketing to be a viable alternative. The scale only tips in favor of Cold-Touch when it occurs to you that the proprietor might attempt to ‘collect’ earlier than he planned if you were to call him up to your room to unlock the door.

Having made up your mind, you continue on to the counter – feeling more confident in your decision with each step you take. Besides the inherent risk of pick-pocketing, the fact that getting away with it hinges on so many variables completely out of your control is just too much accept the more you think about it. On the other hand, the risks with Cold-Touch are much more manageable, especially if the men who made the prints aren’t actually able to see the Strangeness.

For all you know, those men could be just like the Coroners; though without any ability or device, they managed to correctly deduce that they had been exposed to the Strangeness and attempted to take matters into their own hand by performing a Remediation or Mitigation on their boots. Mundanely.

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As you pass the stairs, you get your hood up, over your head but not quite near your eyes, for fear of the cowl entering into the envelope of the Hide-Eyes spell. Only when the time comes to actually cast will you pull it down all the way, as at that point the glamor will break anyway. Entering back into the common room, you take some solace in that your approach is screened from much of the room … though some of custom does notice you. Though it simply could not be helped, your stomach starts to sink once again. Plainly, they are taking note of your change of outfit, but that too could not be helped. With the possibility of a threat being in such close quarters, there was no way that you couldn’t arm yourself – and really, the only way to hide the wand comfortably was with the cloak, as garish as it might be. Anyway, if you are apparently a prostitute, then some more colorful dress is probably expected, right?

While you can understand how someone would get the idea that an unchaperoned, unwed woman looking to rent a room would be … looking for work, it still galls you that the witless whoremonger just went and assumed that you were for sale with barely even a look. You didn’t even have a chance to say anything! Do you really look that much like a prostitute that someone would just jump to a conclusion like that? Sure, you suppose you look odd enough, considering your height, but women in that line of work are usually a bit poxy and homely as well, aren’t they? Oh, Maker’s Mercy – does he think you look homely? Do you look homely? You’ve always thought that you might be a bit plain, but … you don’t really have much to go on as a reference, as the last eight years you have been wearing a mask amongst a population of mostly masked people, some with disfiguring conditions. Complicating things further is that barely any of those are women. You see mothers and daughters and wives out on the streets walking back and forth to the burying grounds – and on very rare occasions, one has cause to speak to you, like the woman that mistook you for an Animal Control Leper – but that … you don’t exactly look like them. Different, sure. Paler, certainly. But worse? You didn’t really think so, not by much. Then again, you have been getting a lot of odd looks when you have been going around without a mask. There was that lingering customer at the Dry Goods that kept looking at you, and there was the way that Bertrada was staring at you too during your fittings. All of them would know more about such things than you would.

You push these thoughts to the side for now – though as you do, it occurs to you that your plans to present yourself as a the daughter of a wealthy Subject if you look so uncanny. You approach the counter, once again feeling the eyes of the room behind you running up and down your back as your hair stands on end.

“Pray excuse me, but I was hoping that I could get some water for the washbasin.”

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He raises an eyebrow at you, presumably on account of the change of clothes, but beyond that he does not immediately respond. Only after some seconds have passed, does he stir himself. The chair or stool suffering underneath the proprietor’s posterior groans in protest as he sets aside the ledger that he was consulting and shifts the whole of his girth forward. Eventually, the counter stops him, so he has to roll a bit of himself on to it, grunting with the effort as he braces himself with both arms, one resting on his elbow and the other resting on his palms. With his breathing sounding a little bit wheezier for all of this strenuous exertion, he finally cranes his neck out enough to peer over the height of the counter. Staring straight at your crotch, he takes a series of deep sniffs, then looks you right in your eyes.

“I’ve had worse.”

And without another word, he shifts back to his more comfortable reading position, the unseen piece of furniture whinging away once more underneath him. At this moment, it is all you can do to not gasp and wail in shame and frustration. It would have been galling enough if he had said it as a joke, or worse, loud enough for the other men in the room to hear – but there was no mirth, nor malice in those words. It was simply a flat declaration of fact. When you were pilfering the wedding band and the locket off of the dead Comptroller you did not feel half as filthy as you do right now. Did he actually smell something? Did you get something on your from dealing with the Glyphed Gull? Do you just … smell? Like, always, and no one has ever gotten close enough to you to tell? No, that can’t be right – if you did it would have come up during the fittings for your dresses. Feeling marginally fortified, you are about to leave when you realize that you are still going to need the water to perform Cold-Touch. You try to take a steadying breath, but you don’t find it particularly fortifying. Regardless, you try once more to get the water, this time unable to keep the sound of the strain out of your voice.

“Sir, please, I’d really like to clean up.”

He looks at you with this blank gaze, his head cocked to one side and his mouth hanging open as he breathes in and out. After a couple of moments of this, he finally deigns to give you a proper answer.

“Bertram gets the water.”

Not willing to let this go, you try once more – against your better judgment. You point to the kitchen behind him, still bustling, despite the relative emptiness of the dinning room.

“Surely there must be some water somewhere in the Kitchen?”

His gaze is no longer blank, it is now annoyed. Markedly annoyed.

“Water in the kitchen and the new vat is for cookin’. Water in the basin and the old vat is for cleanin’. Bought separately. Accounted separately too. T’would be bad practice to mix ‘em. T’would confuse the books.”

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Well … though that answer might have been nothing but a stone wall, at the very least there wasn’t anything indecent about it. Feeling that you are grasping at straws here, you decide to take an entirely different tack. While Cold-Touch was developed with pure water as the intended working material, it is very accommodating with substitutions. All it really needs is a liquid that freezes at a temperature close to the freezing point of water … and most ales, beers and wines do not have enough actual alcohol in them to throw the freezing point far off enough to render it unusable.

“Then, perhaps I could have a drink? Some … ale?”

He looks at you again, same as before – until his face breaks into this impish little grin. You had not even noticed but sitting to far side of the pile of ledgers that he was looking over was this battered looking tankard. Without a word, he picks it up and places it on the counter right in front of you, spits in it and then resumes flipping through the pages of the ledger seemingly aimlessly, though his face is still twisted into a gleeful leer.

Choking down what is left of your pride, you force yourself not to rise to the provocation. Instead, you turn away from the flesh-floundered fool and survey the common room. From your spot in front of the counter, you can basically see the entire room, save for the little vestibule by the front. Trying not look too conspicuous, you quickly glance at each of the patrons, until you are satisfied that there are no new arrivals – and more importantly, there have been no departures.

You can also see that there is another way in and out of the room, on the far back wall – and if there is actually a second set of stairs somewhere in this place, then the men who made those prints could have walked down those stairs and could be among those down here right now. Your mind races as you try to figure out what makes more sense – should you check to see if the men are among those at the tables right now, or should you find their room first? Staying down here and looking for them runs the risk of them noticing you, especially if they have some way to detect the Strangeness, but if they are down here and you go upstairs first, then you are going to run the risk of them either returning while you are trying to break in or leaving the establishment entirely.

After only a moment of thought, you decide on taking a sweep through the room – and in a small turn of white luck, everyone just happens to be sitting close enough together that you should be able to check all of their boots in one pass through the room.

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While you steel yourself for … whatever may come, your left hand is fumbling in your apron pocket blindly, trying to get some salt on your wand. By the Mercy of the Maker, it will not come to that, but … if your fears about these men are true, then save for your encounter with the Inquisition the other day, you have probably never been closer to being found out as a Witchlet as you are right now. Wanting to be done here, you grab the tankard off of the counter -

“So I'll take it you will be paying in kind for that as well, lassie?”

You want to scream. Partly out of embarrassment, partly because once again, every eye in the room is boring right through you. Struggling to maintain your composure, you walk away from the counter as the gargoyle carver's muse behind you cackles and wheezes. Wanting to be done here as quickly as possible, you glance down at the floor to check for the prints, but you do so too quickly. Your head follows your eyes – which is dangerous, considering that someone might correctly interpret that you are looking at Strange footfalls. You try not to jerk your head back to level, but again you move too fast, and in the end your hood rides up a little. Now concerned about the hood of your cloak entering the envelope of Hide-Eyes, you very deliberately reposition the hood to a safer seat. Even as you do this, your eyes are cast downwards, raking over every square inch of the floor. Currently, you see the two sets of footprints that you followed into the establishment – but if there is in fact a second staircase back there, then it is possible that the men who made these prints are sitting in the room right now, their footfalls simply out of the range of Strange-Staining.

You head into the room. With each sweep of eye and fall of foot, you become more and more anxious. Strange-Staining activation envelope is relatively small – only six feet. And there is nothing that you can do to extend it. There is a bit of white luck in that the six feet is measured from the ball of your right foot, not your center of mass, or Hell, your eyes, otherwise at your height you would have to stoop to see any Strangeness on the ground at all. Still … if it turns out that these prints were made by another practitioner of the Many Mysteries, there many casts, constructs and devices that are intended or otherwise suitable for combat that have effective ranges larger than a few feet.

Of course, the odds that one of these two men is actually a He-Witch is small, and the odds that both are would be vanishingly so … but the chances that men are servants, trained, outfitted and glyphed by a Witch are rather high, considering how they were able to partly remediate their boots. After all, assisting with Remediating and Mitigating Strangeness is one of the most important duties of a Witches Man-of-Arms.

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And while they might not have been able to do it perfectly, if they were exposed to the Strangeness at the late Aldoin's house, then getting their boots to only a partially communicable state is no small feat, especially considering the shoes and boots of Aldoin's next of kin in the funeral procession. If they were in the hire of some Witch, then she – or he, these could be father's professional friends, after all – could have provided them with some Mysterious means to remediate exposed clothing. You know such things exist, even though you don't know the first thing about making them. In that same vein, the Witch could have also armed them. Your wand of Head-Knocking is only considered to be second-degree, and it has a range of six yards, and double that with overcasting. There is nothing to indicate that they couldn't be equipped with something that has a comparable range. If there is a fight here, you’re going to be stumbling into it at knife-fighting range. Actually … if they do have some means of detecting the Strangeness with a range equal or greater than yours, then they could come at you with mundane weapons. Probably makes a lot more sense.

With a start, you realize that you have almost passed by the first customer. Your heart nearly shoots right out of your throat, and your hand reflexively tightness on your wand as you come to grips with what might be a fatal error … but Strange-Staining does not activate.

Before you can lose yourself in repudiations, a throbbing jolt from the crook of your left arm preemptively snaps you out of it. Still, there is no sense of relief. Did you see everything? Is there someway that he could be hiding the Strangeness, some sort of glamour, like your Hide-Eyes? Could a glamour defeat your Strange-Staining Glyph? Mercy, there are still five other men in this room, and that fraying cad behind the counter, you never got a good look back there -

Just … just keep moving. You have to keep moving. So you do, all the while doing your best to remain unobtrusive – which, for various reasons, all of which are painfully and blatantly obvious, is practically impossible. Still, you have to try. Continuing your way into the room, you grip your wand tightly in your hand, feeling the cool smoothness of the carved handle and the coarse irregularity of the heavy grains of sea salt against the palm your hand. The more that you grip the wand, the more that you worry that you didn’t put enough salt on it, or at least, if you did, too much of it has fallen off. To be sure, the wand should be able to without any salt at all, at least theoretically. From your studies, you know that the efficiency and the efficacy of the cast will suffer, but as to what this means specifically for this spell and this wand, you won't know until you actually try. If you had to guess, it would probably be a reduction in the operable range of the wand.

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Of course, if it so transpires that you actually need to use the wand here, in this room, then by any and all measures, that would be the absolute last time to mess around with crippled casts and hobbled wands. For half a second, you seriously consider salting the wand once more– though you come to your senses quickly.

You are in the middle of the fraying room right now, and it is bad enough that you have your left hand in your left apron pocket – messing around any more is just going to signal louder to all and sundry that you have something stowed in there. Instead, you grip your wand tighter and tighter, hoping to keep the salt that you have got on your hands and on the handle safely in place. All the while you maintain as even of a pace as you possibly can, working your way around tables in such as way that the envelope of Strange-Staining covers as much of the common room's floor as absolutely possible without making it blatantly obvious that you are searching the room.

Throttling your wand as you are makes the Socketing needle tug all the more insistently at the crook of your arm, but for once, the pain actually improves your mood. It is a little thing, but at the very least, you can honestly tell yourself that you have done everything that you can to be ready if it comes to a fight in here. Father explained – in no uncertain terms – that if you were ever out in the world, and found yourself in a situation where there was a chance, even a slim one, that there was an unknown Witch or her servants, then you were to jump to conclusions. Specifically, the worst possible conclusions, and then act accordingly. Even though the evidence is strictly circumstantial, you have to assume that a scrap is in offing … no matter how remote a prospect might seem.

Or how much you wish it was just a remote prospect.

Somehow, you manage to grip your wand even tighter as you approach the next table – the closer of the two pairs in the room. When Strange-Staining does not activate as you slip within the six-foot envelope, you relax, just a little … until one of the men starts trying to proposition you.

“Ya working here tonight, lassie? Tending the sheets? Here to tuck us all in?”

On the verge of tears once more and steaming with embarrassment to boot, you have to fight the impulse to put your head down – but even with your eyes nailed to the floor as they are, you can still make out that this whoreless - and tactless - whoremonger is making obscene gestures.

You continue to move, but now there is a new urgency in your steps as you make your way further into the room. As a Leper, you are no whobody to getting shouted, cursed, warded, and crudely gesticulated at. Sometimes, people will spit at you, or even throw things – even when there isn’t illness coursing through the city. On occasion, you will even see children, very young children, burst into tears at the sight of you.

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The last eight years of wearing the Spotted Cloak have done much to inure you against these indignities. So on some level, you find yourself surprised just how cutting these assumptions are to you. Perhaps it is because you haven’t been exposed to this species of abuse before. Or perhaps it is simply because these men are so certain that you are a whore.

But there is enough to be worried about here already, you cannot let this affect you. You continue your sweep through the dining room, your eyes darting across the floor in front of you, the fingers of your left hand wrapped firmly around the handle of your wand, and the Socketing needle throbbing away in your arm. Unfortunately, your silence does not go over well with your gentleman caller.

“Oi, you poxy cunt!”

His shout actually made you jump a bit, and now you are certain that the whole room is looking at you once more. Given just how much of a scene he is making, you are absolutely certain that this man is not in the hire of a Witch … though it does not follow that he is no threat. Honestly, in retrospect, entering a rough establishment like this without a male escort seems to have been a much greater risk than you originally had figured. Had it been later, and there been more men in here, or had these men been any deeper into their cups … you actually might not have been able to make it this far into the room.

Seeing that he has still failed to get a response, your spurned suitor escalates things even further, and spits at you – Maker's Mercy, what is it with the men here and spitting? It either misses you completely, or hits some spot on your apron that is thick enough that you cannot feel it, but either way, you are starting to get scared. This man keeps escalating things – and he doesn’t sound drunk either, just angry. Maybe ignoring these sorts of things only works for Lepers. After all, it is not like anyone in their right mind is going to grab or beat on or even touch a Leper. But you are not a Leper, not here – you are a woman, or in the mind of this bastard, a disrespectful prostitute. Is there any compelling reason why he would refrain from grabbing or beating on you? You can’t think of any. And as for touching … well, inexplicably, it is quite clear that he wants to touch you.

Just as you are weighing the risks of turning your back to this man, his dining companion intervenes in hushed tones that you are just close enough to hear.

“Would you lay off? Stars above, we paid good money for room and board. You keep this up and we’ll get thrown out.”

Blessedly, that is enough to shut him up, though you swear you still feel his eyes on the back of your neck – hot and angry. At the very least, you can stop panicking about him trying to accost you and get back to panicking about the possibility of one of the three remaining customers being a Witches Man-of-Arms.

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Before you know it, you are striding into range of the last single diner in the room, and you find yourself holding your breath – but Strange-Staining does not activate, and the man barely bothers to look up at you while he works away at his meal. Now, all that is left is the pair in the back – one of whom was staring at you when you came in – well, everyone was, but he was really staring.

Or at least, that's the impression you got. Hopefully, he was just hoping that you were a streetie, just like all the other men in here.

Pattern's Perdition, what a disgusting thing for you to hope for.

As you draw near to their table, you are able to take a little solace that there are still no Strange prints on the floor. But the real test will come once you are in range of the back entrance to the room. If these men were the ones who left those prints, you would only be able to tell once you were right on top of them. You take a series of deep, steadying breaths, and shift yourself up right a little more. If anything is going to happen here, odds are it is going to be now. You swing around one final table and start down the final stretch. It is at this point that you see that both of them have these large cloth sacks. The one with his back to you has his on the ground, with the drawstring tied shut, but the other – the one that was staring earlier – his is on the bench next to him, with its mouth wide open, pointed right at him. Now, there is nothing to indicate that those sacks are anything but sailors’ seabags – and no hints that they have anything more dangerous than old laundry in them. But the sight of them is enough for you nearly trip over yourself. You know that you jumping to conclusions, but you can’t help it.

Eight years you lived in Scrimshaw Mount, without any risk of getting caught or killed – well, at least imminent risk. But since you have been left to your own devices, the ground under your feet has all but given away, leaving you struggling for a few more days – no, a few more hours of safety. And of course, things went so incredibly poorly at the Blue Boy that it is enough to give you the sweats and the shakes. At this point, no matter how improbable any risks might be, it actually feels as if it would be more irrational to not be panicked and afraid.

Only a matter of steps away from being within of the floor under their feet and their boots, the one with the seabag at the ready tries to talk to you.

“Puella.”

You are unsure if he is trying to solicit you, like the other salts of earth in here, or he is trying to get you to turn towards him so he can get a better look at you. Every fiber of your being wants you to put your head down. But you cannot, as doing so might tip him off that you are looking for footfalls.

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Every fiber of your being also wants to you hasten your step and lengthen your stride – you are not sure if it is to close the remaining distance until his boots are inside the envelope of Strange-Staining, or it is to run away, but regardless, you find yourself flushed with the kind of desperate energy that you were awash with in the Refinery.But speeding up or backing off now would just put these two on edge. You have to keep steady, as if your life depended on it. It damn well might.

He tries again to get your attention, keeping his temper much better than the last man – though his calm, almost docent tones are shaking your worse than the shouts and obscenities of your last gentleman caller.

“Hoi, puella.”

Your heart is rising into your throat and your stomach is sinking into your ass. You grip your wand tight enough that you are risking cutting open your now trembling hands on the coarse grains of the salt. You make what you judge to be the final step before you get in range of the men's boots … and nothing. To be sure, you force yourself to take another two. Still nothing. Unable to help it, a small squeaking sounding sigh slips your lips.

“Puella, there is no way through back here. Its just more rooms.”

And sure enough, he is right. What you figured to be another half of the dining room, or a hallway leading to a second set of stairs does in fact turn out to be a large alcove lined with rooms. A door to one of them is open, and you can see a harried looking harridan cleaning what appears to be a noticeably larger and better appointed room than yours. Most importantly, you can see that there are no Strange-Strains leading to any of these rooms. In fact, you are comfortable saying that the Stains only lead out of the common room. Figuring that you should leave well enough alone, you quietly thank the man, then you beat a retreat from the room, still keeping an eye on the floor as unobtrusively as you possibly can. Your path out of the room takes your scorned suitor, and as you draw near, he looks as if he intends resume where he left off, but blessedly, his dining companion is not having any of it, and you are able to leave the common room without any further incident, following the Strange footfalls deeper into this iniquitous establishment.

As you follow the footsteps, you consider for a moment going back into the room, and trying to get a good look at the proprietor's boots – but you decide against it. Setting aside the fact that someone who appears to weigh as much as farrowing gilt is enfeebled enough to not be an effective servant to anyone, much less a Witch, you figure that the less time you spend in his presence the better. You do however, take a moment to thoroughly inspect the ale that he spat into, to see if Strange-Staining triggers.

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It doesn't, but that proves little and less. If you get a chance later, then certainly, you would inspect his boots – and for that matter, the boots, shoes, footwraps and serbula of his cooks, the harridan, the absent Bertram and any other hired hands he may have scurrying around the place.

Or none of that might be necessary. If there is no second staircase, then it is looking more and more like a surety that the men responsible for the Strange footfalls are still in their rooms. That prospect is enough to stop you in your tracks, just as you were about to follow the footprints up the stairs. Taking a quick detour, you briskly walk around the rest of the halls connected to this one, looking for any alternative way up to the second story. While you cannot find any, you console yourself that at the very least you didn't come across anyone else. Though you certainly don't feel so pleased with yourself once you try to map out the layout of the first floor in your head and get the sense that there is some space that you haven't been able to account for … though perhaps you never really would have been able to account for everything, as you only really got a look at this public house from one side.

Is there another entrance that heads straight up to the second floor? That seems unlikely … but there might be a servant's stair – something that is only accessible through the kitchens on the first floor. Still, you are concerned that you have overlooked something, that for the second time today, you have blindly rushed into a public house without appreciating how dangerous it might be for you under the circumstances. In fact, you are concerned enough that you start to seriously consider trying to sneak outside the house and get a better sense of the building – until you remember that you need to conclude your business here before Bertram returns, otherwise you might have to do something drastic to keep that slovenly sot from attempting to “collect”.

Swearing under your breath at your lack of preparation here, it is with a new sense of urgency that you return to the main stair, and after making sure that there is still no one to witness you, you follow the white-then-gray-then-black-then-gray-then-white footfalls up the steep stair to the second floor, then down the entire length of a hallway and around a corner before they come to a door in a jumble, with some on top of others. In addition to the footprints, there is some Strangeness on the door and its frame as well, as if someone brushed up or leaned on it.

There is also a patch of Strangeness a small distance from all of the footprints at the door. You temporarily suppress your Strange-Staining scarification Glyph, hoping that you see what made that particular stain, but unfortunately, you cannot see anything. The shape of the stain itself is irregular enough to make you think that it was a liquid, so it is possible that whatever it was dried – or was blotted away.

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But looking into that is going to have to wait.

Because as you feared, there are no prints leading away from the room.

You struggle with what to do for a moment or so, all the while trying to ignore how the hair on the back of your neck is standing up on end. Blessedly, your wits have not completely deserted you today, and it occurs to you that you might try listening at the lock. If this room is anything like yours, it is small, small enough that you should be able to hear if anyone is inside … unless of course, they were sleeping silently. Trying to not let yourself get discouraged, you quickly glance over both of your shoulders to make sure that no one is coming down the hall, or has wandered out of their rooms. Then, padding quietly to the corner while offering a prayer of thanks for the footwraps, you check to make sure that no one is coming from the stairs.

As comfortable as you are ever going to be under the circumstances, you draw back your hood, brush your hair away from your right ear, and then get down on your knees as delicately as you possibly can, thankful for the cushiony protection of your apron. Your chief concern here is that if you move too fast, you or the floor underneath you are going to end up making some sort of noise – giving the game away to anyone inside the room. That is also on top of the risk that someone managed to hear your footfalls in the hall, and noticed how they stopped in front of their door … or that they see a shadow that you cast under the bottom of the door … or something. But neither of those are things that you can address at this point. You are committed here – so you settle into your listening position slowly, making careful note of where you are relative to the prints on the floor and the patches and swatches of Strangeness on the door and the surrounding wall. While after all of this time of following them, you are certain that the partial bootprints are not communicably Strange, you are not sure about these patches, though they give no immediate indication that they are spreading.

Once you get your ear up to the lock, the first thing that you hear is the creaking and groaning of the floors above you. You are not sure if that is from the building settling, or it is from someone walking or pacing on the floors above – though you would guess that is building, as the sounds seem irregular. On this floor, you can hear your clothes rustle as you lean in, as well as your own breathing. Beyond that, you can hear vague noises from the kitchen and the common room below. But nothing from the other side of this door. You hold your breath and strain, listening harder than you have ever listened before – but there is nothing. And when you press your ear straight up against the lock, the only new sound that you can hear is the warm rustling of blood through your ear. Nothing from inside the room. No moving, and certainly no talking.

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You then get the idea to look through the lock, to see if you can see anyone or anything, but the cut of the keyway is against you. The only thing that you can make out is a portion of the wall on the far side of the room, no matter how far left or right you strafe and shift. Taking another tack, you straighten up a little, trying to look down at the floor – but all you end up seeing is the inside of the lock’s mechanism. On a silly whim, you do the opposite – scrunching down and trying to look up at the ceiling – but again, you cannot make anything out but the tumblers in the keyway.

Hmm. There is no indication that there is anyway out of the room beside this door, but at the same time, there is no indication that there is anyone inside of the room at the moment and there is no indication that the two men have left the room. Well, shit. There is no way around it. Either at least one of your assumptions about this room has been wrong, or both of the men are on the other side of this door, dead silent.
At the moment, you are not sure which would be worse.

But of course, you cannot just walk away at this point – not after all of the effort you put in and trouble you have gotten in just to get here. You are going to stick with the original plan, and use Cold-Touch to get into the room. You are just going to have to trust that you are going to be able to hide the glow from your eyes with the hood of your cloak – and that you have enough ale to perform a proper Ice-Lockpick. It is at this point that it occurs to you that you were so flustered and disgusted you never actually bothered to check to see how much working material you actually have … not to mention that you have never attempted Ice-Lockpick with anything but water before. No doubt the alcohol content in the ale is low enough that the glyph should still be able to freeze it, but it might be more difficult to work with than straight water. But when you inspect the contents of the tankard, swirling around the head to check the ale level underneath it, you are relieved to see that there is actually quite a bit of material to work with.

There is nothing to do to assuage your concerns about complications from using ale and not water however, and the idea of just casting out in the open like this is enough to fray your nerves to pieces. You cannot afford to focus on that though, not here, not now. Instead, you go through your mental checklist to perform a Cold-Touch cast, and to that end you need to determine how much of the working material do you want to use on your first attempt?

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If you were a sparing as possible, you figure you might get four or maybe five attempts, though you would need to freeze just about all of the ale – and keep it frozen for the duration of the cast. That would give you plenty of chances, at the cost of making all of those attempts harder than they would need to be. Alternatively, you could use half of the … whatever … in a single attempt to open the lock. This would be closer in line to how the spell was intended to be used. You would of course only get two attempts – but both would be relatively easier then if you were to be stingy with the working material to get four or five shots at opening the door. Or you could go for the whole hog and drain the entire thing all in one go. Doing so would make the cast trivial – but if something was to go wrong, then you would have no recourse but to find more working material. Which means either sneaking into the kitchen and getting some of the water the proprietor admitted was in there, or asking – actually, no, you don't think you should plan on interacting with the proprietor again. Ever.

After mulling it for as long as you dare, you decide to go for the whole hog. The locks are fairly quiet, but they are not silent. There is a real risk that if one or both of the men are still in the room somehow, that the noise from your picking and then turning the lock over might be enough to rouse them. So it follows that the most sensible course of action is to make sure that the first attempt is both successful and as quick as possible.

But before you cast Cold-Touch and perform an Ice-Lockpick, you take a few seconds to get your Wand of Head-Knocking salted down properly, then you take a pinch of salt for yourself. Unlike casts that either target salt, and can draw excess off as a catalyst, Cold-Touch targets liquids that typically do not have salt in them, as such, it must draw that salt – or some other catalyst – from elsewhere. In the case of a Scarification Glyph, that means from caster, just like the fuel. To be sure, salt occurs naturally in the body, and it would take a concerted effort to cast so many Cold-Touches that the bodies stores would be depleted to the point that the spell would not reach completion, and even more to get it to a point where the spell would not initialize … but at the same time, you know from experience that the harder the spell has to work to draw that salt out, the more strain there is on the caster. Wanting to avoid that at all costs, you get the pinch of salt in your mouth, under your tongue. The coarse grains are really irritating, and that is to say nothing about the taste, but it is better to deal with this now than once you are actually casting.

Embarrassingly, it is only once you reach for the tankard that it finally occurs to you how difficult it is going to be to have your wand out and at the ready while you are performing Cold-Touch.

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The way that you are going to have to cast the spell to pick the lock requires you to have one finger in the keyway while you are pouring the working material over it. Getting increasingly flustered, you experiment with different combinations of holds and hands until you settle on holding the tankard with your left hand, using your right pointer for the pick and holding your wand in the remaining fingers of your right hand – which is not the side that you have the wand socketed into. The wad of salt in your mouth should more than make up for the salt falling off of the handle of your wand … but the conduit is trailing out of your sleeve, and try as you might, you cannot help but wince as the Socketing Needle waggles and pitches in your arm as you adjust yourself.

Keenly aware that you are holding a socketed wand out in the open, you heft the tankard upward. From your cramped position right in front of the door, you cannot see into the tankard, which again is not ideal – but hopefully you will be able to guess how much is left by weight alone … though now that you think about it, you might not, as you have no idea how heavy the tankard is empty. Pushing that concern out of your mind, as well as the image of the proprietor spitting into the mug, you try to take a deep breath in, but quickly realize that doing so is starting to dislodge the wad of salt underneath your tongue – so in the end, you have to make do with a less-than-deep breath in through your nose. Before you can waste anymore time or get anymore flustered, you start the pour. The moment that the working material hits your finger, you initialize the cast.

Immediately, your finger goes completely numb, and the salt under your tongue starts to heat up. Neither of these sensations are pleasant, but you are smiling broadly in spite of this – and yourself – all the same. The strain from this is magnitudes less than what you would get with Salt-Remediation or Salt-Mitigation, to the point that you cannot immediately feel it, or the drain. The difference is moon and sun, really. As the first of the working material begins to freeze, you tremble a little – but that has more to do with kneeling in an uncomfortable position for so long, and less with the spell. Done properly, the caster should experience nothing more than a slight drop in temperature, right on the focal point of the cast, and nowhere else.

You start your mental count. Without pushing yourself or the Glyph, the spell should only last twenty seconds, which should be more than enough time to get a simpler lock like this opened up. Angling the pour the best you can, you get as much of the working material into the mechanism as you possibly can. The Cold-Touch Glyph that you have can freeze up to a tenth of a gallon, enough to freeze the entirety of the keyway … maybe half a dozen times over? Maybe less. Either way, in this case, it makes more sense to do everything you can to get it right the first time.

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And one of the big benefits of using everything at once means that you can push the ice – or if you are being pedantic, the frozen ale – to its limits. Ice made by Cold-Touch is slightly stronger than mundane ice, but it is significantly more flexible, making it surprisingly suitable for an application like this.

Really, it is a remarkable little spell, especially considering that it was developed as ‘parlor trickery’ – belonging to an entire informal school that is comprised of casts that are easy to learn, flashy by nature, cause next to no strain, pose absolutely no risk to the caster … and most importantly, provide them with nothing of tangible value. Father had told you once that the book he had gotten the spell from was written by a 'founder' of this spurious little school, unironically called the 'School of Frivolities', whose entire intent was to impress and entertain friends, dinner guests and 'wide-eyed serving girls'. It is almost impossible to wrap your head around that – just going out and casting for fun. Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last time, you wonder what it must have been like to be a Witch back before the Strangeness.

Realizing that you have gotten distracted, you haul yourself out of your daydreams, and stare intently at the lock, illuminated in the light from your now beaming eyes. Once the keyway starts to flood, you slowly start to back your finger out, and more of the working material freezes, until there is a stud of ice sticking out of the lock. Careful to keep your pointer finger in constant contact, you get your thumb on the stud as well, then you turn it, just as you would turn a key. It is a bit stiff, and manipulating it is even more difficult than usual, considering that you are also holding your wand between your pointer and ring finger as well, but with a well-oiled click, you get the tumblers open. You set the tankard down, get clear from the lock and snuff out the spell. Instantly, the frozen working material melts, dumping communicable Strangeness throughout the lock, on the door and on the floor – but blessedly enough, none on you, save for your right pointer finger.

Despite the faint click, and the splash that was fainter still, you cannot hear anyone stir on the other side of the door. Desperate to get out of the hallway with your eyes glowing as they are, you wrench the door open and basically throw yourself through it, wand first, keeping your now Strange pointer finger clear from the wand.

The first thing you see is the window, which is definitely large enough for someone to leave the room by, unlike the slit in your room. The second thing you see is the small fireplace right next to the window. Crammed in there are two pairs of boots. And if there was any doubt, you can see one of the four soles from the doorway, and you immediately recognize one of the four patterns of Stains that you have been following.

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Pattern's Perdition! Why did it not occur to you that they simply could have taken their boots off? By the Heights of Hell, you are such a fraying idiot! Somehow resisting the urge to slam the door shut, you reach your left arm out into the hall while you keep you head inside the room as you grope around for the tankard. Once you get a hold of it, you bring it inside and close the door as quietly as you can, raging at yourself all the while. If you are so damned stupid, then how are you ever going to keep your Oath to Balance the Scales and bring four murderers to justice? You lock the door behind you, and shudder as you force yourself to swallow all of the salt just to get it clear. You then pass your wand to your left hand , dig out enough salt to catalyze it properly and then self-sequester the ale off of your right pointer finger, again trying not to think of the proprietor spitting into it.

Well, congratulations are in order. You have successfully managed to break into an empty room! Feeling equal parts defeated and dumb, you swallow again, trying and failing to get the taste of salt out of your mouth. Desperate, you wash it down with most of the remaining ale, which does make you feel a little bit better … at least until it occurs to you that you might need to perform more Ice-Lockpicks before you get out of this public house.

You are just about ready to start pulling your hair out, when you actually get a good look around the room. Immediately, you notice that there seems to be something else in the fireplace besides the bed-sheets. You make your way over to the little stone hearth, avoiding all of the Strangeness on the floor, on the off-chance that any of it is not from the boots and is therefore communicable. At a safe distance, you squat down, and suppress Strange-Staining temporarily to get a better look. With the shifting white-then-gray-then-black-then-gray-then-white stains out of the way, you are now able to see that someone has stuffed sheets inside the fireplace, and attempted to burn them. You stand up, check the bed, and sure enough, the blanket is all balled up and sheets are missing.

Well, it seems you were able to solve that mystery at least. But it does raise the question why someone would want to burn the sheets. The boots, you understand – they are Strange, and worse that than that, they allow anyone with the means of detecting the Strangeness to follow every step the wearer takes.

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But the sheets? Considering how Strange the boots are, you are hesitant to reach in there, but odds are you are going to have to if you want to have a Hope in Hell of getting to the bottom of this.
As you consider your options for poking around in the hearth, it occurs to you just how dangerously full the hearth is – and how odd it is that the job was left undone. Did the flames simply not take, and the men gave up? Did they manage to light the sheets up, only to change their mind? Or did they light the fire and then leave, never guessing for a moment that the flames would die out after barely burning anything?

Out of those three options, the last one makes the most sense – but of the three, that one also gives you the most pause. Obviously, someone in this room really wanted these sheets destroyed. The fact that they would just leave it to chance like that makes you think … that they weren't just pressed for time, they were in some sort of danger. That they were -

Oh, Hell, what do you know? You are just projecting. Setting aside conjecture, you really don't know anything. And without any way to track these men now that they aren't wearing the boots, odds are this is the end of the trail. All this effort and risk, and all you managed to do was put yourself in even more fraying danger, you damned stupid girl. And of course, you made sure that everyone in the common room got a good look at you – for all you know, the men who made these prints are now tracking you … well, actually … no, that doesn't follow. If you assume that your instinct was right, that whoever lit the sheets was rushing then wouldn't they be rushing out of this place, not heading down to the common room to take a meal?

Unless they were setting an ambush in this room.

Shit! Pattern’s Perdition, have you walked into a trap? No – no, think, you fool, think! If this was a trap, then it would have sprung by now, especially with your eyes glowing like lanterns under your hood. And there would be something in the room to keep you here – more than just the mystery of why there are fraying rags in the fraying hearth. There is nothing stopping you from going out the window or back out the door … isn’t there? The shutters are closed – but their latch is dangling open and this is only the second story.

Returning your attention to the rags, you go back to your assumption that whoever tore then up and then attempted to burn them has left, without intending to return. That makes sense – but it hinges on all of this mess being made recently, as in either earlier today, or maybe yesterday. Public houses, at least the ones that you have experience with, check the rooms of guests before they leave, to make sure that … well, things like this don’t happen. For this room to have been left in this state, then that means one way or another, the men who rented this room and tore those sheets have not checked out.

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They could still be here, sitting in the common room – or they could have left without checking out, possibly through the window. Suddenly, it clicks! The men have almost certainly left for good, because they have left nothing behind in this room, save for their boots and the rags, one which they want to get away from, and the other they want to destroy. You breathe a little easier at the realization, but you keep your wand at the ready all the same.

Still, you cannot help but be pleased with yourself as you turn your attention back to the burn pile. Your first thought is to use your key to probe and pick through it, but as soon as you get the key out of your apron, you realize that this is actually a terrible idea. The key was given to you specifically. If the worst was to come to pass, and Strangeness was found on something that you were specifically known to have been touching … no, things are already bad enough for you. Likewise, the tankard is disqualified for the same reason, and you don’t want to get the Strangeness on your knives if you can help it.

It is only at this point that it occurs to you that if the men have well and truly left the room, then they might have left their key behind. You stop suppressing Strange-Staining, get to your feet, and head over to the nightstand by the bed. Sitting half-hidden in a shadow cast by the much taller bed, you find the key – surprisingly free and clear of the Strangeness. The bed, on the other hand, is a complete mess of shifting Stains. On an impulse, you deactivate Strange-Staining once more. And as soon as you do, you can see the mundane ones clearly.

Bloodstains. More than you would get from just some small accident. They are noticeably darkened, and browning, to the point that you would say they are three or four days old. Whoever rented this room must have got it for the week. Your sense of urgency restored by the prospect of figuring out what happened here, you return to the hearth, and start poking around with the key to this room in your right hand, with your left hand keeping your wand leveled at the door.

Sure enough, once you get through the first layers of rags, you start to see rags that have been used as bandages. Some with blood on them. Your mind is absolutely racing, coming up with all sorts of explanations as to why someone would need to make bandages like this … but what you don’t get, is why someone would go to the trouble of tearing up the entire sheet – most of them in sizes too big to be used as bandages.

Understanding eludes you – at least, until you start probing deeper , and feel the unpleasantly crusty fabric of the wraps give and slide under your feet. The rags in the fireplace are not just bandages, they are footwraps and bandages! Now this whole affair here is starting to make sense.

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There are two men. One, possibly both of them, are injured, but only one of them gets it bad. Around the same time, they are exposed to the Strangeness. They feel the need to get off of the streets. They come here and arrange for an extended stay … possibly to ensure that no one checks in on their room for a good long while. They go straight to the room, and get their boots off as quickly as possible.

The two of them make bandages and do their best to tend to their wounds. Once they have done what they can, they make footwraps – but … no – how does that work? The footwraps are still here, and the sheet is not big enough that they could have made four sets of them, on top of all of these spent bandages – and the bandages that the injured man was presumably was still wearing when he left here.

Well … how about … if the more mobile of the two of them went out wearing the footwraps he made to go buy proper boots for them to wear! Great! So then they go … where? Another public house? Somewhere outside of the Mount? Damn it all, for all you know, they could be on the moon. Not to mention, that if your read on the bloodstains is right, then you are already three, maybe four days behind them. It is agonizing, to be perfectly honest. You were so certain that you had something, but even if you were somehow able to figure out where they went, you are so pressed for time at this point you doubt that you -

Hold on! Now, you might not be able to track where they went from here, but you could certainly figure out where they were coming from, possibly even all the way back to the point where they were exposed to the Strangeness. And in that vein, say for the sake of argument that the badly injured one did want to go to another public house to recuperate, they probably would not want to go too far. If you were to poke around the nearest handful of houses, you might actually be able to pick up their tail once again.

But before you do any of that - or check the alley outside - you should really finish poking through the burn pile. In your excitement Strain-Staining reactivated, so you suppress it once more and start prodding around the back of the bundle, where the fire was set. You turn some half-burnt rags over. Huh, is that some rope back there?

Understanding is slow to dawn on you. Embarrassingly slow. However, it does eventually occur to you that you are looking at a fuse. You are so startled by the realization that you actually have to steady yourself. Your heart absolutely hammering, you move the rest of the rags away, to reveal a long slender tube, made out of what appears to be vellum, folded over on both ends and sealed with wax. The fuse makes you think of ‘peter-pomegranates, but you get the sense that this is an incendiary, not an explosive. It is not easy to see in the back of the fireplace, but it looks like some sort of power is coating the outside of the vellum.

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While it is currently Strange from contact with the rags and boots, there is no other sign that it is anything more than a mundane fire-starter. Yet … whatever exactly this is, it was made by someone with an understanding of chemistry, and chemistry is just mundane Alchemy. A full-fledged Witch could have made this, easily – though by the same token, some back alley chemist could have as well.

More importantly than that though, the men who rented this room were so damned serious about preventing anyone from following their trail, that they were willing to use something like this. And you thought they were being reckless by walking out on a burn pile. That said though, if it really has been three or four days, and they had just moved to another nearby public house, wouldn’t they have realized that their nasty little candle here didn’t do its job?

So perhaps you aren't going to be able track them down after all … but either way, you are going to have to take the Strange Incendiary with you, or at the very least, render it inert somehow. Of course, you are not thrilled at the prospect of keeping something like that on or even near your person, but as you don't have the time to properly cleanse the rest of the Strangeness in here, taking responsibility for this should be a decent sinecure, right? Surely that is a goodly deed. And more than that, while the Guard would probably not bestir themselves over a pair of malicious travelers running out after ruining some sheets in this barn of a public house, they would almost certainly be interested if they heard that the men attempted to set off a presumed incendiary. They might even wonder why someone would go to such great lengths to burn those sheets – and with the Inquisition running around the city full tilt, that kind of wondering would be patently dangerous for you.

If you had your druthers, you would cleanse the room properly and leave absolutely no trail for anyone – but you cannot afford to spend that kind of time here. Leaving behind the Strangeness is quickly becoming a bad habit for you. Here, that alley, the Morgue, the – you don't even want to think about it. But … confiscating a dangerous and Strange Incendiary – that is something that you can do. Understandably, you are not thrilled at the prospect of keeping something like that on or even near your person, but removing any Strangeness from the premises is a good thing, right? Even if it is not communicably Strange, it is still counts as a good deed?

Getting closer, it looks like someone thought they were lighting the fuse, but instead were lighting the fraying end of other of the rags. In the dark, cramped corners of the fireplace, you could see how one could pass for the other. Next with Strange-Staining active once more, you poke at the Strange Incendiary with a portion of this room's key that has not been covered in the Strangeness yet … and you sigh in relief when the Strangeness doesn't spread.

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If this was communicably Strange, then on top of everything else you would not have been able to immediately rule this candle out as being Alchemical. Though … you suppose that it still could be Alchemical, though from your limited knowledge of the field, you know that it is unlikely, as Alchemy is amongst the most Unstable of all of the Schools and Studies.

You then spend the next minute poking and prodding your way through the rest of the burn pile, to make sure that there is nothing else left behind in the hearth. By the end of it, the key for this room is completely covered in Strangeness, and is probably seconds away from becoming communicably Strange itself, but you are satisfied that there are no more surprises in the fireplace – dangerous or otherwise. Besides the boots and candle, it is just rags, rags and more rags. Some clean, some with blood and grit.

As you set the key to the side for a moment to consider how you are going to carry the candle, a horrible, terrible thought crosses your mind, that these men might have had something to do with the disaster at Gothorum-One … but then you remember the apparent age of the bloodstains. Three to four days ago – not last night. To be sure, that doesn't exonerate them, but at the very least, it means that you are not going to learn anything new about what happened at Oiler's Wharf in this room. After fishing the candle out of the fireplace, you inspect it over in the light of the room. Beyond the knowledge and materials that went into making it, there is no obvious indication that it has any Mysterious aspect or component to it. You do note that there is powder rubbed into the vellum some how, which gives the candle a surprisingly rough texture.

As it did not react to your prodding with the now Strange key, and it does not react now when you lift it up, you have to assume that it is at the very least chemically stable … which you suppose is vouchsafed by the fact that rags that were right on top of this thing were on fire, and it didn't ignite. Now though, you need to decide how to carry this thing. You don't want this near the fuel for your wand, as you have no idea what is in it, and how it could react with the nodules - or for that matter, your wand and its conduit - if the wax broke or the tube opened up. That means the very convenient big pockets on your apron are out. Even though one of them is completely empty at the moment, you are keeping it reserved for spent and Strange fuel nodules. There are smaller pockets on the apron, but the candle would stick out of them conspicuously.

In the end, you have to tuck it into your left footwrap. You have to figure that keeping it constrained, as uncomfortable as it might be, is a better option then trying to stuff it up one of your already tight sleeves. Of course, as soon as you get the chance, you are going to get it onto the cart. And you are going to get your Oiler's back on again.

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Satisfied with the rags and the candle, you finally turn your attention to the boots themselves.

You pick the Strange key up again, and wack the boots a couple of times, just to make sure that nothing was inside of them, then you flip three of them over so you can see all four of the soles.

You inspect the boots, activating and deactivating Strange-Staining several times, before you realize the significance of what you are looking at. The portion of the soles of the boots that are not communicably Strange are not Strange at all. That is something that simply cannot be done with mundane methods of Remediation or Mitigation, at least, with any mundane method that you know about. Some Mysterious craft had to be involved. It is settled now. Either these men are in the service of a Witch, and provided them some means to deal with the Strangeness, or -
Actually, that seems to be exactly what this is. Now that you are looking carefully, you can see that in addition to the stock-standard wear and tear of a boot that you would expect, there are these tiny punctures in the leather. You wouldn't suspect them to be of any great importance, but it just so happens that these punctures are all dead center in the middle of the clean and clear portions of the soles. Some sort of Remediation implement must have been responsible.

All you can do is stare at the soles, and offer up a silent prayer in thanks. It is settled now. You are either on the trail of your father's professional friends – or perhaps the people that they were attempting to rob.

Before you are completely overwhelmed, you do notice two more more things about these boots. Both of these boots have the same maker's mark – a large and distinctive depiction of a masked badger – and the right boot of the slightly smaller pair has quite a bit of dried blood inside of it. Taking a guess, you would say that the more injured of the two men, the one with the smaller feet, took a wound to his right leg.

Before you quit the room, you make a point of checking the bed and the window. Your search of the bed turns up nothing but a battered tenth-talent caught in the balled up blanket, somehow spared from both blood and the Strangeness. Your search of the window, however, is more fruitful. With Strange-Staining reactivated, you can see that there are some prints on the sill and patches on the shutters themselves, as well as one on the wall by the window. That one on the wall appears to be a print of a left hand, with the pointer finger absent. Judging from how lightly the hand must have touched the wall to make the print, it is possible that the pointer finger just never touched the wall. Or it is possible that the pointer finger was cleansed. Or in some sort of splint. Or had been cut off. If you had to guess, you would say that the man who was in the bed made that one.

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Of course, you are assuming that these were men, based off of the size and style of their boots. That is not definitive, by any reason. After all, you have a pair of Oilers – and by the Heights of Hell, you wish you were wearing them right now. That damned candle is really starting to itch. Trying to not worry about whatever you are exposing yourself to at the moment, you peek through the shutters and see that the window of this room overlooks an overhanging piece of roof as well as the alley you expected. The spit of roof slopes fairly gently, gently enough that just about anyone could walk along it, hugging the building. It leads in both directions. One towards the main street, and the other, towards the back of the building – though the one that leads towards the back of the building goes around a corner. After sticking your wrist right in front of your eyes to check to see if they are glowing, you cautiously open the window, and stick your head outside. In a few places, you can see some more indistinct patches of the Strangeness, but nothing more substantial. Still, it certainly seems that your guess that the men left by the window was right on target.

From your vantage point, you try to peer down into the alley, to see if you can spot anything – but as you are on the second floor, you are too far away for Strange-Staining to activate for anything on the ground. More than that, you really can’t see anything from up here – the alley is narrow enough, and this public house is tall enough that it is fairly dark down there, even at this time of the day. Playing it safe, you are going to withhold judgment on there being anything of interest in the alley until you are down there on your own two feet.

At this point, your business in this room seems to be concluded. You take a couple of looks around the room, some with Strange-Staining suppressed, some with it active, just to make sure. But when nothing jumps out at you, you decide that at the very least, it is time to leave the room.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Exit this room through the door.
> Attempt to exit this room by the roof.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Take tankard with you.
> Leave tankard behind.

>Please choose ONE of the following:
> Leave key in room, leave door unlocked.
> Leave key in room, leave door locked.
> Take key with you, leave door unlocked [vote restricted to: Exit this room through the door]
> Take key with you, leave door locked [vote restricted to: Attempt to exit this room by the roof]

It returns! Sadly I lack the time to participate at the moment.

>>5661949
Glad to have you back anon!

I just realized I didn't put the note in at the beginning of the thread. All of this is the previous thread, just edited, and punched up a bit. It is a good refresher, but if you remember how things left off last thread, then there isn't any new material here.

>>5661938
>Exit this room through the door.
>Take tankard with you.
>Leave key in room, leave door locked.

It's been a while. Hope I haven't forgotten anything important.

>>5661938
>Exit this room through the door.
>Take tankard with you.
>Leave key in room, leave door locked.
I really need to reread the previous threads, let's hope we don't fuck up (again)

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You consider leaving by the window for a moment, but then you decide against it. You would either have to unsocket your wand, or risk injuring yourself. Not to mention this is not the only window that overlooks this alley. The second that you step on the roof, you are going to be on display - and possibly even to the street as well. It seems to you that your odds of remaining unseen are much better if you go stay inside the public house. Before quitting the room, you take the tankard with you - as well as the battered tenth-talent off of the bed. You might need to perform another Ice-Lockpick ... and you would never hesitate to take money, though you do check the coin all over one more time before slipping it into one of the smaller pockets on your apron with the other coins.

Your business finally concluded in here, you leave the room, closing and locking the door behind you, then kicking the key under the door, wincing as you remember just a second too late that the footwraps that you are wearing do not provide much in the way of protection for your toes. As the pain - and the quiet embarrassment - fade away as you silently plod down the hallway towards the stairs, you try to figure out your next move.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> While your business in that room is concluded, your business in this house is not. You still have something left to do ... [write-in]
> You have tarried here overlong. You are going to go to your room, fetch your cart and waltz out the front door. Let that sack of suet try and stop you, you could use a good laugh.
> You have tarried here overlong. You are going to go to your room, fetch your cart, and then break into a room on the first floor with a larger window. If all goes well, it will be as if you disappeared into thin air.
> You have tarried here overlong ... but you have business to settle with the proprietor of this establishment. He has a head, just begging for a-knocking, and you have just the wand for it ... sit tight in your room. He will come to you.
> Write-ins are allowed with approval from the QM

Do note that Chlotsuintha's Right Used Footwrap I is carrying more volume and weight than it can comfortably deal with. So long as it is over-encumbered, Chlotsuintha will incur a malus scaled to the severity of the over-encumbrance and relative to the importance of the over-encumbered article in tests. If Chlotsuintha attempts a cast, she will not incur any penalty, unless the cast involves the use of her right leg. If Chlotsuintha attempts to run away from someone, then she would take a moderate penalty to the Athletic Test. In addition to whatever unpleasantness may be caused by failing the test, not passing enough rolls may also result in the damage or loss of the Right Used Footwrap I and its contents.

>>5662104
>You have tarried here overlong. You are going to go to your room, fetch your cart, and then break into a room on the first floor with a larger window. If all goes well, it will be as if you disappeared into thin air.

>>5662104
>You have tarried here overlong. You are going to go to your room, fetch your cart, and then break into a room on the first floor with a larger window. If all goes well, it will be as if you disappeared into thin air.

>>5662104
>You have tarried here overlong. You are going to go to your room, fetch your cart, and then break into a room on the first floor with a larger window. If all goes well, it will be as if you disappeared into thin air.

File: Battered Wooden Tankard A(...).jpg (14 KB, 384x314)

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It is plain to see that you have tarried here overlong. Your best bet for slipping out unseen is to fetch your cart, then break into a room on the first floor that has a window that you can actually climb through, unpack the cart, get the cart outside, then repack the cart - effectively disappearing into thin air. Unfortunately, there is a bit of blight on your tuber: in a moment of thoughtlessness, you drank most of the remaining working material in the battered tankard ... and you have no way of knowing which of the first floor rooms have windows large enough for you to escape out of. In fact, there is no guarantee that there are any.such windows on the first floor, as the only ones windows you have seen of such a size were the ones in the common room - which won't work, so long as you intend to keep this a stealthy escape.

For the second time, your lack of knowledge about this establishment galls you - you don't the extent of its footprint, you don't know where all of the exits are, you don't know about the windows ... Hell, you don't even know the name of this public house. And you might yet end up paying for that ignorance. With most of your working material either drunk or dumped, you have what you figure to be about two attempts, maybe three - and with restricting the amount of working material you are using so dramatically, those attempts are going to be much harder than the previous one. Making matters worse, there is no helpful trail of Strange footfalls leading you to a room with a window suitable for you to exfiltrate from. Maybe ... maybe you should get your hands on some more working material somehow. If you were lucky, you could break into a room with a filled washbasin - but can you count on being that lucky? Rather, should you count on being that lucky? Perhaps you should wheedle another thing of ale from the proprietor, and while you are at it, tell him that you are going to 'take some fresh air'. So long as you leave your cart behind, you couldn't see any objections he could raise, and more working material and an opportunity to find a viable window would make your escape much easier - but you wouldn't be disappearing, at least, not as cleanly ...

Maker's Mercy, why do you keep ending up in these shit circumstances? Well ... you have been burning the candle at both ends for two days and two nights more or less straight, and then before that, you were working harder than usual to make up for father's absence in the South Burying Ground. Eventually, something was going to have to suffer for it. Just ... short of risking the proprietors attention one more time, or committing yourself to complicated casts with nothing to vouchsafe any value to them, is there any other way that you could get out of this place?

File: Respice post te; hominem (...).jpg (495 KB, 1186x780)

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> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Use what working material you have, and take your best educated guess as to where a suitable window might be.
> Approach the proprietor and inform him that you are leaving to take some fresh air, but do not ask him for additional working material.
> Approach the proprietor and ask for more working material, but do not leave the premises.
> Approach the proprietor and ask for more working material, then leave the premises.
> Propose alternative means of exfiltration [write-in, subject to QM approval]

Hint: If you are looking for a suggestion as to what to put as a write-in, I have already given it.

>>5662233
>Take our money and just walk out to scout around quick and then come right back. This innkeeper knows we aren't likely to leave without our stuff. Plug the keyhole with a bit of rag we can pull back out to make it more time consuming if he decides to snoop in our stuff.

I'm going to sleep, and I'll close this vote when I wake up ... unless of course, it becomes tied over night.

Glad to be back!

>>5662399
Supporting I guess

>>5662399
Supporting. If there's a stable or something we can also fill our tankard with water from the trough

>>5662616
Welcome back Boss!

Oh, this quest is back! Glory be to the Patternmaker!

>>5662013
>>5662033
There’s some things I will have to check later, but just keep in mind the maker’s mark and the lack of a strange pointer finger on the left hand for now.

>>5662233
>you drank most of the remaining working material in the battered tankard
Ewwwww! The fat fucker spit in that!

>>5662234
Personally, I’d just go for
> You have tarried here overlong. You are going to go to your room, fetch your cart and waltz out the front door. Let that sack of suet try and stop you, you could use a good laugh.
Mainly because disappearing outta thin air may be the wrong move, despite me loathing going through the public space again. Alternatively, breaking into the washing bin would be our second best bet- plus maybe robbing the fat bastard blind (at least of his water).

On a smaller note, we should invest in a waterskin- or have brought one with us beforehand. Also, exchanging footwear soon may be wise, as well as moving the Incendiary- maybe if we had some string, we could hang it underneath our clothes? Something to think about at least.

>>5662767
>we should invest in a waterskin- or have brought one with us beforehand. Also, exchanging footwear soon may be wise, as well as moving the Incendiary- maybe if we had some string, we could hang it underneath our clothes? Something to think about at least.

Chlotsuintha does have a small flask which she keeps water in, but it is empty at the moment.

Alright, consider this closed.

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Not completely satisfied with your initial instinct, you rack your brains as you keep moving towards your room. You are trying to look at this situation here from all possible angles, trying to whip up some sharp little stratagem to get you out of this dump that doesn't involve either relying on dumb fraying luck or prancing through the common room again ... but by the time that you have made it back, the only improvement to either option that you have come up with is to stuff rags into the keyhole - hoping that the proprietor's fingers will be too fat to fish them out - and to take your talents with you, so if the worst came to pass, you could bail on the cart. Pattern's Perdition, you hope it wouldn't come to that. If there is some cleverer play here, then it eludes you.

Swearing under your breath in frustration, you unlock the door to your room, then head straight over to the cart, to where you buried the forty or so large-denomination talents. You pluck them all out ... and after a moment of consideration, the pouch of saffron that you ... actually, you don't even want to think about that now. With all of the valuables safely in your possession, stowed in the pockets of your dress, you pick a hearty looking rag out of one of the bundles then head straight to the door. After closing and locking it behind you, you are easily able to get the rag wadded and wedged up into the keyway of the lock with your almost uncannily long and slender fingers. When the time comes, digging it out might be a little tricky for you, but it should be practically impossible for anyone else. You are smiling to yourself, quite satisfied ... until you take a few steps down the hallway, and realize that you still have the Strange Incendiary strapped to your right leg. Swearing under your breath some more, you consider going back into the room and stashing it on the cart - but you decide against it. For all you know, Bertram could be back right now. That thought sends shivers down your spine, and your strides lengthen as you make your way back to the common room, doing your best to ignore the Strange Strains on the ground in front of you. All the while, you are trying to figure out what to say to the cad behind the counter - but when you finally get into the common room, you still haven't figured anything satisfactory.

"And just where are you off to, little one?"

Not that it would matter even if you had, the bastard has a real knack for getting under your skin, always making you feel - no, you cannot dwell on it.

"I'm - I need to take some air."

"Oh, you need to take something, alright."

Both of your faces blaze red - his from a fit of wheezing laughter and yours from a newly plumbed depth of shame. How can he say something so crass and vile? Still you can take some solace in the fact that he hasn't told you that -

"But before you go, I'll be needing that flagon back now."

Shit!

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Keep the battered tankard in your possession. Once you turn it over, he might not be willing it give you another.
> Give him back the battered tankard. Hopefully you will be able to get another one once you return inside.

>>5662960
>Give him back the battered tankard. Hopefully you will be able to get another one once you return inside.

>>5662960
> Give him back the battered tankard. Hopefully you will be able to get another one once you return inside.

>>5662960
>> Give him back the battered tankard. Hopefully you will be able to get another one once you return inside.

>>5663190
>>5663144
>>5663047
Consider this closed. I'm going to get something to eat, then I will write this up.

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Without a word and a look back, you set the tankard down on the nearest table and stiffly walk out of the common room and back out into the Cleanport streets. Half of you wants nothing more than to keep walking away - perhaps even more than half - but as tricky as your current circumstances may be, they are not bad enough that you can just abandon those supplies ... though if Bertram does show up and the proprietor comes looking to collect, that might be a different story.

Right now though you need to focus on reconnoitering the public house - something that you definitely should have done before setting foot inside.

> DC 30: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is not Keen of Eye, making a easy Sight Test like this [easy]
> + DC 6: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Tired II and is not as perceptive as she might be otherwise.
> - DC 15 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is well aware of what she is looking for here
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is looking for something that is very readily apparent
> + DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha finds correlating the exterior of the Public House to the interior somewhat difficult, on account of its obtuse design
> - DC 4 Witchlet Chlotsuintha has Partial Knowledge of the first floor of the Public House

> DC 17: Anything lower is a failure. [Re-rolls and auto-passes are available. No hostile re-roll(s)]

>No Passes: Chlotsuintha's inspection does not tender her any succor - either she managed to overlook them, or the Public House does not have any suitable windows on the first floor.
>One Pass: Chlotsuintha's inspection manages to turn up a single window, but she is not entirely sure how to get to it.
>Two Passes: Chlotsuintha's inspection turns up several windows large enough but they appear to be in the kitchen area.
>Three Passes: Chlotsuintha's inspection turns up more than a score of windows large enough, and she knows how to get to them.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2) then Chlotsuintha's inspection of the Public House is interrupted by the arrival of someone she assumes to be Bertram.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99) then Chlotsuintha's inspection turns up something ... unexpected.

>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.
>Criticals and Near-Criticals cannot be reversed by a re-roll or an auto-pass
>You are STRONGLY encouraged to roll again after twenty minutes if more rolls are needed, to keep the quest moving.

>May I please have three rolls of 1d100?

Rolled 60 (1d100)

>>5663433

Roll to squint!

Rolled 54 (1d100)

>>5663433

Enhance.

Rolled 46 (1d100)

>>5663433

>>5663557
>>5663522
>>5663505

Okay, so Chlotsuintha has her heading. Even though she is still a little fuzzy on the layout of the Public House, she has enough of an idea of where things are to make an escape work - assuming of course, that the rooms in question are not occupied, and that she is able to get her hands on more working material.

Before she returns to the Public House (and I write the update tomorrow morning) there is the question of if she wants to look for working material (and a vessel to transport it) while she is out on the streets, or will she try to get working material from the proprietor.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Chlotsuintha will scamper around looking for water (or a liquid with a similar freezing point) and a vessel to carry it.
> Chlotsuintha will return immediately to the Public House and demand a fresh ale without spit.

>>5662958
>If there is some cleverer play here, then it eludes you.

I’ll reread this thread fully later, see if I can figure out what we obviously missed.

>>5663575
I have no option one way or another- the expedient option would’ve been leaving immediately, not going on a mini-quest to disappear into thin air via a window. Lotta time and effort to be memorable.

>>5663575
>> Chlotsuintha will scamper around looking for water (or a liquid with a similar freezing point) and a vessel to carry it.

>>5663575
>Chlotsuintha will scamper around looking for water (or a liquid with a similar freezing point) and a vessel to carry it.

Okay, consider this closed. Sorry for the late start, my mother wanted me to clean out her garage for Mother's Day.

Actually, can I get two rolls of 1d10, to determine if Chlotsuintha finds anything? An 8 or a 9 means that she finds somewhere that she can get working material from, if she chooses to invest the time and/or money into, while a 10 means she stumbles across an unattended bucket of water.

Rolled 2 (1d10)

>>5664041

Rolled 5 (1d10)

>>5664041

>>5664074
>>5664052
Okay, Chlotsuintha has been about 6 minutes looking for something that she can use as working material, but has not had any luck. Should she widen her net, and look further down the street?

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Spend another six or so minutes searching for working material.
> Throw in the towel, and return to the public house to get some from the proprietor.

>>5664098
>> Spend another six or so minutes searching for working material.

>>5664098
> Spend another six or so minutes searching for working material.

>>5664098
>Spend another six or so minutes searching for working material.

>>5664117
>>5664103
>>5664101
Alright, can I get another two rolls of 1d10 please?

I rolled, it's your turn anons.

Rolled 4 (1d10)

>>5664136

Rolled 1 (1d10)

>>5664136

Do your telling me that there are no inns or stuff within 12 mins that’ll offer us a glass of water?

Honestly anons, why have we embarked on this miniquest?

>>5664186
Fine, let's just leave through the front door.

>>5664195
I’m just wondering what the hint was?

Like, my homebrew solution was to piss in the tankard, but that clearly wasn’t what the QM hinted at, so I’m at a loss. Like, was this hint in the recent updates, or the introduction?

>>5664195
>Just leave through the front door after all.

>>5664186
This area is kind of an odd spot. More trading houses, shops and private residences than public houses. That said, Chlotsuintha has gone far enough that the odds for running into a public house (or somewhere else that she could buy working material from) have increased (from rolls of 8 and 9 with 10 being an auto-pass, to 7 and 8, with 9 and 10 being an auto-pass).

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Try one last time to find somewhere to buy working material and vessel to carry it for the next six minutes.
> Return immediately to the Public House and demand a fresh ale without spit in it.

Also, sorry I wasn't able to spend more time yesterday running, though I hope to make up for that later today!

>>5664358
>> Try one last time to find somewhere to buy working material and vessel to carry it for the next six minutes

>>5664358
>Try one last time to find somewhere to buy working material and vessel to carry it for the next six minutes.

>>5664358
Let me get this straight- we’ve walked 12 minutes straight, potentially going on 18, and doubling back will take around the same amount of time, ya? So we effectively wasted roughly 36 minutes to get a 60% chance of getting nothing? With 20% chance of potentially wasting even more time/resources getting some water? And this doesn’t include the time investment in sneaking and moving all our shit out of a window into a public alley? When we’re both limited on time and trying to not be memorable?

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we have somehow bamboozled ourselves into a situation worse than the saffron merchant. I’m in quiet awe at the opportunity cost we subjected ourselves to.

Alright, can I get two rolls of 1d10 please?

>>5664496
Chlotsuintha has not been having a good day, but things are not that bleak. She wasn't moving in a straight line this entire time, it will only take a few minutes for her to get back to the Public House.

Rolled 9 (1d10)

>>5664680

Rolled 5 (1d10)

>>5664680

>>5664714
Alright! I'll get to writing this up.

>>5664680
That’s still 25 minutes gone- in a already constrained time schedule. We’re probably gonna have to cut another shopping segment off the schedule, maybe even both (thank god we bought those dried foodstuffs), and this doesn’t take into account other plot opportunities that may crop up.

Honestly, we should’ve just stolen the water from the washbasin, or gambled that one of the rooms had water in them. Did we even check the Stranger Duo room if it had any water in it’s washbasin?

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So far, it seems that you are not fated to suffer from your mistakes here, for as soon as you turn around the street corner, you come across a whole bank of windows more than large enough for you to haul the hand-cart through. But while you take some solace that you are going to be able to make your escape as you envisioned, you cannot say that you are particularly happy about your find here. For starters, these windows face the street corner, which seems to be relatively well trafficked, making it effectively impossible for you to escape unseen. Following that, they are also on the opposite side of the building that your room is located, which would obviously make sneaking out much more involved. But the condemning stroke is that if you have figured the layout of the house correctly, then these windows are on the portion of the first floor that you were not able to find a way into.

Desirous to do better, you continue your walk around the house, trying to remain as inconspicuous as six foot, four inch woman wearing a bright red cloak could be. Just as you are about to turn the far corner of the building, into the alley between it and what appears to be a private residence, you pass the second entrance to the building - which along with several of the windows closest to it have been bricked up. All of these bricked orifices of the building have been done up as painted placards to attract custom, all depicting a canopy bed with posts made of up spears. One of which even has the name of the establishment spelt out; the 'Poonist's Perch.

You have a hard time imagining that the proprietor as a harpoonist, or an Oiler or Whaler of any sort. In fact, it would be less of a stretch to imagine him as a whale, to be quite honest. Still, you are smiling to yourself as you turn the corner into the alley ... though that smile does not survive long. While there are large enough windows here as well, the ones that you can see immediately are bricked up as well. The first two are completely sealed shut, but the others have done so a thin slit runs the full height of the window frame, straight up and down the middle. If the rest of the windows facing away from the street are all like this ...

With a renewed sense of urgency, you pick up the pace, following the public house around its perimeter. When Strange-Staining activates unexpectedly, you feel as if your heart skips several beats, though before you can overreact anymore, you realize that this is where one of the men that you tracked to the room on the second floor got back onto the street from the hipped roof over this portion of the first floor. Still, your nerves are all a-fray ... until you come across an alley-facing window that has not been bricked up. Then a brace of them. Then an entire bank of them. Pressing further into the alley, you also find what appears to be your room, as its window was built as a slit, not modified into one.

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Beyond that, there is the receiving area for the kitchen with windows large enough for even you to walk through, a bulkhead down to the cellar, and some more slits in the wall, possibly windows for the serving men and maids quarters. On the other side of all of that are a few more windows, then it is the street that you first entered the Perch from. With a real spring in your step, you follow the alley back out onto the sidewalk of that street, barely even glancing down as Strange-Staining activates again on the footprints that led you here. Now all you need is to get your hands on some working material to perform another Ice-Lockpick and you are near as good as gone.

Not wanting to deal with the proprietor more than you have to - or rather, ever again - you decide that you would be better served if you went out and found your liquid elsewhere. But that is easier said than done. There aren't many public houses or shops in this portion of Cleanport - too far from the harbor, too close to the Chip - so you actually end up spending some serious time looking for something, anything that you could buy or use. Minutes pass though, and you find yourself further and further away from the Perch without anything to show for it. You find a public fountain, and for a moment your hopes soar ... only to be soured by the realization that you have nothing to carry the water with. You are cutting through an alley when you find a half-broken bucket, without any handle, sitting on top of a covered rain barrel. You practically pounce on the damned thing, and you actually laugh with relief when you look it over and determine that it will be able to hold enough water, more than enough water.

After checking to make sure that the coast is clear, you pop the top to the rain barrel, and fill the bucket with wet lucre, then you head back to the Perch at a brisk pace. In an uncommonly munificent mood, it occurs to you that perhaps you should have left some talents as compensation for the bucket, but at this point, you are not in a position where you can go back. Maybe later. Maybe.

When you get back to the Perch though, slightly splashed from all of the sloshing water, all thoughts of charity slip from your mind. There seems to be some commotion in the receiving area of the kitchen. Presumably, Bertram is back.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Abandon Ship! What is left on the cart is not worth the risk of going back into the Perch, not by a long shot. The absolutely last thing you need is to get cornered in there.
> Get in there! Surely, with as fat and as lazy as the proprietor is, there has to be enough time left for you to get in and get out! You can do this! You have to do this!
> Damn it all to the Heights! You need to stop fraying yourself like this. Yes, you are scared, and yes you are tired. But now it is time to come up with a better plan ... [write-in, subject to QM approval].

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>>5665029
I frankly don’t want to touch this escalating mess that my fellow anons have got ourselves into.

>>5665029
Even though I don’t want to touch this vote with a 10ft pole, I also don’t want to lose the shit we just payed a shit on of money for, wasted a lot of time on, and left a lot of incriminating evidence in.
>Whatever plan that allows us to keep our cartful of things

>>5665029
>Get in there! Surely, with as fat and as lazy as the proprietor is, there has to be enough time left for you to get in and get out! You can do this! You have to do this!

>>5665122
Anon, this is a quest. You don't have the choice to keep your hands clean (nor does it matter to anyone). Either Chlot escapes this shithole or it's all over.

>>5665163
It isn’t about keeping my hands clean- it’s honestly hard to bring myself to care in something I was uninvolved in. I disagreed with the escape decision anons decided on, and I simply didn’t care to vote on the proceeding escape decisions. I’m apathetic- and now we’ve bumbled into not just wasting more time and effort into this questionable escape attempt, but into something potentially more dangerous than and just as stupid as the saffron merchant debacle. At this rate there’s going to have to kill someone- and with all the strange sightings of extremely tall criminals running around, we might as well paint a bullseye on our back for the Port Authority and the Inquisitions with all the heat we’ll generate on us.

>>5665029
>> Get in there! Surely, with as fat and as lazy as the proprietor is, there has to be enough time left for you to get in and get out! You can do this! You have to do this!
Fuck that fat dude, we'll do it directly

>>5665029
> Get in there! Surely, with as fat and as lazy as the proprietor is, there has to be enough time left for you to get in and get out! You can do this! You have to do this!

Worst case scenario, we enter a strange fever.

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Your heart is hammering, and your stomach feels as if it had been hammered. This ... this is ...

No. No! You cannot just stand here, slack-jawed and flatfooted. And more than that, you cannot just abandon that hand-cart. Setting aside the time and money that the purchases you have stowed away on it represent, the fact of the matter is that once you are out and away from the Mount, those dry goods could mean the difference between life and death on the frontier. Admittedly, it should be no issue for you to buy more stuffs and stocks later ... but why complicate things any further? You have what you need now - well, at least some of what you need. You are not going to let just the threat of having to deal with some skeevy sot run you off from what is yours! Though if it looks like you are going to get hemmed in, or he is already waiting in your room ... and of course, with both hands holding on to the bucket, you cannot have your wand salted and at the ready, either. It -

Damn it all! You cannot allow yourself to be knocked over like this. You got yourself into this, now you need to go in there and get yourself out of it.

Setting your jaw with a confidence that you can only wish you felt, you march into the Perch, through the vestibule and then through the common room. Immediately all eyes are upon you, and your nerves falter - but somehow you manage to get it through your head that if you were to back out now, it would only make things worse for you. And when you see that the proprietor is still planted on his stool behind the counter, you do take some heart ... though once he starts laughing at the sight of you, splashed and harried, clutching a mildewed bucket, you are shamed and scared all over again. You keep moving though, your feet mechanically tramping towards your room. As you pass out of the common room, he starts to say something, but you are spared any further indignities from him by a fit of rheumatic coughing. You do, however, notice that one of the diners in the common room has left - though it is possible that they will be back soon, as their plate is still sitting on their table, with a goodly amount of food left on it.

Having made your way through the lair of the beast, with no indications of pursuit, you calm down just enough to realize that you have been holding your breath since you stepped into the Perch. As you do, you look down at the bucket that you are squeezing tight to your midriff ... and realize that you might have a problem. This bucket is substantially larger than the tankard that you used earlier, and is in much worse condition. Filled as high as it is, you might not be able to get the consistent pour that you need for Cold-Touch to work. After all of the splashing and dripping on the way over, you still have at least two times as much water as you did ale when you started Cold-Touch to get into the room on the second floor, so it is not like you couldn't just dump water ...

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But what if something else goes wrong? What if you need that extra working material? Between your stress and your exhaustion, your head is throbbing and your eyes are starting to ache. Worse than that though, is that you have the distinct impression that is there is a third option here, but even for your Red Thread you cannot suss it out. You are still trying to work it out, when it occurs to you as you draw within sight of your door that you might want to fetch your cart now, before you get the door to the other room opened up, so you aren't wandering around more than you need to ... but on the other hand, what if someone saw the hand-cart out of your room? Wouldn't that tip them off that you were trying to make a break for it?

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> You are going to attempt the pour with all of the contents of the bucket. Unless the attempt completely goes to shit, you should have more than enough working material for three pours equivalent to the one you used to unlock the door upstairs. However, because of the bulk of the bucket and weight of the water, the cast is going to be more difficult - and you are not going to be able to have your Wand of Head-Knocking at the ready.
> You are going to dump the excess water from the bucket, leaving roughly as much water in the bucket as ale you used to get the door open. If this option wins, a secondary vote will be held, to determine how much of the working material should be used in the attempt. If it is decided that all of the remaining working material is going to be used, then the difficulty of the cast is going to be the same as the cast of Cold-Touch on the door upstairs. If it is decided that the working material should be rationed further, then the difficulty of the cast is relative to how little of the working material is actually used. Note that choosing this option allows for the Wand of Head-Knocking to be held at the ready, though casting with it will receive a slight malus, to reflect the difficulty of bringing it to bear under the circumstances.
> The fog in your head breaks, and for once, you are able to have your cake and eat it too. What you need to do is ... [write-in, subject to QM approval]

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Keep the hand-cart in your room until you are ready to make a break for it. With your run of black luck, you might not be able to pick the lock as quick as you like
> Get the hand-cart out of your room right now, so you are ready to make a break for it. You are done with 'Poonist's Perch, and you are done planning for failure.

>>5665029
> Damn it all to the Heights! You need to stop fraying yourself like this. Yes, you are scared, and yes you are tired. But now it is time to come up with a better plan ... [write-in, subject to QM approval].

Were a master climber, right? We climb up to the window of our room, break into our own room and toss everything worth keeping down (I forgot if we are carrying lifting oil, if yes we can throw the entire cart and have it gracefully float down).

>>5665403
> The fog in your head breaks, and for once, you are able to have your cake and eat it too. What you need to do is ... [write-in, subject to QM approval]

Throw the stuff out the window and climb down

>>5665615
>>5665619
First point, the room we have the hand-cart in is on the first floor. Additionally:
>Suddenly you notice the window, a slit, scarcely wider than your arm. There is absolutely no way that you – or anyone else – could ever hope to squeeze out of that. If you get cornered in here ...
Much of the stuffs and stock on the cart is not going to fit through the window, much less the cart - or Chlotsuintha, for that matter.

As to the point about climbing though, yes, Chlotsuintha has an aptitude for climbing that could be considered preternatural.

>>5665403
>> You are going to attempt the pour with all of the contents of the bucket. Unless the attempt completely goes to shit, you should have more than enough working material for three pours equivalent to the one you used to unlock the door upstairs. However, because of the bulk of the bucket and weight of the water, the cast is going to be more difficult - and you are not going to be able to have your Wand of Head-Knocking at the ready.
> Get the hand-cart out of your room right now, so you are ready to make a break for it. You are done with 'Poonist's Perch, and you are done planning for failure.

I really don't know anymore

>>5665737
Well, neither does Chlotsuintha. So I'll chalk this up as emergent story telling.

>>5665403
So the hint is clearly still an option?

Damnit, and I got work in less than an hour- I don’t have enough time to reread to find the hint.

>>5665737
Supporting

>>5665403
Tried to reread as fast as I could, fate intervened. Best idea I can come up with is to use our mouth the transfer vessel.

I have no option on the cart beyond the usual exasperation. Like, it’s getting a bit ridiculous now.

>>5665403
Also, anons, I implore you to try to find the third hidden option in my stead, because
>Worse than that though, is that you have the distinct impression that is there is a third option here, but even for your Red Thread you cannot suss it out.
Means that there is a secret hidden option that’s way easier, faster, and probably overall better than the previous ones that you’ll unfortunately have to sus out for yourselves while I’m off to work. Best of luck to lads, I hope you find it before the next update.

>>5665870
If I knew I would have proposed it, but I am as perplexed as chlot

>>5665671
Oh yeah I was confusing her room for the room the other guys were staying in. I suppose we could try to bring our stuff there but that would hardly be easier or better than the original plan.

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Alright, first we are going to need to perform a Hearing Test at the door of the room we are trying to break into, to make sure that no one is inside.

> DC 40: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is not Keen of Ear, making a moderate Hearing Test like this [Moderate]
> + DC 6: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is now Tired II and is not as perceptive as she might be otherwise.
> + DC 7: 'Poonist's Perch has a few guests in this section of the second floor, and Witchlet Chlotsuintha must work to avoid being seen by them.
> - DC 20: 'Poonist's Perch occasionally creaks and groans, but beyond that it is very quiet in the halls.
> - DC 10: Locked Door II can safely be assumed not to be insulated against sound
> - DC 1: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is hidden by the presence of her overburdened hand-cart, allowing her to listen long than she might otherwise be able to do.

> DC 22: Anything lower is a failure. [Re-rolls and auto-passes are available. No hostile re-roll(s)]

>No Passes: False start. Chlotsuintha is interrupted by the approach of someone from the common room.
>One Pass: Low confidence (Flip a Coin) Chlotsuintha is unsure, but she thinks she has heard what there is to hear in that room correctly.
>Two Passes: High confidence (1d20, fail on 1, 2 and 3). Chlotsuintha is almost certain she heard everything there is to hear in that room.
>Three Passes: Absolute confidence . What is there to be heard in the room, is heard. Perfectly.

>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2) then Chlotsuintha is caught listening at the door by the approaching interloper.
>If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near-Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99) then Chlotsuintha discovers that Locked Door II is actually Unlocked Door I.

>A Critical Failure overrides a Critical Success and a Near-Critical Success, but a Critical Success overrides a Near-Critical Failure.
>Criticals and Near-Criticals cannot be reversed by a re-roll or an auto-pass
>You are STRONGLY encouraged to roll again after twenty minutes if more rolls are needed, to keep the quest moving.

Incidentally, once we are free and clear from 'Poonist's Perch, I'll tell you what I was hinting at, as well as some of the better options (that I came up with at least, it is entirely possible that someone could come up with something even better that I didn't think of, which I would have been more than willing to run with).

Rolled 15 (1d100)

>>5665891

>>5665895
If you are still here anon, you can roll again if you want.

Rolled 26 (1d100)

>>5665891

Rolled 57 (1d100)

>>5665891

Rolled 2 (1d20)

>>5665891
Listen! D20

>>5665970
Well, this isnt great. So how this works is when the d20 comes up 4 through 20, whatever Chlotsuintha hears is accurate. If it is 1 2 or 3, which it is, what she hears MAY be accurate, or it may not. You will not know until you act on it. The saving grace hear is that Chlotsuintha is unsure of the results of this test, allowing you the option of retaking it. Alternatively, a re-roll or auto-pass may be used here. Im not sure how many you have at the moment, but I know that you have at least one of both.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Accept questionable result of hearing test
> Reattempt hearing test at risk of worse failure and cost of time
> Use a re-roll on the d20
> Use an auto-pass on the d20

I will let this choice remain open until we have three votes, or an hour passes, whatever comes first, rolling to break ties.

We have only a 49% chance of getting 3/3 successes if we reroll the hearing test and an 85% chance of success if we use a re-roll on the d20. We're already tight on time, I'd just reroll it.

>>5666000
> Accept questionable result of hearing test

Save the reroll. Let's walk in on Dirty Mike and the boys.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>5666002 roll of 1
>>5666008 roll of 2

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Well, Chlotsuintha does not hear anything on the other side of Locked Door II. Of course, she may have missed something, or she might not have. Now it is time to cast Cold-Touch and perform another Ice Lockpick.

>Cold-Touch II: Buckets Up!

> Critical Success:DC 99 and higher. Besides a flawless cast, your trial by fire with the glut of working material sees you developing a special casting technique to take advantage of high volumetric flow, allowing 'overkill' pours to reduce difficulty of casting going forward.
> Complete Success: DC 26 and higher. You made the right decision by using all of the working material at once. Additionally, you are able to keep yourself and your clothes safe from the now communicably Strange working material as it pours down Locked Door II.
> Partial Success: DC 16 and higher. It was a little trickier than you expected to get the pour right, with the bucket and all, but you did manage to get the door unlocked ... at the cost of getting your apron, dress, and hood soaked with communicable Strange working material.
> Partial Failure: DC 15 and lower. It was trickier than it should have been, all on account of that fraying bucket. Because of this, you were not able to get the keyway frozen, but at least you were able to stop with plenty left for a second attempt.
> Complete Failure: DC 5 and lower. You don't even know what went wrong, but the spell has just snuffed itself out halfway through ... and oddly enough, you feel sick to your stomach all of a sudden. There is enough for a second attempt, if the hall would stop spinning...
> Catastrophic Failure: DC 3 and lower. Somehow, instead of targeting the intended working material, you targeted the lock with Cold-Touch - and have managed to freeze your finger onto the metal of the lock!
> Critical-Catastrophic Failure: DC 2 and lower. Inexplicably, instead of targeting the beverage, you targeted yourself! Your extremities now have frostbite - in the height of the Growing Season!

>May I please have one roll of 1d100?

>Remember, there are re-rolls and auto-passes available - but they can only be used after the dice are rolled, and only if those dice do not come up with a Critical.

Rolled 60 (1d100)

>>5666052
100

>>5666070
Alright. I will get to writing this up. I fully intend to have this up for an overnight vote, but I might end up falling asleep on you guys - just a heads up.

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After allowing yourself a moment to work it over, you decide against dumping any of the water in the bucket out. Simply put, you cannot square away the prospect of running out of working material for a second time. Even as unlikely as that might be, given how much water you have on hand. And even though you will end up making the cast more difficult for yourself, between the complication of hefting and pouring a half-broken - or rather, a three-quarters-broken - bucket and the issues that it might cause; variability in the flow rate, or a harder pour than you have worked with previously, or who knows what else, the prospect of having to waste any more time here, it ... you don't think your nerves could bear it at this point.

And in that vein, and in the interest of putting the 'Poonist's Perch behind you forevermore, you decide to retrieve your hand-cart from your room now, not later. While if someone sees you walking the cart around they might correctly deduce that you intend to leave, the alternative option would have you wandering the halls of the Perch with your eyes all a glow, or have you kill precious minutes waiting for the glow to abate. In this - and in this alone - there is no doubt in your mind that you have made the right call. You set the bucket down in front of your room, withdraw the key from your apron, unlock the door, and quick as you can you duck inside and basically throw yourself at the cart. As you drag the cart out as slowly as you can, hoping in vain to keep the wheels from squeaking, you glance over your purchases. Everything seems to be where you left it, but at this point, in the heat of the moment, you doubt that you would be too upset if the entire cart was gone. You just want to get the Hell out of here.

To that end, you haul the cart to the door to the next room, then you fetch the bucket. With everything you are going to need at hand, all that is left is to make sure that you are breaking into an empty room. As before, you are going to assume that this room is similarly sized to yours, so the hope is that you should be able to hear anyone inside, unless they are sleeping quietly. You check up and down the hall, not bothering to be subtle about your attentions - with your cart and bucket here, if someone was to see you, there is no chance that any witness wouldn't notice that you are up to something ... odd. Pushing that discomforting thought aside, you get down on your knees in front of the door, and press your head to the lock, centering your left ear on the keyway. As it was before, you can hear the creaking and groaning of the floors above you, but now, as you are on the first floor, you can also hear sounds that might be the kitchen or the common room, as well as irregular, hollow thumps in the distance. Perhaps those are Bertram, back from his errands.

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You shiver at the thought, then you press your ear hard against the lock, desperate to hear nothing on the other side. What you do hear is blood rustling in your ears, maybe some more noise, a little closer now ... but you don't think you hear anything. You are not sure - you are simply so wound up that you are ready to jump at any sound, and the more intently you focus, the harder it seems to identify any sense of direction on anything that you are hearing. A particularly loud creak is enough to make you physically recoil, and once you have regained some semblance of composure, you come to the conclusion that at this point, you probably listening for something that doesn't exist. And in the worst case scenario - where there actually is someone on the other side of this door, for them to be this quiet, they would have to be asleep, surely.

That doesn't make you feel any better, and when you try to see through the lock, only for the cut of the keyway to be against you, just as it was upstairs, you feel worse about the prospects here, if anything. But you simply cannot justify tarrying here any longer. Looking to get this over with, you pack some salt under your tongue, just in case you do need to use your wand, then with your right arm - the one without the Socketing Needle in its crook - you heft the bucket as best you can, pressing it against the door, in a somewhat successful bid to keep your purloined pail steady as you get your left ring finger into position, pushed into the keyhole. You do what you can to clear your mind, and focus on the finger. Ready as you will ever be, you tip the bucket as gingerly as you can, starting the cast as soon as tepid rainwater makes contact. Right away, you can tell that the cast is strong and stable, and you let out a quiet sigh of relief, muffled in part by the salt in your mouth. Still, you don't take anything for granted, and you watch the keyway fill with freezing water like a hawk as it becomes lit brighter and brighter by the light from your eyes.

With eight seconds remaining of the twenty second duration of the cast, you determine that you have gotten enough water in there to turn the tumblers, and you start to turn the 'key', slowly enough that any weak spots and breaks can be refrozen over. Finally, illuminated by a glow from your eyes intense enough to warm your entire face, the lock is picked open. Committed at this point, you squint your eyes shut, hoping to hide as much of the light as possible, then you swing open the door - to find a blessedly empty room. Oh, Maker! Oh, Merciful Maker! Careful not to lose yourself in elation, you get the bucket inside, followed by the cart, pulling it as slowly as you can bear, to not risk anything falling off at what would be the most inopportune of times. Once it is inside the threshold, you close the door behind you.

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As heartened as you are by this stroke of white luck, you are not clear of the Perch just yet. You lock the door behind you with the thumb-turn, then you head straight for the window and throw it open. Sticking your head out, you cannot see anyone in receiving area of near the kitchen, nor can you see or hear any of the earlier commotion. You move quickly and unpack the hand-cart onto the floor, then you get it out into the alley, just barely getting it through the frame, though if it had come to it, you would have broken the glass in heart beat. With the cart outside of the room, you make quick work to repack everything on to it, and while this is a little more involved than unloading the cart, you are pleasantly surprised to see that your eyes have stopped glowing by the time that you are finished with the cart. Without any further complications for once, you finally depart from the 'Poonist's Perch, putting your head down and letting your hood hang down over your eyes as you push your cart down the alley, then merge into the interment foot-traffic on the streets. As harrowing as it was, and as much time as you spent, you do feel better for following those footfalls. You have certainly picked up quite a few clues as to the Strange comings and goings around the Mount, that odds are you wouldn't have found elsewhere.

Now ... what next?

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Strike while the iron is hot. You learned a lot of about the men who made the Strange footfalls by following them to the Perch, perhaps you will learn more if you follow those prints to their source. With tonight booked solid, this might be your last chance to do so.
> Strike while the iron is hot. You have reason to believe that at least one one men who made the Strange footfalls was still seriously injured when he left the Perch, and potentially still Strange. Odds are good that they wouldn't have gone far from here. Maybe, with a little white luck, you will be able to pick up their trail again.
> A change of pace is needed. You are at least three days behind the men. There is no sense in shooting yourself in the foot trying to track them down when you have more pressing things to do, like picking up your dress from Festive Fabricans before it closes.
> A change of pace is needed. You are at least three days behind the men. There is no sense in shooting yourself in the foot trying to track them down when you have more pressing things to do, like picking up your repaired work boots from your cobbler before he closes.
> A change of pace is needed. You are at least three days behind the men. There is no sense in shooting yourself in the foot trying to track them down when you have more pressing things to do, like continuing to shop for supplies before merchants close up for the day.

>>5665870
As Chlotsuintha deduced earlier, there would be a servants stair, somewhere on the second floor, that would lead to the kitchen. This could have been used to procure water, or leave the Perch without drawing attention.

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>>5666163
Though I should specify that attempting to leave through the kitchen would have required a Stealth Test.

The issue with the bucket could have been resolved by remembering that Chlotsuintha had access to her room, which had a washbasin in it. She could have taken the basin with her, then poured the excess into the basin, allowing her to perform Cold-Touch without the added complication.

It is also worth noting that there was a way out of the Perch that didn't involve using Cold-Touch at all, and >>5665615 was really, really close to figuring it out. Once Chlotsuintha was outside of the Perch, there was nothing stopping her from finding an appropriately sized window, performing the Hearing Test outside of it (instead of outside of the door), then breaking into the room, unlocking the door from the inside, walking to her room, retrieving her hand-cart, returning to the room with the improvised alley egress, and then leaving that way. Using Ice-Lockpick to escape was only really necessary if you wanted to avoid going through the common room (or running the risk of failing a Stealth-Test in the kitchen). Once you were outside, it became unnecessary, but in her tired, stressed state, Chlotsuintha developed a bad case of tunnel vision.

These are the alternatives that I came up with. I don't doubt that there could be even better ways to have played that, either, which I would have been willing to go along with.

>>5666158
>> A change of pace is needed. You are at least three days behind the men. There is no sense in shooting yourself in the foot trying to track them down when you have more pressing things to do, like picking up your dress from Festive Fabricans before it closes.
No more chasing after ghosts

>>5666158
> Strike while the iron is hot. You learned a lot of about the men who made the Strange footfalls by following them to the Perch, perhaps you will learn more if you follow those prints to their source. With tonight booked solid, this might be your last chance to do so.
I'm perfectly fine with the other hot iron vote as well- way I figure it, we could hit two birds with one stone, and look for another shop while unraveling the mystery of the Strange Duo.

When do the stores close, and how much time have we wasted on this excursion?

>>5666163
>Is there another entrance that heads straight up to the second floor? That seems unlikely … but there might be a servant's stair – something that is only accessible through the kitchens on the first floor
You mean the one mention of it in the middle of a 30+ post info dump after almost a year off... that even Chlot said was unlikely and only a maybe? Is... that really considered a deduction on Chlot's part, especially since she almost instantly disregards the idea and never thought of it again?

>>5666177
>Though I should specify that attempting to leave through the kitchen would have required a Stealth Test.
Obviously.
>The issue with the bucket could have been resolved by remembering that Chlotsuintha had access to her room, which had a washbasin in it. She could have taken the basin with her, then poured the excess into the basin, allowing her to perform Cold-Touch without the added complication.
Wait, those are actually detachable?!?
>It is also worth noting that there was a way out of the Perch that didn't involve using Cold-Touch at all. Once Chlotsuintha was outside of the Perch, there was nothing stopping her from finding an appropriately sized window, performing the Hearing Test outside of it (instead of outside of the door), then breaking into the room, unlocking the door from the inside, walking to her room, retrieving her hand-cart, returning to the room with the improvised alley egress, and then leaving that way. Once you were outside, in her tired, stressed state, Chlotsuintha developed a bad case of tunnel vision.
I believe the problem with that would've been property damage- and the subsequent report to the Authorities. Otherwise, solid play.
>I don't doubt that there could be even better ways to have played that, either, which I would have been willing to go along with.
That's where I disagree- your alternatives were clearly the best, and very brilliant, but required more in-universe or time-period knowledge than the audience has readily available, or on the mind. I can imagine Chlot knowing this intuitively, and not considering the information in her tired state, but I can't imagine us coming to those same conclusions without a little more hinting and prodding. Certainly a delight to read the reveal though.

>>5666211
Those are fair points. I don't intend to do too much of this 'Chlotsuintha is asleep on her feet, and isn't thinking of all possible options' just enough to penalize burning the candle at both ends. When I do dabble in it again, I'll try to make the clues a little more obvious. In this case, mentioning the servants stair more than once or twice would have been a good start.

Though to your point, the Stealth Test would only have been required to leave through the kitchen. Chlotsuintha could have snuck water from the supply in the kitchen earmarked for cooking without a test (referenced by the proprietor, back when first asked for water). And while I cannot speak for all washbasins, the one that my parents kept in their guest bedroom was a waist high wooden stand with a removable porcelain bowl.

>>5666236
>I don't intend to do too much of this 'Chlotsuintha is asleep on her feet, and isn't thinking of all possible options' just enough to penalize burning the candle at both ends. When I do dabble in it again, I'll try to make the clues a little more obvious.
I appreciate it man.
>Chlotsuintha could have snuck water from the supply in the kitchen earmarked for cooking without a test (referenced by the proprietor, back when first asked for water)
Probably one of the only thing I would have voted for. I don’t like that man, and I would steal his life saving from him if we had the time. Shame it didn’t work out like that.
>And while I cannot speak for all washbasins, the one that my parents kept in their guest bedroom was a waist high wooden stand with a removable porcelain bowl
Ah- the only experience I’ve had with something remotely similar are sinks mate. It’s probably why I didn’t consider it detachable- one of those intuitions that you take with you into fiction immersion that you don’t really challenge until it’s pointed out to you. Shame that it happened here- would love to have stolen the fat bastard’s basin and water, even though I believe it conflicted with our mission to retain our low profile.

>>5666158
>> A change of pace is needed. You are at least three days behind the men. There is no sense in shooting yourself in the foot trying to track them down when you have more pressing things to do, like picking up your dress from Festive Fabricans before it closes.

>>5666158
> A change of pace is needed. You are at least three days behind the men. There is no sense in shooting yourself in the foot trying to track them down when you have more pressing things to do, like picking up your dress from Festive Fabricans before it closes.

Pick up our stuff, eat something, wash up, get some sleep.

Alright, we got a solid consensus on what to do next. Now, next question: do you want to stow the hand-cart somewhere, or are you comfortable taking it with you into the Fabrician's?

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Consider options for where to stow the cart.
> Just take the damned thing with you.

> A change of pace is needed. You are at least three days behind the men. There is no sense in shooting yourself in the foot trying to track them down when you have more pressing things to do, like picking up your dress from Festive Fabricans before it closes.

>>5666502
> Just take the damned thing with you.

If anyone asks we just lie our way out of it.

>>5666502
> Consider options for where to stow the cart.
I don’t want any more questions from that stuck-up woman.

>>5666502
>Consider options for where to stow the cart.

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While your first instinct is to just take the damned thing with you ... you cannot help but remember how touch and go it was, dealing with the proprietor of Festive Fabricans, Cassandra. Things could have gone differently. You might have ended up without a dress, or even without a dress and the talents you spent, if she had gotten any more suspicious. Hell, the Guard could have been called if she got it in her head that these talents were not yours to spend ... and you don't even want to think about what happened during your last encounter with the Guard. Taking the cart with you - it just seems like it would be an unnecessary risk to take at this point. Not to mention that hauling it around slows you down significantly, and it adds a serious complication to any escapes or sneaking that you might have to do.

You are best off stashing the hand-cart somewhere. As for where you actually are going to park it -

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> - in the egress tunnel out of the Midden. Outside of the Belfry, it is probably the only truly safe spot to hide anything in the Mount. Getting the cart there, underground and getting back is going to take serious time, but if you rush, you should be able to make it to Festive Fabrician's with enough time to spare. However, you would be starting to cut things close on the other end. Assuming that there are no significant detours, choosing this will leave you enough time to pick up the boots at the Cobbler's, then head to the wainwrights, coachbuilders, stockbreeders and liveries outside of the Landward Walls before businesses start to close for the day. You might be able to squeeze something else in, but you shouldn't count on it.
> - in some abandoned, quiet place, like that derelict house you house. You don't know how long it will it take you to find such a spot, and the security leaves a lot to be desired - but with equal parts luck and speed, you should be able to find somewhere nearby that is safe enough to allow you time to pick up your boots at the Cobbler's, then head to the wainwrights, coachbuilders, stockbreeders and liveries outside of the Landward Walls with enough time to continue shopping or exploring the Mount afterward.
> - in a room of a Public House. After all of the tribulations that you went through at the last two public houses you went to, you are leery of this option, but if you could find a more reputable establishment then the Perch, the prospect of keeping your cart under lock and key is certainly appealing, and because of the relative ease and proximity, it should allow you plenty of time to continue shopping or exploring the Mount once your planned business is concluded.

I think anons have chosen...poorly for the order of our tasks. the cover story for the dress shop is a young respectable woman getting a dress for her father's wedding, iirc, and chlot currently has...oilers and crusty unpleasant footwraps as her footwear. again iirc. I could be wrong. the cobbler cover story is a young...widow? nearly-a-widow? but lower class, so forgiveable to have poorer clothing. though who knows maybe the riding cloak is incriminating in that setting, it feels as though everything else is a problem everywhere else
>>5666805
>> - in the egress tunnel out of the Midden. Outside of the Belfry, it is probably the only truly safe spot to hide anything in the Mount. Getting the cart there, underground and getting back is going to take serious time, but if you rush, you should be able to make it to Festive Fabrician's with enough time to spare. However, you would be starting to cut things close on the other end. Assuming that there are no significant detours, choosing this will leave you enough time to pick up the boots at the Cobbler's, then head to the wainwrights, coachbuilders, stockbreeders and liveries outside of the Landward Walls before businesses start to close for the day. You might be able to squeeze something else in, but you shouldn't count on it.
at this point I just want to play it safe

>>5666805
>>5666947
This anon speaks the truth. I'd be up for doing the cobblers first and support their choice.

>>5666805
>> - in a room of a Public House. After all of the tribulations that you went through at the last two public houses you went to, you are leery of this option, but if you could find a more reputable establishment then the Perch, the prospect of keeping your cart under lock and key is certainly appealing, and because of the relative ease and proximity, it should allow you plenty of time to continue shopping or exploring the Mount once your planned business is concluded
Yeah I changed my mind, let's get the boots first

>>5666947
The cover story that Chlotsuintha fed the cobbler was that her husband was an Oiler who after escaping an potentially fatal industrial accident at the Ulteria Refinery with no more than some bruises, he got serious about his dream to purchase a farm. He had been saving his wages and drastically cutting costs, and while Chlotsuintha had tried to be supportive of the measures - which included wearing these men's boots that he replaced her sandals with instead of buying appropriate woman's footwear - she had been unhappy about the extent of his talent-pinching, and eventually he had relented somewhat ... then Gothorum-One tore itself apart. He was fine, but Chlotsuintha wove a sob story about how guilty she felt, that there was a chance that he might have save up enough by now to have moved but for her, and if he had gotten hurt, how she would never have forgiven herself.

As far as going to the Cobbler first, I'm alright with changing that. I am going to leave this vote, on where to stash the hand-cart (eventually) up for a little while longer, as I am not ready to write at the moment.

>>5666805
> - in a room of a Public House. After all of the tribulations that you went through at the last two public houses you went to, you are leery of this option, but if you could find a more reputable establishment then the Perch, the prospect of keeping your cart under lock and key is certainly appealing, and because of the relative ease and proximity, it should allow you plenty of time to continue shopping or exploring the Mount once your planned business is concluded.
I’m still of the opinion that we should strike while the iron’s hot- this could be our last chance to see Father again, or at least learn what happened to him. Otherwise, I don’t mind our destination- though if we are going to the cobbler’s first, remember to change back into the oilers.

As for the cart, we are limited on time- and even with the recent bad experience, I still think that this is ultimately the best option. Hell, maybe we’ll even get all of our shopping done without incident- what a miracle that would be!

However, I want to add the situation of no more seedy Public Houses- any skeevy people, just walk out, I don’t mind the time crunch if we get quality loggings.

>>5666805
>- in a room of a Public House. After all of the tribulations that you went through at the last two public houses you went to, you are leery of this option, but if you could find a more reputable establishment then the Perch, the prospect of keeping your cart under lock and key is certainly appealing, and because of the relative ease and proximity, it should allow you plenty of time to continue shopping or exploring the Mount once your planned business is concluded.

Closed and writing.

File: Public House Kitchen Alt.gif (107 KB, 1689x1201)

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- in a room of a Public House, may the Maker spare his Mercy on you. While there are some who define madness as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, you have to believe that this is the best of brace of bad options. Taking the time to find some quiet, out of the way spot with no surety beyond wishes that it remains secure while you conduct your business, or taking even more time to go all the way back to the far edge of Stickport to stow the cart in the dried well egress tunnel ... no, you simply cannot accept that, not under current circumstances. You are much too pressed for time, and both options will chew minutes coming and going.

But, if you were to find a decent establishment, unlike the Perch, and didn't do anything near-fatally idiotic immediately after entering the place, unlike you did in the Blue Boy, then you should be able to square your cart away quickly, allowing you to explore and shop until the hours of closing - and to take some peace of mind that your possessions will not be molested in your absence. That is a prospect so appealing that even in the face of all of the misfortune you have had with public houses, it cannot be gainsaid. And truly, what are the odds that you come into some misfortune at three different public houses in one day? If you were, you would have to wonder if this was some small part of a Judgement against your failings - and more than that, you would seriously consider forswearing all such institutions.

You pass the next block praying silently, but once you have fortified yourself to the extent that you can at the moment, you turn your full attention to finding a Public House. As an unexpected benefit of your escapades looking for water earlier, you have a very good idea of where public houses aren't in the area, so it does not take you overlong to find one. You look the place over from all angles afforded to you on your approach .. though admittedly, that is not many. This House is not on a corner, so you cannot see too much of it from the street - but as you are determined to learn from your mistakes, you make a point of peering down the thin little alley between it and its neighboring building as you pass. You are heartened to see that none of the windows that you can see have been reduced to slits or bricked over entirely, and that by all outward appearances the House is plain but in good repair. More than that, it seems that you are close enough to the kitchen to smell its labors, and the warm redolence vouches for the propriety of the establishment as well.

File: Decisions Alt.jpg (40 KB, 640x588)

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Still, after your mistakes at the Perch, you are not going to set foot inside the establishment without walking the perimeter at least once - an admittedly awkward proposition with a cart, but you are not going to be deterred. As you draw closer to the entrance, you make note of the House's shingle, depicting a bed with a yellow frame. You also note that the house has a raised cellar, necessitating a small stair of three steps between the sidewalk and the front door, recessed into the building. The stair has a railing -

And the railing has a Strange-Stain on it.

Pattern's Perdition! Struggling to keep your face neutral, you try to process this. You had figured that those men might have gone to another Public House, one close to the Perch, considering that at least one of them had an injured leg ... but, honestly, this - could this Strangeness have been left behind by someone else? It is possible, certainly ... though you cannot help but recall that one of the men did have communicable Strangeness on their hand, as evidenced by the handprint by the window. It suddenly occurs to you that the men who made the prints might still be inside, and you get shivers all up and down your back.

Spheres and Stars, what do you do?

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> If the men are in this Public House, then the place is too dangerous for you to treat it as a storehouse when other options exist. And if they aren't ... either way, right now you need to focus on getting supplies and finishing errands, not following three or four day old leads. There are not too many hours left in the day for trading, and assuming that you don't manage to leave the Mount tonight, most places of business are going to be closed for Titheday tomorrow. If you do investigate this place, it should be later. Keep moving, find another House.
> If for whatever reason, the late Aldoin's house does not pan out, then this might be the last lead you have to father. Ever. You hemmed and hawed about poking around the house across the street from the South Burying Ground, where the Hook Gulls were congregating - and what happened? Before you could make up your mind, a decision was made for you when the Inquisition remediated the entire building. At this point, you have better odds of bleeding a stone then learning anything of substance from the site. What if the same thing happens here? There will always be other opportunities to shop, but you will only ever have one father. Get the wand ready, and head in.

Sorry about falling asleep on you guys. But I think sleeping on this update certainly improved it.

>>5667920
> If for whatever reason, the late Aldoin's house does not pan out, then this might be the last lead you have to father. Ever. You hemmed and hawed about poking around the house across the street from the South Burying Ground, where the Hook Gulls were congregating - and what happened? Before you could make up your mind, a decision was made for you when the Inquisition remediated the entire building. At this point, you have better odds of bleeding a stone then learning anything of substance from the site. What if the same thing happens here? There will always be other opportunities to shop, but you will only ever have one father. Get the wand ready, and head in.
If this is the Duo, then clearly the Pattermaker has tangled our Red Thread with theirs, and the last time we misbehaved in the face of his challenges he not only forced our hand, he created an entire new existence just to challenge us further. Maybe we should just check it out for a moment or two?

Besides, while the likelihood of this being the same Duo maybe somewhat higher, this could also just be some Strangeness from a random actor- like the Funeral procession, the Corners, the Refinery explosion, Animal Control Leapers, etc. etc.

Actually, there’s a lotta ways someone could get Strange in this town. It’s starting to become disconcerting desu.

>>5667920
>> If the men are in this Public House, then the place is too dangerous for you to treat it as a storehouse when other options exist. And if they aren't ... either way, right now you need to focus on getting supplies and finishing errands, not following three or four day old leads. There are not too many hours left in the day for trading, and assuming that you don't manage to leave the Mount tonight, most places of business are going to be closed for Titheday tomorrow. If you do investigate this place, it should be later. Keep moving, find another House.

>>5667920

> If for whatever reason, the late Aldoin's house does not pan out, then this might be the last lead you have to father. Ever. You hemmed and hawed about poking around the house across the street from the South Burying Ground, where the Hook Gulls were congregating - and what happened? Before you could make up your mind, a decision was made for you when the Inquisition remediated the entire building. At this point, you have better odds of bleeding a stone then learning anything of substance from the site. What if the same thing happens here? There will always be other opportunities to shop, but you will only ever have one father. Get the wand ready, and head in.

There is no escaping the Patternmaker's design.

>>5667920
>If the men are in this Public House, then the place is too dangerous for you to treat it as a storehouse when other options exist. And if they aren't ... either way, right now you need to focus on getting supplies and finishing errands, not following three or four day old leads. There are not too many hours left in the day for trading, and assuming that you don't manage to leave the Mount tonight, most places of business are going to be closed for Titheday tomorrow. If you do investigate this place, it should be later. Keep moving, find another House.
I still think that we're chasing rabbits and that the real clue will be at Aldoin's

> If the men are in this Public House, then the place is too dangerous for you to treat it as a storehouse when other options exist. And if they aren't ... either way, right now you need to focus on getting supplies and finishing errands, not following three or four day old leads. There are not too many hours left in the day for trading, and assuming that you don't manage to leave the Mount tonight, most places of business are going to be closed for Titheday tomorrow. If you do investigate this place, it should be later. Keep moving, find another House.

>>5667920
> If for whatever reason, the late Aldoin's house does not pan out, then this might be the last lead you have to father. Ever. You hemmed and hawed about poking around the house across the street from the South Burying Ground, where the Hook Gulls were congregating - and what happened? Before you could make up your mind, a decision was made for you when the Inquisition remediated the entire building. At this point, you have better odds of bleeding a stone then learning anything of substance from the site. What if the same thing happens here? There will always be other opportunities to shop, but you will only ever have one father. Get the wand ready, and head in.

This is not something I'd feel comfortable rolling a tie-breaker for. I'll wait for a tiebreaker.

>>5668303
Well, while we wait, what does the Strange-Stain look like? For all we really know, it could just be the Strange Gulls making a mess on the railing, so maybe more information on the stain and surroundings will help us come to a conclusion.

>>5668447
Good question.

Well, it is not a clean handprint by any stretch of the imagination, but the handrail does not look like any place a Hook Gull could perch, even if it was confused enough by the Strangeness to try to take a rest in such a man-trafficked spot. It is also worth noting that Chlotsuintha is not looking directly at it, in a bid to not draw attention, in case someone is set up over the Stain, looking for people to react to it.

>>5667920
>If the men are in this Public House, then the place is too dangerous for you to treat it as a storehouse when other options exist. And if they aren't ... either way, right now you need to focus on getting supplies and finishing errands, not following three or four day old leads. There are not too many hours left in the day for trading, and assuming that you don't manage to leave the Mount tonight, most places of business are going to be closed for Titheday tomorrow. If you do investigate this place, it should be later. Keep moving, find another House.

Alright, that is the tiebreaker. I'll get to writing this up.

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Your feet might be stumbling on the street-stones, but at the moment your mind is racing. On one hand, there is an entire host of risks lurking behind the door of this House. The risk that you run into the men responsible for the Strange footfalls, or perhaps someone else who is pursuing them. The risk of minute-chewing complications, like those you dealt with in the Perch. The risk of being recognized, as you were in the Blue Boy. The ever-present risk of making a mistake, and your wand or your true eyes being seen - or even just your blades or the talents from the Euthyphro knock-down. The risk that you are once again mistaken to be a prostitute. If this establishment is of a more decent bent than the Perch, you might be run out on sight, before you even get the opportunity to speak. But if this House is kith to the one you just quit, then the proprietor might intend to ... take license with you, as did the previous cad. Actually, it could even be worse - there might be nothing stopping this one from trying to ... "collect" ... effective immediately.

But even as you blanche at the thought, your eyes are inexorably drawn the front door of the House, invitingly ajar, with those delicious smells wafting through the air. For against all of those risks, is the prospect of finding your father. While there is no proof that this Stain was from the men you followed to the Perch, and it is true that there are now a disconcerting number of men around the Mount who are communicably Strange - Aldoin's decedents primarily, but also anyone that might have been exposed by the destruction of Gothorum-One, as well as those almost certainly doomed Coroners, as well as that other Leper from Animal Control, not to mention the Hook Gulls themselves. But ... while the Stain is not in any shape that definitively identifies it as being left by a human, its placement on the handrail, and the complete absence of any other Stains around it suggest that it was not left by a Gull perching there. And under no circumstances would any public house allow a Leper through the front door, so that leaves the Refinery workers and the mourners. But anyone who was exposed and registered as even non-communicably Strange would have been taken into curative custody, and even those who didn't register as Strange at all might have been sent to an Asylum for short-term observation, just to be safe. As for Aldoin's family ... everything that you have seen of them suggests that they are more than comfortably well off, and while this House doesn't look to be some manner of wastepit, you find it hard to imagine any of them staying in a simpler, presumably cheaper establishment such as this.

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So really, it does seem pretty likely that you are back on the trail of those two men. But now, the hard question. Should you be on their trail - at the moment, that is - or should you be doing something else? You aren't even sure what time it is, but looking around the street, you are seeing more and more people out, which suggests that it is getting later in the day. You have a lot of errands you still need to run, and most if not all of them, are to shops and businesses that will be closed for Titheday tomorrow. And you mustn't forget, tomorrow is the seventh day since father left, the day he said that you needed to be out of the Mount by if he had not returned. But public houses are both open past the typical hours of closing for businesses, as well as on Titheday - in a limited capacity, of course. Perhaps - if you were to investigate this place, you should do it after the other places that you are running errands to have closed. Doing so will certainly mean that you are not going to have enough time to escape the Mount tonight and the other things you wanted to do - plant the dummy Graven Ball in Aldoin's coffin, and investigate his house - but honestly, you probably weren't going to have enough time to do all of that anyway. Not unless your luck turned and stayed blindingly white the whole night through.

Of course ... perhaps it wouldn't be a bad compromise if you were to simply go into the House to stash your cart as you -

No, that simply won't do. If there is a chance that those men are in there - and there is - then this place is simply too dangerous to use as a warehouse. You are better off finding another. Minutes pass, but eventually you do in fact find another House. Of the four that you have seen today, this one is easily the best appointed, at least from the outside, with crisp, colorful paint, and windows with large, clear panes of glace, instead of the small and cloudy affairs typical of most establishments. However, the House does have a markedly disturbing aspect to it. Seeming in lieu of a shingle, it has a dozen ship's figureheads, mounted to its front, all of which depict men or women - and all of which have their heads covered in what is clearly supposed to be an execution-hood. As you tentatively draw closer, you can see that the name above the door is The Hooded Heads.

It is a very grim and macabre aspect for a place that is supposed to be inviting, but even as you watch, you can see people heading in, and you can just hear the warm boisterous sounds from the common room. Perhaps monied men and women have a different sense of humor ... or perhaps you are just uncomfortable about any allusions to capital punishment. Due to the vagarities of law in the Mount, you are considered a pirate, and if you are caught by Thief-Takers or the Guard or by Bailiffs you will be winched.

Still, setting aside any misgivings about the name, you have to wonder if this establishment is simply too upscale for you to attempt to get a room to stow your cart away ...

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Regardless if you can talk your way into a room at the Heads or not, you are going to stick out the moment you step through that door, really badly. It kills you to spend more time on this, but you need to find more modest lodgings.
> This is an establishment for well-heeled Subjects, right? And well-heeled Subjects have maids, right? If they are traveling, then some of them might have maids and manservants with them. It shouldn't be too bad ...

> Also, if anyone has any suggestions for Chlotsuintha's cover story here, feel free to write them in. Good suggestions will make the eventual Deception-Test (either here or at another establishment) easier. Bad suggestions will make things more interesting!

>>5669510
> This is an establishment for well-heeled Subjects, right? And well-heeled Subjects have maids, right? If they are traveling, then some of them might have maids and manservants with them. It shouldn't be too bad ...
Sure- I wanna see how the other side live before we get kicked outta this establishment. If this is our Trial- so be it.

Illegitimate child turned maid I guess- frankly don’t know how to explain the cart of shit we got, or the lack of shoes, but it worked good enough with the Fabrication, maybe the same sort of story may hold some sway.

>>5669510
>> This is an establishment for well-heeled Subjects, right? And well-heeled Subjects have maids, right? If they are traveling, then some of them might have maids and manservants with them. It shouldn't be too bad .

>>5669593
Supporting, or we could do the young widow sob story again

>>5669704
Frankly, I would appreciate that more if we could somehow swing- it’ll make our later high-class appearance even more believable. Don’t know how that’s gonna cut with our current clothes, cart of stuff, and lack of adequate shoes though.

This probably isn’t a good idea if I’m being brutally honest with myself- even if we can somehow bullshit our way in, this is setting off multiple red flags in my head. The only reason I’m gunning for this is that I doubt we’ll get anything ‘better’- all the Public House we went to had some sorta significant catch or drawback to them, at this point I’m willing to chalk this up to a Trial from the Big Man himself and just bite the bullet- even if it becomes literal.

I got a stupid idea- what if we affiliate ourselves with the Aldoin family? We know they’re influential and well off, and it should’ve gotten around that they had a death in the family- could work, assuming there is a bone of empathy in such a haunting establishment.

Granted, when- not if- it comes out that the whole family’s been hit by Strangeness, it’s gonna be such a bullseye on our back that our Red Thread will be glowing in the dark- so that’s gonna be the ticking timebomb with a broken watch, and that’s just the obvious problem- no doubt there are other issues I haven’t considered. This is only really viable because the Inquisition is going to be busy dealing with the Refinery Explosion- which I assume will be all hands on deck for at least- what, a week? It’ll distract and delay them from uncovering the Aldoin Strangeness for a while, and all we need are two days technically.

>>5669704
Would a Refinery Comptroller’s wife/widow be influential/high-status enough that they would entertain our story? Like, yada yada, we were trying to find our husband, the Inquisition took our shoes but Chlot came up clean, lost the house with the husband, trying to pick up the shattered remembrance of our life on the worst day of our lives? Throw in how we recognized the burnt body of our husband by our gift he wore to work, maybe? I honestly don’t know if this is a decent suggestion, or an ‘interesting’ bad suggestion.

>>5669593
>Sure- I wanna see how the other side live
While the typical customer here would no doubt be monied and patented [have a registered and recognized surname] odds are they are Imperial Subjects. The 'other side' would be Imperial Citizens.

>>5669736
To answer your question about a Comptroller's widow, yes, they would, though I would remind you and all of anons that at this moment we are wearing a what is recognizable as a maids' dress. More pressingly then that, Chlotsuintha knows enough about how the Strangeness and the Inquisition operate to know that no one would be allowed anywhere near bodies taken from Gothorum-One, not for quite some time. Remember, all Strangeness that dissipates into the body over course of that bodies life is released upon death.

So, to clarify, do you want to present yourself as a maid, or as a widow?

>>5669777
Maid

>>5669777
I’m fine with whatever, I’m just spitballing suggestions here.

File: Born and Bred Liar.jpg (1.25 MB, 3052x2034)

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> Deception Test Part I: Introduction

> DC 40: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is a Born and Bred Liar, making a Involved Deception like this [Moderate]
> + DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha matches the description of a wanted criminal.
> + DC 2 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is odd looking, given her height.
> + DC 4 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is currently Drained II, and is not thinking as quickly as she normally does.
> + DC 6 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is currently Tired II, and is prone to making mistakes that she otherwise would not.
> - DC 15 Proprietor [Name Unknown] has no reason to believe that Chlotsuintha is lying to her yet.
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha looks to be Gently Bred; most male characters are more inclined to listen to her because of this (benefit doubles from – DC 5 to – DC 10)
> - DC 3 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is dressed as a maid might be, strengthening the deception.
> - DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is able to use her success at convincing the Dry Goods Merchant as a roadmap for this deception.

> DC 24 Anything lower is a failure. [Auto-pass(es) available. Re-roll(s) available. No hostile re-roll(s)]

> No Passes: Losing Your Head. From the moment you set foot in The Hooded Heads, you just knew that you didn't belong here, and that your story was not going to work. And guess what? You were right!
> One Pass: A Foot in the Door. Even as you try to explain yourself, the proprietor is trying to shoo you out of the establishment .. though he isn't completely ignoring you. Do you continue with the Introduction, or do you just bail?
> Two Passes: Of Hoods and Heads. Despite your best efforts, the proprietor here has picked up on some holes in your story. This is going to make the Ask a lot harder.
> Three Passes: Putting Heads Together. The proprietor is nodding along as you weave your backstory. As long as you don't blow the Ask, you should be free and clear.

> If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2) then as you are leaving The Hooded Heads, the axle of your cart breaks.
> If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99) then the proprietor beats you to the punch, and offers you a place to park your cart under lock and key for free here going forward, so long as your cover story holds.

>Standard rules in effect - so if you want to use the auto-pass, then you need to speak up before a Critical or Near Critical is rolled.

Rolled 54 (1d100)

>>5669891

>>5669912
If you are still here, you can roll again if you like.

Rolled 16 (1d100)

>>5669947

Rolled 98 (1d100)

>>5669891

Oh, almost a near-critical success.

Do you guys want to use a re-roll or an auto-pass to address that 16?

If unchecked, it will changes the -15 DC to a -8 DC, which in turn raises the DC of the Ask from 24 to 31. For reference, if you had only gotten one pass, the -15 DC would have been dropped, raising the DC of the Ask from 24 to 39.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Keep the re-rolls and auto-passes for life and death situations.
> Use a re-roll to try to get that 24.
> Use an auto-pass to skip directly to the Ask.

>>5669968
>Keep the re-rolls and auto-passes for life and death situations.
31 DC isn't fatal. That said, how many rerolls do we have?

>>5669978
You have banked up quite a few. By my count you have five re-rolls and two auto-passes, but I may have missed one over the course of the entire quest.

>>5669985
Screw it then, one reroll can't hurt
>Use a re-roll to try to get that 24.

>>5669968
>Use a re-roll to try to get that 24

Alright, we have spent enough time on this - can I get a 1d100? Remember, this roll overwrites the previous one, but re-rolls are not eligible for critical or near-critical successes or failures.

Rolled 68 (1d100)

>>5670045

File: Born and Bred Liar II.jpg (1.25 MB, 3052x2034)

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> Deception Test Part I: Ask

> DC 40: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is a Born and Bred Liar, making a Involved Deception like this [Moderate]
> + DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha matches the description of a wanted criminal.
> + DC 2 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is odd looking, given her height.
> + DC 4 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is currently Drained II, and is not thinking as quickly as she normally does.
> + DC 6 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is currently Tired II, and is prone to making mistakes that she otherwise would not.
> - DC 15 Proprietor [Name Unknown] has no reason to believe that Chlotsuintha is lying to her yet.
> - DC 7 Cobbler [Name Unknown] believes Chlotsuintha’s story completely.
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha looks to be Gently Bred; most male characters are more inclined to listen to her because of this (benefit doubles from – DC 5 to – DC 10)
> - DC 3 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is dressed as a maid might be, strengthening the deception.
> - DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is able to use her success at convincing the Dry Goods Merchant as a roadmap for this deception.

> DC 17 Anything lower is a failure. [Auto-pass(es) available. Re-roll(s) available. No hostile re-roll(s)]

> No Passes: Headless. Somehow your story just ... unraveled on you. You need to leave. Now.
> One Pass: A Head of Yourself. Just at the last moment, you slipped up a little with your Ask. It is unfortunate, but you are going to be in a rougher spot than you should be for the Counter.
> Two Passes: Heads with Shoulders. In spite of everything, you have developed a plausible Introduction and you have managed to avoid pitfalls with your Ask. All you need to do now is to keep it together for the Counter.
> Three Passes: Heading on in: You must have some sort of magnetism about you or something today. All doubts and questions are wiped from the proprietor's mind - there is no Counter. You are free to pay for the room.

> If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2) then as you are leaving The Hooded Heads, the axle of your cart breaks.
> If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99) then the proprietor beats you to the punch, and offers you a place to park your cart under lock and key for free here going forward, so long as your cover story holds.

>Standard rules in effect - so if you want to use the auto-pass, then you need to speak up before a Critical or Near Critical is rolled. Also, if you roll, wait 10 minutes or so, then roll again to keep the quest moving along.

Rolled 6 (1d100)

>>5670071

Rolled 39 (1d100)

>>5670071

Rolled 79 (1d100)

>>5670071

>>5670074
If you are still here, anon, it is alright if you roll the last one.

Also:

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Keep the re-rolls and auto-passes for life and death situations.
> Use a re-roll to try to get that 17.
> Use an auto-pass to conclude this test

>>5670094
>Use a re-roll to try to get that 17.
A safe room would be very handy right now

>>5670094
>> Keep the re-rolls and auto-passes for life and death situations.
I'd much rather have them on hand when we're doing the dangerous stuff, like planting the graven ball and making our escape. A bad roll there can be BAD.

>>5670094
>Use a re-roll to try to get that 17.
Last one, I hope

>>5670124
>>5670105
>>5670103
Alright, then lets get this show on the road! Can I get a roll of 1d100 please?

I see the vote that's about to happen and:
>Keep the re-rolls and auto-passes for life and death situations.

Rolled 65 (1d100)

>>5670131

>>5670133
Anon, you've rolled 4 times. Maybe let someone else get a chance to.

>>5670094
I’d like to voice my rabid objection to all these fucking rerolls- this ain’t normal talents spent like water you dolts, they are for life and death situations only. We only have a very small, limited number, and I’d rather take the low rolls here than reroll them you idiots.

>>5670139
>>5670137
>>5670136
Well, this turned into a mess, didn't it. On the honor system now, did the roll in >>5670133 pass DC 17?

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>>5670165

>>5670165
Only if you added 10 to it. Unfortunate that one of our limited edition rerolls failed us.

>>5670165
It appears that my admonition inadvertently led to this. My apologies.

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> Deception Test Part III: Counter

> DC 40: Witchlet Chlotsuintha is a Born and Bred Liar, making a Involved Deception like this [Moderate]
> + DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha matches the description of a wanted criminal.
> + DC 2 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is odd looking, given her height.
> + DC 4 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is currently Drained II, and is not thinking as quickly as she normally does.
> + DC 6 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is currently Tired II, and is prone to making mistakes that she otherwise would not.
> - DC 15 Proprietor [Name Unknown] has no reason to believe that Chlotsuintha is lying to her yet.
> - DC 7 Cobbler [Name Unknown] believes Chlotsuintha’s story completely.
> - DC 10 Witchlet Chlotsuintha looks to be Gently Bred; most male characters are more inclined to listen to her because of this (benefit doubles from – DC 5 to – DC 10)
> - DC 3 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is dressed as a maid might be, strengthening the deception.
> - DC 5 Witchlet Chlotsuintha is able to use her success at convincing the Dry Goods Merchant as a roadmap for this deception.

> DC 17 Anything lower is a failure. [Auto-pass(es) available. Re-roll(s) available. No hostile re-roll(s)]

> No Passes: Hoodlum. Pattern's Perdition. You are not sure how you did it, but you managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Your lies unraveled at the very last moment - you must quit this place immediately!
> One Pass: Head Hunting. You are so close ... but your 'perfect' answers must have rubbed the proprietor the wrong way - or something to that effect. Suddenly, he has other questions. There will be a second Counter.
> Two Passes: Under the Hood. It has been a long road, but you are going to be able to rent a room here for the rest of the day - though there is going to be a catch, of course ...
> Three Passes: Head of the House. You have secured a place to keep your cart under lock and key, for today and tomorrow without any strings attached.

> If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near Critical Failure (Roll of 1 or 2) then as you are leaving The Hooded Heads, the axle of your cart breaks.
> If ONE of the THREE rolls comes up as a Critical or Near Critical Success (Roll of 100 or 99) then the proprietor beats you to the punch, and offers you a place to park your cart under lock and key for free here going forward, so long as your cover story holds.

>Standard rules in effect - so if you want to use the auto-pass, then you need to speak up before a Critical or Near Critical is rolled. Also, if you roll, wait 10 minutes or so, then roll again to keep the quest moving along.

With any luck, this should be the last set of rolls for the night.

Rolled 14 (1d100)

>>5670202

>>5670171
You should feel good anon - you inadvertently kept the game honest.

Anyway, I would like to make it clear, that multi-stage Involved-level Deception Tests are not going to be common occurrences, though there will be at least one more in this thread when Chlotsuintha heads to the wainwrights, coachbuilders, stockbreeders and liveries to secure some means of conveyance and a team to pull it.

>>5670202
Oh joy

>>5670206
I am not a merry man

Rolled 95 (1d100)

>>5670202
>>5670224
Figures that i forgot to roll

>>5670226
Ordinarily I’d be happy with rolling above the 90th percentile, but I’m honestly just depressed that we keep failing a DC test of 17- and that’s not mentioning the near crit-success that we failed by 1 to hit.

Rolled 41 (1d100)

>>5670202
Patternmaker forgive me for rolling again

>>5670202
Ok, first thing’s first- is the catch a lewd one? Cause I will -shudder- consider using one of our non-replenish-able lucky talent on it.

Secondly, I was speed reading though the last intermissions thread, where I noticed this
>I don't know how I keep doing this. I'm sorry guys, truly. Sorry enough that I will count that eighty the next time we need a roll.
Is this still redeemable QM?

>>5670259
Nah, the catch would be that if someone showed up during the dinner rush looking for a room, and the House didn't have any left, they'd be allowed to remove Chlotsuintha's stuff from the room. Not a bad deal, so long as you are able to get back here before the start of the rush ... in little less than three hours.

As for that one, good eye. I figured I missed something. As far as redeeming it goes, I'll do you one better. I'll turn it into a partial auto-pass, capable of skipping any test with a DC of 79 or lower. You can use it now, you can bank it and use a re-roll, or you can accept the condition.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Use the partial autopass.
> Use a re-roll to get that final 17.
> Accept the conditions on the room.

>>5670271
Thanks QM, I really appreciate it.

Thinking about it for a while, I’m ultimately unwilling to use the auto-pass or re-roll- even with our wasteful use of the first two, I’d rather we bank what we have for more critical rolls.

To me, it mainly comes down to whether I think the condition is acceptable. It isn’t a bad deal, I’m just unsure if it’s the deal we need right now.

> Accept the conditions on the room.

I’ll think it over a meal.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>5670271
> Use the partial autopass.
> Accept the conditions on the room.

>>5670387
I swear to fucking god, if you use that partial auto-pass up, I will scream. That’s a DC of 79 auto-pass, which is abnormally high. We need to save it, not waste it on a DC of 17. I’d rather we pay extra talents to secure the room than waste that partial autopass- hell, using another reroll would be more sensible. Please anon, I beg of you!

>>5670271
>Accept the conditions on the room.

Alright, consider this closed for accepting the condition on the room. I'll get to writing this up as soon as I can.

>>5670271
> Accept the conditions on the room.

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Well ... this is clearly an establishment for the well-heeled. And the well-heeled have maids, menservants and all manner of hirelings. So then it stands to reason that a place like this might be more amenable to dealing with a maid or a servant than a rough place like the Perch, or even just a less wealthy House, like the Blue Boy. That being said, if you are going to go in there as a maid, then you are going to need to stow your gaudy - relatively gaudy - hooded red riding cloak, and you should make a point of at least attempting to present yourself at the servant's entrance.

It turns out that doing so is easier said than done, however. The street-stones of the alley between The Hooded Heads and the neighboring building are not nice little cobbles, but are instead flagstones, most of which are not quite flat, and of those that are, most of them do not sit flat on the street. You have to watch your footfalls, lest a loose binding of your footwraps get caught on the trailing edge of the stones - and your poor hand-cart! The passage of each stone is marked in jerks and shudders, and by the time that you actually find the servant's entrance, you are certain that the creaking of the cart and the clattering of its cargo must have announced your presence to the entire House, if not the whole of Cleanport.

As embarrassing - and potentially dangerous - as all of this unwanted attention taking might be, it seems that it might have also been a bit of a boon, as before you make it to the stoop of the door, a cook has already poked their head out. Thinking quickly, you make a show of setting the cart down carefully and catching your breath, in a bid to get them to speak first. It pays off.

"Lookin' for a bit of work then, eh? Step inside, I'll fetch the Master."

Not bothering to correct him, you manage to get your cart inside the rear storeroom, before a well-dressed and well-rounded man makes his way around the stacks of stuffs and stocks. When he catches sight of you, he stops for a moment, then his face lights up. As he closes the distance between you, he is chuckling all the while. Again, you make a point of letting him speak first.

"When Cam said that there was a 'large lass' looking for work, I had figured that he'd meant a different stripe of 'large'."

To emphasize this, he pats his stomach. Before he can continue though, you break your silence.

"I'm terribly sorry sir, but there has been a bit of a misunderstanding here. I'm already employed as a maid; I simply didn't get a chance to explain myself before you man headed off."

Damn it all. I just accidentally deleted 3/4ths of the update. I'm going to take a break now, but I will get it re-written as soon as I can.

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Second by second, you can see the good humor slide off of the proprietor's face. Well aware that you must act quickly, you take a deep breath, and launch yourself into your story - partially based off of the fable that you fed to the Dry Goods Merchant.

"My Master's patented name is ... Dremen. The family lives on top of the Mount, right near the University. Me and ... two of the other girls, we were sent out to pick up purchases the Master and Mistress had made over the course of the week - you know, to, to get the things in before Titheday. And as you might imagine, the other girls are responsible for smaller, lighter things, you know; dresses, and hats, and cut flowers, and the like, while I - "

You pause here to gesture to the cart, partially to give yourself a moment to breathe, and partially to judge how the story is going over. Dishearteningly, you find that you cannot really get much of read off of the proprietor's face, beyond that he is very intently listening. Before you can lose your rhythm - or your nerve, for that matter - you continue.

" - I am responsible for the heavier loads. Regardless, we had all gotten what we were sent out for, and we had all met up at ... a Cobbler, and we - we were all being fitted for new pairs of servant's sandals - paid for by the Mistress, bless her - when one of the families' menservants come bursting into the shop, with two roasting geese under each arm, and other shopping besides. It - you see, it turned out that our Mistress had gotten herself roped into some unexpected entertaining, and it was 'everyone into the breach', as my Master might say. They needed all of us to come home, quick as we can. Well, all well and good for the other girls, who can manage one of the Stairs with their little bundles, and same goes for the man - but me, there is no way that I - or anyone else, for that matter - could possibly get a hand-cart up through the Stairs, and the manservant had seen that the line to go up the Lift was simply too long on his way down it. And burdened down as it is, it probably wouldn't survive the trip up the Chip at any speed that would get me back to the House before nightfall. So instead, he, he gave me talents, and told me to go quick as I could, and find a public house, and then to take a room there for a few hours - so the Master's shopping could be kept there, under lock and - "

This time, you are interrupted by the laughter of the proprietor ... though this laughter is incredulous, and missing much of the warmth of his earlier chuckling. Getting the distinct impression that you are starting to lose him, you don't even need to force the emotion into your voice as you try to recover - it finds it way in there all on its own.

"Please, sir. I - I have been running around with this cart, trying to find a House that will take it in, just for a few hours, so I can come back and fetch it once the press at the Lift has subsided, and I'm not - "

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The proprietor of The Hooded Heads holds up his hand, and without even really thinking about it, you stop, and allow him to interject.

"So you - or rather, your hand-cart here - needs a room for a few hours?"

You are still having a hard time reading the soft features of his face, especially in the relatively poor light of the storeroom, but you can plainly hear that there is some acceptance along with the subdued mirth in his tone. You nod vigorously, while allowing yourself a fortifying breath - and silently congratulating yourself on a right tight little fable that you -

"So this manservant who gave you the talents - he still had enough on him, after paying for the Lift down, and the Master's shopping, to cover the cost of room?"

Shit! Think, think!

"Ah - well, you see sir ... it is kind of indiscreet to speak of such things but ... my Master, he has this ... habit. He insists on making all of his purchases, paying all of his debts, in gold. Specifically, talents struck in gold."

You haven't been caught in a lie yet, but that doesn't mean that you haven't stumbled into dangerous territory. Currently in your possession are low denomination talents, specifically eighth talents; a few are the old, tiny ones struck in silver, though most are the much larger new ones, struck in either bronze, if they were minted in the Old World, or straight copper, if they were minted locally in Outremer, where tin is scarce. But regardless of the seigniorage, or the metal or mint they were struck in, you know full well that you do not have enough of these coins to cover the cost of lodging at an establishment such as this. You do have larger denomination talents, starting from twenties and all struck in gold - but their use by someone presenting themselves as a maid must be explained away somehow, lest suspicion take root and fester. Hence the nonsense about a Master who insists on settling all of their debts in gold. Still -

"So this Master of yours, this Dremen, he sent you all out to do his shopping with, what, a pocket full of eight-talents?"

- it raises other questions, which will have to be addressed in turn. And the longer you keep speaking, the more likely you are to make a mistake.

"No sir, it - its just the menservants that get sent out with coins. Actually, it - it is really just ... well, Irwin and his son. They have been with the family the longest. The rest of us, we have to deal with those bits and bobs of papers. You know, slips, sir."

Well aware that you have started to ramble, you force yourself to clam up, hoping that the proprietor will accept your story as is ... but instead, he simply returns your gaze with that oddly inscrutable look. An awkward moment passes, and you realize that he is not going to say anything else either ... so in a bid to keep things moving, you fish out a twenty-talent to hand him, running your fingers over the coin to make sure that you are not handing him a hundred-talent instead.

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His eyes go wide at the sight of the twenty-talent, but it seems what held true for the Dry Goods merchant holds true here as well - for all your experience in the matter at hand, gold is a much more eloquent convincer than you could ever hope to be. Not only does it not need to lie to ensorcell as you do, it doesn't even need to speak!

"Lets see that talent then."

As your heart soars with the hope that you finally managed to pull this off, you reach out with the talent, intending to drop it into his hand, as you have learned to do these past eight years. It is only when he gently extracts the coin directly from your fingers that you remember that you are not a Leper now, that people will not go to great lengths to avoid your presence or your touch - in fact, there seems to be some who inexplicably and unsettlingly enough want - no, this is not the time to think about such things. You shoot a quick glance at the proprietor, to see if he noticed your awkwardness, or potentially worse, your fingers, slender and exceptionally long, even for your size. But as you clap eyes on him, you are certain that those fears, at least, are mules. The coin itself has his undivided attention. As he turns the talent over in his hands, you suddenly realize that at some point you started holding your breath. You force yourself to relax, and watch with what you hope looks like nothing more than vague interest as he continues to inspect the coin. When he turns towards the door, you panic for a split second, fearing the worst ... but then it becomes obvious that he is simply moving into better light.

Blessedly though, he is still too occupied by the talent to notice any signs of distress or discomfort that you might have let slip. Finally, he lowers the coin from the light - but then instead of returning it to you, he withdraws a half-busted set of false teeth from one of his pockets and then holding them in his hands, uses them to 'bite' the coin. Your mouth goes agape at the bizarre sight, and you don't quite manage to get your face fixed back to 'vague but polite interest' by the time he looks up at you, satisfied by his test. With a genuine smile complete with what for all the world look to be his genuine teeth, he says, by way of explanation -

"Better these than mine, right?"

"A-ah, yes. As you say, sir."

He chuckles to himself, with all the earlier warmth returned. Honestly though, you are confused. Now, you have stolen worse looking dentures off of corpses, and teeth as well, for that matter ... but someone like him, someone ... decent ... he should be staying clear of something so unclean - physically and spiritually unclean - as those false teeth. Then again, what with the mounting figureheads on the wall, then placing execution hoods over them ... in spite of the obvious money in this place, as well as the glorious smells of the nearby kitchen, and the decency and patience of the proprietor, this House is more than a little unsettling.

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Still, there is nothing to indicate that there is anything more than here than a public house being appointed and run by an eccentric with a dark and bizarre sense of humor. The proprietor turns the false teeth over in his hands idly, with the coin still pinned between them. Finally he breaks the strained silence between you.

"One will take in all manner of guests under their roof, you know, keeping a House in a place like the Mount ... but I cannot ever say that I expected to have a hand-cart as guest, paid up for with a twenty-talent. Might just be the queerest custom I will ever see ... "

"You - you'll let me park the cart here? In a locked room?"

"Well ... for a few hours, yes. All of the rooms have been paid up for, but there is one that was taken by an - I think he was an actuary of some stripe - anyway, he is out on the Mount, and not going to take possession of his room until he returns for dinner. I'll open up his room my key, and you can park your cart in there. But if he is back before you are, then it has to go. Understand?"

"Yes, certainly, yes! Before dinner. I ... I doubt it will take too long to get things back in order up at the House, and ... yes. Before dinner. I can do that."

"Good. As for the payment, I don't have hourly rates for my rooms, so I'll need to figure something out. When you get back, we can settle up then."

With that, he turns and begins to pick his way through the stocks and stuffs of the storeroom, clearly intending for you to follow him. Yet you remain where you are. It is not lost on you that he has not returned the twenty-talent, which to put it mildly is frustrating and concerning. More than that, after what could have happened to you at the Perch, the talk of 'settling up' sent shudders up and down the length of your spine, and it was all you could do to hold yourself steady. Still, there is no indication that this man is Cut from the same Cloth that the previous proprietor was. In fact, one might interpret his reticence to return your coin as an indication that his interest in this transaction is entirely monetary.

Praying that it is the case, you follow him as he leads you deeper inside, through the storerooms and the servant's quarters to a relatively quiet hallway which has to be just off of the common room of the House. Light shines through several large-paned windows, similar to the ones that you saw from the street, and mounted between them are several bright copper lamps, their wicks ready and waiting for the kiss of a flame. Beneath your feet there are threadthick carpets which run the entire span of the hall. But perhaps the most impressive is that standing by the door you just passed through, is a stout little bookshelf, complete with curios, pamphlets, scrolls, and of course, books. You deliberately turn away from the bookshelf and try to peer into the common room. While you cannot see into it from here, what you can hear and smell of it makes you wish you could.

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Without a doubt, this is the nicest place you have been in ... you don't know how long. It is certainly the nicest place that you have ever been let into. That thought makes you feel a little bit ashamed, and quite self-conscious - though at the same time, you are annoyed to note that the coin and the false teeth are no longer in the proprietors hands. You are wrestling with whether or not to say anything about it, but then he goes to open the door to the room and you can almost physically feel the moment pass you by, and you stifle a frustrated sigh. Perhaps it is for the best - after all, against all reasonable and rational concerns and objections, this man has decided to trust you and accede to your admittedly ridiculous request. You should repay that trust in you with trust in him. Believe that he will do the right thing, and give you change for that twenty-talent back. More importantly, believe that he does not have any ulterior designs by ... personally letting you into this room.

Of course, he shouldn't be trusting you. So by that selfsame token ...

Immediately following that harrowing thought is the realization that instead of giving you the key to unlock the room, he is doing it himself with a key from a cord around his neck, presumably the Master's key for The Hooded Heads. Once he opens the door and stands back with a mild smile on his soft featured face, it seems apparent that he has no intention to give you your own key to this room. You make a bit of show of fumbling with the cart a bit, pressing on the bundled goods, to make sure that they are packed down, hoping that if you simply stall a bit, he will put two and two together and offer you the key to the room. But when he doesn't, you have to press him on it.

"Pardons, sir, but the key?"

"What about it, lass?"

"Can ... I get the key to the room?"

"Oh. No, unfortunately. The man who took the room for the night has the guest key. The only other one is mine."

Great. Just fraying great. Doing your best to keep your nerve, you get your cart moving once again, and with the proprietor standing beside the door, you cross the threshold into the room. The room is of a similar size as to the one that you were sent to in the Perch, but this one is much more comfortably appointed. For starters, there is a full-size window instead of a slit. The bed is a little longer, and significantly more comfortable looking - as is the chair at the table. The washbasin has it own little cabinet, and not only does this one actually have water, but it has a hunk of lye soap and a towel as well. And while there might not be a sea chest at the foot of the bed, there is a brace of devotional tapestries instead of just the one. This is a remarkably nice room, and if you weren't so damned on edge - and you actually were going to be staying in it - you might be able to appreciate it. You allow yourself a fortifying breath, then you push the cart in.

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That breath does not do you much good. As soon as the proprietor passes out of sight, you start to panic again. And by the time that you and the cart have cleared the door, you have gotten this terrifying mental image of him standing in the doorway - blocking you in - with his face twisted and distorted by wearing those half-ruined false teeth. You cannot stop yourself from spinning around - and as you do, you realize that without even intending to, you have started to reach for your wand.

But once you have turned around, you can see that the proprietor is not leering at you in the doorway. He is not in the doorway at all - in fact, he is on the other side of the hall, examining one of the copper lamps. Tapping on it, no doubt trying to ascertain how much fuel is left in the reservoir. When he sees that you are out of the room, he traipses back over, closes the door to the room and locks it. He then looks at you, smiling.

"Well then, I suppose I will be seeing you in ... three hours?"

You nod, still too shook up to speak.

"Well then, if there is nothing else I can do for you, I hope your Mistress manages to get her hands around her unexpected obligations."

You look at him blankly, then remembering what he was talking about, you nod again, this time more vigorously.

"Do you remember the way out?"

"I - yes, certainly, sir."

He didn't even really wait for your answer to that, he just ... ambled on off, leaving you behind in the hallway. You follow his lead, and make haste out of The Hooded Heads. Unencumbered by your cart, your long legs now make short work of the distance, and soon you are back out on the streets, with the disquieting totems and idiosyncrasies of the establishment shrinking behind you, now out of sight, but far from being out of mind. After all you have been through, especially at public houses, it is no wonder to you that you are on a hair-trigger ... though you are well aware that a break in your composure at the wrong time, in the wrong place, in front of the wrong people could easily be fatal.

For now though, you need to focus on the errands that you must finish today. First among them is picking up your repaired boots from the Cobbler. You should also make a decision on if you are going to ask him about the maker's mark that you saw on the boots you found in the Poonist's Perch, the one depicting a masked badger. As the pair responsible for the Strange footfalls were staying in public houses, you'd assume that they weren't local. If the Cobbler knew where the mark was from, then that could be huge.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> What few clues you have are precious. More than that, they might be time sensitive. Ask the Cobbler about the maker's mark you saw on the boots.
> At this point, what you need to be cautious of is leaving behind a trail of your own. There will be other Cobblers in other places. Perhaps you would be better off asking them, instead.

>>5671135
>> What few clues you have are precious. More than that, they might be time sensitive. Ask the Cobbler about the maker's mark you saw on the boots.

>>5671135
> What few clues you have are precious. More than that, they might be time sensitive. Ask the Cobbler about the maker's mark you saw on the boots.
With any luck, Inquisitor Sherlock won’t divine our implication in these Strange events from a random cobbler. Oh, who am I kidding?

I’d appreciate if Chlot keeps tabs on any inns she passes- it might be a decent idea to find a place to store our stuff for a later pickup, especially considering how we’re supposed to make it back before the dinner rush.

Also, we were waring Oilers when we left the Cobbler- just wanted you to know that I haven’t forgotten that little fact since >>5667073.

>>5671173
Anon, unless I have completely overlooked a passage - which is entirely possible - Chlotsuintha is still in her footwraps. Which is to her benefit, at least at the moment, considering that she no longer is able to stow stuff away on her cart. If she was still wearing her Oilers, then once she went to the Cobbler to pick up her repaired boots, she would need to carry either them or the Oilers ... which might not go over well in Cassandra's establishment. With wearing the footwraps, she can simply re-wrap them higher on her legs, so they fit in the boots ... or just dump them.

Anyway, I am not ready to write at the moment, so I am going leave this a little longer.

>>5671285
It took me a minute, but I think I understand what you are getting at now. Showing up at the Cobbler's wearing different footwear than we left in is not going to be a problem this time, as the poor condition of the footwraps are in line with the fable Chlotsuintha fed the Cobbler. If pushed, Chlotsuintha could simply say that this is what she has to wear in lieu of stockings.

>>5671173
>>5671294
In case it was not obvious, I intended to respond to you, not myself.

Man, I need to sleep more ...

>>5671135
> What few clues you have are precious. More than that, they might be time sensitive. Ask the Cobbler about the maker's mark you saw on the boots.

>>5671285
>>5671294
>>5671296
Ah, thanks mate, I was worried that was what it was leading to.

>>5671135
>At this point, what you need to be cautious of is leaving behind a trail of your own. There will be other Cobblers in other places. Perhaps you would be better off asking them, instead.

Okay, consider this closed. I'll get to writing this up.

>>5671285
>>5671294
Also, we do have the Incinarary in our footwrap- I just wanna know if we should move it or if will it be fine and the Cobbler won’t insist on watch us put them on?

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The more you think on the matter, the more certain you become that asking the Cobbler about the mark is the right play here. Even shreds of information can be the difference between life and death. For all you know, it could turn out that the city or town that mark is from is going to be on the route you end up taking from the Mount to the frontier provinces. If you ignore this, you could end up right in the middle of a Coven's stomping grounds without even realizing it. A harrowing thought. Of course ... you are also worried about leaving behind a trail of your own. Though, admittedly, you are hard-pressed to see how anyone would manage to track you back to the Cobbler - or what specific harm it would do you if they knew that you had seen a specific maker's mark on a pair of boots, and had asked about. In fact, considering that they have the remains of Gothorum-One to deal with, it is more than possible that the Inquisition never finds all of the Strangeness in the 'Poonist's Perch.

That is a pleasant thought, and while you know enough not to count on anything of the sort, it does buoy your mood as you make your way into the looming shadow of the Mount, where the Cobbler hangs his shingle. You reach the little establishment without further incident, and upon entering, see once again that there are no other customers – which is as you want it, of course, but you cannot help but feel a little concerned for the livelihood of a man who has helped you so much. The man makes his way out of the back shortly, and after a bit of polite conversation and without fuss or complication you take possession of your repaired boots. Truly, he has done an excellent job on them – you doubt that this pair looked this good the day you got them. After thanking him for the work, all there is left to do is steer the conversation to a point where you could ask him about the maker's mark in the image of a masked badger. On the spot, you come up with some tall tale about a man who cheated your father-in-law.

“ … so he ended up waiting there, in the rain, for the better part of three hours before he finally came to grips that he had been 'taken in'. To be honest, I doubt the man had a share of a barrow-hog to sell.”

“A liar, a cheat and a thief. Well, 'tis a terrible position to be in, but at least your father-in-law can take some solace that the bastard will suffer accordingly, if not in life, then after it.”

“R-right. Uh, anyway, as slim as the odds are by now, he still is intent on trying to find this … well, one of the things that he remembers about him is his boots.”

“Oh?”

“Well, actually, the boots themselves were fairly standard affairs – but when he had taken them off to dry, he saw the maker's mark, that is what he remembered. Was large - ”

You gesture the size with your hands, while hoping that he somehow doesn't notice the exceptional size of your fingers.

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“And depicted a masked badger. Have -”

“Aye, Blue Barrens.”

“ Blue Barrens? I can't say I've ever heard of Blue Barrens.”

“ I hadn't either, 'till I seen the maker's mark on a pair o' boots and asked their owner where they'd bought them. Apparently, 'tis the last gasp of the Principalities to the north, or at least the last port of any substance, anyway.”

With your inquiries and your business here concluded, you thank the aged Cobbler for his help as sincerely and genuinely as you possibly can ... then you go right back to lying to him by ensuring him that your 'father-in-law' will be pleased at the lead, as tenuous as it might be. All of the while, you are thinking about what this means. Does the fact that these men had boots from some distant corner of the Principalities mean that they couldn't be father's 'professional friends'? No ... but it does make it much less likely. Especially if you consider that both of them had boots from there. And as for this location ... well, on one hand, you are glad that you are not going to have to be anywhere near there on your way to the frontier provinces, as your escape is going to be harrowing enough already ... but, on the other, this place must be so far away that you doubt you could get there safely even if you wanted to. To that point though, even if you knew for certain that there was a Coven based out of Blue Barrens, you are not in any position to go sniffing after them.

After a little more polite conversation, and well-wishes from him to you and your husband, he wanders off to the back of his shop once more, and you sit down to get your boots on once more. The footwraps, tattered and dirty as they are performed much better than you would have expected - though you question how well they would have held up to Stickport boardwalks instead of Cleanport streets. You loosen the wraps to reposition them higher up on your legs so you can wear them as stockings - in the process finding that you now have a rash were the Strange Incendiary was rubbing up against your leg before you stowed it in the hand-cart in the process of escaping from the Perch - then you slip your feet back into your boots and depart the store.

Your next stop is Spinster's Street. You are in the process of figuring out what route will drop you out closest to Cassandra's when you remember that you still have two dresses waiting for you at Hortingea's - not to mention that you wanted to thank her as well. You re-figure you route and make good time, in part by cutting through alleys and side-streets in the safer districts, until you are back in Cleanport proper. From there is a more or less a straight shot until you reach Spinster's Street. You are still trying to figure out what you might say to Hortingea, given the chance, when you finally turn onto Spinster's Street and stop cold.

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Further up the cobblestone street is what is unmistakably an Inquisitor's carriage.

There are a few men dressed plainly in white, standing near the carriage. Clearly, these are Cleansers - but are there others? A detachment of them equipped with Spot-Dosimeters? A scattering of them dressed as typical pedestrians on the street, looking for ... looking for what? The carriage is still a decent distance away from any of the stores on this street that you were in, so it doesn't seem likely that they are hunting you ...

Your stomach heaves at the thought, and you struggle to keep your face straight, lest anyone seeing anything untoward.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> Your best bet for getting out of the Mount with father's work and without leaving a trail requires you to have that dress. You are not ... well, you are not communicably Strange at least. You are going to need to do this.
> You have to play it safe here. Figure something else productive to do right now, and just ... wait them out.
> You have to play it safe here. Cut your losses, and abandon the dresses. And don't ever come down this street again.

>>5671957
>under the Eye of the Lodestar
> Your best bet for getting out of the Mount with father's work and without leaving a trail requires you to have that dress. You are not ... well, you are not communicably Strange at least. You are going to need to do this.
The Patternmaker will it- our next trial awaits.

If we do not accept this trial, please remember that we do need these clothes- there is no ‘cutting our losses’ when we’re on a strict schedule enforced by our failure to remediate the Leapers of Strangness- and thus damned the whole of Midden to the charity of the Inquisition.

>>5671957
>Your best bet for getting out of the Mount with father's work and without leaving a trail requires you to have that dress. You are not ... well, you are not communicably Strange at least. You are going to need to do this.

>>5671957
>> Your best bet for getting out of the Mount with father's work and without leaving a trail requires you to have that dress. You are not ... well, you are not communicably Strange at least. You are going to need to do this.

Thinking it over, our Strange Duo must’ve come from a foreign trading ship. Maybe they’re related somehow to the trader we knocked off? Probably wishful thinking, though it does have me interested in that snuffbox again.

Could the Duo have killed Aldoin? Would explain the Strangeness, their wounds, and the haste- even if it is all wishful thinking on our part again.

Got me thinking though- clearly Aldoin absorbed an inordinate amount of Strangeness before his death, if all the communicable Strangeness contaminated his house enough for his family to be affected. Was he Father’s friend, or just a victim of unfortunate circumstance?

>>5671957
> You have to play it safe here. Figure something else productive to do right now, and just ... wait them out.

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You need to keep reminding yourself that your best bet - Hell, possibly your only - bet for getting out of the Mount with father's work and without leaving a trail necessitates using the dress waiting for you at Festive Fabrician's. Moreover, there is not enough room on that carriage to hide a ranged-dosimeter, and even if it was, to the best of your knowledge nothing in your possession is communicably Strange at the moment. Your only real risk would be from a Spot-Dosimeter, but none of the Cleansers that you can see at the moment are carrying them.

You just ... you just need to walk down the street. The carriage is parked in the middle of the street, so even if you had walk by it, sticking to the sidewalk should give you enough of a berth. That shouldn't happen though, because both Hortingea's and Cassandra's are closer to you than that damned carriage. Plucking up what little courage you have, you surmount the curb and walk the rest of the way to Hortingea's. You do your best not to pay too much attention to the Cleansers, but as they are in front of you it is similarly hard not to look at them. At the very least, they are a good distance away - you just need to keep telling yourself that. That and breathing. You just need to keep breathing, and keep steady, and keep the Hell away from - calm. You need to keep calm.

Eventually, you do manage to get to Hortingea's, and although you have the urge to throw yourself through the door like a burning man might throw himself into a body of water, instead you compel yourself to just slowly and steadily walk in onto the squeaking plank floors. There is no one there behind the counter, but as it was the first time you were there, someone calls out from further inside the shop that they will be with you - though the voice is not Hortingea's nor Bertrada's. The woman who eventually does come out is young enough to be one of their daughters, though if you were any judge, you'd doubt it. And while you do no recognize her, she certainly recognizes you, no doubt by description - a harrowing thought. Without any prompting, without even a word to you yet, she reaches under the counter and draws out two complete dresses, the rest of your order here.

"Would you like to try them on to make sure they fit?"

You are about to say no, fulling intending on getting out of here and ultimately off of this street as fast as you possibly can, when you realize that it might actually be a good idea to change - not to make sure of the fit, but rather to pull the Socketing Needle for your Wand of Head-Knocking. It might be easier to do that here, than at Cassandra's. On the other hand, with Cleansers on the street, perhaps this is not the time to disarm yourself.

> Please choose ONE of the following:
> "Yes, why don't we just make sure of the fit."
> "Oh, that won't be necessary. This one fit flawlessly."

>>5672033
> "Yes, why don't we just make sure of the fit."

I somehow have the feeling that Sherlock is around

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"Uh ... yes, why don't we just check the fit."

The woman at the counter nods, and after handing over the dresses, she directs you to one of the changing rooms. Blessedly, she does not follow you in, and once you are satisfied that you are alone in here, you undress yourself ... and in the process realize just how battered you are at the moment. Just the amount of bruises and cuts that are all over your body could be suspicious - and that is to say nothing of the track marks left from the Socketing Needle in your arm. Before you can get distracted any further, you pull the needle out of the crook of your left arm, smarting and wincing away for all three of the painful, miserable inches. When the tip finally clears your arm, you actually shudder in relief.Thinking quickly, you dig through your apron and fetch one of your stilettoes, then you unwind some of your right footwrap, then you cut it into crude bandages. You don't have the time - or even the desire - to wrap up all of your hurts, but having those tracks covered up makes you feel marginally better about all of this.

Of course, if you were stopped, investigated and inspected by the Inquisition, they wouldn't hesitate to look under a set of bandages ... and perhaps, by wrapping the tracks, but leaving all of your other injuries bare, you are drawing more attention to your left arm. For a moment, you consider wrapping the rest of them, or taking the bandage off of your arm - but ultimately, you decide against it. If the Inquisition is inspecting you, then they are also going to be checking you over with a Spot-Dosimeter - which you are presumably Strange enough to set off. Not a pleasant notion, but truly, there is nothing that you can do about it now. Out of the black, you find yourself thinking of the Master Abbot, how well he could read you. How from the moment you presented yourself to him with Ossavian's note to the harrowing experience of cutting 'deals' with him in his personal coach you were the breadths of a hair away from an agonizing death. It is also something that you don't want to dwell on .. but with the Inquisition afield after the disaster at the Oiler's Wharf you have to accept the possibility of another close encounter with an Inquisitor or a Cleanser.

Closer than simply being on the same street as them, that is.

Idly, you wonder if the Master Abbot would recognize you in one of these dresses. Probably.

Would Ossavian? Doubtful, he thought you were a man. You poorly stifle a sigh. Goes to show how bright you are, not only mooning after someone who has devoted their lives to hunting Witchlets like you down, but someone who cannot even tell that your a woman.