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Post by Laurelai on Mar 10, 2019 21:26:06 GMT
Fun fact: Elves can’t be put to sleep with magic, but their bodies can be induced to it by a wide variety of poisons and toxins. When you don’t normally sleep, it also really messes you up, even before you get into all the fun side-effects of most knockout agents which reliably work on elves.
On the plus side, if you do happen to be an elf like me, it is easy to tell if you've been drugged with a soporific: the first clue is that you wake up.
The first thing you should do after waking up is make yourself vomit.
I don’t care how much antitoxin you’ve got. I don’t care if you’ve got an amulet some guy in a shiny robe told you meant you’d never suffer a hangover again. You don’t know what drug knocked you on your ass, and even if you think you do know, you don’t know what else they’ve done to you whilst you were unconscious. The best thing you can do is make sure you’re as empty as possible. Yup. That means it doesn't stop with vomit. You're in for a fun time. This is why I don't recommend letting people knock you out.
Not only that, but if you can hold your nose, the contents of your stomach can give you a pretty good idea of how long you’ve been out. It takes between six and eight hours for food to fully digest, only the most dedicated kidnapper bothers to spoon-feed an invalid, and your stomach doesn’t care if you were conscious whilst it works. If you’ve got a nice chunky spew on, congratulations! You’ve only lost a few hours.
Laurelai pulled her head out of the bedpan and swilled the contents. It was liquid. All liquid. Whatever had happened to her, she’d been out for a good, long time.
After that, it was time to take stock of the surroundings.
She was in an attic. She was dressed. There didn’t seem to be a lock on the trapdoor out, or the windows. She was still in the clothes she’d worn when she was last awake, meeting Ace. Her head felt like it was full of cotton wool.
Then she realised her necklace was missing. And her rings. And her daggers. And, in fact, every piece of magical equipment she had relied on for the last eighty years. A cold sweat beaded on the back of her neck, trickling down her spine as she realised that the nondetection effect she had been under for so damn long was no longer active, which meant that any of the many people who might be looking for her through very expensive magical means, could now find her.
She checked her pockets. Her coin purse was gone too, which just seemed petty, but there was a note:
You’re out. Await further instruction.
-Ace.
She flung open the window, and fought her gorge back down her throat through pure effort of will. And as the sound of the City below came floating up to her pointed ears, she stared in disbelief at the sight which greeted her.
Waterdeep.
They dumped her in fucking WATERDEEP?!
It is a common belief that when you are angry, you make poor decisions. That’s not necessarily true. Anger is an explosive force. It needs direction. If you focus it in the wrong area, it can be very unproductive – but if, for instance, you are groggy after being dosed with some unknown toxin, anger can do wonders to get you moving again.
Her ears pricked when the footsteps were already halfway up the stairs towards her. If she hadn’t been distracted, she would have heard them coming much earlier. As it was, she had a split-second decision to make. Either she had a conversation with the person who was approaching, when she had no weapon and no real way of defending herself, or she jumped out the window.
When she hit the ground, the impact shuddered up her legs, and she twisted her ankle, but she pulled herself up against the wall. Muffled cursing from inside the room, and then the sound of heavy footsteps running down the stairs.
It took hours to reach the safehouse she had set up in Waterdeep … 10? 20? Years ago. It was hard to remember. It was one of those things she’d done on downtime between assignments, just in case she needed somewhere to fall back to on the Prime Material and all her other sites were unavailable. The Undermountain had changed a lot, but the decrepit shack she had purchased was still there, even if the door had been busted in and broken.
Four paces in, five paces to the right, and she levered up the floorboard, letting out a deep sigh of relief when she saw that the supplies were still there, too.
Magic items are great. They make life easy. When you’ve been part of a well-supplied organisation for many years, you become used to having all the best toys. Who needs to spend hours working with chalk, cream, dye and animal fat to create a believable persona when you have continuous access to Disguise Self? What’s the point in learning to forge documents when you can pass someone a roll of parchment that shows them exactly what they are expecting to see?
But find yourself in unfamiliar territory, without that support, and a half pound of animal fat, some coal dust, three sheets of parchment, some ink and wax will save your life.
The studded leather armour still fit after all this time. That was good; Waterdeep was a city filled with adventurers. Studded leather armour would do to keep herself inconspicuous until she could get in synch with the fashions of the different factions again.
She also had her bow, a hundred arrows – a nice, round number she always felt – and the tools of her trade. After applying a thick coating of coal dust and grease to her hair, she washed her hands off in the stale water, and carefully repacked her bag, keeping the legal items front and centre, and secreting the … less than legal tools of her trade around the subtle pockets of her studded leather.
The woman who emerged from the shack was absolutely nothing like the one who had entered.
Now she just had to find out how many of her contacts in Waterdeep were still alive… and what the hell they knew about the reason why she was, supposedly, ‘out’.
(Wordcount: 1087)
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Post by Laurelai on Mar 11, 2019 21:07:55 GMT
Zam was big for a human, small for an orc. Just over six feet, but starting to go to seed a little. He was growing pudgy as he aged, and his hairline had definitely seen better days, though his chin remained a stubbly mess. How he managed to make it look like he was perpetually in need of a shave, without ever quite looking like he had just shaved or was genuinely in the process of growing a respectable bears, was a mystery that she was never going to get to the bottom of. It was always difficult to see the shorter-lived races start to edge towards their final days. That was one of the things she had liked about this line of work; there weren’t many operatives who made it to retirement age. Zam was one of the exceptions.
A huge tusky grin spread across his features as he saw her across the crowded taproom floor. He rose, and embraced her, and she sat down in the seat opposite him, propping her bow against the table.
“Well, shit. Lau. As I live and breathe. When my buddies told me you were back in town, I though they were pulling my leg. You should have heard me. ‘Not Laurie’ I said, ‘She’d rather try and sell ice in the City of Brass than take an easy job back with us poor schmucks. So. What’re you doing here, other than making me look bad?”
Laurelai smiled easily as she gave a loose salute. Completely unsurprised that he’d been able to recognise her. Zam was always better at his job than people gave him credit for.
“You tell me, Zam.” She said, “You’re the one people are talking to. All the Wheel told me is that I’m out, and you know, it’s the strangest thing, but none of my usual contacts are where they told me to meet them. Except you.”
Zam laughed, shook his head, and raised his ale. “You think they tell me anything? I’m not exactly in their good graces any more, you know. Not a.” He belched. “Reliable asset.”
Laurelai’s smile didn’t even twitch, “They’re talking to you enough to tell you that I’m in town.”
Zam took a slug of his drink, looking at her over the top of it before he put it back down. “You worry too much. You want a drink? I still owe you one for pulling me out of the Feywild that time.”
“I’m fine, thanks. Just tell me what they told you.”
Zam sighed, and looked over his shoulder. There was no point. A bar like this? Nobody was here to eavesdrop on an elf and a half-orc having a private conversation. They were here to drink. That was exactly the point. If anyone had been trying to get close enough to get a good read on them, they’d be practically standing on top of them.
“You know what the players are like.” Zam said, shrugging his shoulders, “Lots of gossip, no real facts. You’re supposed to cool your heels here for a bit. Prime material only. Half of them are saying you turned traitor and stole, I don’t know, the fucking Dreamheart or something. The other half are saying worse. Sold out your people to Asmodeus, or Vecna, or whatever other boogeyman of the week they’ve got their panties in a bunch about.”
Laurelai liked Zam. He was a good enough friend to not have to ask the question. He didn’t even look at her like it was a possibility that either of those things were true.
“Look. Zam.” She said, “Whoever did this to me, they did it for their own reasons. If you can just get me a name, tell me where the order came from, at least then I might be able to clear up whatever misunderstanding this is all about.”
Zam sighed, and shook his head again, his tusky grin fading into a grim set.
“I wish I could. I’m not a player any more, Lau. You’ve been gone, what, twenty years? Twenty five? I keep my ear to the ground, but it’s a young man’s game, and I’m not a young man any more. All those years I gave to them? All they buy me now is drinks from the young pups who want to hear about the good days from the old dog himself.”
Laurelai held his gaze for a few moments, and then shrugged, as though it didn’t matter in the least. As she did, she rose back up from her seat, slung her bow back across her shoulders.
“It’s okay, Zam. Look. They dumped me here without any cash. You know any good sources of work?”
“’Course I do.” He said, cheerfully. “This is Waterdeep. Always work for people with our skillset. Come back tomorrow, I’ll have something for you.”
People who haven’t been playing it very long say that you can’t have friends in the Great Game. That’s not true. People like that take everything personally, and they don’t last long.
If you’re going to make it more than a few months, you need friends in your corner. Having an organisation backing you up helps, but how many people are going to take a knife for a co-worker? Who is going to stick their neck out for a colleague? Do you really think that someone who sees you as an asset is going to risk even a single gold on fighting your corner when things get tough? And they get tough for everyone eventually.
No. You find people who share something with you. Maybe it is love, or hate, or just an appreciation for fine booze. Maybe it is having a moral compass in a world that does its best to knock them out of whack.
But at the same time, don’t forget that they’re still Players, just as much as you are. Expect them to have their own game. In fact, if you know them as well as you should, you should be able to guess their next move… and use it to your advantage.
Most people probably wouldn’t have noticed when the pair of men – one an Aasimar and the other Human – opened the door and headed into the bar. The only thing that gave them away was that they were dressed a little too professionally. The dark and severe cut of their clothes was the type favoured by the quiet, dignified souls who worked closely with the nobility without actually being nobility themselves; sorts who appreciated discretion in those they dealt with. Not people who would ordinarily be drinking in the early afternoon in a place like this.
They’d been talking to Zam for ten minutes when her arms draped across their shoulders, and her smiling face pushed between them.
“Hey, guys! You must be City Guard, right? I know those tailors.”
She was beaming from ear to ear, and she raised her voice, loudly. “These guys are Guard!”
Their faces were stony as they stared at her. Zam looked horrifically embarrassed, shrinking back into his chair.
The Aasimar looked even less impressed, “We’re not here to talk to you.”
“No.” She agreed, “You’re here to talk to my good buddy about me. So why don’t we just cut out the middle man and I answer your questions. I’m Laurelai Stargrove, and you are …?”
The Aasimar stood, shrugging her arm from his shoulder as he did. She straightened to meet his eye, which he clearly hadn’t been anticipating.
“Harper.” He drawled, dryly, and adjusted the lapels of his jacket. “And those aren’t the orders we have.”
“Do you even know why you’ve been put on to me? Because I’d love to know what-“
He stood and pushed past her. As he did, his friend rose with him, jostling her from the other side.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. That’s for my boss to know.” ‘Harper’ said.
“Great! So just tell me who your boss is, and I’ll go ask him.”
He paused to look over his shoulder at her. “No. And I’m not asking him for you. I do have a message for you though.” The Human was by his side, now, his jacket pulled back just enough to indiscreetly show the hilt of a sword. As though she were stupid or crazy enough to start a fight.
What kind of rabid dog did they think she was?
“Don’t feel like you’ve got nothing left to lose. You’ve got family here, Stargrove. Friends.”
Laurelai’s smile faded at the edges, and she raised an eyebrow.
“Is that a threat, Mr. Harper?”
His smile didn’t touch his eyes.
“Just a reminder of the facts. You might have moved away, but there’s still plenty of things in boring old Faerun that you care about. I hope you don’t give us a reason to remind you how many there are.”
(Wordcount: 2565)
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Post by Laurelai on Mar 14, 2019 21:54:43 GMT
“C’mon, Lau. What was I supposed to do?”
Zam was pleading, following the tall elf as she made her way down the street.
“It’s okay, Zam.”
She’d lost count of the number of times she’d said that in the past five minutes. It was starting to get a bit annoying, really.
“They throw me work. Let me act as middle-man. Without them, I’d have been out on my ass years ago. When they heard that you’d sat down with me, what was I supposed to do? Tell them I didn’t know anything?”
Laurelai sighed, and stopped in mid-step, turning around to face him head on.
“I told you. It’s fine. You don’t need to feel bad, Zam. Just make sure you don’t tell them anything that’d get me in trouble.”
Zam laughed, and his hands clapped against her shoulders in a rough, loose embrace.
“Don’t worry. You’ll handle that part yourself!”
It doesn’t matter what city you wind up in, the only thing it’ll have more of than spies are rats.
Where there’s cities, there’s money. Where there’s money, there’s power. And where there’s power, there’s people who need to know how it is being used. It doesn’t matter what form it takes. Whether you’re trying to keep one set of padded buttocks on a throne over another set, or get your hands on the Orb of Arak’nee, you can bet that there’s going to be another dozen groups of people trying to do the exact same thing – or just trying to stop your group from succeeding.
That means it can be useful to know what those people are going to be talking about when they’re talking about you. Sometimes, a buddy you know is going to sell you out to the biggest player in town is exactly what you need. They’ll make sure you’re being talked about, and that means word will eventually get out to the right kind of people that you are looking for work.
It was hours later by the time Laurelai made her way back down to her safehouse. It wasn’t much, and she’d have to change it up in the very near future, but it was as good a place as any to lay her head down for the night. Reacquainting herself with the streets of Waterdeep hadn’t taken nearly as long as she had expected.
Cities have a character to them; a personality which shines through. Waterdeep was far from flawless, but the overwhelming emotion which ran through every city street was greed. Waterdeep was a city built on trade, commerce, and the veneration of the rich. It was, more than almost any other city she had been to, a city for merchants.
There was something disarmingly honest about all that. Most places had a veneer of respect for nobility, lineage, or a high ideal – all of which would be proven to be so many empty words when sufficient quantities of gold were waved around, in her experience. Waterdeep, by and large, had done away with the pretence and put the centrality of coin at its heart.
She was musing this when she became aware of the presence of someone lurking in the shadows outside her home.
He wasn’t a particularly intimidating sight, for her, but he was clearly supposed to be. A human with a wiry build, clad in tight-fitting leather which did not flatter his build. He wore a red sash around one arm, clearly the sign of some gang or other, with a longsword at his hip in ostentatious display.
As she approached, the younger man he had been talking to took a small bag from him, handing over a pouch in return, and took off down the street.
Ah. It was one of those deals.
Laurelai turned away in a very obvious way, meant to indicate that she didn’t give a damn what they were doing on her street corner.
“Oi. You new in the ward, huh? My name’s Wolf, nice to see a fresh face.”
Oh good. So that went well.
She turned, and made herself smile as the man approached. Now that he was closer, she wasn’t sure he was that much older than his customer. Maybe just a bit less shaven and a bit more worn around the edges. It was always so difficult to guess the ages on the younger races.
“Sure am. I’m tired. Good night.”
She started to turn, and his hand went to her shoulder, stopping her.
For a long moment, she just looked at the hand. Her eyes slowly slid to his, and her smile faded.
“Don’t see many knife-ears down here.” He said, spitting the slur so she knew he really meant it. “And it was rude of you to move in without checking with the landlord.”
“I bought this place fair and square.” She replied, “Probably before you were born, now I think of it. You want to let go of my arm, now.”
“No, I run this ward. This is my house, and you owe a lot of back rent.”
When dealing with a small time criminal, you’ve always got to weigh up options.
Killing one street thug is usually not a problem. But killing ten of them? Twenty? When you don’t know the lay of the land well enough to know how many you could be dealing with, it is usually better to play it safe. Nobody wants to have to trance with one eye open just in case someone decides it is a good idea to burn your house down because you killed the wrong scumbag.
On the other hand, if you give them what they want once, you’re going to keep on giving them what they want until they’ve taken everything you have, and then some.
Laurelai adjusted the dagger casually against Wolf ribs, just enough that he could feel the sharp steel through those poorly-made leathers.
“I feel like we got off on a bad start.” She said, casually. “My name’s Laurelai, and I really hate it when people invade my personal space. So maybe now you want to back up a couple of paces?”
He obliged, taking two neat steps backwards, and his hand twitched, starting to move towards his sword.
“I really wouldn’t.” She said, “Right now, Wolf, I’m just a little annoyed. If you draw that, we’re going to have a real problem.”
Her smile widened, and, showing a surprising amount of common sense, he didn’t go for the blade.
“It’s a gold a day. You pay, or I take it out of your hide. You’ve got a week.”
Laurelai’s eyes met his, and all the warmth had drained from them. Her expression didn’t change otherwise, still smiling a warm, open smile.
“Go talk to your Alpha, ‘Wolf’. Get him to come down here and have a talk with me. I’m sure we can work something out.”
(Wordcount: 3710)
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Post by Laurelai on Mar 15, 2019 19:26:47 GMT
“So, what’ve you got for me, Zam?”
Laurelai enjoyed the park a lot more than the tavern. There was a continual flow of people, and whilst the nature on display was strictly delineated and controlled, it was at least green and lush. There were even benches, and a free place to sit and talk was always appreciated, when money was tight. Besides, it wasn’t as though they were going to be discussing anything particularly secret, even if anyone was interested in keeping an eye on her right now.
The half-orc shrugged his shoulders, “A few things, here and there. Nothing that I looked at and though ‘Laurel will jump at that’, but…”
“I’m desperate, Zam. I’ve got bills to pay.”
He shrugged a second time, “You still specialise in finding lost goods?”
She smiled, an easy, lazy smile, “I specialise in keeping food on my table, Zam. I’m not rich enough to be picky right now.”
He sighed, and nodded slowly, “Sure, sure. Okay. Well, some rich guy lost his pocket watch when he was slumming it a couple days ago. Silver. Got a pretty dragon on it and some rubies. He’s paying a nice finder’s fee, if you can track it down.”
She had to suppress a shudder of revulsion. It wasn’t exactly the same stakes she’d been playing for previously, but then…
“Alright. Any chance you can front me fifty gold or so? I’ve got a few expenses I need to take care of before I go searching for some noble’s trinket.”
“’Course. Just don’t forget your old buddy Zam when you’ve hit it big again, okay?”
“Like I could.” She smiled, “Hey. Whilst we’re at it. Do you still have that hammer and chisel?”
When the sun was beneath the level of the rooftops and the street was plunged into darkness, a hooded and cloaked figure lugged a bag full of clay jars around the outside of Laurelai’s home. It had been drizzling all day, and the contents of the jars mingled and flowed with it.
"There’s a lot of different schools of thought as to how to make a first impression.
Personally, I’ve always felt that if you’re going to go through the effort, you should make it spectacular. Most people have short memories, so you want them to remember exactly who you are and what you can do. The more impressive your first impression, the deeper that emotional hook will be.
And once you’ve got them hooked, they’ll never forget you."
They came like clockwork. So predictable. The moment the sun was down and she was ‘supposed’ to be getting ready to rest, a dozen men and women with red sashes and weapons drawn. She observed from the roof of the next shack over. The man inside had taken a big dose of sannish an hour ago; he was going to be out for the whole evening.
She was faintly amused to notice that ‘Wolf’ was walking with a limp as he led a far larger man to her door.
“Oi! Knife-ear!” Wolf shouted, “Come out and face the music!”
The rest of their little gang spread out to surround the hovel, apparently thinking that she might be looking to make an escape. As though she’d have just sat there, waiting for the gang to make their move on her. Why did amateurs always seem to think that everyone was as stupid as they were? Would they just sit around waiting for her to drop through the ceiling and kill them? … Probably, now she thought of it.
With a shrug, she pulled out the tiny, stoppered green vial from where it rested about her throat. In the normal course of things, it would have been the most basic of the tools in her toolbox, but when she was so lacking in cash? Eh. It’d be worth it. She could pay Zam back a hundred times over when she was back in the game, and sometimes, you just needed the right tool for the right job.
She tossed the vial off the roof, and it shattered into the ground next to Wolf’s feet. Immediately, flames blossomed up from the point of impact.
She actually saw the self-satisfied smirk as he began to look around – clearly thinking that she’d missed.
And then the flames rushed up his legs, and raced across the ground in all directions. In an instant, the inferno had lit up the night, the gang’s screams filling the air, along with the scent of charred meat. A nice, neat oval delineated the end-point of the cascading fire.
It had taken her almost all day to secure enough oil, and the flask of alchemist’s fire, and then even longer to chisel the moat deep enough that she could be sure the oil wouldn’t spread to her home. But it had all been worth it. Who was going to mess with the crazy bitch who had a moat of fire around her shack?
And it was the easiest thing in the world to loose one arrow in the midst of all that chaos, fear and confusion.
The blaze was intense, but short-lived. She counted. Six seconds. No doubt to the people stuck in the middle of the flames, it would have felt like much, much longer. Half the gang had fled. The other half were desperately beating out the flames that still clung to their clothing.
“FIND HER. FIND HER NOW!” The boss roared, “Damnit, Wolf, what shit have you gotten us into?”
It took him a pleasingly long time to realise that Wolf wasn’t responding. When he finally spied the man face-down in the dirt with the arrow protruding neatly through the back of his head, he stopped moving around.
And that was the moment Laurelai stepped in close behind him, and pressed her dagger against one of his kidneys.
“I’m right here.”
After that, it was the easiest thing in the world to get the Red Sash Gang to agree that, yes, Laurelai did own her property outright, and yes, it was very rude of Wolf to shout slurs at her and, yes, by mutual agreement, they’d just make sure that nobody bothered her any more, because she was a woman who had quite enough on her mind.
Like finding some nobleman’s lost watch, apparently…
(Wordcount: 4762)
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