Adventure: Love Bites

[Lord Sessadore]

Tristan looks at his now-empty hand, then pats Mikara on the shoulder. "It's ok, these city people things confuse me too."

He turns to Dungwringer again. "I dunno, Dung. I get the distinct feeling that Hacker here doesn't really feel like paying you at the moment. Maybe you should just tell us what you know to show your goodwill or something."

The elf taps his chin a couple times. "Actually, maybe Hacker would feel a whole lot better about this whole thing if the gold exchanged to his hands to boot! Now there's an idea." Tristan grins at Dungwringer, but the smile doesn't look very encouraging.

 

[KenHood]

"Hacker thinks it's a load of ***** when people talk about Hacker in front of Hacker. And yes, Hacker would like it if Hacker received gold."

 

[Dunamin]

"Serevas, you say? I think I might have heard something about someone by that name. If only I could remember... Hey, you know what always jogs my memory? The sweet sound of gold exchanging hands!"

“How about the sweet sound of teeth exchanging places?”

As Dungwringer gives ground, Woe strolls inside. He takes to pace around the room while whistling a merry tune, glances up and down the accommodations, admires paintings, and inspects the more precious items on display.

Ignoring any protest that Dungwringer may produce, he finally picks up the most expensive and frail object he can find – preferably something that seems like it might have sentimental value to the inhabitant.

“Now what do we have here, Dung? Is this supposed to be your idea of "taste"? Pretentious clichéd style and obviously a counterfeit all the same. We’d be doing you a favour breaking it up and save your reputation before the scandal hits the street.”

Woe weighs it in his hand and starts to juggle it around, pulling off the more risky manoeuvres and only barely catching it from shattering on the ground.

“Don’t worry, this one’s on the house.”

 

[nerdytenor]

Kathalia sighs absentmindedly. "Such a big fuss over little shiny coins." She clucks her tongue and carefully gives Dungwringer, and his abode, a careful examination as the interchange continues. She sidles up to Hacker, lowers her head to meet his, and whispers something in his ear (Perception 27, whisper what she notices, if anything)

 

[covaithe]

ooc: Sorry for the silence; had to work some things out.

[sblock=Kathalia and Hacker]Dungwringer's suite is excessively neat, even fussy. The edges of the books all sit at precisely the same depth on the shelf, and stand exactly upright. The corners are free from all but the most minute quantities of dust; the whole room is probably dusted daily.

On the bookshelf are a variety of normal books, but the top shelf is taken up entirely with leather-bound, unmarked books, the kind that are usually sold with blank pages, to be used as journals and such.
[/sblock]

Woe grabs a rather beautiful glass vase, cleverly worked to look like two swans just about to unfurl their wings and take flight in a spiral so close that their necks are entwined. Woe begins dangling and juggling it, taunting Dungwringer by pretending to drop it. Unfortunately, his fingers are more used to gripping weapons than fine glasswork, and when he tosses it up and catches it by one of the wings, the wing snaps off and the rest of the vase smashes into a thousand tiny pieces on the floor.

ooc: You didn't think that was going to happen without a skill check, did you? Thievery 4 fails. Oops.

Dungwringer stares in shock at the broken glass all over his very clean floor. His jaw works soundlessly several times before he finds his voice. Then he looks up, eyes pinched with fury and hands balled into pudgy fists. "Price's gone up," he snarls. "A thousand gold, or you get nothing from me."

 

[Dunamin]

[sblock=What the…]Natural-one me, will you? Fine, have it your way! [/sblock]

Finding his shield-hand unexpectedly twitching up at yet another critical moment, Woe shrugs and saunters back around Dungwringer’s neatly cleaned floor with dirty muddy boots.

“Not the only thing going up, Dung-Bringer… Ooo, now those look like really tasteless fakes. Here, I'll give you a hand with those as well.”

The merc grabs three no less pricey vases - his left hand still far from stabilized - and prepares a grand display that probably won’t turn out much better for Dungwringer’s net worth.

 

[nerdytenor]

The merc grabs three no less pricey vases - his left hand still far from stabilized - and prepares a grand display that probably won’t turn out much better for Dungwringer’s net worth.

"Oooh!" exclaims Kathalia. "Juggling show! Juggling show!"

 

[Lord Sessadore]

Tristan merely chuckles quietly, smiling as he watches Woe's display.

 

[covaithe]

“Not the only thing going up, Dung-Bringer… Ooo, now those look like really tasteless fakes. Here, I'll give you a hand with those as well.”

The merc grabs three no less pricey vases - his left hand still far from stabilized - and prepares a grand display that probably won’t turn out much better for Dungwringer’s net worth.

"Nooo! They're not fake! They're irreplaceable! Put them down! I'll tell you what I know, just... put them down. Please?" Dungwringer's voice cracks and squeals as he begs, tears streaking his cheeks.

ooc: assuming Woe doesn't deliberately smash them just yet...

"Father Serevas got in some kind of trouble, maybe eight or ten years ago; got himself mixed up with someone who ran afoul of the Five. Nobody knows exactly what, but that didn't stop the rumors. Demon worship, sacrificing babies, all the usual lurid nonsense. Not long after, he retired on some kind of pension from the L'irkash. Paid to get out of sight, most likely. He moved out of the city, into a little shack near that rocky patch to the southeast. He told people he wanted peace and quiet to pursue his alchemy studies, but the word on the street was that the L'irkash wanted him somewhere where if he blew himself up or set his house on fire, it wouldn't burn the city down."

 

[KenHood]

Hacker pulls a sheet of parchment and a piece of charcoal from his kit. He sets it in front of Dungwringer and taps it. "Map."