Shemeska
Adventurer
Grandma is dead, and some spoilers for SH1 ahoy.
They ignored the Prancing Nightmare's prancing succubus and made their way straight to the top of the stairs, giving a cursory knock on the frame of the door before stepping inside. Hopefully Aspaseka wouldn't mind them wanting to meet somewhere else in the future, because the "entertainment" downstairs was getting to be a bit much, even if the inn itself might otherwise have decent service.
"Well we're back from yet another creepy place." Victor said as he walked in.
Aspaseka looked up from a stack of papers that she'd been signing. "And into a place only slightly less disturbing I suppose."
"How true..." Victor said.
Apparently the inn's room service had been busy in the time that they'd been off to Sigil and into the Astral, because Aspaseka's rather bloody dishes and leftovers had been taken away and the table had been stocked with a set of eight goblets and a half-dozen bottles of wine, along with a rather wide selection of food.
"Business is finished," She said, motioning to the food and spirits. "So I figured that we could take some time to relax and simply chatter if you liked. Everything's already paid for and on my tab."
Given how much she'd paid them for their work already, and the quality of some of the wine just from a quick glance, she and/or her masters apparently had deep pockets and a willingness to spend.
"Not bad at all." Inva said as she reached down for a random hors’dourve.
"Please, help yourselves." Aspaseka said, rolling up the papers and slipping them inside a leather case. "I was just finishing up some accounting work on something that pertains to you all. I think you'll like it too."
Amidst some curious glances, drinks were poured and the group made themselves comfortable as she explained just what that something was.
"Center isn't your thing, and we'd talked about getting you set up elsewhere." She paused and grinned. "And I've managed to get you very well set up in Sigil, and on short notice no less."
"Anywhere but the Hive." Phaedra said.
"And just what's wrong with the Hive?" Inva asked, putting on a face of mock offense. "Not that I'd be caught spending a night there if I could avoid it mind you..."
Phaedra swatted Inva's tail playfully.
"Anywhere but the Portal Jammer." Velkyn added. "Please."
Aspaseka looked up over the rim of her cup as she took a sip of wine. "That was on the list of possible places, but I figured that might be more than a bit awkward, all things considered."
"Just a bit." Velkyn replied as Phaedra giggled. Going right back to living in his father's inn wasn't high on the half-drow's list of things he wanted to do, regardless of how nice the inn might be, and regardless of father and son being on good terms. Living at home, even if other people were paying it for wasn't a high mark of independence in his book, and thankfully it wasn't going to be.
"Black Sails? Greengage? Twelve Factols?" Inva asked, increasingly the stature -and cost- of the inns as she listed possibilities.
"Keep guessing." Aspaseka said. "Think big."
"Fortune's Wheel?" She asked tentatively, not really expecting for their employers to have splurged on that particular establishment.
Aspaseka grinned and raised her mug. "And you would be correct."
Velkyn, Phaedra and Inva had giddy looks on their faces. The Wheel was expensive and extravagant, being a high-priced combination of a gambling hall, fest-hall, several different bars and expensive and exclusive rooms for rent above the ground floor. For several centuries, approaching six hundred years now, it had been Sigil's most prestigious inn. In fact, its prestige and quality had only increased since it was remodeled and rebuilt following the incident a hundred and fifty years back when it had been reduced to little more than a smoking crater, a crime which while still officially unsolved, had not held back the inn at any point during its phoenix-like rebirth.
"Wow." Velkyn said. "You're paying for us to stay there?"
"Indeed." Aspaseka confirmed. "Already set up, and rent is paid for in advance for a while to come."
"I'll drink to that." Inva downed her wine like a shot of liquor. She looked over to the others, ignoring the purple smudge on her lips. "And you'll all drink to it as well. Expensive but hard as heck to come by. It's an opportunity given the sort of people that frequent that place."
"I like to treat the people working for me as best as I can." Aspaseka said.
Clearly so if she was buying them a suite of rooms at the most expensive in the whole of the City of Doors. She leaned back in her chair and looked quite pleased with herself, happy to see that the effort hadn't been wasted as most of them understood the significance of it all. Only Marcus, Francesca and Garibaldi hadn't immediately taken it all in, but they were primes with little knowledge of Sigil, so no worry there. They'd get the best the city had to offer, and without a stinger spent from their pocket.
Wine continued to flow and the food slowly vanished, only to be replaced with more by one of the Nightmare's serving staff, and the group relaxed and enjoyed themselves. Eventually though, out of curiosity or simply spirit loosened tongues, they had a few questions to ask their employers' servant.
"Can I assume that we're not the only people working for you." Marcus asked. "Given how much you're spending, and how new we are to working for you, it would seem like you'd have more than just us."
"Well, you're not working for me." Aspaseka corrected. "I just pay people, recruit people, and all sorts of middle management tasks. I'm a bit like an over glorified taskmaster for a mercenary company like you'd find in Rigus."
"But nicer." Velkyn said. "Much nicer."
"I try to be." She replied with a grin. "But as for your original question, no, you're not in any way the only people working for me. I handle individual people who specialize in one thing or another, and then groups like yourselves who I tend to alternate between tasks."
"Any of them long term, or is there a high turnover?" Marcus asked.
She shrugged. "At most around five years. Turnover is mixed really, between people taking other offers, dying while taking other offers, taking a payment from me and retiring from the profession, or not coming back from something I send them on."
Garibaldi frowned and Aspaseka caught the look.
"Don't look so glum on that last part." She said, waving off his concern. "The turnover, so to speak if we want to dance around the morbidity of it all, it's not higher by any margin than similar work anywhere else on the planes. I value my people for their skill and their competence, and so I take care of them as best I can."
"If the Fortune's Wheel is any indication..." Inva said between gulps of wine.
"On my level at least, this isn't some faceless and rigid organization employing cogs to fit positions. If you want that, you can go find the minders guild or the Ministry of Mortal Affairs."
"Been there. Done that." Inva replied. "Almost got killed dealing with the latter."
Phaedra corked the bottle next to Inva. The tiefling was already loosened up and relaxed, and it might not be the best place on the planes to have her drunk.
"I'd rather not deal with either of them." Phaedra said. "So how long have you worked for these people? Assuming you don't mind me asking."
"Not at all." Aspaseka replied, taking a drink. "I've worked for the Pentad for roughly 270 years, and for Tyranny around a millennia before that."
Well that certainly settled the question about if she was mortal or not. The question it raised though was just what in the heck she actually was, if not the human she appeared to be.
"Alright," Phaedra said, giving Aspaseka a curious look. "Working on the assumption that you're not exactly human, what actually are you?"
"Ah yes, that." She replied. "Yuvaraj sort of burst that bubble on me I suppose when he said he hadn't seen one of -my kind- before."
They nodded. The mimir's comment had been one indication but hardly the first. Her choice in meals and her age both would have done the same.
Aspaseka held up one of her hands and the flesh suddenly shifted to something of roughly the same size, but with the wrist oriented in the opposite direction, ivory claws on her fingertips, and a thin coat of dark gray fur, striped with black in place of any previously exposed skin.
"That should answer that question." She said, keeping her left hand in its true form for a few seconds before shifting it back.
"Rakshasa?" Phaedra asked. "Huh."
"A subtype of Rakshasa yes."
Velkyn nodded, "And can I assume that Tyranny is as well?"
"Of a sort." Aspaseka replied. "But only in the same way that a dretch and a balor are both tanar'ri. He's a bit more than I am. My service is one of house, station, shared goals, deep respect and debt. You can assume that he's some manner of rakosh, but beyond that you'd have to ask him yourself. It's not my place to explain anything beyond that."
"Makes me trust him more honestly." Velkyn said. "He's lawful."
Aspaseka smiled. "Comes with the territory I suppose."
"Well that settles one question." Victor said, taking the revelation that their employer and his middleman were both fiends of a sort rather well. "But I've got another."
"Go for it." The rakshasa replied.
"How discrete do you want us to be?" The cleric asked. "I don't know how secretive you people are, or if you have enemies that you might not want aware of who you are, what you're doing, etc."
Aspaseka nodded. "Nice question, and thank you for asking it rather than making any assumptions. Some of the five are more secretive than others: Tyranny and the Visionary like to stay out of public view as much as possible, for various reasons, while Death who you recently met, he doesn't particularly care. So if someone -has- to know whom you work for, you can answer the question, but I do ask that you exercise some discretion in how freely you spread that information around."
They nodded and continued their banter on a progression of lighter topics, staying away from anything that could have been construed as more business. Aspaseka wanted them to stay away from anything so serious, and to their credit they did so, and as the next hour faded away, they were in high spirits.
"Now as much as I'd like to stay here, sadly I have more prosaic things to deal with, and other people to speak to." Aspaseka said. "But this has been really fun."
"For a Rakshasa you're not as woefully formal as I might have expected." Inva said. "That's a good thing."
Aspaseka chuckled. "I'm not viewed in any sort of high place by most Rakshasa, not back in Acheron to any extent. I'm an apple fallen a bit far from the tree so to speak. Formality has its place mind you, and you'll see enough of it as you see me more, but I don't insist on it, or insist on the sort of station and caste mongering that's endemic among most of my kind."
Either she wasn't evil, or she was an exile, or potentially both. That was an unresolved question still.
"But regardless, enjoy your new accommodations and don't hesitate to let me know if you need anything, or you have any problems. With maybe one exception you'll be able to reach me by a regular sending, and I doubt I'll be going there anytime soon."
"What's the exception?" Victor asked.
Aspaseka finished her drink before replying. "The Risen."
Her tone was a bit cold, and she clasped her hands together under the edge of the table as she answered. Had the others been able to see them, they would have seen a faint and involuntary tremor.
"You haven't met her... it... yet." She continued. "You probably won't anytime soon. But I haven't yet figured out what I'll be offering you as a next job, and there's no rush to judgment there since you've earned some rest."
Inva nodded and added a smile to alcohol-flushed cheeks. "We'll be sure to enjoy ourselves and make a bet on your behalf on the Wheel itself. If I win the Mage's prize, I'll keep you in mind."
Phaedra steered the mildly tipsy tiefling towards the door and they all gathered their things and took their last nibbles from the remaining food before they left.
With something much better waiting for them in Sigil, they were eager to make their way from the Prancing Nightmare, and even more so to leave Center. The nude succubus that was dancing in the tavern's main room however was doing her best to try to coerce them to do otherwise, gender and alignment being no detractor to her expressions, motions and telepathic calls.
"That's really disturbing." Victor said. "There aren't enough cure disease spells in the world to make that thing even slightly less so."
"I should go over there and buy you a lap dance." Inva said, clearly having lost whatever inhibitions she had, either from the wine or realizing that they'd probably never be back to that particular tavern.
Victor shuddered. "You'd end up buying me more than that. A resurrection probably."
"What, the incubus was more your taste?" She snickered. "Sure there's a sense of danger that they'll rip out your heart and eat your soul. Evil is sexy. Even a little evil."
Phaedra felt a gentle poke on her leg from Inva's tail and smiled. "Likewise."
Victor frowned as the succubus said something to his mind both perverse and blasphemous at once, and though they were trying to work their way through the tables to leave, he almost turned around with half a mind to banish the chaotic wench back to where she'd come from. Velkyn stopped him however, knowing full well that the cleric could have probably done just that, and offered something better.
"I've got this covered." He said. "I can only guess what she said, but don't worry."
Velkyn grinned and fished around in his pocket for a coin, finding a thin disk of cold iron minted in Dis, a little something to ensure that Baatorian coinage didn't circulate among their enemies. Roughly the same size and a little under the weight of a standard jink, a few whispers and a rub between thumb and index fingers were all it took for a glammer to make it gleam like gold.
"You're terrible." Inva said, looking at Velkyn's grin and the coin in his hand. "And I approve. Gimme."
"You're not..." Phaedra said with a quickly suppressed look of incredulity as she turned to no longer face the stage were the succubi was performing obscene acts with a brass pole.
"He is." Victor said as he walked for the door without looking as Inva swaggered towards the stage. "And I'm blissfully ignorant."
The others however watched as the tiefling sauntered up to the dancing succubus and caught her eye with a slow, appreciative looking once-over, following the line of her hips and moving up to her breasts for a few seconds of staring. Topping it off she licked her lips and then reached down to plump her own cleavage before leaning onto the stage and looking up. Without question she'd done the routine before.
"Hey there sexy." Inva said, locking eyes with the fiend and holding up the glammered coin. "I just wanted to extend my appreciation for the show."
The lust-filled look, and providing a view of her own to the fiend would have elicited a reaction in and of itself, but the tip drew something like a purr and the fiend crouched down to take the coin. Presumably she would have accepted it with her teeth, but Inva was a bit more forthright about it -or obscene depending on one's perspective- and with a quick caress of the succubus’s tail she reached forward and slipped the coin inside of her.
The fiend chuckled and grinned at the mortal's spunk, to say nothing of the caress between her legs, and watched her leave. Odd she thought, that after such an enticing act she wouldn't have stayed to pursue something else and even perhaps...
Suddenly her eyes went wide.
Outside, Inva ducked around the corner to rejoin her companions just as they heard a blood-curdling scream of pain let loose by the fiend back inside the inn. The tiefling was grinning puckishly, Victor was doing his best to look innocent of the affair, and Velkyn had a rather self-satisfied look on his face. Suffice to say, they probably weren't going to be welcome back at the inn, and that district of Center might not be the most welcome of places for a while.
"Score one for burning bridges I suppose." Phaedra said. “Or burning something…”
"I still don't understand how you can live in a place without a sun!" Victor said as they walked towards the Fortune's Wheel.
It was well after peak, and while the light in the "sky" had not yet given over to dusk and the twinkling of mock-stars on the opposite side of the ring, the swirling, low-hanging fog was doing its best to snuff the available light before its time. The lights of the Fortune's Wheel spilled out like a lighthouse's beacon offering safe harbor to passing ships, advertising the promise of warmth, wine, riches and pleasure, though for half the crowd on a given night that promise might have been more siren song atop a reef than anything else.
"Um..." Velkyn began, looking at Victor after his comment. "Is this regarding the whole drow thing, or the whole being raised in Sigil thing?"
"I suppose it applies to both." Victor replied as he used his sleeve to wipe some of the fog from his face.
"The fog is normal." Velkyn said. "But it's usually not this heavy. You just got it on a bad day. Plus it's after peak so the light's slowly going down anyway, but it's never truly night, not completely."
"You'll get used to the cycle." Phaedra said. "Besides, we're already here at the Wheel, and maybe tomorrow we can give you a tour of what the city has to offer."
Victor nodded and stepped past a bulky merchant and into the interior of the inn, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the light and his ears adjusted to the din of many dozens of conversations the shouts of winners and losers at the gambling tables and the chink and clatter of plates and tableware.
Off to their left was the grand festhall and its dozen or so dining rooms, while off to their right were the various gambling rooms including the inn's titular Fortune's Wheel. The entire place was awash in lights, be they candles, gas lamps, or illusory stars that drifted and cavorted along the walls and contours of the ceiling, periodically chasing one another or following guests like curious little pixies. The Fortune's Wheel was Sigil's extravagance boiled down and neatly packaged for residents and visitors alike.
"Man that food smells good." Garibaldi said as he glanced to the left. "Even though I just ate back in Center, my mouth is watering."
"I've heard it's really good." Velkyn said. "It certainly smells it. I've only heard one bad thing about the place, and that was from my Uncle Tristol. He hated the food here for some reason, one really bad experience with lunch at some point, but I don't know the particulars and like I said, he's the only person I know who doesn't lavish the place with praise."
"So where do we check in?" Marcus asked as he looked around.
"There used to be a front desk were you check in." Inva said, referring to the inn's previous incarnation. And sure enough, the front desk was still there, complete with open visitor's log and a hovering golden bell, but no receptionist in sight.
They walked up to the desk, waited a few seconds and finally rang the bell. No help arrived and so they rang the bell a second time.
"I think he's handling something over in one of the others rooms." They looked up into the smiling face of a dragon, or maybe a dragon, well... part of one anyway. "Something about a halfling getting kicked into the bear-baiting pit by another one of the patrons."
The "dragon" whose toothy, grinning face they stared up into was the ornamental head and neck of a dragon that emerged from -or was hung from- the wall between the front desk and the bar. His scales were a little bit dusty -it looked as if he hadn't been cleaned by the staff in a week or so- but he certainly looked and acted real enough, though he wasn't any sort of dragon type that was immediately recognizable: something like a cross between a green and a gold, with a mottled color pattern of both.
"I didn't think you were real." Phaedra said.
The dragon sighed and gave a wistful smile. "A lot of people don't. I've come to accept it I suppose."
Common wisdom held that the dragon was one of several things: the owner of the Fortune's Wheel, a masterfully animated stuffed dragon head, an illusion, or a real dragon who'd been involved in an accident with a portal somewhere along the line. At no point had the dragon ever actually addressed which version of the story might be true or not, but otherwise he was a rather chatty fellow, ever eager to interact with the patrons, and rather protective of "his" bar. In fact he'd been known to snarl and breath smoke to frighten off troublemakers and issue more pointed warnings to anyone causing any undue commotion within the establishment.
"I suppose that you can help us though. We're new..." Inva paused. "Well, mostly new to Sigil, and our employers supposedly arranged for us to have rooms in the inn."
The dragon raised an eyebrow and they watched as his eyes darted from person to person making a headcount and seemingly comparing them to something bottled away in memory. "Oh, you're those people. A young-looking lady was here earlier today and she arranged for it all, paid in advance for a month: suite 5 up on the second floor. They just became available, and she snapped them up without hesitation. They're quite a nice set of rooms, so I think you'll be happy."
That raised some eyebrows, and not on the dragon. The Fortune's Wheel was bloody expensive, and in one lump they'd been set up in relative luxury for a month's time? Their employers had money apparently.
"If you would though," The dragon added. "Please sign your names into the registry along with the room numbers. It helps with the paperwork and room service and such to keep track of that."
Victor picked up the pen and looked at the next open line, right at the bottom of the page and cramped because of the size of the signature above it that took up almost half of the page. "This'd be easier if some jerk hadn't taken up half the page."
Inva peered over the cleric's shoulder at the book. Sure enough, one of the names was written in elaborate calligraphy and decorated with a half-dozen personal sigils. The owner of the signature had also either used their own pen, or some magic of their own because the ink changed color every few inches without the telltale mark of the pen being lifted and replaced after using a different inkpot. Ostentatious didn't begin to tell the story.
"Who the hell is Nerath the Marauder?" Marcus asked.
"Nerath the Marauder, King of the Crosstrade" was what the sprawling signature and exercise in ego wanking read as. The primes hadn't heard of the name, and while Inva had been familiar with his predecessor Shemeska, only Phaedra and Velkyn were at all familiar with him, and both of them were frowning. They'd have been frowning more however if they'd realized that the room number listed next to that individual's overly large signature was the luxury suite one floor underneath their own.
Eyes were watching them of course even before Marcus's question about the Marauder, and well before a subsequent comment of "What sort of moron writes their name across half the bloody page? Compensating for something perhaps?". That did however gather attention, and once the group had signed their names and room number, gathered their keys and walked away from the front desk, a particularly well-dressed tiefling made his way up to the dragon.
Moving with the grace of a trained killer and the professional confidence of a man with little worry in the world, the tiefer took out a slender notebook and jotted down their names and room number, adding comments about their race, gender, appearance, disposition, and courtesy of a ring on his finger, their alignment. Information was his stock in trade, and his master even more so.
All the while the dragon was doing his level best to ignore the man, turning away and moving his head as far away as being tethered to the wall would allow him as if the tiefling left a smell in the air or his very presence disturbed him. Eventually he just closed his eyes and started humming to himself a little drinking song from a century back, something nonsensical about a "dishwater archon", but eventually there was a tap of a cane's silver head on his snout.
He opened his eyes and they briefly crossed as he focused on the ornate, razorvine crowned jackal's head cast ironically in silver at the end of the tiefling's cane. There was no avoiding the questions, as distasteful as cooperating with him and his ilk might be.
"So who's paying for their rooms?" The man asked with an overly courteous tone.
The dragon frowned, looked away awkwardly, then finally sighed and told him what he knew.
They ignored the Prancing Nightmare's prancing succubus and made their way straight to the top of the stairs, giving a cursory knock on the frame of the door before stepping inside. Hopefully Aspaseka wouldn't mind them wanting to meet somewhere else in the future, because the "entertainment" downstairs was getting to be a bit much, even if the inn itself might otherwise have decent service.
"Well we're back from yet another creepy place." Victor said as he walked in.
Aspaseka looked up from a stack of papers that she'd been signing. "And into a place only slightly less disturbing I suppose."
"How true..." Victor said.
Apparently the inn's room service had been busy in the time that they'd been off to Sigil and into the Astral, because Aspaseka's rather bloody dishes and leftovers had been taken away and the table had been stocked with a set of eight goblets and a half-dozen bottles of wine, along with a rather wide selection of food.
"Business is finished," She said, motioning to the food and spirits. "So I figured that we could take some time to relax and simply chatter if you liked. Everything's already paid for and on my tab."
Given how much she'd paid them for their work already, and the quality of some of the wine just from a quick glance, she and/or her masters apparently had deep pockets and a willingness to spend.
"Not bad at all." Inva said as she reached down for a random hors’dourve.
"Please, help yourselves." Aspaseka said, rolling up the papers and slipping them inside a leather case. "I was just finishing up some accounting work on something that pertains to you all. I think you'll like it too."
Amidst some curious glances, drinks were poured and the group made themselves comfortable as she explained just what that something was.
"Center isn't your thing, and we'd talked about getting you set up elsewhere." She paused and grinned. "And I've managed to get you very well set up in Sigil, and on short notice no less."
"Anywhere but the Hive." Phaedra said.
"And just what's wrong with the Hive?" Inva asked, putting on a face of mock offense. "Not that I'd be caught spending a night there if I could avoid it mind you..."
Phaedra swatted Inva's tail playfully.
"Anywhere but the Portal Jammer." Velkyn added. "Please."
Aspaseka looked up over the rim of her cup as she took a sip of wine. "That was on the list of possible places, but I figured that might be more than a bit awkward, all things considered."
"Just a bit." Velkyn replied as Phaedra giggled. Going right back to living in his father's inn wasn't high on the half-drow's list of things he wanted to do, regardless of how nice the inn might be, and regardless of father and son being on good terms. Living at home, even if other people were paying it for wasn't a high mark of independence in his book, and thankfully it wasn't going to be.
"Black Sails? Greengage? Twelve Factols?" Inva asked, increasingly the stature -and cost- of the inns as she listed possibilities.
"Keep guessing." Aspaseka said. "Think big."
"Fortune's Wheel?" She asked tentatively, not really expecting for their employers to have splurged on that particular establishment.
Aspaseka grinned and raised her mug. "And you would be correct."
Velkyn, Phaedra and Inva had giddy looks on their faces. The Wheel was expensive and extravagant, being a high-priced combination of a gambling hall, fest-hall, several different bars and expensive and exclusive rooms for rent above the ground floor. For several centuries, approaching six hundred years now, it had been Sigil's most prestigious inn. In fact, its prestige and quality had only increased since it was remodeled and rebuilt following the incident a hundred and fifty years back when it had been reduced to little more than a smoking crater, a crime which while still officially unsolved, had not held back the inn at any point during its phoenix-like rebirth.
"Wow." Velkyn said. "You're paying for us to stay there?"
"Indeed." Aspaseka confirmed. "Already set up, and rent is paid for in advance for a while to come."
"I'll drink to that." Inva downed her wine like a shot of liquor. She looked over to the others, ignoring the purple smudge on her lips. "And you'll all drink to it as well. Expensive but hard as heck to come by. It's an opportunity given the sort of people that frequent that place."
"I like to treat the people working for me as best as I can." Aspaseka said.
Clearly so if she was buying them a suite of rooms at the most expensive in the whole of the City of Doors. She leaned back in her chair and looked quite pleased with herself, happy to see that the effort hadn't been wasted as most of them understood the significance of it all. Only Marcus, Francesca and Garibaldi hadn't immediately taken it all in, but they were primes with little knowledge of Sigil, so no worry there. They'd get the best the city had to offer, and without a stinger spent from their pocket.
Wine continued to flow and the food slowly vanished, only to be replaced with more by one of the Nightmare's serving staff, and the group relaxed and enjoyed themselves. Eventually though, out of curiosity or simply spirit loosened tongues, they had a few questions to ask their employers' servant.
"Can I assume that we're not the only people working for you." Marcus asked. "Given how much you're spending, and how new we are to working for you, it would seem like you'd have more than just us."
"Well, you're not working for me." Aspaseka corrected. "I just pay people, recruit people, and all sorts of middle management tasks. I'm a bit like an over glorified taskmaster for a mercenary company like you'd find in Rigus."
"But nicer." Velkyn said. "Much nicer."
"I try to be." She replied with a grin. "But as for your original question, no, you're not in any way the only people working for me. I handle individual people who specialize in one thing or another, and then groups like yourselves who I tend to alternate between tasks."
"Any of them long term, or is there a high turnover?" Marcus asked.
She shrugged. "At most around five years. Turnover is mixed really, between people taking other offers, dying while taking other offers, taking a payment from me and retiring from the profession, or not coming back from something I send them on."
Garibaldi frowned and Aspaseka caught the look.
"Don't look so glum on that last part." She said, waving off his concern. "The turnover, so to speak if we want to dance around the morbidity of it all, it's not higher by any margin than similar work anywhere else on the planes. I value my people for their skill and their competence, and so I take care of them as best I can."
"If the Fortune's Wheel is any indication..." Inva said between gulps of wine.
"On my level at least, this isn't some faceless and rigid organization employing cogs to fit positions. If you want that, you can go find the minders guild or the Ministry of Mortal Affairs."
"Been there. Done that." Inva replied. "Almost got killed dealing with the latter."
Phaedra corked the bottle next to Inva. The tiefling was already loosened up and relaxed, and it might not be the best place on the planes to have her drunk.
"I'd rather not deal with either of them." Phaedra said. "So how long have you worked for these people? Assuming you don't mind me asking."
"Not at all." Aspaseka replied, taking a drink. "I've worked for the Pentad for roughly 270 years, and for Tyranny around a millennia before that."
Well that certainly settled the question about if she was mortal or not. The question it raised though was just what in the heck she actually was, if not the human she appeared to be.
"Alright," Phaedra said, giving Aspaseka a curious look. "Working on the assumption that you're not exactly human, what actually are you?"
"Ah yes, that." She replied. "Yuvaraj sort of burst that bubble on me I suppose when he said he hadn't seen one of -my kind- before."
They nodded. The mimir's comment had been one indication but hardly the first. Her choice in meals and her age both would have done the same.
Aspaseka held up one of her hands and the flesh suddenly shifted to something of roughly the same size, but with the wrist oriented in the opposite direction, ivory claws on her fingertips, and a thin coat of dark gray fur, striped with black in place of any previously exposed skin.
"That should answer that question." She said, keeping her left hand in its true form for a few seconds before shifting it back.
"Rakshasa?" Phaedra asked. "Huh."
"A subtype of Rakshasa yes."
Velkyn nodded, "And can I assume that Tyranny is as well?"
"Of a sort." Aspaseka replied. "But only in the same way that a dretch and a balor are both tanar'ri. He's a bit more than I am. My service is one of house, station, shared goals, deep respect and debt. You can assume that he's some manner of rakosh, but beyond that you'd have to ask him yourself. It's not my place to explain anything beyond that."
"Makes me trust him more honestly." Velkyn said. "He's lawful."
Aspaseka smiled. "Comes with the territory I suppose."
"Well that settles one question." Victor said, taking the revelation that their employer and his middleman were both fiends of a sort rather well. "But I've got another."
"Go for it." The rakshasa replied.
"How discrete do you want us to be?" The cleric asked. "I don't know how secretive you people are, or if you have enemies that you might not want aware of who you are, what you're doing, etc."
Aspaseka nodded. "Nice question, and thank you for asking it rather than making any assumptions. Some of the five are more secretive than others: Tyranny and the Visionary like to stay out of public view as much as possible, for various reasons, while Death who you recently met, he doesn't particularly care. So if someone -has- to know whom you work for, you can answer the question, but I do ask that you exercise some discretion in how freely you spread that information around."
They nodded and continued their banter on a progression of lighter topics, staying away from anything that could have been construed as more business. Aspaseka wanted them to stay away from anything so serious, and to their credit they did so, and as the next hour faded away, they were in high spirits.
"Now as much as I'd like to stay here, sadly I have more prosaic things to deal with, and other people to speak to." Aspaseka said. "But this has been really fun."
"For a Rakshasa you're not as woefully formal as I might have expected." Inva said. "That's a good thing."
Aspaseka chuckled. "I'm not viewed in any sort of high place by most Rakshasa, not back in Acheron to any extent. I'm an apple fallen a bit far from the tree so to speak. Formality has its place mind you, and you'll see enough of it as you see me more, but I don't insist on it, or insist on the sort of station and caste mongering that's endemic among most of my kind."
Either she wasn't evil, or she was an exile, or potentially both. That was an unresolved question still.
"But regardless, enjoy your new accommodations and don't hesitate to let me know if you need anything, or you have any problems. With maybe one exception you'll be able to reach me by a regular sending, and I doubt I'll be going there anytime soon."
"What's the exception?" Victor asked.
Aspaseka finished her drink before replying. "The Risen."
Her tone was a bit cold, and she clasped her hands together under the edge of the table as she answered. Had the others been able to see them, they would have seen a faint and involuntary tremor.
"You haven't met her... it... yet." She continued. "You probably won't anytime soon. But I haven't yet figured out what I'll be offering you as a next job, and there's no rush to judgment there since you've earned some rest."
Inva nodded and added a smile to alcohol-flushed cheeks. "We'll be sure to enjoy ourselves and make a bet on your behalf on the Wheel itself. If I win the Mage's prize, I'll keep you in mind."
Phaedra steered the mildly tipsy tiefling towards the door and they all gathered their things and took their last nibbles from the remaining food before they left.
***
With something much better waiting for them in Sigil, they were eager to make their way from the Prancing Nightmare, and even more so to leave Center. The nude succubus that was dancing in the tavern's main room however was doing her best to try to coerce them to do otherwise, gender and alignment being no detractor to her expressions, motions and telepathic calls.
"That's really disturbing." Victor said. "There aren't enough cure disease spells in the world to make that thing even slightly less so."
"I should go over there and buy you a lap dance." Inva said, clearly having lost whatever inhibitions she had, either from the wine or realizing that they'd probably never be back to that particular tavern.
Victor shuddered. "You'd end up buying me more than that. A resurrection probably."
"What, the incubus was more your taste?" She snickered. "Sure there's a sense of danger that they'll rip out your heart and eat your soul. Evil is sexy. Even a little evil."
Phaedra felt a gentle poke on her leg from Inva's tail and smiled. "Likewise."
Victor frowned as the succubus said something to his mind both perverse and blasphemous at once, and though they were trying to work their way through the tables to leave, he almost turned around with half a mind to banish the chaotic wench back to where she'd come from. Velkyn stopped him however, knowing full well that the cleric could have probably done just that, and offered something better.
"I've got this covered." He said. "I can only guess what she said, but don't worry."
Velkyn grinned and fished around in his pocket for a coin, finding a thin disk of cold iron minted in Dis, a little something to ensure that Baatorian coinage didn't circulate among their enemies. Roughly the same size and a little under the weight of a standard jink, a few whispers and a rub between thumb and index fingers were all it took for a glammer to make it gleam like gold.
"You're terrible." Inva said, looking at Velkyn's grin and the coin in his hand. "And I approve. Gimme."
"You're not..." Phaedra said with a quickly suppressed look of incredulity as she turned to no longer face the stage were the succubi was performing obscene acts with a brass pole.
"He is." Victor said as he walked for the door without looking as Inva swaggered towards the stage. "And I'm blissfully ignorant."
The others however watched as the tiefling sauntered up to the dancing succubus and caught her eye with a slow, appreciative looking once-over, following the line of her hips and moving up to her breasts for a few seconds of staring. Topping it off she licked her lips and then reached down to plump her own cleavage before leaning onto the stage and looking up. Without question she'd done the routine before.
"Hey there sexy." Inva said, locking eyes with the fiend and holding up the glammered coin. "I just wanted to extend my appreciation for the show."
The lust-filled look, and providing a view of her own to the fiend would have elicited a reaction in and of itself, but the tip drew something like a purr and the fiend crouched down to take the coin. Presumably she would have accepted it with her teeth, but Inva was a bit more forthright about it -or obscene depending on one's perspective- and with a quick caress of the succubus’s tail she reached forward and slipped the coin inside of her.
The fiend chuckled and grinned at the mortal's spunk, to say nothing of the caress between her legs, and watched her leave. Odd she thought, that after such an enticing act she wouldn't have stayed to pursue something else and even perhaps...
Suddenly her eyes went wide.
Outside, Inva ducked around the corner to rejoin her companions just as they heard a blood-curdling scream of pain let loose by the fiend back inside the inn. The tiefling was grinning puckishly, Victor was doing his best to look innocent of the affair, and Velkyn had a rather self-satisfied look on his face. Suffice to say, they probably weren't going to be welcome back at the inn, and that district of Center might not be the most welcome of places for a while.
"Score one for burning bridges I suppose." Phaedra said. “Or burning something…”
***
"I still don't understand how you can live in a place without a sun!" Victor said as they walked towards the Fortune's Wheel.
It was well after peak, and while the light in the "sky" had not yet given over to dusk and the twinkling of mock-stars on the opposite side of the ring, the swirling, low-hanging fog was doing its best to snuff the available light before its time. The lights of the Fortune's Wheel spilled out like a lighthouse's beacon offering safe harbor to passing ships, advertising the promise of warmth, wine, riches and pleasure, though for half the crowd on a given night that promise might have been more siren song atop a reef than anything else.
"Um..." Velkyn began, looking at Victor after his comment. "Is this regarding the whole drow thing, or the whole being raised in Sigil thing?"
"I suppose it applies to both." Victor replied as he used his sleeve to wipe some of the fog from his face.
"The fog is normal." Velkyn said. "But it's usually not this heavy. You just got it on a bad day. Plus it's after peak so the light's slowly going down anyway, but it's never truly night, not completely."
"You'll get used to the cycle." Phaedra said. "Besides, we're already here at the Wheel, and maybe tomorrow we can give you a tour of what the city has to offer."
Victor nodded and stepped past a bulky merchant and into the interior of the inn, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the light and his ears adjusted to the din of many dozens of conversations the shouts of winners and losers at the gambling tables and the chink and clatter of plates and tableware.
Off to their left was the grand festhall and its dozen or so dining rooms, while off to their right were the various gambling rooms including the inn's titular Fortune's Wheel. The entire place was awash in lights, be they candles, gas lamps, or illusory stars that drifted and cavorted along the walls and contours of the ceiling, periodically chasing one another or following guests like curious little pixies. The Fortune's Wheel was Sigil's extravagance boiled down and neatly packaged for residents and visitors alike.
"Man that food smells good." Garibaldi said as he glanced to the left. "Even though I just ate back in Center, my mouth is watering."
"I've heard it's really good." Velkyn said. "It certainly smells it. I've only heard one bad thing about the place, and that was from my Uncle Tristol. He hated the food here for some reason, one really bad experience with lunch at some point, but I don't know the particulars and like I said, he's the only person I know who doesn't lavish the place with praise."
"So where do we check in?" Marcus asked as he looked around.
"There used to be a front desk were you check in." Inva said, referring to the inn's previous incarnation. And sure enough, the front desk was still there, complete with open visitor's log and a hovering golden bell, but no receptionist in sight.
They walked up to the desk, waited a few seconds and finally rang the bell. No help arrived and so they rang the bell a second time.
"I think he's handling something over in one of the others rooms." They looked up into the smiling face of a dragon, or maybe a dragon, well... part of one anyway. "Something about a halfling getting kicked into the bear-baiting pit by another one of the patrons."
The "dragon" whose toothy, grinning face they stared up into was the ornamental head and neck of a dragon that emerged from -or was hung from- the wall between the front desk and the bar. His scales were a little bit dusty -it looked as if he hadn't been cleaned by the staff in a week or so- but he certainly looked and acted real enough, though he wasn't any sort of dragon type that was immediately recognizable: something like a cross between a green and a gold, with a mottled color pattern of both.
"I didn't think you were real." Phaedra said.
The dragon sighed and gave a wistful smile. "A lot of people don't. I've come to accept it I suppose."
Common wisdom held that the dragon was one of several things: the owner of the Fortune's Wheel, a masterfully animated stuffed dragon head, an illusion, or a real dragon who'd been involved in an accident with a portal somewhere along the line. At no point had the dragon ever actually addressed which version of the story might be true or not, but otherwise he was a rather chatty fellow, ever eager to interact with the patrons, and rather protective of "his" bar. In fact he'd been known to snarl and breath smoke to frighten off troublemakers and issue more pointed warnings to anyone causing any undue commotion within the establishment.
"I suppose that you can help us though. We're new..." Inva paused. "Well, mostly new to Sigil, and our employers supposedly arranged for us to have rooms in the inn."
The dragon raised an eyebrow and they watched as his eyes darted from person to person making a headcount and seemingly comparing them to something bottled away in memory. "Oh, you're those people. A young-looking lady was here earlier today and she arranged for it all, paid in advance for a month: suite 5 up on the second floor. They just became available, and she snapped them up without hesitation. They're quite a nice set of rooms, so I think you'll be happy."
That raised some eyebrows, and not on the dragon. The Fortune's Wheel was bloody expensive, and in one lump they'd been set up in relative luxury for a month's time? Their employers had money apparently.
"If you would though," The dragon added. "Please sign your names into the registry along with the room numbers. It helps with the paperwork and room service and such to keep track of that."
Victor picked up the pen and looked at the next open line, right at the bottom of the page and cramped because of the size of the signature above it that took up almost half of the page. "This'd be easier if some jerk hadn't taken up half the page."
Inva peered over the cleric's shoulder at the book. Sure enough, one of the names was written in elaborate calligraphy and decorated with a half-dozen personal sigils. The owner of the signature had also either used their own pen, or some magic of their own because the ink changed color every few inches without the telltale mark of the pen being lifted and replaced after using a different inkpot. Ostentatious didn't begin to tell the story.
"Who the hell is Nerath the Marauder?" Marcus asked.
"Nerath the Marauder, King of the Crosstrade" was what the sprawling signature and exercise in ego wanking read as. The primes hadn't heard of the name, and while Inva had been familiar with his predecessor Shemeska, only Phaedra and Velkyn were at all familiar with him, and both of them were frowning. They'd have been frowning more however if they'd realized that the room number listed next to that individual's overly large signature was the luxury suite one floor underneath their own.
***
Eyes were watching them of course even before Marcus's question about the Marauder, and well before a subsequent comment of "What sort of moron writes their name across half the bloody page? Compensating for something perhaps?". That did however gather attention, and once the group had signed their names and room number, gathered their keys and walked away from the front desk, a particularly well-dressed tiefling made his way up to the dragon.
Moving with the grace of a trained killer and the professional confidence of a man with little worry in the world, the tiefer took out a slender notebook and jotted down their names and room number, adding comments about their race, gender, appearance, disposition, and courtesy of a ring on his finger, their alignment. Information was his stock in trade, and his master even more so.
All the while the dragon was doing his level best to ignore the man, turning away and moving his head as far away as being tethered to the wall would allow him as if the tiefling left a smell in the air or his very presence disturbed him. Eventually he just closed his eyes and started humming to himself a little drinking song from a century back, something nonsensical about a "dishwater archon", but eventually there was a tap of a cane's silver head on his snout.
He opened his eyes and they briefly crossed as he focused on the ornate, razorvine crowned jackal's head cast ironically in silver at the end of the tiefling's cane. There was no avoiding the questions, as distasteful as cooperating with him and his ilk might be.
"So who's paying for their rooms?" The man asked with an overly courteous tone.
The dragon frowned, looked away awkwardly, then finally sighed and told him what he knew.
***
