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Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 4540111" data-attributes="member: 3285">Silence, Silver, and Secrets: Part 1 – ViolinThe streets of the Barren Hills Quarter were muddy and slushy with melting snow, but were somewhat cleaner than the streets in other portions of the city. Kham and Vlad had little difficulty in locating Bochin’s. Bochin’s stood out from the buildings around it. Many of the other buildings of the city were decorated by typical Cancerese frescoes or bas-reliefs, but this one was unusual in that it was plain, with large windows that were draped with colorful hangings. Inside, the floor was covered by skins and brightly colored woven rugs. The hangings on the windows tinted the light that managed to filter into the building in warm tones. Rather than the stark bench seating often found elsewhere in Nishanpur, the establishment had low tables, and the seats were draped with more skins. They sidled up to the bar.  “Hard to find a good place to drink around here,” muttered Kham.  They were both already drunk.“We haven’t had a drink like this since…” Vlad thought, staring into his mug, “since Sweet Savona.”A large fire pit filled the center of the main room. A roaring fire was built therein, over which spitted animals roasted, filling the room with smoke and the smell of spiced meat.“Yeah, well,” Kham downed his mug and ordered another bottle from the serving wench.  “I’m down a vice, so drinking and women will have to compensate. Speaking of women…” he looked around.Most of the patrons were paying attention to a clear area, where a man with the typical braided beard of a Hinterlander sat, quietly playing a large, two-stringed violin-like instrument. Though the man played quietly, almost reverently, his complex tune echoed throughout the room.  He finishes his rendition as they looked on, and an unusual form of applause followed his performance, as the appreciative listeners gently clinked their utensils against glasses and plates.Vlad’s lip curled in a sneer.  “Nierites,” he growled.  Swords of Nier flanked them at the bar. They had been heavily involved in the tussle surrounding Burning Man, and most of them showed it, with large bruises on their faces and hands where they were pummeled with ice and hit by the Nerothians. “That festival is ridiculous,” spat a particularly striking young Nierite.  She had red hair tied up in a bun and sparkling green eyes.  “It’s an insult the Sword of the Heavens.”“Maybe you shouldn’t attack what you don’t understand,” Vlad muttered without looking up.  “You know what’s going to happen,” said the woman.  “The Nerothians are going to use it as an excuse.  With that criminal that they broke out of prison, the heretics are going to rebel, I just know it.”Kham pulled his hood over his head a little lower. “The Burning Man festival is just a celebration of life over death.”“Oh yeah?” sneered the Nierite woman.  “I think it was a symbolic slaughter of Nier!  And then there’s the fact that we can’t find the Commander’s body…”Vlad nodded towards a poster to Kham’s left.  Kham looked over to see a sketch-artist’s accurate rendering of his face. “You know what Nerothians do with the bodies of the enemy?” asked another of the Nierites on the other side of the bar.  “They animate them…make them…do things.”“I’d like to get my hands on that son of a bitch who murdered him,” said the Nierite woman.  “I’d string him up by his loins and light his guts on fire.”At that moment, Kham and Vlad locked gazes.  Kham nodded his head slowly.  Vlad took a deep breath. What the hell?  There was no way they were going to leave the bar without being spotted.In one motion, Kham grabbed the Nierite woman by her hair and kissed her deeply.  The woman gasped for breath as Kham let her go.  “Wow,” he shouted at the top of his lungs.  “She really did set my loins on fire!”  He hopped up onto the bar.  Vlad turned and punched the nearest Nierite in the face.  The man spun off of his bar stool in surprise.“It’s von Grebel’s murderer!”The Nierites reached for their swords. The woman shrieked in rage.  Gauntleted hands reached for them…Kham downed a potion and promptly turned invisible.“Where’d he go?” shouted one of the Nierites.Kham moved to toss another potion vial to his companion, but in his drunken state, didn’t remember that Vlad couldn’t see him. The vial bounced off the Milandisian’s head and shattered on the tavern floor.Vlad went under in a pile of fists and curses as Kham slipped out of Bochin’s. “Great,” he muttered to himself, “now I lost my Milandisian.”</blockquote>

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