Meeting with Ignatius Ironshirt
Time is advanced to when the Squad arrives back in their office in the 14th Ward of Lauralie Summerhome. Ignatius Ironshirt, the grouchy Dwarvish Magistrate of the 14th Ward, demonstrates his usual surly demeanor by gruffly greeting the Constables,
” 'Bout time you sluggards came to work – don't think that I don't know how cozy and buddy-buddy you are with Sir Upjohn. A mission to his manse is basically a vacation for you. In fact, I think I'll just charge this time against your accumulated vacation time, not that you had that much coming. Anyway, I see Zane Harper found you. He is one of your coastal brethren, a “Constable by the Sea” as it were. His home Ward is the 16th, across Sorcerer's Bay where he works for Magistrate “Sarge” Knuckles, your old buddy, SoulFetter.”
[OOC: SoulFetter, you remember hearing about a group of new Constables being hired in the 16th, or seeing a notice in "Constables Monthly," or something, and the name Zane Harper rings a vague bell in that regard, but you never made his acquaintance. And, yes, this is new info about Sarge being Magistrate of the 16th, he was just an innkeeper when you knew him better. Evidently he was bitten by the politics bug, or else he just got tired of seeing the 16th Ward slip down the drain.]
"Anyway," continues Iggy, "Constable Harper has put in his paperwork to tansfer to the 14th, as well as bringing with him a pile of new work for everyone. It seems that the ring of hobgoblin slavers that have been a thorn in Constable Knuckles' side for some time have now been pretty much contained but the investigation has led to their "masters" as it were, who are a band of ogres in the mountains outside the 14th. Now, knowing those mountains like the Dwarf I am, something occurs to me -- in the relatively low altitudes by Sorcerer's Bay, the slavers were mainly hobgoblins. As elevation increased, so did the size of the slavers, so we have more ogre slavers around the level of the city. And you know that the mountains continue to climb well-above this level. Let's just hope that the trail of the slavers ends before things get too out of hand regarding their swelling height. But, like I said, I do know that there are some frightful creatures back in the heart of those mountains, and we can all thank the LCA for maintaining the safeguards that protect the city from them," he nods at Constable Tauvelak Dusksprocket (Tau).
OOC: "Constables Monthly" is a one-page newspaper that mysteriously appears on an irregular, but quasi-monthly basis, the inside of the door of the only stall in the constables loo of the 14th Ward Magistrates Office. Outside the lone stall, there is a pot mounted on the wall with a drain that empties into the sewers of the 13th Ward, what Mowgli lovingly refers to as a 'pissoir.'