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[SOLDIER First]

She considers this.
"...I will join you. But I must warn you, I do not.. 'speak softly' as others do, if you understand me."

[Harry Baldman]

"Brilliant. I'll go get Tadisill."

With that in mind, Egil goes off to do just that.

[Iituem]

Search for jobs related to magical research.

You ask around and get responses varying from "Ahahahahahaha!" to decidedly racist slurs I will not repeat here.  It becomes apparent to you that, unlike Oritzteten, there are no wealthy sponsors or government funding dedicated towards the sciences.  This is a thoroughly barbaric culture, and if you want to do research, you'll need to pay for it yourself.

On a related note to that, you spend a full day in a corner of the flophouse with the bear's brain.  You  aren't sure about preservation, but McGee offers to sell you a massive jar of pickled cabbage for a ducat that you could probably use to preserve it.  Either way, you sit and focus on the shape of the spell serving as the trigger.

[Arcane: 7+3] You make good progress over the course of the day.  There are connections with what appear to be effects adjusting vision and hearing, and you don't have a lot of understanding of those yet, but you are able to produce a basic copy of the spell within your own consciousness.  The hard part is the 'wrapping'.  You need to develop a detailed mental setting which would induce the kind of rage that the werebear felt.  Once you have decided what will work for you, you can set about creating it.


Tadisill: Talking with Master Hamson, a grizzled old Haegar from Eldania with a massive grey beard and arms that could crush a man, you learn that there isn't a lot of work going but that if you can drum it up he'll let you make use of his workshop for five ducats for the season.  About half of what you think you could make with your skill, but you've got a bit of skill with fletching, bowcraft and whittling, and you think you can pick up a lot more from observing Hamson at work.

You also learn that in his day (before he lost a leg, where he sports a finely crafted peg now) Hamson was a raider, a pirate and the sharpest shot with a bow in the Blessed Lands.  He got picked up by another pirate and sold to the colony about fifteen years back, and with the leg he can't really go back to raiding, so he's settled down here for good instead.  If you ever wanted to pick up more tips on archery, he would be the man to ask - if he can find the time to talk about it.

[Rolepgeek]

Well, that was nice. He would need a place to work, after all, and five ducats was much better than nothing.

Now to see what the others had been up to. They might not work for the same House, but they knew each other, at least. That was something.

[ATHATH]

"Sure. Do you have a ducat that you can spare? I've decided to get a sling so that I'm less useless in combat, but I'm broke."

"Nope. But I can lend you a sling."

"That'll be fine. Thank you."

[Iituem]

Those who go to enquire about the Dispute Resolution job:

You head to the local headquarters of House Chan, one of the handful of stone buildings in Hope.  It is appropriately impressive; the grey stone of the walls has been painted red with yellow highlights, the roofs are of almost certainly imported slate and arranged in a distinctive tiered Occidental style, reminiscent of Golden pagodas.  Surrounding the central square of the compound are multiple buildings built into the walls and often rising up several storeys.  You can see why the administrator referred to them as towers.

The centre of the headquarters is devoted to a wide garden space, surrounded by the compound walls and several smaller buildings.  The garden itself is a strange blend of Golden aesthetics and the necessity of the arctic region; a tiered, sculpted garden with a small fountain trickling water down through an artificial stepped waterfall, but surrounded by ornamental rocks and hardy bushes, complete with what appear to be dwarf conifers that some gardener must lovingly tend.  Judging from the fountain, they must have built the gardens (and the whole complex) atop a natural spring for the area.  Chunks of ice float in the ornamental pond.

You only glance this, of course, as you are escorted past it by a yellow-skinned Golden guard in thick furs.  He carries an unusually well-constructed firearm on his shoulder, similar in design to a musket.  For those of you who have visited the Reaches, you have only seen these before on imperial soldiers - a rifle.  He also has a smaller pistol and a short sword at his belt.  He escorts you to a small antechamber of dark wood where he knocks at the door to the office beyond.  After a few terse words he opens the door and allows you in.

The office is laid out in polished red wood with a wide glass window covered by a painted paper blind.  Cold light filters through the spaces in between slats onto a floor of scrupulously polished white wood and an ornate desk before a similarly ornate cushioned seat.  Very notably, there are no other seats in the room, forcing you to stand.  A fire roars on the far side of the chamber, heating the room.  Sat upon the chair is a man with long black hair beneath a squat black cap, extravagant (and well padded) blue robes, slippers and literally golden skin.  If it weren't for the smoothness of it, it would look as if someone had liberally painted gold dust all over him.

Chan Tan-Chieng does not look up from his work.  He has several books in front of them and spends a full minute writing in them and stamping them with a small brass stamp several times before he puts down his pen, blots the pages and deigns to look up at you.

"Freelancers?" he asks, as if to ascertain your identity.  His accent is thick, and rather nasal.  He carries on without waiting for confirmation.  "Good.  A riot has taken place at Teping Mine, three days from here.  End it and put the miners back to work by the end of the week and you will be paid.  If the mine administrator is still alive, you have the authority to demand a bonus for saving him.  Questions?"

[SOLDIER First]

"What sort of riot has taken place?"

[ATHATH]

Did I find any blood mages? If I did, consult them about the were-bear corpse. If I did not, I will preserve it in the pickle juice. I went with the group. The rage-inducing image is of a man who has just set fire to an orphanage and is currently torturing babies in front of their parents, while flipping the viewer the bird, and is doing it all "for te lolz".

[Harry Baldman]

Well, that was nice. He would need a place to work, after all, and five ducats was much better than nothing.

Now to see what the others had been up to. They might not work for the same House, but they knew each other, at least. That was something.

At some point, Egil finds Tadisill, informing him of somewhere from 120 to 24 ducats being in it for him if he helps out with a bit of business with House Chan, mentioning probable violence, but accentuating the peacekeeping efforts probably also involved. Whether he would accept the invitation, of course, was yet to be discovered.

"Freelancers?" he asks, as if to ascertain your identity.  His accent is thick, and rather nasal.  He carries on without waiting for confirmation.  "Good.  A riot has taken place at Teping Mine, three days from here.  End it and put the miners back to work by the end of the week and you will be paid.  If the mine administrator is still alive, you have the authority to demand a bonus for saving him.  Questions?"

"How many days has the riot been happening? It's three days for news to get here, three more if you sent someone to check after receiving no news, some days for someone to formulate a response in the form of putting up a notice on the job board and maybe an extra six days before that if you've sent House Chan enforcers to try and fix it first, at least five days for freelancers to sign up for the job, judging from how long we've been here, and three more days for us to get there if we start off now. Are we heading off to some tunnels with hardy miners entrenched in there over a period of weeks? Have they beaten anyone back yet, like a House Chan force?"

[Rolepgeek]

((A matter of debate? What? ))

Tadisill accompanies Egil, and waits patiently for the answers to the questions the man asks of Chan.

[Harry Baldman]

((A matter of debate? What? ))

((A matter of shitty phrasing, I mean. Which is how I happen to debate! Changed it a little.))

[Iituem]

"How many days has the riot been happening? It's three days for news to get here, three more if you sent someone to check after receiving no news, some days for someone to formulate a response in the form of putting up a notice on the job board and maybe an extra six days before that if you've sent House Chan enforcers to try and fix it first, at least five days for freelancers to sign up for the job, judging from how long we've been here, and three more days for us to get there if we start off now. Are we heading off to some tunnels with hardy miners entrenched in there over a period of weeks? Have they beaten anyone back yet, like a House Chan force?"

Tan-Chieng seems genuinely surprised that you actually asked questions instead of meekly heading off.  He answers after a short pause and a raised eyebrow.

"Four days," he says.  "A rider can reach Hope in a day, and he did, but as you can imagine horses are expensive to keep here - you'll be travelling in foot.  We put the notice up three days ago and you're the first to apply.  I expect the fighting will either be finished, or any survivors will be barricaded against the mob.  We would have heard by runner by now if the revolt was sorted on the first day.

"The miners may have entrenched at the entrance to the deeper mine, which I believe consists of a wooden structure against the hillside.  Much of the work done there is strip mining, but we operate a series of shafts to reach some of the deeper deposits where occasionally we find diamonds.  It is possible that they may retreat into those in a pinch, but mine shafts tend to be cramped affairs.  I understand you have to hunch or crawl in most of them.  You certainly would," he says, nodding to Tadisill.

"There was an on-site garrison of twelve men, along with powder stocks for blasting and armament.  The prisoners may have seized the guns when they took the armoury, but they are likely unskilled.  The good news is, we only used cheap weapons there - muskets and pistols.  No sense wasting money on rifles when we need them here.  You should be able to out-range them with a bow in the open, and the muskets are of limited use in close quarters.

"We would eventually send a force to reclaim the mine, but all our other garrisons are busy maintaining order at the rest of the mines and we cannot afford to divert men to deal with this.  Therefore, the cheapest option is to hire expend- freelancers like yourself.  Use whatever means you feel are necessary, but restore the mines to working order.  Do you accept the commission?"

[SOLDIER First]

Sonja waits for her question to be answered.

[Harry Baldman]

"I see. Good news all around, guns aside. Seems like a job we might just not die doing, which is decent. I'd probably accept, how about the rest of you?"

[Rolepgeek]

Tadisill curls his upper lip in disgust at the reference to him, but nods at Egil's question.