D2

Brom 2017/10/09(Mon)18:03 No. 835459 ID: f30be2
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"Well I do want to look at this Greenhowler Grotto thing," Strela says. "Strela?"
"I don't believe I've ever been in a grotto," Bruco says.
Sashika's lip curls. "Uch. It is not a good place to be."
Strela pulls Sashika into her embrace. "So does that mean you don't want to come with us?"
Sashika freezes again. "You would like this?" she squeaks.
Strela looks to Bruco. He puts a hand on Sashika's plush thigh and nods.
"We would," she says. "The journey may get dangerous. In fact I'm willing to bet it will. But a master alchemist would tip the scales in our favor. And if you really want to make a change..."
"Tedium builds a shield against fear like pearl around sand," Sashika says. "I am immune to it. Whatever I have is at your fingertips."
Bruco rubs the patch of skin right under her bellybutton. "Y'know I think it already was."
Sashika giggles.
Strela lays with Bruco's (or her own, technically) back pressed against hers. She is still far from used to this body; but the heartbeat coming from Bruco and the gentle swoop of his hips under her hand are making it easier on her.
"You wanna spend the night here?" he asks.
"If Sashika's reaction to the Grotto is any indication we won't exactly find stellar lodging there." Strela makes herself more comfortable, and feels Bruco shimmy his hips (her hips, technically) in response. "And I must admit she managed to tire me out."
"Was I good?" Sashika asks. "I am not exactly in practice."
"You were one of the best women I've ever had," Strela says, with complete honesty.

The night passes in soft bliss.

Brom 2017/10/09(Mon)18:03 No. 835460 ID: f30be2
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Greenhowler Grotto is sweltering and humid. Strela's high-altitude fleece sticks to her skin.

All around the wide sweep of its main hall, a great wooden framework supports a forest of hammocks, several of which swing gently with the snoring of Nautish citizens. The floor level is studded with hidebound stools and low wooden tables, moatly empty at the early hour. Behind the bar, next to a sweating copper still, a lizard man bartender regards the trio under indolent lids.

What draws the eye most dramatically hangs right above him. A mottled green hide, stitched into a wide canopy stretched across a block of sandstone, mouth slightly agape, flayed eyestalks stretched up to the balcony above it.

As Strela looks at it, its eyes swivel and it looks back. She averts the gaze.

"This place is olfactory Hell," mutters Sashika to Strela's left.

A]] Order a drink.
B]] See about purchasing provisions or some other kind of tavernly gear.
C]] Ask the bartender about Naut.
D]] Ask the bartender about himself.
E]] Ask the bartender about whatever the hell is hanging above him.
F]] Ask the Bartender about Corsairs.
G]] Do that classic adventuring thing and ask him about rumors or strange happenings.
H]] Listen in on some breakfast conversations, surreptitiously
I]] Depart the Grotto.
J]] _____________

EDF. New new main character.

ACDF. Standard bartender questioning tactics.

G

C, F, H

A but breakfast for everyone. Get the smell of lizard out of Sashi's nose

A and B.

Brom 2017/10/12(Thu)13:29 No. 836217 ID: f28b2f
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Strela sidles up to the bar.

“Howdy,” she says.

“Hey.” The bartender is leaning against the back wall of his establishment. He makes no move to approach.



"So you the bartender?"

"Yup."



Silence.



"How is that?"

"Alright."



"Slow morning?"

"Bit."



Great. Scintillating.



"So... Naut." Strela sits at the bar. Bruco follows. Sashika stands; her ears barely reach past the counter. "How do you like it."

"Sfine."

"Tell me more about it?"

"Decent folk. Buildings don't leak much." He shrugs. "Been worse. Morning, Sashika."

"Hello, Tarvid, Your floor is filthy."

He shrugs again.



"So..." Strela taps on the bar. "Have you heard of any Corsairs about?"



The conversations floating around the breakfast tables drop like dead birds. Tarvid the bartender is as still as ever, but lines appear in the scaly epidermis on his forehead.



"Why?" he asks, the lethargy in his voice replaced by something darker.

Isn't there a standing bounty on them for menacing fine upstanding citizens and whatnaut?

Before you continue you should order a drink. That should bring him a bit closer to the bar heh.

And then proceed to explain your noble cause.

>>836217
>The conversations floating around the breakfast tables drop like dead birds.
Annnd now everyone is looking at us.

>"Why?" he asks, the lethargy in his voice replaced by something darker.
> darker
Uh oh. Let's choose our words carefully.

>>836217
have you ever seen anything good happen when Corsairs are about?

We're hunting.

>>836217
We're Sorcerer's, spirit deal. Gotta find a certain Corsair, give him a message from beyond, yotta yotta yotta. Supposedly near here. We'll probably die from a spirit killing us if we don't find him in time and failing the deal. So, actually on a time limit here.

>>836217
We're looking to gut us a pale, knife-nosed, spear chucking freak. Do you you know where they're at or not?

Heard they weren't popular around here. Also heard there was one hanging around. Seemed an unusual combination. Unusual things suggest... business opportunities. For us.

>>836217
So there ARE corsairs about.

Brom 2017/10/16(Mon)13:51 No. 837210 ID: f30be2
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"We're hunting one," Strela says. "Do you know where they're at or not?"
"Bad business," Tarvid says.
"Bad but mine." Strela clicks a silver onto the bar. "Yours is getting me a drink."

They hold a mutual stare for a moment before Tarvid slides a tankard under the tap and fills it. "Bit early."
"Are you a barkeep or a dad?" Bruco asks.
Tarvid snorts and slides the brew over to Strela.
As she drains it, the sounds of morning food and talk cautiously reestablish themselves.

"Was talk of a corsair boat in the sky last night," Tarvid says. "Everyone's on edge."
"Not what we're looking for," Bruco says, hastily. "This one would've been here a while."
"Corsair been here a while." Tarvid wipes his nose. "You sound like Rolastus."
"Rolastus?"
"Lead guardsman. Sees Corsairs under his bed and down the shitter. Bit--" He waves his finger around his earhole in the universal gesture for crazy. "In his old age. You could take that kind of talk out of this bar and to his wardhouse, would do us some good. Just eh." He gestures at Bruco. "It didn't bother me none, but watch your woman's mouth there. He don't much like them talking out of turn to him."
Bruco's eyebrow hitches up.

Guess we should go see that guy then.

>>837210
Before you leave, ask him what a Moldy's doin' so far out of Bureau territory.

>>837210
Go find the old guy. Tease Bruco while he's in your body.

Visiting Rolastus... I don't think he would be helpful considering he sees a Corsair in every shadow. But I'd still visit the Wardhouse just to ask if there's been any official reports about Corsair sightings.

Oh. Ask Sashika if she's got any memory-enhancing potions. For Rolastus.

>>837214
I think you got your wires crossed.

To the wardhouse for paranoid preparations, then. Pisswater's a poor breakfast anyway.

Let's check this guy out.

>>837215
Thiiiiiis.

Brom 2017/10/22(Sun)12:44 No. 838720 ID: f30be2
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"Then I guess we're off to the wardhouse." Strela steps away from the bar. She nearly trips over the diminutivie Sashika, who skitters apologetically out of the way.
"No tip?" Tarvid calls.
"Here's one," Bruco says, following Strela. "Don't tell a man to watch his woman's mouth next time."

"What a fuckin' punk." Bruco is scratching Sashika's head to calm himself down as they head for the wardhouse. "You couldn'ta said something?"
"Coin is a universal language," Strela says. "Its lack is doubly so."
"I guess."
"It hadn't occured to me you wouldn't be used to blocking that kind of thing out," Strela says, then, suddenly conscious of keeping the kayfabe up for Sashika, adds: "Uhhh we're a little more egalitarian in the Tribelands."
"Naut is a morass in ways beyond physical, my friends. You need not tell Sashika this. They are-- set. In lizardly ways." Sashika tugs on Bruco's pant leg. "Behind ear, Mistress?"
Bruco readjusts and Sashika's leathers squeak as her tail wags rapidly. "Yessss," she purrs.
"You're going to need to gird yourself, I think," Strela says. "For this Rolastus customer."
"He better watch his tongue," Bruco hisses. "Before a cat gets it."

Strela tries to hide how amused she is by Bruco's unorthodox act of doubleback chivalry. "Would you happen to have a potion for this, Sashika?" she asks. "Something to jog our man's memory or give him some clarity?"

"Have you seen my shelves, milord? Sashika has a potion for this." She twists her head to get Bruco's hand behind her other ear. "A draught I can brew to banish the uncertainty from Rolastus' mind, and bring him the focus he lacks. Under such influence his mind would discern the true threat from the phantasm... but such a thing he would never willingly take from a foreign harlot in tight pants." She frowns. "Rolastus and Sashika are not on the best of terms."

A]] We'll make do without. I imagine we can get what we need out of him regardless.
B]] Then we'll just have to trick him into drinking it somehow, won't we?
C]] He'll drink it. Strela and I have a way of convincing people.
D]] This calls for an invocation instead, then:
E]] __________

C) And we don't mean by sleeping with them. This time.

>>838720
c

Something tells me threatening the captain of the guard in his guardhouse won't work.

D]] An incantation to make the potion look and taste exactly like Rolastus' favorite drink, whatever that might be. Frame it as dropping by to give him a gracious gift as an apology for not checking in first off when you arrived from the forest mysteriously.

C!

You'd think sexism would have been selected out in a lot of societies when anyone could randomly be a sorcerer who takes issue with that sort of thing.

E) How about you make for a cheaper invocation by using the invocation to get him to drink? Don't forget to pay for the potion, by the way. Can't go taking advantage.

Potential bonus: if you (or rather, Bruco) visibly use some sorcery with this guy it might teach him a little lesson, or at least get him to hold his tongue a bit until you're done.

>>838720
C it is!

C

D, how much would a spirit charge to make a self-nutshot on the bartender look like an accident?

C Shouldn't be terribly difficult.

E. Go all out on disproportionate retribution and attract unnecessary attention by invoking spirits to humiliate an imaginary bit character who didn't agree with my personal politics in THE CURRENT YEAR. He deserves it.

D.

I'm not entirely sure C is meant to imply seduction, but I'm pretty sure it's meant to imply seduction. Strela can easily use her feminine wiles to- oh. Right.
Let's go with B instead. We'll find a way to sell it as a truth serum and convince him he's obligated to drink it for some reason.

Brom 2017/10/29(Sun)16:16 No. 840816 ID: f30be2
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"No," Rolastus says.

Brom 2017/10/29(Sun)16:17 No. 840818 ID: f30be2
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"I'll not drink it. You can't make me drink it. I don't care what it does, and I don't care to have that whorish witch who brewed it in my office, so she can take her whore witch draught with her. And then you can talk to me. Not before."
He leans forward. The thugs at his flanks are unmoving.
"You've brought your savage tribal shit into my town. I would like to see it leave."

"Here I thought the corsairs were here before we were. I guess you'll never be certain about them now."

>>840818
"Wow, kind of racist there buddy. But yeah it's pretty dumb, like our whole character arc was spitting in the face of all of that. Rest assured we haven't brought any of that with us."

>>840818
We shouldn't kill them. That would be morally wrong probably. Still, we need him to apologize for those words.

If we can find a practical way to get him to talk politely, we should take it! However, if he refuses to apologize, we should probably demand satisfaction.

Good news - it's a suppository.

>>840818
well I guess its time to break a couple noses. Start boar start with taking out the minions after giving Bruco a look.

>>840818
"Well, that's too bad. We heard that you're the guy to talk to when it comes to talk about a Corsair that's been here a while. But since you don't want to talk about it, then I guess you'll just have to deal with it on your own."

>>840818
Oh, so he wants to play hardball? That's almost cute.
"I suppose if that's how you feel.
I'm sorry, Sashika. It looks like you're not welcome in this town anymore.
We'll guard you while you go around letting the expectant mothers know that this fine gentleman is running you out of town, and how you obviously won't be able to help their eggs anymore. You're always welcome with us, of course."

Then you can leave.

>>840851
He has insulted our new wife. Ask her where he can hear it, if that potion would work as a suppository.

Well, let's try with some persuasion.

Tell him you just saw a Corsair entering through a window in this building and that you're worried for his safety. It's all thanks to this potion that you were able to clearly see its swift movements.
Tell him you understand he's been seeing Corsairs and that you know how elusive they are. Unlike other less-trained individuals. This is his only chance to prove to everyone he cares about that they're wrong! Is he really fine to leave things as they are?

If we can't persuade him with words then I guess we'll have to get creative :3