Scrolls - Business Writeup w/ Mace
Jan 22, 2020 19:04:51 GMT
Milo Brightmane and Ian (Menace) like this
Post by Imp (Dan L) on Jan 22, 2020 19:04:51 GMT
The plush cushions of the Gilded Mirror offered little resistance to Imp’s back as he settled in and shifted to and fro. Try as he might, sleep would not take him - could be that he was unused to the luxury of his lodgings (his old student mattress was scarcely more than an extremely sad collection of feathers spread over some broken slats) but it was more likely due to his heart still thrumming in his chest, like the twanging of a drum’s skin or the steady burst of embers ejected from a lively fireplace.
A few deep breaths later and his heart stilled, but his mind kept racing. Imp was alone with his thoughts. He could logically scrub his self-derision from his mind - after all, he could forgive himself for being woefully unprepared for an impromptu jaunt in the Feywild - but it was his combat intuition that frightened him. As a bright-eyed student, the worst thing he’d done was throw a few firebolts in a fracas. Push came to shove, and he’d nearly levitated someone off a cliff edge. Asked before that fight, he would have liked to think there were some intervening steps before condemning an assailant to the attentions of terminal velocity. Apparently, the steps between harmless pranks and murder were smaller than he’d thought - he’d gone from a man’s laughter to manslaughter and all it took was… a hike? An illusion of a postwoman? That was definitely strange.
He probed in his mind, trying to figure out where those intervening steps had gone, and he found that section of his mind, the part that, when pressed, jettisoned impossible memories and convoluted conclusions, a sickly-sweet sycophantic surge from a pliable mind that sought to explain, explain away the inconsistencies and fill in the blanks, faces that he’d never known but had always known, memories of rough and tumble in the tumbling rough that were older than he was, a waterfall of waterworks from a face that he both loved intensely and had never known once in his life, pastoral parents waving him away from a land that had raised him and that he’d love to visit for the first time, a cascade of contradictions that spun and spiralled inward, inward-
After a few minutes Imp relented and threw open his shutters. The moonlight illuminated his table of scrolls, parchment and ink and began to draw the familiar and mundane symbols that could occupy a mind that he had never been able to trust.
The next morning, Imp made his way down to the tap room for breakfast, stumbling on a few steps, and found a familiar face in the still relative quiet of the inn: the Tiefling Mace sitting alone at one of the tables and spiritedly digging into a plate laden with fried chicken wings in front of him. Upon spotting Imp, Mace waved excitedly, fingers wet with grease.
“My friend! Join me, join me! What a wonderful morning it is. It seems the recent invention of ‘breakfast wings’ at the Three-Headed Ettin, a more modest establishment, has taken the town by storm and is now served even here! I daresay, this honey-garlic sauce is quite tasty, but between the two of us, I do prefer the hot peppercorn sauce they serve at the Ettin - you just have to trust the original, right?!” he says with a laugh and a wink.
Imp blinked. He blinked again. The tracks in his brain righted themselves. There was something comforting about a well-manicured facade, encountering this ‘businessman’ - Imp felt the quotation marks slot into place almost of their own accord - and having him be so… spritely. It was refreshing. Imp found his face pulled into a smile, and waved back.
“Breakfast wings? I thought I’d left these at the college,” Imp said, sitting down and helping himself to one. The salt and fat combined in his mouth with the smoky sweetness of the honey, and soon Imp found himself grabbing another two. There was always something to be said for the healing power of a well-cooked meal, a temporary bridge for a hole that probably needed something more than honey to fill it. It reminded him of sweetened pork pies from back home, long ago, except he was only in his early twenties and had never had a sweetened pork pie and he felt his memories curving back round-
“Hey, Mace,” he said, cutting off the thoughts before they had time to gestate, “you’re a businessman, right?”
The Tiefling smiled, mischief sparkling in his obsidian black eyes.
“Indeed I am. I run a modest trading business out of Port Ffirst, a town to the east of here, at the sea. It is a wonderful place, known far and wide as the Jewel of the Shield Coast! You really ought to visit. But why do you ask?”
“Good. As a thank you for literally saving my life, I have a business proposition,” Imp said with a smile. “Wait here.”
Imp returned moments later with a scroll and a frown.
“This one’s on the house, on account of me being still alive,” he said, handing over the cylinder of parchment. “The other one appears to have been misplaced. Or maybe I thought I’d made it, but hadn’t actually. Regardless, I think you can sell these 1st levels scrolls for anywhere up to 70 gold, that was the cheapest I saw elsewhere. I’ll sell them to you for 40. If anyone wants anything more complicated than this, or a specific spell, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Why?” Mace asked. He also gestured at his greasy hands, so Imp placed the scroll gently on the table. Turning his horned head to one side with a quizzical look, he wiped his hands on a silk cloth and fixed Imp with a stare.
“Well, I heard you talking about having a pawnshop, and I don’t really do retail. But I could use the extra gold. And I would hope that if you find a spell scroll anywhere in your adventures, you could bring it to me and I could make copies of it before you flog it on anywhere.”
The Tiefling businessman flashed a particularly toothy grin, halfway between charmingly roguish and disquietingly wolfish.
“Why, what a wonderful idea! I am always on the lookout for profitable new additions to my inventory. And yes, I believe there is a market for such spell scrolls among the adventuring community… Very well, let us do business together!”
He offered his red-skinned hand to shake on the agreement and Imp gripped it.
“I daresay, how fortunate it was to run into you in these woods. I believe this will be the beginning of a most profitable friendship…”
A few deep breaths later and his heart stilled, but his mind kept racing. Imp was alone with his thoughts. He could logically scrub his self-derision from his mind - after all, he could forgive himself for being woefully unprepared for an impromptu jaunt in the Feywild - but it was his combat intuition that frightened him. As a bright-eyed student, the worst thing he’d done was throw a few firebolts in a fracas. Push came to shove, and he’d nearly levitated someone off a cliff edge. Asked before that fight, he would have liked to think there were some intervening steps before condemning an assailant to the attentions of terminal velocity. Apparently, the steps between harmless pranks and murder were smaller than he’d thought - he’d gone from a man’s laughter to manslaughter and all it took was… a hike? An illusion of a postwoman? That was definitely strange.
He probed in his mind, trying to figure out where those intervening steps had gone, and he found that section of his mind, the part that, when pressed, jettisoned impossible memories and convoluted conclusions, a sickly-sweet sycophantic surge from a pliable mind that sought to explain, explain away the inconsistencies and fill in the blanks, faces that he’d never known but had always known, memories of rough and tumble in the tumbling rough that were older than he was, a waterfall of waterworks from a face that he both loved intensely and had never known once in his life, pastoral parents waving him away from a land that had raised him and that he’d love to visit for the first time, a cascade of contradictions that spun and spiralled inward, inward-
After a few minutes Imp relented and threw open his shutters. The moonlight illuminated his table of scrolls, parchment and ink and began to draw the familiar and mundane symbols that could occupy a mind that he had never been able to trust.
The next morning, Imp made his way down to the tap room for breakfast, stumbling on a few steps, and found a familiar face in the still relative quiet of the inn: the Tiefling Mace sitting alone at one of the tables and spiritedly digging into a plate laden with fried chicken wings in front of him. Upon spotting Imp, Mace waved excitedly, fingers wet with grease.
“My friend! Join me, join me! What a wonderful morning it is. It seems the recent invention of ‘breakfast wings’ at the Three-Headed Ettin, a more modest establishment, has taken the town by storm and is now served even here! I daresay, this honey-garlic sauce is quite tasty, but between the two of us, I do prefer the hot peppercorn sauce they serve at the Ettin - you just have to trust the original, right?!” he says with a laugh and a wink.
Imp blinked. He blinked again. The tracks in his brain righted themselves. There was something comforting about a well-manicured facade, encountering this ‘businessman’ - Imp felt the quotation marks slot into place almost of their own accord - and having him be so… spritely. It was refreshing. Imp found his face pulled into a smile, and waved back.
“Breakfast wings? I thought I’d left these at the college,” Imp said, sitting down and helping himself to one. The salt and fat combined in his mouth with the smoky sweetness of the honey, and soon Imp found himself grabbing another two. There was always something to be said for the healing power of a well-cooked meal, a temporary bridge for a hole that probably needed something more than honey to fill it. It reminded him of sweetened pork pies from back home, long ago, except he was only in his early twenties and had never had a sweetened pork pie and he felt his memories curving back round-
“Hey, Mace,” he said, cutting off the thoughts before they had time to gestate, “you’re a businessman, right?”
The Tiefling smiled, mischief sparkling in his obsidian black eyes.
“Indeed I am. I run a modest trading business out of Port Ffirst, a town to the east of here, at the sea. It is a wonderful place, known far and wide as the Jewel of the Shield Coast! You really ought to visit. But why do you ask?”
“Good. As a thank you for literally saving my life, I have a business proposition,” Imp said with a smile. “Wait here.”
Imp returned moments later with a scroll and a frown.
“This one’s on the house, on account of me being still alive,” he said, handing over the cylinder of parchment. “The other one appears to have been misplaced. Or maybe I thought I’d made it, but hadn’t actually. Regardless, I think you can sell these 1st levels scrolls for anywhere up to 70 gold, that was the cheapest I saw elsewhere. I’ll sell them to you for 40. If anyone wants anything more complicated than this, or a specific spell, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Why?” Mace asked. He also gestured at his greasy hands, so Imp placed the scroll gently on the table. Turning his horned head to one side with a quizzical look, he wiped his hands on a silk cloth and fixed Imp with a stare.
“Well, I heard you talking about having a pawnshop, and I don’t really do retail. But I could use the extra gold. And I would hope that if you find a spell scroll anywhere in your adventures, you could bring it to me and I could make copies of it before you flog it on anywhere.”
The Tiefling businessman flashed a particularly toothy grin, halfway between charmingly roguish and disquietingly wolfish.
“Why, what a wonderful idea! I am always on the lookout for profitable new additions to my inventory. And yes, I believe there is a market for such spell scrolls among the adventuring community… Very well, let us do business together!”
He offered his red-skinned hand to shake on the agreement and Imp gripped it.
“I daresay, how fortunate it was to run into you in these woods. I believe this will be the beginning of a most profitable friendship…”