Post by Malri 'Taffeta' Thistletop on Jan 18, 2019 22:56:44 GMT
1496 DR, 9 Hammer
Cala Clifford looks up from her mug of ale as the door of the Ettin creaks open. ‘Taffeta!’ she exclaims. ‘Back from your holiday?’
‘Just got back yesterday,’ replies the halfling, hoisting herself onto a bar stool. ‘A Daffles Draught, please, Coll.’
‘How was it, then? Did you have a good time? What’s Kundar like? Tell me all about it!’
‘Ah, it was… interesting, I suppose. Did me good to get away, anyhow. And Kundar – well, it’s impressive, to be sure! Big and busy and noisy, lots of machines everywhere. And it was nice to be somewhere that’s all built for people my height for a change!’
Coll places a mug next to Taffeta’s elbow. ‘Not complaining about my furniture, I hope?’ he asks, face stony but eye twinkling.
‘No,’ she laughs, ‘You know I would never!’ The inn-keeper nods and turns to another customer as the two women grin to each other.
‘To tell the truth, Cala… Now, you’re from Yartar, aren’t you?’ asks Taffeta.
‘That’s me! Both of us, actually. Dennar’s family have lived there as long as any of them remember. Ooh, his father was so upset when we said we were moving here – he’s so proud of being Yartaran! Don’t know why, it isn’t like it was his idea to be born there!’
When the grocer pauses to chuckle at her own observation, Taffeta asks, ‘What’s… what’s Yartar like? Compared to here?’
‘Oh, well it’s a lot more crowded. Taller buildings and more people packed into them. More of a trade town than here: it’s in the fork of two big rivers, you see, so a lot of barges come and go, and get built there too, down at the docks. Plenty of fresh fish to be had, that’s one thing I miss…’
‘What about the people? Are there… people like me there?’
‘Halflings? Oh, quite a few. Not every day I’d see one, but –’
‘No, I mean… people like me and Daisy, Lady Sunday, Barden, Dorian, Tugark… Nowhere…’
‘Oh, I see! The kind that like to do dangerous jobs, explore, fight monsters, that kind of thing. Oh yes, plenty of those. Not all of them live in the town, like here. A lot come and go. Yartar’s got a reputation as a place you can hire people for that kind of work, and so people come to get hired. Especially around midsummer: there’s a big fair where rough and tumble folks come from all over to try their luck. Why, are you looking for more of that kind of work?’
‘No, no! No, it isn’t that at all.’
Taffeta takes another swig of ale and looks at the table. ‘The thing is – you’ve heard about what Nowhere said before they took him away?’
‘About how this is a town full of good-for-nothings, or something like that?’
‘Something like that. Liars, thieves, and murderers, I think it was. You see… I never thought it was like that, but what do I know? I grew up in the woods with a dozen other families. We all knew each other, we all looked after each other. When I came here, I thought this was just what other places were like! But how would I know? To be honest, that’s one of the reasons we went to Kundar. Nerry saw me fretting about it and he said, “Let’s go and see somewhere else, then. Let’s take the girls on holiday to somewhere completely different, and we can see if it’s any less full of rascals than this town.”’
‘And was it?’
A rippling reflection looks up at Taffeta from the depths of her mug. Does she look older than last time she saw her own face?
‘It’s hard to tell. Life seemed more predictable there. We did meet some… some “rascals”, as Nerry says. There were taverns with noticeboard like this –’ She stops for a moment as something on the Ettin’s board catches her eye. ‘... like this one, and there were people who took up those offers. We heard some stories of monsters and such. I even got involved with one, come to that.’
‘On your family holiday?’
Taffeta laughs. ‘Silly, isn’t it? If I’m so tired of all that, why did I do it again, even when I was meant to be taking a break from it? We were all on our way back to the teleportation circle to come home, and on the way we ran into some people from Daring! Gorstag, the fellow who was with me and Daisy and the others when there was that nasty business at your house. And he had two others with him I didn’t know, though one I’d heard about. Big tall man with markings on his skin, very polite – Oriloki, his name is. Nerry had met him before and promised I’d meet him too but then all that business… I hadn’t had the time. And an aarakocra named… Pieni, I think? And they were on their way to do some work for a local wizard named Flickerbrow. And I thought, “well, this is a chance to see whether this kind of business is the same everywhere!” So Nerry and the girls went on home and I tagged along with the others.’
‘And what happend? This is very exciting, you must tell me everything!’
‘It was an odd one. This Flickerbrow was planning her own tomb and she wanted us to get some… decorations, I guess you could say. A live cockatrice and the plans for an “ultimate death trap” that some local inventor had come up with. There isn’t much to tell, really. Oriloki made a friend who likes the same sort of magic he does and they agreed to keep in touch. We found more cockatrices than we bargained for – a mother and eight little ones – and Gorstag nearly got turned to stone so we gave up trying to catch the big one and just made a run for it with one of the chicks. The wizard seemed content with that, though she didn’t pay as much.’
‘And then this death-trap thing… The inventor, Alisten, showed us this maze full of traps that he’d built at the back of his house and said he’d let us have the plans if we could make it to the end. None of us were so confident or so desperate for cash that we wanted to take too much of a risk, but Oriloki said he could whisk himself and one other person out of there in a flash if anything went wrong, so he and Pieni went in and I stayed outside with Gorstag.’
‘We watched them head off down this corridor and before they’d even got out of sight they’d spotted and dodged a handful of traps and got caught out by a few more. After they got round the corner I couldn’t really tell what was happening, but it seems like Pieni lost…’ Taffeta stops and looks thoughtful. ‘You know, I’m still not sure what… Do aarakocra even distinguish…? Anyway, um, Pieni suddenly couldn’t remember anything, and just decided to wander back down the corridor. That got pretty nasty: flames, blades swishing around, all kinds of things. The poor creature ended up just rolling out of the corridor, barely breathing. Recovered with a little bit of healing craft, though. And then a bit later we hear Oriloki shouting can he borrow some lock-picks. Well none of us had such a thing, but Gorstag just went off to a shop and bought some, came back and threw them to the big fellow, who disappeared off round the corner again. We heard some clicking and then it went quiet… and, next thing you know, Oriloki’s suddenly standing next to us with a set of fancy armour, a bag, a sword, some potions, and the plans for the trap puzzle!’
‘Alisten let us take all that stuff – as we left he was already working on how to improve the death-trap for the next version. And Flickerbrow gave us some money for the plans and the cockatrice. And then we all came back here!’
‘Amazing! What an adventure!’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Did you enjoy it? It sounds quite frightening!’
Taffeta thinks for a moment. ‘I don’t know. And that’s troublesome. You know, I didn’t take any weapons or armour to Kundar with me – why would I? It was a holiday! – but when we first arrived there and I unpacked, there in my luggage was armour and crossbow.’
‘Goodness me!’
‘Idari packed them. “Sorry Ma,” she said, “but I reckon you’ll want those”. And, you know, I thought it was one of her feelings, her, you know, the things that come to her about what’s going to happen. But today I’ve been wondering. What if she just knows me better than I do? What if that’s just… who I am? One of the “rascals”? The… the liars and thieves and…’ She shakes her head. ‘Sorry, Cala, I’m getting lost in my thoughts again. I never used to think this much back in the woods!’
‘Taffeta, nobody thinks you’re a thief or a liar or any of that. You help keep us all safe!’
‘I know someone who’d say you’re fooling yourself if you think that.’
‘He’s gone, and good riddance. Anyway I’m certain your daughter doesn’t think that about you. Like you said, she must have sensed that you’d need those things – and you did! It’s amazing how she does that. Did I tell you, the other day when she came to the shop with Nerry to buy vegetables, she said to me –’
Taffeta suddenly looks again at the noticeboard.
‘Cala, I’m sorry to interrupt but you’ve made me remember something. There on the board, is that a new note underneath the one Idari put up? Could you tell me what it says?’
Cala leaves the bar and walks over to the note. She calls out:
‘It’s her writing again. She says, “This is happening soon. I will meet you all here at noon on 15 Hammer and we will go together...”’
Cala’s reading is interrupted by a clatter and thud as Taffeta launches herself from the bar stool, sending it thwacking into the one recently vacated by her neighbour.
‘We’ll go together, will we?’ She marches in a straight line towards the door. ‘Sorry Cala, I’ll see you later,’ says the speeding halfling, disappearing out of the tavern and into the town. ‘I need to have a word with my youngest!’
Cala watches the small figure get smaller as she stomps off down the street, then turns back to see Coll leisurely wiping the bar with a cloth. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I suppose she can pay for that drink next time she’s here.’
‘Oh dear, Coll, I’m sure she didn’t mean to – here, let me pay.’
‘No, no, I can wait,’ he replies. ‘It’s not long ’til the fifteenth.’
Cala Clifford looks up from her mug of ale as the door of the Ettin creaks open. ‘Taffeta!’ she exclaims. ‘Back from your holiday?’
‘Just got back yesterday,’ replies the halfling, hoisting herself onto a bar stool. ‘A Daffles Draught, please, Coll.’
‘How was it, then? Did you have a good time? What’s Kundar like? Tell me all about it!’
‘Ah, it was… interesting, I suppose. Did me good to get away, anyhow. And Kundar – well, it’s impressive, to be sure! Big and busy and noisy, lots of machines everywhere. And it was nice to be somewhere that’s all built for people my height for a change!’
Coll places a mug next to Taffeta’s elbow. ‘Not complaining about my furniture, I hope?’ he asks, face stony but eye twinkling.
‘No,’ she laughs, ‘You know I would never!’ The inn-keeper nods and turns to another customer as the two women grin to each other.
‘To tell the truth, Cala… Now, you’re from Yartar, aren’t you?’ asks Taffeta.
‘That’s me! Both of us, actually. Dennar’s family have lived there as long as any of them remember. Ooh, his father was so upset when we said we were moving here – he’s so proud of being Yartaran! Don’t know why, it isn’t like it was his idea to be born there!’
When the grocer pauses to chuckle at her own observation, Taffeta asks, ‘What’s… what’s Yartar like? Compared to here?’
‘Oh, well it’s a lot more crowded. Taller buildings and more people packed into them. More of a trade town than here: it’s in the fork of two big rivers, you see, so a lot of barges come and go, and get built there too, down at the docks. Plenty of fresh fish to be had, that’s one thing I miss…’
‘What about the people? Are there… people like me there?’
‘Halflings? Oh, quite a few. Not every day I’d see one, but –’
‘No, I mean… people like me and Daisy, Lady Sunday, Barden, Dorian, Tugark… Nowhere…’
‘Oh, I see! The kind that like to do dangerous jobs, explore, fight monsters, that kind of thing. Oh yes, plenty of those. Not all of them live in the town, like here. A lot come and go. Yartar’s got a reputation as a place you can hire people for that kind of work, and so people come to get hired. Especially around midsummer: there’s a big fair where rough and tumble folks come from all over to try their luck. Why, are you looking for more of that kind of work?’
‘No, no! No, it isn’t that at all.’
Taffeta takes another swig of ale and looks at the table. ‘The thing is – you’ve heard about what Nowhere said before they took him away?’
‘About how this is a town full of good-for-nothings, or something like that?’
‘Something like that. Liars, thieves, and murderers, I think it was. You see… I never thought it was like that, but what do I know? I grew up in the woods with a dozen other families. We all knew each other, we all looked after each other. When I came here, I thought this was just what other places were like! But how would I know? To be honest, that’s one of the reasons we went to Kundar. Nerry saw me fretting about it and he said, “Let’s go and see somewhere else, then. Let’s take the girls on holiday to somewhere completely different, and we can see if it’s any less full of rascals than this town.”’
‘And was it?’
A rippling reflection looks up at Taffeta from the depths of her mug. Does she look older than last time she saw her own face?
‘It’s hard to tell. Life seemed more predictable there. We did meet some… some “rascals”, as Nerry says. There were taverns with noticeboard like this –’ She stops for a moment as something on the Ettin’s board catches her eye. ‘... like this one, and there were people who took up those offers. We heard some stories of monsters and such. I even got involved with one, come to that.’
‘On your family holiday?’
Taffeta laughs. ‘Silly, isn’t it? If I’m so tired of all that, why did I do it again, even when I was meant to be taking a break from it? We were all on our way back to the teleportation circle to come home, and on the way we ran into some people from Daring! Gorstag, the fellow who was with me and Daisy and the others when there was that nasty business at your house. And he had two others with him I didn’t know, though one I’d heard about. Big tall man with markings on his skin, very polite – Oriloki, his name is. Nerry had met him before and promised I’d meet him too but then all that business… I hadn’t had the time. And an aarakocra named… Pieni, I think? And they were on their way to do some work for a local wizard named Flickerbrow. And I thought, “well, this is a chance to see whether this kind of business is the same everywhere!” So Nerry and the girls went on home and I tagged along with the others.’
‘And what happend? This is very exciting, you must tell me everything!’
‘It was an odd one. This Flickerbrow was planning her own tomb and she wanted us to get some… decorations, I guess you could say. A live cockatrice and the plans for an “ultimate death trap” that some local inventor had come up with. There isn’t much to tell, really. Oriloki made a friend who likes the same sort of magic he does and they agreed to keep in touch. We found more cockatrices than we bargained for – a mother and eight little ones – and Gorstag nearly got turned to stone so we gave up trying to catch the big one and just made a run for it with one of the chicks. The wizard seemed content with that, though she didn’t pay as much.’
‘And then this death-trap thing… The inventor, Alisten, showed us this maze full of traps that he’d built at the back of his house and said he’d let us have the plans if we could make it to the end. None of us were so confident or so desperate for cash that we wanted to take too much of a risk, but Oriloki said he could whisk himself and one other person out of there in a flash if anything went wrong, so he and Pieni went in and I stayed outside with Gorstag.’
‘We watched them head off down this corridor and before they’d even got out of sight they’d spotted and dodged a handful of traps and got caught out by a few more. After they got round the corner I couldn’t really tell what was happening, but it seems like Pieni lost…’ Taffeta stops and looks thoughtful. ‘You know, I’m still not sure what… Do aarakocra even distinguish…? Anyway, um, Pieni suddenly couldn’t remember anything, and just decided to wander back down the corridor. That got pretty nasty: flames, blades swishing around, all kinds of things. The poor creature ended up just rolling out of the corridor, barely breathing. Recovered with a little bit of healing craft, though. And then a bit later we hear Oriloki shouting can he borrow some lock-picks. Well none of us had such a thing, but Gorstag just went off to a shop and bought some, came back and threw them to the big fellow, who disappeared off round the corner again. We heard some clicking and then it went quiet… and, next thing you know, Oriloki’s suddenly standing next to us with a set of fancy armour, a bag, a sword, some potions, and the plans for the trap puzzle!’
‘Alisten let us take all that stuff – as we left he was already working on how to improve the death-trap for the next version. And Flickerbrow gave us some money for the plans and the cockatrice. And then we all came back here!’
‘Amazing! What an adventure!’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Did you enjoy it? It sounds quite frightening!’
Taffeta thinks for a moment. ‘I don’t know. And that’s troublesome. You know, I didn’t take any weapons or armour to Kundar with me – why would I? It was a holiday! – but when we first arrived there and I unpacked, there in my luggage was armour and crossbow.’
‘Goodness me!’
‘Idari packed them. “Sorry Ma,” she said, “but I reckon you’ll want those”. And, you know, I thought it was one of her feelings, her, you know, the things that come to her about what’s going to happen. But today I’ve been wondering. What if she just knows me better than I do? What if that’s just… who I am? One of the “rascals”? The… the liars and thieves and…’ She shakes her head. ‘Sorry, Cala, I’m getting lost in my thoughts again. I never used to think this much back in the woods!’
‘Taffeta, nobody thinks you’re a thief or a liar or any of that. You help keep us all safe!’
‘I know someone who’d say you’re fooling yourself if you think that.’
‘He’s gone, and good riddance. Anyway I’m certain your daughter doesn’t think that about you. Like you said, she must have sensed that you’d need those things – and you did! It’s amazing how she does that. Did I tell you, the other day when she came to the shop with Nerry to buy vegetables, she said to me –’
Taffeta suddenly looks again at the noticeboard.
‘Cala, I’m sorry to interrupt but you’ve made me remember something. There on the board, is that a new note underneath the one Idari put up? Could you tell me what it says?’
Cala leaves the bar and walks over to the note. She calls out:
‘It’s her writing again. She says, “This is happening soon. I will meet you all here at noon on 15 Hammer and we will go together...”’
Cala’s reading is interrupted by a clatter and thud as Taffeta launches herself from the bar stool, sending it thwacking into the one recently vacated by her neighbour.
‘We’ll go together, will we?’ She marches in a straight line towards the door. ‘Sorry Cala, I’ll see you later,’ says the speeding halfling, disappearing out of the tavern and into the town. ‘I need to have a word with my youngest!’
Cala watches the small figure get smaller as she stomps off down the street, then turns back to see Coll leisurely wiping the bar with a cloth. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I suppose she can pay for that drink next time she’s here.’
‘Oh dear, Coll, I’m sure she didn’t mean to – here, let me pay.’
‘No, no, I can wait,’ he replies. ‘It’s not long ’til the fifteenth.’
