1: Do You Know the Rifle Man?

[AbsentWizard]

When the cell door closed behind Sam, the leader-woman of the red-jackets gave Sam a glare and walked away without another word. She goes down the hall to the next cell, where the whole group repeats their swarming-in, ordering-against-wall, and asking-questions-nobody-cares-about.

 

That just leaves Sam and the silver-masked man standing there, at the cell door. He's no longer empty-handed, and holds a crudely-made pistol, a length of twine and a small narwhal-horn with a cork in the tip. These he hold in his gloved hands almost out of sight behind him. He addresses "Sam" with a soothing tenor,

 

"Sam, do you know who I am?"

[Powderhorn]

Cassandra gives the man a quick look, and, though almost out of sight, notices the eclectic items.  "A silver mask, and badges of office.  You are both judge and executioner, I should think."  She pauses before adding, "You're also someone who wants me alive, else you would not concern yourself of me knowing your position.  That is, if I were to offer a guess."

[AbsentWizard]

It's really quite quite difficult to try to read expressions through two eye-holes. "It is not badly guessed."

The man's hand comes up and holds out the things towards Cassandra. Several waxed lead balls are revealed to have been tucked away in the man's grip. To Cassandra's eyes, they were all clearly of (slightly) differing diameters. The pistol itself is apprentice work at best; its barrel clearly mounted crooked and its cock clacked loosely against the rest of the lock.

A few tiny flecks of blue lacquer fall from the man's armor and dust his sleeve. On a further look, it seems that the armor had been dented by something large and blocky on his right breast - The lacquer had shattered but the plate itself had not failed.

"Load this."

[Powderhorn]

Taking the pistol and eyeing it briefly, she already has a few ideas how to shore up the shoddy work.  A bit of felt under the barrel, some twine to hold it all down, and some simple reshaping of the lock to tighten it up would have it, at the very least, serviceable.  Still, if the man wants to give her a gun and have her load it, she certainly won't shy away.  "I don't know your game yet," she starts as she takes the narwhal horn and uncorks it with her teeth, pouring powder down the muzzle and dashing some into the pan, closing it as tightly as it will go.  She replaces the cork and continues, "but this is disappointing stuff."  She eyeballs the waxed lead balls, and takes the one that looks to be just a smidge oversized in total diameter.  She knows the wax will scrape off the sides, and help prevent powder from falling out and giving a tighter seal to boot.  "I have seen higher quality work from scavengers."  She rams the ball home, gently cocks the pistol, trying to keep the hammer from coming off the main spring while doing so.

 

"So what's the deal?  Indoctrination into your cult?  Need someone killed by someone who is expendable?  Or am I to be the Captain of your transportation mission, given one gun, three bullets, and not a prayer?"

[AbsentWizard]

There's a moment of silence, then the man lifts a finger to tap the barrel, apparently listening for perhaps a rattle. Of course, the clank of the matchless cock is louder than anything else that might be loose in the pistol.

"My name is Dyord Chudze-Ka. Well, lately Reng'pya-Ka." The man tosses aside the twine - clearly just an ordinary bit of twine instead of actually being a slow-match. "Now, you answer only to me, and I for you. As for the deal..."

 

Dyord's mask shifts slightly upwards of its own accord, and one can almost make out crinkles at the edges of his eyes. "I wanted a gun-keeper."

[Powderhorn]

"Well," she says as she grabs at the string as it floats down.  "The first thing you should know is that when you have junk like this," she nods to the misshapen lump of wood and steel that can generously be called a pistol, "even bits of strings will be an improvement."  She looks the person up and down again.

 

"So you wanted a gun keeper, and now you have one I suppose.  Yet somehow I doubt it's just for a collection of interesting people.  So what's next?"

[AbsentWizard]

"That was in prisoner possessions. Keep it if you wish." Dyord turns away and starts walking down the hall, back towards civilization. As he turns left to the stairs leading to a guard room and the exit, two Peacekeepers, each bearing a tray with wooden bowls, come down the stairs. Seeing Dyord and Sam, they turn back and stand aside at the top, yielding the way.

 

Sam notices glares of disapproval - to both her and Dyord - as she passes the Peacekeepers. One of them even seems to have been in the squad that apprehended her.

[Powderhorn]

Carefully tucking the pistol into a belt, she nods to Dyord and follows.  Seeing the one that appears to have apprehended her, she offers a wink as she passes, happy to tug on the tail of whatever she's caught up in now that she has a gun (though it barely qualifies for the name) on her hip.  "So, what are the odds of getting something better made?" she asks, as they walk.

[AbsentWizard]

"I intend to visit a foundry soon. You can take what you like then. Ah-"

 

In the well-lit guard room, Dyord stops, facing an empty corner of the room for a moment before speaking, still facing the corner. 

"It's gone."

 

The four Peacekeepers in the room, as one, stand up to put their table and the card-game on it between them and Dyord. The sound of chair legs scraping die down, then, several elbowings later, one of them speaks up. "T-they were taken away already."

 

Dyord stares at the corner a few seconds longer, then turns back towards the door outside, "Where?"

 

"D-don't know."

 

Dyord pushes through the door, having never looked at the guards, "I did not wish this, Sam."

 

Item Get!

Poorly-made Matchlock Pistol (Loaded, 1 shot)

Dmg: 1d6

Attribute: Dex

Range: 15/45

Traits: AP, Inaccurate (-1 to attack)

Reload: 1 (round of focused effort)
Enc: 1

Item Get!

Juvenile-Narwhal Powder Horn (Stab-ready)

Dmg: 1d6

Shock: 2/AC 13

Attribute: Str/Dex

Traits: -

Enc: 1

Contents: 400 measures of gunpowder

 

[Powderhorn]

Glaring at the guards, in the moment Cassandra decides to play at being Dyord's right hand.  "You'll be flogged for your inattentiveness, I'm certain," she says to match the look.  With Dyord leaving, so too does Cassandra, hurrying after him.  "I didn't either, but here we are."

[AbsentWizard]

Once outside, Dyord takes a left, towards the direction of the Reng'pya docklands. They are built around the tallest mountains here - like all harbors are, really. Two to three dozen wood-and-steel towers stretch up into the sky from foundations hidden in the masses of warehouses and longshoremen-tenements in the foothills. Here and there glitter a brassy or gold-leafed tower poking above the roofs, marking another Hearth-Temple of Syanslok rising above the community that it serves-and-governs and all of them dwarfed by the dock-towers.

 

It is a breezy day today. Even from this distance, Cassandra can see that the docked ships are weathercocked and rocking against their lines atop the dock-towers. The pillarlight shines cleanly around the dark shadows of distant clouds, fracturing into thin rainbow edges around each.

 

An atmosphere of disquiet meets Cassandra and Dyord as they proceed down the street. A large number of windows have residents watching openly from them and discussing amongst each other about passerby. A Peacekeeper convoy turns the corner ahead and marches up the center of the street - a ring of ten of the monks around at least twice their number in prisoners newly-shackled and some newly-beaten. They ignore Dyord as they pass, and he them.

 

Dyord breaks his silence a minute later, "Have you hunted?"

 

[Powderhorn]

"In a town, with a pistol, you only hunt people or rats," she says as they walk.  "My experience tends to be more rustic in nature."  It's unsurprising that it would be, as she does look around quite a bit, unfamiliar with the surroundings.  How she even wound up in this mess was beyond her, but suddenly, things seemed like they might be more interesting in a positive direction for once.  He seemed to be breaking away from protocol, and she would be more than happy to help him.  "What were you thinking to hunt?"

[AbsentWizard]

"Monsters." Dyord immediately shrugs, "Many hunt monsters. There is glory in it. Paying too. I hunted some monsters. We hunt some monsters. But monsters... euhhh... like dish-towels in the scullery of hunting. Here."

 

Dyord stops underneath an overhanging sign declaring that this place was called the Broken Anchor. The sign appears to actually have been made from a small ship's anchor, with one fluke snapped off, and with brass words welded on the side. The whole thing creaks in the wind, swinging at the end of a thick chain looped around a chunk of a ship's mast and then back down to wrap around a big rock set in a hole in the wooden patio.

 

The only people on the patio is a group composed of two particularly short, stocky women and a bullied-looking man. They sit at one of the empty tables, drinking and laughing about something. Well, the women were laughing. The man mostly drank in embarrassed silence. The three of them raise their mugs to Dyord as he passes and he returns with the first wave that Cassandra has ever seen out of him. Cassandra gets 2 curious stares and 1 curious stare, which then immediately turns into an embarrassed stare when one of the women whispers something.

 

"Organizations." Dyord continues as he pushes through the Broken Anchor's door and steps inside. "Fantastic prey. The big ones are puzzles that can survive parts chopped off and recruit new ones. It's hard to find all the right organs to hit, if they're secretive enough."

 

Inside is a common room, with tables, chairs, and benches of widely disparate makes and materials arranged in small clusters for intimate conversations. Several chests are along one wall, each one with a lock on them but each one also open and clearly empty. There was another door on the far side, but instead Dyord turns up the stairs to the second floor. Nobody was in this room, but wisps of smoke above a pipe stuck into an enameled clay mug suggest that someone was here not long ago.

 

"Gods." Dyord arrives at the second floor landing, which has five different closed doors, each one marked with a different bird silhouette painted on. He puts his hand on the handle of the right-most door (the Cloudshrike Room, based on the sign), but looks at Cassandra instead of opening. "Eventually."

Edited September 6, 2022 by AbsentWizard (see edit history)

[Powderhorn]

Cassandra lowers her voice so as to not be overheard, "So to be clear, you want to hunt an organization, by which you mean a targeted assassin," she quirks an eyebrow for confirmation, "and build your way up to knocking gods themselves on the head?"  She looks incredulous at him.  "And to do all that, you have... Sam, with a crooked pistol?"

 

She takes another long look at this obvious lunatic, and wonders if she shouldn't just put a bullet in him and book it.  Still, she liked the idea of overthrowing governments - and organizations and gods sure sounded like governments to her.  "Do I have the right of it?  And do you plan to get me something better than this garbage?" she indicates the pistol tucked into her belt.

[AbsentWizard]

"Of course not." Dyord pushes open the door, which apparently had not been locked. There's a soft metallic click sound underlying the woody pop. Cassandra thinks she sees a small length of metal fly and bounce off of the door panel. She definitely sees three full-sized swords swing horizontally into the doorframe, aimed at Dyord's head, waist, and ankle.

 

Then the swords stop, a good half-foot shy of making contact with any part of Dyord. They are definitely swords, strapped onto a metal frame by the handles with wire, and the frame itself with a large spring wound around it. The trigger pin clacks against the door; it's still hanging from a string taped to the top of the door. Dyord had stopped the trap with a rondel dagger jammed into the trap-frame pivot, though Cassandra hadn't seen his hand move. Such was the force that the stout, spike-like dagger blade has been bent.

 

Dyord's foot slides forward and his other elbow strikes the door, which flies the rest of the way open while making a oddly crunchy noise. From behind the door comes the sound of something heavy and soft hitting a wall, then the floor.

 

"Hold the door, Sam." Dyord instructs, sounding casually unperturbed. He sidesteps the blades and heads for the bed in the room to strip the thin blanket from it.

 

The bed next which lean seven or eight long-guns, four powder-horns, and two closed chests.