Spire: Eidolon Sky IC

[n0ble]

One way or another, just like trouble, famished hyenas or dreck addicts, it finds you. Maybe your worshipping, maybe your feasting or helping others. Maybe your half cut in the middle of a sordid aether binge riding a Garden-District vat churner like a Nujab iguana. But it doesn’t really matter where. What matter is who, and the who is you. The corvids have your scents, and they have your messages. The Magister beckons, and saying no isn’t an option.

Zilvra

Limyé looms low in the sky tonight, which puts it about level with your vision and, by extension, level with whatever strata of Spire your currently residing. A white disk, full, whole and blazing silver, yet still not at her fullest apogee in the sky. Like the moon, Dreck is on the rise and both will prove to make for long nights in the future. Its possible to stop it. It has to be. With the Limyé swollen in the sky, its difficult to see the crow against the white backdrop of her moonlight. The corvid is completely albino-red eyes lending it a strangely anthropomorphic anger that seems out of place on the avian features. Its beak is pink. Clutched in the hooked aperture is a message, still rolled tight with twine. After withdrawing it the bird leaves quickly as it came to you. You can almost see a bit of sympathy in its gaze and then its gone. For you? For your charge? Definitely not for the Ministry. No if anything you'd imagine that crows harbour nothing but resentment for the services imposed on them. Not all that dissimilar to a durance, were one to think on it.

Ianyne

Hunting crows for blood was always going to be a risky prospect in-Spire. Hunting crows for blood with the Dreck epidemic on like it is…that’s challenging. But far from impossible. A simple thwumping to the head with the weighty bit of your chain and its more blood for the nurseries. Without so much as a single witness. For now. Just as well. Aunrae was just saying the other day how with dreck highs hitting all time…well, highs-things are likely to be looking bad in terms of egg-carrying addicts. A steady blood supply might help see them through the coming troubles. But there's something more to distinguish this crow from the egg-nutrient it carries: the message strapped to its leg by a flimsy piece of twine. Well. That and its eyes. It has two pairs, both equally vacant in death, the upper ones are polished black buttons common to all corvid species up-Spire. The second are a dyad of cateracts, strangely human. Could be that’s an omen. Could be its nothing-you’ve seen lizards with just as many heads as this thing has eyes Outside-Spire. But you can’t help but think that the second pair of dead eyes follow you no matter how you move. Best to break eyes contact and see if that message on its leg has a good reason for why the crow was following you.

Ashen

Madame Pretty Whiskers has been hunting tonight. She descends from the sky, the wings of her raven-form flapping time with a steady pulse-beat only you are privy to and in that pulse there is a message all its own and that message says, on repeat: there is a killer on the loose, there is a killer on the loose there is a killer on the loose. The raven Madame pretty whiskers clutches in her talons in almost blue in the moonlight, making the blood flecked against its shivering feathers all the more noticeable. Still, some atavistic instinct remains in the dying corvid, urging it to twitch feebly against your pet’s graps. It ends abruptly as you spot it: Madame Pretty Whiskers drives down and the death-rattle of the corvid on whatever surfaces you stand resounds with another pulse. Dead as Madame Pretty Whiskers looks. Your pet rolls form the corpse and sembles into a feline, turning to retrieve her prize to deposit at your feet. Message and all. Madame Pretty Whiskers looks from the splotch of blood and feathers-where the corvid impacted-to the message on its leg, then to you. Not all that dissimilar from the killings that have been shaking the Spire as of late. Madame Pretty-Whiskers yawns, sits and lazily scritches at an ear with one of her hind legs. Her purrs are a comfort.

Hoonta

Its not a corvid. And whatever shoestrings got that little strip of paper hitched to its digits isn’t doing this beast any favors. No fashion expose for this uniquely feathered source. Did you do shrooms? When was the last time you did-sidetrack that. Mushrooms can wait. Not-corvids first. Your up on your hiney or down your feet with the ground and about to slay a dragon. But first-first that piece of paper. Maybe you can tempt the dragon. Who knows. Do birds eat corpsefruit? Too hip. Chum would stink even more than where your currently situated. Reallyit depends on whatever chickenscrath that clearly-secret-message has scrawled on its insides and what shiny thing the not-corvid might trade for it. Could be a map of to a dragon hoard. Could be it leads to the motherload-they don’t call it Ivory Row for nothing, right? Maybe. Just maybe. It’s a clue as to just what this monstrosity in miniature actually is. (Its probably a corvid.) But whatever it uncertainly is you can be certain about one thing. That on its twiggy little talon is the best high of all to chase: a potential scoop.

Each of you is able to reach and read their respective messages without difficulty. Regardless of the form their messenger takes, each letter has the same tight script with the same words. A secret missive:

Come to Heaven for a funeral
Where Grey meets sky
As luminous rays wax strong
Don’t be late


The message is written in tight compact font, the hanwriting of your designated Magister.
Come to Heaven for a funeral
Translation: come to New Heaven, specifically a Tower of Silence

Where Grey meets Sky
Translation: More specifically, meet at the Slate Tower, a Tower of Silence notable for 2 things: the grey color of its stone (most towers use onyx black) and for the fact that it wasnt built so much as excavated from existing stone that makes up spire.

As luminous rays wax strong
Translation: when Limyé is highest in the sky.

Don't be late
Don't be late

Feel free to situate your characters/place yourselves and narrate how you set off for the meetup-feel free to take some detours if theres any items you think you might want before the meetup/things you want to do and we can work that out too! :smallsmile:

[Artemis97]

Zilvra

The priestess watches the corvid go, enjoying the way the moon's light silvered its feathers. Beautiful and useful, like her during her own Durance. Did these Corvids feel abused too?

She opens the message and reads the words, understanding the hidden meaning behind them. Zilvra would have to move quickly to make it upspire in time. She moves about the infirmary located near the Cathedral, where she's set up shop for the time being, and checks on her patients. They were blessedly few this evening. A child with a stomach ailment, his mother close by worrying. She gives a tincture to the mother, to administer as needed to her son, and says they can rest here or go home. There's little more to be done.

There was little more to be done for her other patient as well. He'd overdosed on the wretched Dreck. He was the third one this week who hadn't survived his last fix. Zilvra didn't even know his name. Searching for her kit, she brought out a vial of holy mercury and anointed the dead drow, saying prayers that would hopefully guide him to the Garden after death.

By the time she had finished the ritual, the boy and his mother had slipped away into the night. Another small blessing. No one left behind here to worry about. Zilvra packed up her kit carefully, and wrapped herself in her dark robes. She made sure her bone-handled knife was hidden but within easy reach. Lastly, she dropped the message into the brazier that heated the space, where it would burn without a trace.

She started to make her way upspire, making sure to mention to another priest that there was a corpse that now needed taking care of.

[Batcathat]

Ashen

"Deh...oh...nn...tt...bee...ee..el...ay...tt", Ashen finished sounding out the note. "Don't be late."

She had never had much schooling at home, only picking up bits and pieces of knowledge, like crumbs from a table. The wild children of the Works had taught her a lot, but they had little room for fancy words and the Heart had even less.

Ashen wasn't stupid, though. She knew what the message meant. Slate Tower. She scratched Madam Pretty-Whiskers behind the ears. "The moon is calling, kitty." She paused, staring thoughtfully at Limyé above. "Do you think the moon has blood? Tastes like cheese, maybe..."

The cat's purring turned into a hiss as Madam Pretty-Whiskers, now a snake, coiled around Ashen's arm, slipping upwards until their heads were next to each other. "It will be your doom, child."

Ashen giggled and scratched the snake behind where she thought it's ears were. "You always think it will be my doom." She stood up, gathered her tattered cloak around herself and started walking. "Stupid kitten. Good thing you're so pretty..."

[Inigo Montoya]

Ianyne sighed, and set the crow upright, and waited for the stunned bird to fly off. No need for this one's blood. Not with eyes like that. It would influence the egg's development too much. Ianyne had read what would happen if you fed children diseased blood. She believed those more then the legends of feeding drow on 'good' blood. As she waited for the corvid to recover, she reflected on the nature of blood. To her mind, 'good' blood didn't exist. Once you had freed it from veins, blood was blood. Bad blood though. Diseased blood...that was where you ran into trouble. It flowed like tar, could kill an infant. She rubbed her eye, and as the crow recovered, she walked off, coiling the chain back up. The slate tower...Well, there were always plenty of healthy rats by the towers. She'd bring some home tonight.

The nursery was situated on the far edge of the Blue Port, away from the worst of the dust. But now there was another hazard: addicts. She sighed as she walked around them, and cursed this new drug. So many souls lost to it, so many people who could be living good lives...She entered the nursery, and pulled her hood back, revealing ashy blue skin with dark hair, and a hint of the black chitinous flesh that was her birthright. As she always did when she first entered, she said a short prayer to Ishkrah, then headed to the midwife dormitories. No guards barred her way, she had been seen and expected. She passed a few of her sisters beginning their shifts, donning their red robes. Eventually, she makes her way to the drow she wanted to see.

"Mother Abbiir. How is your family?"

"Well enough, my child. Did you have any luck hunting today?" The older drow looked at her with her many eyes, reminding Ianyne of the crow. It was not a good comparison, as Mother Abbiir's eyes were old, but filled with wisdom in the way they looked at the young woman. Not like the blind, idiot eyes of the crow...

Ianyne thought of the note secreted away in a fold of her robes. "Not today Mother. However, I have to attend a funeral tonight. In New Heaven. I shall return with some rats for you."

The older Drowess sighed after a moment of thought. "So many funerals nowadays. Not enough births to make up for it. I pray you have good hunting."

Ianyne bowed low. "With Ishkrah's blessings, I shall." After a bit more light conversation, Ianyne turned and slipped into her civilian robes. Dark grey, with an inner red hood, concealed by a larger one. If the guard gave her any trouble, all she had to do was show that red hood and they would let her be. But she didn't think such subterfuge would be needed tonight. Mother Abbiir was right after all. So many funerals now. Gripping her chain tightly, she made her way up hive, thinking dark thoughts that she knew she'd have to purge sooner or later.

[thenewflesh]

Duke shrieks in terror, his dark, wild eyes rolling around in their sockets. "A dragon! A dragon! Duck for cover!"

"Not yet," I say, "I want to study its habits."

It hops around, dangling paper, spewing flames. "It comes with news from the Authorities." I say significantly. But Duke isn't listening; his terrified head shoved into an exhaust pipe. My paraornithology is lost to a gutterkin.

I tempt it with corpsefruit. The trick is to offer sacrifices - they are a proud species, and will accept nothing but the best in maidens or drugs. Luckily corpsefruit is seen as quite a delicacy in the Haemanthus Pseudocorvinois species. It hops closer. I lunge, bring the beast to the ground - Hoonta Ess the dragonslayer, violent to the last nail. Its prize is torn from its claw, and I set it free to warn its friends of the fearsome hunter Ess.

The words jumble on the page. "What is needed here is concentration," I say, but Duke's head is still in the pipe, bloody degenerate. I pull out a flask of off-grey crystalline powder from my robes, pour some onto the end of a finger, sniff it. The words snap in place, and I nod vigorously, understanding suddenly. "Some real journalism is required, you see, Duke, some real journalism, for someone with true grit." And I begin to roll some godsmoke into the parchment, to ease me down from the dagger.

Duke appears behind me, munching on some carotids, and holding some more. "Pipes," he says, "Contain tremendous amounts of psychomemetic artifacts. I offer some freely to you, my client."

"No," I reply, glancing nervously around me, "They might make me paranoid. And we have a job to do, up in New Heaven."

"As your attorney, I advise that we bring lots of drugs."


And so, robes filled with two bags of godsmoke, seventy-five pellets of blue, five shards of glimmer, a flask half-full of dagger, and a whole galaxy of multicolored fungaloid uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of chum, two quarts of malak, half a pound of mushrooms, a vial of ambrosia, two dozen sulfur crystals, and some other psychoactives brought along for good luck, Duke and I find ourselves in New Heaven.

[n0ble]

New Heaven's towers are like jagged teeth or pointed nails cut black across the moonlit sky. Far from the sky docks, every building thats not a tower or a Charnel-house showcases devotion to one or the other or some wind or lighting god whose heraldry flutters from the tip tops of the teeth. Odd peals of hyena and Dreck-addict laughter find harmonies with sky-whale song that recedes to the sky-docks. The smell of Corvid-effluence settles down over New Heaven like a hair shirt cloak.

Nobody really knows why Slate Tower was and remains abandoned. People know it used to be a Tower of Silence for the Morticians. Some hold it the site of a mutual slaughter amidst the growing tensions between Morticians and Charnelites. Others say the former occupants-Morticians-wet mad and replaced their hearts with bee hives. Or that Or that the Morticians went Vigilite. Who the **** knows. What people do know is that Slate Tower is that the end of a four way road, where the teeth of New Heaven loom large and cast shadows over the streets.

Zilvra

There's a commotion about. Its several blocks away from the slate house that you spot the small crowd gathering up. They mil around at the intersection, a sort of found arrangement long since absent water. One and all drow. People are chattering. Noise is beginning to build into the night, and every so often its cut through by the yelling of a guard captain. Its not quite broken into the open clamour of discussion, more a quiet series of whispered conversations. Somewhere in the growing press you think you here a Charnelite and Mortician arguing before the guard-captain out-volumes them with a "Step back, step back please!". The whole scene is lit in numinous moonlight. An omen? The widening circle does have a dead body at the centre. Things are getting primed here. Things are getting...touchy here. Voices are starting to go from whispers to street conversation. And Limyé's light is starting to widen in time with the growing volume of the crowd. To encompass the discord's source-the crowd outside the guard-circle.

You see it clearly enough: what was once a small crowd has begun to swell with growing numbers. People push back from a slowly widening circle of guardsmen. They push and cajole the gathering groups. More moonlight swells in time with the growing volume of voices. Somewhere, voices are laughing like corvids. But what makes it clear that its an omen from the goddess is what you see at the very centre of the crowd-a pair of drow lead by another one. You have to stare for a moment just to make sure. Its hard to see given how their silvered fullplate reflects the moonlight. But your eyes dont deceive you.

A Paladin of the solar Pantheon, and Limyé protect you its a drow paladin of the Solar Pantheon.


Ianyne

From Blue Markets to the red intersections , another right towards Slate Tower, another funeral in the making. Theres a dead body in the middle of the circle and the solar Paladin-a ****ing drow-is looming over it.

Your birthrights help, your eyes able to pick out a few details. Its hard to tell if the victim was male or female. The remaining eye is bloodshot-white, the kind that comes from sleeplessness, not force or impact. Small vials flecked with black granules litter the scene. Dreck vials. An addict. Crow feathers have been sloppily scattered about her person, some sticking and clinging to the stab wounds that weave and slash across their body, from face to feet. Someone has done a very messy job of stabbing this person in the heart. Blood has begun to pool underneath the corpse, and in the moonlight they look all the paler for their bloodloss. Bloods also started to pool and flow into the abandoned fountain-fixture the corpse is slumped over. Almost braced against in death.The light reflects from the solar paladin's armour and the corpse's teeth. Somehow the latter is smiling with no lips, like there's some kind of hilarious joke only the corpse is partial to in death.

Not the Swan's marks. From what other midwives have gossiped about, what Mother Abiir has briefed you about and what the local periodicals have reported on, the person who did this had none of the grace, nor the trademark glass feathers left in a victim. And the Swan removes victim's hearts. Nothing about crow feathers or savagery like this. Its pretty clear what this is signs of though:

The epidemic is getting worse. And theres a copy-cat or two out there.


Ashen

Whatever their form, Madam Pretty Whisker's lets out a low hiss as you make your way to the crowd-clotted intersection.

There are several things immediately odd about this trio. The one in the centre of the guard-circle that seems no more bothered by the growing voices than a light summer rain. Most immediate is a general absence. The steady patter patter of the Heart's pulse is completely gone from the trio investigating the corpse-a man, a woman and the Paladin. Completely nil when it comes to sorcery. They dont register any kind of magic. You spot the reason the small shops worth of charms that hang from the Paladin's armor. Like a holy beetle covered in mirror polish. The man and woman that accompany them are little better: both have a rough rope knotted about their necks, each ending in a small-ish satchel. This would explain their muteness.

The Paladin looms over the corpse, and when they raise themselves there's a sort of dysrhythmia that settles out into the cadence of their voice. Some up-Spire wind shakes the charms that bedeck their armor-and the two shotguns crossed at their back-sending out a rustle-scrape that echos out enough to dampen the crowd back down to their previous volume. They look up from a mask cast like Father Summer himself: an angular half-spade made from grasses, scrub and a fair amount of dirt, all artfully conjured into a hale half-mask that looms out from what you judge to be a normally thin face. These dam paladins and their fasting. Their chin is a grey-purple, a clear sign that this is no aelfir. Stamped plain in the middle of the mask's forehead is the heraldry of the Solar Basilica. Like some kind of holy brand, it is here where the occult silence around the trio is....deepest. Aimed at the crowd, their gaze is somewhere between mirthless and stoic, perhaps tinged with a bit of quickly passing concern. But you'd recognize a predatory's glance when you see one and while its certainly well hidden under the Paladin's eyes, the man and woman that make up their entourage do a far worse job.

Hoonta


There's nothing more strange than a junkie in the middle of a Dreck binge, though Lekloé herself might fear those sharp ends they've got on them. Could be its the high from the godsmoke, could be its the rather large stash of sulphur you've on your person in a place like New Heaven. Who knows. What you can see is that they're brandishing mom's silverwhere and what's left of her good hooch-a bottle and a pair of scissors-like they're spoiling to swing the biggest prank spire has ever seen. And thats not even counting the third one. If laughter were smarts they'd be howling with an intelligence well beyond the greatest minds of spire. Louder than any hyena, the third of this sorry triumvirate is belly-laughing and waving his crappy snub-nose around like anyone could take a swig from its filed-down barrel. One of Loudmouth's friends is clinging to him like he's a rope to a Perch-whore's bedroom and. Well. People really should be paying more attention but really at the same time there is a lightshow going on in the middle of that big elliptical dancefloor. Nothing like the motions and projected notions of a holy-drow to harsh on a good mellow. And people say you do drugs.

Loudmouth lets out another peel of laughter thats cut off by a chorus of actual hyenas somewhere in the distance. People are starting to rowdy up with their speech again-a pious' man's stare only goes so far after all. Thank goodness the menace of loudmouth's revolver is pointed ata ...a something. Hard to tell with the three pigeons all clinging to each other in that shadowy alley opening. But you did find a source and like any good source it's lead to another. Maybe three. Maybe even four if Loud mouth here can stop boring the barrel of his, uh "gun" into the temple of that gutter-kin looking thing. Like some sort of queue, a vial of Spire-black looking dreck falls from scissor wielder's person, coming to shatter on the ground. Quicker than a Nujab lightning strike he's down on it nostils first, huffing up the dreck and glass shards as he chases his own dragon. Loudmouth's hanger on-clearly in the throws of his own dreck high-lifts a bandy, poorly clothed knee high until its about waist level. For a second there he's perched like a stork-crow, giggling with spittle flying from his lips as he stands one legged and still tries to cling. Then his boot comes down onto the back of his snufflinf companions skull and any sound that mightve come from it is lost to another bout of Loudmouth's laughter.

Well. Its not as though theres been a terribly large number of interviews with dreck addicts lately. Then again...thats probably for a good reason. Best be quick though. A few faces from the crowd just turned back to take in the same pantomime of sobriety as you and prentended to ignore it but that only goes so far when the cruelty of a dreck-high is thrown into the situation.


Feel free to approach this however you'd all like (heck if you want to get to the tower you can just skip over the whole scene :smalltongue:) and also assume your characters are all competent enough to notice the things I've mentioned in other character bits, just tried to present things as they might seem most relevant to folk's characters.
Couple of big takeaways:
- Theres a copy cat killer or two loose in Spire imitating the Swan with 100% of the same passion as the Swan and 0% of their skill.
- The Solar Paladin currently investigating this corpse is a drow-not unheard of but definitley rare for how high this particular drow-paladin ranks in the Solar Pantheon. The second thing to note is that their lack of presence with regards to magic would indicate some sort of immunity to magic.
- Finally: dreck and dreck highs. The big outstanding factor is that dreck makes one incredibly, unbelievably cruel and it also makes you find everything hilarious. Naturally this is not a good pairing.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask on the disco OOC :smallsmile:

[Artemis97]

Zilvra

Goddesses above! What a scene! Did this poor foolish dreck addict cross with one of the Swan's copycats? Or was this paladin and his friends responsible?

A drow paladin of Solar Pantheon, devout follower of Brother Autumn or Scythes-Cull-The-Weeping. Zilvra could have walked that path, once. She'd been allowed to study the Solar Pantheon under her Aelfir master. She'd found her calling in another religion, the one which belonged to her people properly, not some foreign overseer's cruel faith. Damnou was her goddess, the three-fold face of the moon. Particularly her aspect, Limyé, the light of the full moon.

Limyé was here tonight, she could feel it. Carefully, Zilvra made her way through the crowd, towards a guard marking the boundary of the scene.

"Can I be of assistance here?" She asks, her robes and the crystal around her throat unmistakably marking her as a follower of Limyé's light.

[Batcathat]

Ashen

Ashen made her way through the crowd like a rodent through the undergrowth, slipping past people a head taller than her while barely touching them. As she reached the front, she stopped and stared. Not at the paladin and their helpers, not even at the mangled body itself, but at the blood pooling beneath it. Quickly cooling, but still warm enough to tell its secrets. Ashen unconsciously licked her lips and took a half-step forward.

"No", Madam Pretty-Whiskers commanded, wrapped around Ashen's neck like a scaly, rotting scarf. "They will see."

"But... but..." Ashen gestured, trying to find the words, eventually settling for the obvious. "But I want too. If I taste it, I can see what happened. I can tell them. Help them."

"No", Madam-Pretty Whiskers said, staring unblinkingly at the paladin. "I do not think they wish for help, and we definitely do not wish to be seen."

Ashen pouted but relented. "Stupid kitty..."

[Inigo Montoya]

Ianyne gazes on the scene, a mental war waging in her mind. Her first, cruelest reaction is to laugh like the dreck addicts. Fool. Absolute fool. No one to save you now. Your conqueror's gods care very little for something they'd wipe off the bottom of their shoe. This is what you get for abandoning your family.

Fortunately, this reaction is tempered by the second: mourning for his family. Whomever he was supporting they'd find very little sympathy among the high elves. Even less among the drow. They would be the lowest of the low, and suffer accordingly.

This led to her third, and final thought, and the one that had initially attracted her sponsor: Pragmatism with compassion. She knew that there would be an investigation. Perhaps not a full one, but he was still a solar paladin. The high elves would want to find the truth in the death of one of their own, if only to assure the other bootlickers that they were still safe. However, if she was caught, interrogated, and her connection to the ministry discovered...that wouldn't do at all.

These thoughts resolved themselves quickly and she inhaled, reaching for a mask that she kept with her at all times. Best to be safe here in the spire. After reassuring herself that if the high elves did come here she wouldn't give them a reason to arrest her, she pulled back her outer hood to reveal the red silk that marked her as one of the midwives. A small space cleared itself around her, as people unconsciously gave her space. With this space, she studied the scene again, marking the corpse's features. She would remember them, and look them up in their archives when she returned home. All drow had dealings with the midwives at some point, no matter what their position, and any sister could look at their public records. She would do her own investigation. There was a reason this killing. Even if it wasn't the Swan, there was a reason for this.

More laughter from Dreck addicts. The cruel part of her mind vowed that someday, she would have the maker of dreck under her fingers, and when she slit his throat, his bad blood would trouble no one ever again. This thought, she did not temper.

[thenewflesh]

"Unholy Ishtuk," I say, taking a swig of malak, "there's a scene to stir the limbid freezes of a civilized drow's heart."

"Yes, yes," Duke agrees. "There's nothing sorrier than a drug-addicted degenerate. Here, pass me a sulfur crystal."

"No, your hands are still trembling from the last one." I say, and crush the broken-off tip of one beneath the heel of my boot, get down on my hands and knees and sniff the powder off the ground. "These dreck addicts, they have no dignity. All those drugs, all that violence, and nothing truly lurid to direct it at. I pity them."

The cold glow of the sulfur kicks in. I get up, whoop. "Let's interview some ****ing ****ers! Hahahahaa!"

And I run at Loudmouth, notepad at the ready. "Listen here, Loudmouth, if that's truly your name, isn't it, because you're so bleeding loud you could mouth off into an even louder mouth! Hahahah!"

I look to Duke to soak in his peals of laughter, but he's elsewhere on his hands and knees finishing off the dregs of my sulfur lines. No dignity, him.

"Tell me about the violence! Tell me about the dreck!" I cry into Loudmouth's face. "Show me the sacred ways of the Kama-Sutra Swan Disembowelment Rites!"

[Batcathat]

Ashen

Madam Pretty-Whiskers stepped into cat-shape and onto Ashen's shoulder. Her eyes narrowed as she gazed at the loud onlooker and the louder reporter. "Didn't we taste that one once?"

Her eyes locked on the blood, Ashen mumbled to herself. "I'm here to help, I'm the Spire's greatest detective, just need a little, little, taste. 'Oh please help us, good hero blood-witch. For the good of all you simply must drink.' No, I couldn't but if you insist..."

"What?"

"What?" Ashen turned to look at Madam Pretty-Whiskers and then beyond her. "Oh, it's him."

"Yesss", hissed Madam Pretty-Whiskers, snake S's sneaking into the cat's voice. "The inksmith who tastes of delirium and horrors yet to come. It's a bad sign. We should leave."

Ashen waved cheerfully. "Hey Hoonta! Whatcha doing?"

[thenewflesh]

"Don't tell her! Don't tell her!" shrieks Duke suddenly from right behind me. "She won't understand!"

But I turn to the girl. "What you must understand," I say, a rictus grin on my face, "is that we are on a journey to lay bare the great spiral nightmare! We have bought the ticket and will take the ride, all the way down to the feverish undercity shiverlets, though we have to sniff all the dagger in the city to do it."

[Batcathat]

With an expression of uttermost seriousness, Ashen nodded.

"Right", Madam Pretty-Whiskers said to no one in particular. "I almost forgot how he is completely insane." She turned towards Ashen. "You do know he is completely insane, right?"

Ashen nodded again, before reaching into her many-layered robe and pulling out her athame, its blade almost as long as her forearm. Holding it up to her face, she loudly sniffed it a couple of times.

"Of course."

[Inigo Montoya]

Taking in the scene with a second glance, Ianyne realized that the shock of drow paladins to realize the victim wasn't wearing armor, but was in fact, an innocent. This shocked her greatly. What shocked her more was who was approaching the corpse: Zilvra, the former pet turned priestess, whom Ianyne once treated when no one else would even look at her. It was only for a night, and it was only a simple meal of broth (The woman was too weak to eat much else at that point) but the memory stuck with Ianyne none the less.

This helped make up the midwife's mind, and she stepped forward, red hood bright in the torchlight. She stopped, looking at two of the paladins. "I am a midwife." was all she said. "I must identify this man and inform his family of his passing." She wondered if Zilvra would recognize her. Possibly not. Ianyne was still a child then, not even a full year free of her durance. Still, there was a chance...

[Artemis97]

Zilvra glances to Ianyne and nods to her, feeling bolstered by the other woman's presence.

"And I need to grant them their last rights." She adds.

Should the guard let them by she'll kneel near the body, preferably away from the blood, but she wasn't afraid of it. She'll start unpacking her kit, and take a closer look at the poor fool's wounds. She'll try to steal a feather, as well, and hide it away in her kit, hopefully without the paladins noticing.