Glade 86, 122
“It’s gone, little one. He is gone, and your agreement is gone with him.”
”...you can’t be serious.” Imogen said. It might have been a joke, after all; the Orks of Drathera were always ready to make fun of the foreigner with the empty skin. She’d heard a lot of tall tales, made by Orkhan who clearly thought they could simply tell a foreigner anything and get a rise out of them.
The problem was that she saw no signs that the large blue ork was lying.
It makes sense to back up for a moment.
After Imogen Ward left the Archives, she believed she had plenty of time to hit the list of stores and find her unknown contact. Thankfully, she was a professional, and that professionalism led her to find a map of the city and get the addresses down before she took any time to loaf around.
This revealed the unfortunate truth that even though the relevant stores weren’t far apart, it was going to take days to travel between each of them. While a handful of the likely prospects were in the lower city, many sat in Landings, the neighborhoods which lie snugly between levels of the mountain stair.
The Great Stair.
Who the fuck thought that was a good idea?
She started with the businesses in the lower city, obviously. If it happened to be down here, great, she could skip the damn stair, do some touristy shit, and leave. Maybe stop by one of the local apothecaries, see if they had any exotic drugs; that’d make Carina happy, anyway.
Unfortunately, she turned up nothing. Two of the stores weren’t open any of the three days she visited them, and the others took only a few minutes of chatting with the store owners to determine that they weren’t her contact. With some trepidation, she decided that she needed to begin mounting the stupid stairs.
Why hadn’t she written the damn name down?
The stairs weren’t that bad, on their own. The Pfenning Theater was over six stories tall at its height, and had over twenty staircases, which Imogen had to painstakingly clean on a daily basis. She was used to the motion and the stress, although her legs still ached more than a bit at the end of each day of climbing. More than that, the late Glade wind was cool, the frequent rainstorms gave her an excuse to rest often, and the artworks which lined the stairs were frequently intriguing.
No, what pissed her off were the damned kids.
They were teenagers, really, not much younger than she was, but unfathomably less mature. Either way, she seemed to attract small groups of Orkhan youth, who found it deeply amusing to lap her on the stairs, sprinting up to the next landing, waiting for her to get there, and then sprinting past again after a few minutes.
”Why do you keep doing this?” She called after one particular boy who kept at it for two full hours. ”Do you have nothing better to do?”
The youth answered with a fairly unprintable suggestion, which in Zaichaer would have led to her punching the lad. The next run up, he ditched his shirt, either to try to get her to admire his muscled body or to taunt her with the presence of his tattoos.
Imogen faced two counterproductive instincts- to either engage with him rationally and explain that he was trying to flaunt a society-specific totem across a cultural divide and she possessed no deep-seated need inculcated from youth to get tattoos, or to summon her spear and knock him off the fucking ledge. Since she did not expect him to understand the psychology and also did not want to start some kind of blood feud in Ecith of all places, she chose instead to make stupid faces at the boy each time he passed, like he was a baby.
He seemed to find this disconcerting. After only a few more laps, he left.
After days of that, it would have been nice if her dedication had been rewarded by finding that one of the six shops on the Stair was the right one. Sadly, it quickly became clear that the Triumvirate was not satisfied with her devotion, and not one had any record of the correspondence with a buyer in Zaichaer. She chose not to visit any of the temples above, in retaliation.
When she returned to the city below, she was in something of a state. There were only a few days left to complete the contract, and her (extremely thorough!) search seemed almost assured of a disastrous ending. This was going to be, quite frankly, the single most embarrassing failed mission any Sunsinger had ever undertaken.
“Go pick up a statue from our contact.” - MISSION FAILED
Maybe she could pretend to have died. That would be something, at least. People died all the time, and it was tragic that it happened, and not a deeply embarrassing affair in which you were asked to pick up some eggs and forgot that the grocer existed.
”No,” she told herself, ”I’m Imogen Ward, and I don’t fake my own death out of embarrassment unless there’s absolutely no other option.” Some nearby Orkhan gave her strange looks.
As she came back to one of the closed shops, however, she found that it was open. Well, kind of open. In that it was closed, but there were several Orks inside moving things around, and the door wasn’t locked. That was as close to “open” as she needed.
”Hello!” she called in, to get the mens’ attention, ”Excuse me, is this place open?”
“The opposite.” grunted a dark-skinned Ork holding what appeared to be a softwood credenza. “Closed for good.”
”Closed for good?” Looking around inside, she was acutely aware that most of the items had been crated up, and there weren’t even that many crates.
“That’s right.” responded another Ork, this one blue-skinned and wearing a much nicer sash and more flash than his fellows. He was standing behind the counter, scratching his nose as he looked her way. She noticed that he had very nice scales across his biceps. “Something we can do for you?”
”Oh. Well, I was in the city to pick up something from an antique dealer, only I somehow forgot the guy’s name on the trip over. If this place is closed, though, I don’t think…”
The flashy Ork’s face fell, and she shook his head.
”Not it?”
“No, little lady, worse the luck, this’ll be it.”
”...well, then I have a contract with the owner. Where can I find him?”
“Nowhere. The owner of this store was taken by the Unknown.”
There wasn’t much to say about the Unknown. Not because it wasn’t important–arguably, it had shaped much of Ecith’s society–but because of how simple the phenomenon was. Every so often, an Ork would disappear. From their bed, their place of work, the jungle; it could happen anywhere, and everybody else would simply forget them.
That was it.
You couldn’t fight the Unknown. You couldn’t predict it. You couldn’t plan for it. Probably it would never come for you, but there weren’t any countermeasures you could take if it did. As one composer wrote:
“Here today, yet gone tomorrow; yes I know, it may be so.”
Imogen had heard of it, obviously. An element so threatening and mythical and dramatic couldn’t help but be in the family tales of heroism in Ecith. But the notion that this had happened to her contact simply hadn’t occurred to her. After all, if you forgot a name, would you jump first to the assumption that a mythical eldritch force had disappeared them from the world? Of course not, the notion was risable.
”Well, I was looking for a statuette…”
“It’s gone, little one. He is gone, and your agreement is gone with him.”
”...you can’t be serious.” Imogen said. It might have been a joke, after all; the Orks of Drathera were always ready to make fun of the foreigner with the empty skin. She’d heard a lot of tall tales, made by Orkhan who clearly thought they could simply tell a foreigner anything and get a rise out of them.
The problem was that she saw no signs that the large blue ork was lying.
”What do you mean, gone? The Unknown took his wares, too?”
None of the men laughed. The flashy blue Ork gave her a stern look, like the looks of disappointment her uncle had given her if she forgot to practice her swordplay. “No. And it’s crass to give short shrift to a man’s memory when you focus on the things he left behind.”
Crass? Well, perhaps her outburst was a little indelicate. It was hard to quite come to terms with the notion that sometimes people simply vanished, though. Still, better to try to placate these men and glean more information.
”...I apologize. Truly, earnestly, I do. The letter which m-” Imogen remembered just in time that telling the man about ‘her master’ might go down badly. Ecith had very particular opinions on that kind of wording, ”-the man who is employing me left said that this man was a good and amiable sort, and he hoped that we would become friends. I am truly very sorry that I will never get to meet him. But the statuette I was meant to purchase means a lot to friends and family back home.”
The blue ork eyed Imogen suspiciously, as though seeking some sign that she was lying to him. After a moment, he shrugged. “I do not expect uninked foreigners to know the proper ways. Let me tell you something- I am in the employ of Ecith, and it is my job to arrange for the things of the dead to be properly auctioned off.”
He must have noted the surprise on her face. “Yes, here we do not allow wealth to be hoarded across time. When the proprietor of this store was taken by the Unknown, we sold his remaining inventory. I remember the statuette of which you speak; a fine piece from Ailos, yes?”
Imogen nodded, somewhat overwhelmed with all this new information.
“If it is important to your family, you may go speak to the one who bought it, and see if you can purchase it from them. The records are open and true.”
The blue Ork produced a leather-bound ledger from beneath the desk and laid it on the counter, flipping through it. After a moment, he stopped, pointing to an entry from almost a month prior.
“That’s where the statue is, in the middle of the forest. Your decision if you want it that badly.”
“It’s gone, little one. He is gone, and your agreement is gone with him.”
”...you can’t be serious.” Imogen said. It might have been a joke, after all; the Orks of Drathera were always ready to make fun of the foreigner with the empty skin. She’d heard a lot of tall tales, made by Orkhan who clearly thought they could simply tell a foreigner anything and get a rise out of them.
The problem was that she saw no signs that the large blue ork was lying.
~~~
It makes sense to back up for a moment.
After Imogen Ward left the Archives, she believed she had plenty of time to hit the list of stores and find her unknown contact. Thankfully, she was a professional, and that professionalism led her to find a map of the city and get the addresses down before she took any time to loaf around.
This revealed the unfortunate truth that even though the relevant stores weren’t far apart, it was going to take days to travel between each of them. While a handful of the likely prospects were in the lower city, many sat in Landings, the neighborhoods which lie snugly between levels of the mountain stair.
The Great Stair.
Who the fuck thought that was a good idea?
She started with the businesses in the lower city, obviously. If it happened to be down here, great, she could skip the damn stair, do some touristy shit, and leave. Maybe stop by one of the local apothecaries, see if they had any exotic drugs; that’d make Carina happy, anyway.
Unfortunately, she turned up nothing. Two of the stores weren’t open any of the three days she visited them, and the others took only a few minutes of chatting with the store owners to determine that they weren’t her contact. With some trepidation, she decided that she needed to begin mounting the stupid stairs.
Why hadn’t she written the damn name down?
~~~
The stairs weren’t that bad, on their own. The Pfenning Theater was over six stories tall at its height, and had over twenty staircases, which Imogen had to painstakingly clean on a daily basis. She was used to the motion and the stress, although her legs still ached more than a bit at the end of each day of climbing. More than that, the late Glade wind was cool, the frequent rainstorms gave her an excuse to rest often, and the artworks which lined the stairs were frequently intriguing.
No, what pissed her off were the damned kids.
They were teenagers, really, not much younger than she was, but unfathomably less mature. Either way, she seemed to attract small groups of Orkhan youth, who found it deeply amusing to lap her on the stairs, sprinting up to the next landing, waiting for her to get there, and then sprinting past again after a few minutes.
”Why do you keep doing this?” She called after one particular boy who kept at it for two full hours. ”Do you have nothing better to do?”
The youth answered with a fairly unprintable suggestion, which in Zaichaer would have led to her punching the lad. The next run up, he ditched his shirt, either to try to get her to admire his muscled body or to taunt her with the presence of his tattoos.
Imogen faced two counterproductive instincts- to either engage with him rationally and explain that he was trying to flaunt a society-specific totem across a cultural divide and she possessed no deep-seated need inculcated from youth to get tattoos, or to summon her spear and knock him off the fucking ledge. Since she did not expect him to understand the psychology and also did not want to start some kind of blood feud in Ecith of all places, she chose instead to make stupid faces at the boy each time he passed, like he was a baby.
He seemed to find this disconcerting. After only a few more laps, he left.
After days of that, it would have been nice if her dedication had been rewarded by finding that one of the six shops on the Stair was the right one. Sadly, it quickly became clear that the Triumvirate was not satisfied with her devotion, and not one had any record of the correspondence with a buyer in Zaichaer. She chose not to visit any of the temples above, in retaliation.
~~~
When she returned to the city below, she was in something of a state. There were only a few days left to complete the contract, and her (extremely thorough!) search seemed almost assured of a disastrous ending. This was going to be, quite frankly, the single most embarrassing failed mission any Sunsinger had ever undertaken.
“Go pick up a statue from our contact.” - MISSION FAILED
Maybe she could pretend to have died. That would be something, at least. People died all the time, and it was tragic that it happened, and not a deeply embarrassing affair in which you were asked to pick up some eggs and forgot that the grocer existed.
”No,” she told herself, ”I’m Imogen Ward, and I don’t fake my own death out of embarrassment unless there’s absolutely no other option.” Some nearby Orkhan gave her strange looks.
As she came back to one of the closed shops, however, she found that it was open. Well, kind of open. In that it was closed, but there were several Orks inside moving things around, and the door wasn’t locked. That was as close to “open” as she needed.
”Hello!” she called in, to get the mens’ attention, ”Excuse me, is this place open?”
“The opposite.” grunted a dark-skinned Ork holding what appeared to be a softwood credenza. “Closed for good.”
”Closed for good?” Looking around inside, she was acutely aware that most of the items had been crated up, and there weren’t even that many crates.
“That’s right.” responded another Ork, this one blue-skinned and wearing a much nicer sash and more flash than his fellows. He was standing behind the counter, scratching his nose as he looked her way. She noticed that he had very nice scales across his biceps. “Something we can do for you?”
”Oh. Well, I was in the city to pick up something from an antique dealer, only I somehow forgot the guy’s name on the trip over. If this place is closed, though, I don’t think…”
The flashy Ork’s face fell, and she shook his head.
”Not it?”
“No, little lady, worse the luck, this’ll be it.”
”...well, then I have a contract with the owner. Where can I find him?”
“Nowhere. The owner of this store was taken by the Unknown.”
~~~
There wasn’t much to say about the Unknown. Not because it wasn’t important–arguably, it had shaped much of Ecith’s society–but because of how simple the phenomenon was. Every so often, an Ork would disappear. From their bed, their place of work, the jungle; it could happen anywhere, and everybody else would simply forget them.
That was it.
You couldn’t fight the Unknown. You couldn’t predict it. You couldn’t plan for it. Probably it would never come for you, but there weren’t any countermeasures you could take if it did. As one composer wrote:
“Here today, yet gone tomorrow; yes I know, it may be so.”
Imogen had heard of it, obviously. An element so threatening and mythical and dramatic couldn’t help but be in the family tales of heroism in Ecith. But the notion that this had happened to her contact simply hadn’t occurred to her. After all, if you forgot a name, would you jump first to the assumption that a mythical eldritch force had disappeared them from the world? Of course not, the notion was risable.
”Well, I was looking for a statuette…”
“It’s gone, little one. He is gone, and your agreement is gone with him.”
”...you can’t be serious.” Imogen said. It might have been a joke, after all; the Orks of Drathera were always ready to make fun of the foreigner with the empty skin. She’d heard a lot of tall tales, made by Orkhan who clearly thought they could simply tell a foreigner anything and get a rise out of them.
The problem was that she saw no signs that the large blue ork was lying.
”What do you mean, gone? The Unknown took his wares, too?”
None of the men laughed. The flashy blue Ork gave her a stern look, like the looks of disappointment her uncle had given her if she forgot to practice her swordplay. “No. And it’s crass to give short shrift to a man’s memory when you focus on the things he left behind.”
Crass? Well, perhaps her outburst was a little indelicate. It was hard to quite come to terms with the notion that sometimes people simply vanished, though. Still, better to try to placate these men and glean more information.
”...I apologize. Truly, earnestly, I do. The letter which m-” Imogen remembered just in time that telling the man about ‘her master’ might go down badly. Ecith had very particular opinions on that kind of wording, ”-the man who is employing me left said that this man was a good and amiable sort, and he hoped that we would become friends. I am truly very sorry that I will never get to meet him. But the statuette I was meant to purchase means a lot to friends and family back home.”
The blue ork eyed Imogen suspiciously, as though seeking some sign that she was lying to him. After a moment, he shrugged. “I do not expect uninked foreigners to know the proper ways. Let me tell you something- I am in the employ of Ecith, and it is my job to arrange for the things of the dead to be properly auctioned off.”
He must have noted the surprise on her face. “Yes, here we do not allow wealth to be hoarded across time. When the proprietor of this store was taken by the Unknown, we sold his remaining inventory. I remember the statuette of which you speak; a fine piece from Ailos, yes?”
Imogen nodded, somewhat overwhelmed with all this new information.
“If it is important to your family, you may go speak to the one who bought it, and see if you can purchase it from them. The records are open and true.”
The blue Ork produced a leather-bound ledger from beneath the desk and laid it on the counter, flipping through it. After a moment, he stopped, pointing to an entry from almost a month prior.
Kighe Iv'uvi Ci'uvaeui'uv - Ailos Statuette - 60 gp - Gihah K'uvfoi'uv Fi'uv
“That’s where the statue is, in the middle of the forest. Your decision if you want it that badly.”