Kasimir
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Day Two: The Sound of Silence “And the people bowed and prayed To the neon god they made And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was forming And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls And whispered in the sound of silence." —’The Sound of Silence’, Simon & Garfunkel Someone started the riot. And I didn’t like that one bit. Crowds aren’t bad, not by nature. Some crowds are fairly benign. But when people are angry or scared, then well, there’s a dry grain silo, just waiting for a spark. Emotional Allomancy was that spark, and the whole village meeting thing that Wilson’d called? Blew right up in our faces. Still, at least the Mayor was fine, just shaken. Figures. Riot’s an ugly thing. What’s even uglier is seeing the inner demon, the one that lurks inside all of us, come out to play. Thing is, in that village square, that demon, that fundamental ugliness in us all wore the face of neighbours, friends, the kind grocer, the wheelwright… Guess there’s something shocking about realising people are only human, after all. That they’re just as selfish and screwed up as the rest of us. Not that I’m one to talk, really. It’s a good day if I can stand to look myself in the eye in the morning. I still have more good days than bad ones. Reckon if things were otherwise, I wouldn’t keep doing what I do. Of course, it’s easy to say Wilson should’ve done something, sooner. I dunno. Can’t Riot what isn’t there, after all. You get that a lot, in Tremredare. ‘Maybe the Watch should’ve put more boots on the ground.’ ‘Maybe the Watch should’ve patrolled the Warrens more.’ ‘Maybe the Watch should’ve launched the manhunt the moment she went missing.’ So many ‘maybe’s. You listen to them too much, and they’ll keep you up at night. And maybe we should’ve had El there, from the start. Smokers like her, they’re rare. Maybe one in ten of the Smokers you’ll ever meet can shut down Emotional Allomancy, just like that. Of course, we had no reason to expect Emotional Allomancy to be used at the village meeting. But it didn’t stop me from kicking myself, anyway. Maybe I felt like this shouldn’t have happened. Like I was smarter than this. And now Lasalen was dead and a whole bunch of people injured. Lit a fire in my belly, that. I was angry. The Misting, whoever it was, I figured probably a Rioter, given how all of Fallion’s Tears must’ve been feeling at that time was a firebug. And I’ve known firebugs, in my time in Tremredare. They start with something small, like someone’s trash. Or someone helpless, like a kitten. Then they work up to bigger things: a house. A block. Maybe it gives them a thrill, a sense of power. I don’t know. Something’s deeply wrong and deeply broken in some people, and far as I’m concerned, it’s up to people like me to stop them. There was a case. A missing child, when I was a few months on the job in Tremredare. Noble, of course, but it doesn’t matter. Not when it’s a child. Thing is, the report was filed three days after she went missing, and any veteran who’s worked Watch before knows that every second counts. What happened, how we found her, it doesn’t bear repeating. There was silence in the precinct the day we found her. I remember staring at my cubicle walls, just staring. It wasn’t right at all. It was the sort of jarring wrongness, the sense that something is terribly, terribly fecked about a world where a child vanishes and turns up dead five days later. That, I dunno, things had come out of joint. And there was a terrible, aching sadness in me, that we couldn’t have found her. Couldn’t have saved her. Back when the report first came in, I asked if we could. The sergeant looked and me and shook his head. “We’ll get the bastard who did it,” he said, and I heard the iron certainty in his voice. Later, he wanted to know how I was feeling. Empty, I said. “Don’t feel empty,” he snapped. “Feel angry. This is your precinct, your turf, and these bastards are hurting children on your ground.” Never been one for anger. Makes you sloppy, I think. Makes you lose control. Over the years though, sometimes I’ve started to think he’s right. Anger, or maybe just damned stubbornness keeps you going, keeps you working the case, until you crack it. And right now, I was very, very angry. Thing is, if we didn’t find our firebug soon, well, I hated to think of the sort of drek a firebug like our Rioter could get up to, in Fallion’s Tears. But Rioters need their zinc, so I figured I’d go talk to the metallurgists in the village. Which meant two of them: one of them a little strange, probably overworked, and the other one was Tesse Mourn. Far as I know, there’s always been a Mourn in Fallion’s Tears, as long as anyone in the village remembers. Figured I’d go prod them about their customers. Always a sensitive topic, and maybe I didn’t have any right to demand answers. But maybe after the violence in the square, they’d open up to me, even a little. I owed it to Lasalen to at least try. A profound, wounded silence had fallen over the village of Fallion’s Tears like a pall, with the onset of night. It was a hushed silence, punctuated by whispers. People moved about the village, gazing about them with the wariness of those who have seen a safe harbour wrested away from them. The events in the village square earlier that day had shattered the illusion that Fallion’s Tears was a quiet, sleepy village: that nothing happened in Fallion’s Tears, ever. People who had known each other all their lives found themselves staring at each other with suspicion and distrust normally reserved for strangers. Fallion’s Tears had been safe. Until that notion of safety had proven today to only have been the flimsiest of lies. Down a side-street in Fallion’s Tears, two men stared at each other in a cluttered study. Files were stuffed haphazardly in a drawer, some of them ongoing cases that had been temporarily relegated to the drawer in light of the events of the past day. Wyl stood up to get the whisky from the cabinet. Kast raised an eyebrow but didn’t even bother moving. El’d left some of the pain medication he was taking, but Wyl figured his game leg was still bothering him, especially after the day’s events. “Thought you were saving that for something special,” he commented, lightly. “Yeah, well, it’s been one of those days, hasn’t it?” Wyl replied. “A special shade of screwed up.” Though that was putting it lightly, as far as he was concerned. “Bit of an understatement, don’t you think?” “Fair enough,” Wyl replied, as Kast poured. It had been one of those days that felt far too long, by half, and all he really wanted was a stiff drink, before they had to have this conversation, before he had to see what he could make of the firebug, and maybe he could slot in having a poke into Lasalen’s affairs while he was at it. God, the things he needed to do never ended, and the shade of the departed Leas Fel still weighed heavily on him. Were they going to bring the killers to justice? Wyl hoped so. They had to, if only to set things right again. It didn’t matter if Leas Fel had no surviving family; it was about the law, about making sure that justice was done, even if the ashen skies fell, and about what the living owed the dead. About being able to look himself in the eye in the morning, when he performed his morning ablutions. “Wilson sent out one of the hunters,” Wyl said. “He thinks he’s found tracks.” He waited until Kast had set down the glass before he said, meaningfully, “Too large to be human.” “Feck,” Kast whispered. “Yeah, that’s about the shape of it. Wilson wants a militia. Think she’s going to get it, too, after what went down today.” After the enraged villagers had beaten Lasalen to death, and after El’s Smoking had cleared the air, or the firebug had gotten away, and after Wyl had managed to get a few of the volunteers to form a line to try to control the crowd. It’d been a closer shave than he’d have liked. Someone’d nearly brained him with a torn cobblestone. “That doesn’t make sense, though. It’s not like koloss to watch and wait. But the tracks…” Kast frowned. “Laid?” “Dunno,” Wyl shrugged, though he admitted that sounded more plausible than a wily band of koloss stationed near Fallion’s Tears, even though no one had seen sight or sound of them. “Reckon she’s going to get the hunters to take a closer look. If they can.” “Lord Ruler,” Kast muttered. “Not our problem at least.” “It isn’t, yeah. You know what our problem is, though.” It was, in fact, sitting on the cleared-out desk between them, cleaned of crusted blood and glinting in the lamp-light. The brutally simple yet lethal shape of the spike rested on top of the cotton bag that Kast had carried it in. Not for the first time, Wyl considered it a strange weapon to kill with. There was no hilt, nothing to stop the killer’s grip from slipping. And killing with a wound to the chest wasn’t easy—all those ribs in the way. There were better places to place a killing blow. No, the killing of Bart had been deliberate, and almost ritualistic. Exactly like those disappearances in Tremredare all those years ago. “Yeah,” said Kast. “I do.” Wyl waited. Sometimes, the best thing you could do was to nourish the silence, to let the suspect talk, and fill it up. Sometimes, you learned more by listening, rather than by talking. Kast, though, was content to sit there and nurse his whisky. Wyl had almost thought to start prodding him a little harder when Kast said, “You never really saw how bad it was. God, it was a slaughterhouse.” He stared at his whisky as though it held the secrets to the universe, or some kind of insight into human iniquity. “Good men and women. Maybe you wouldn’t think of them as good, not you, but...People I’d known and worked with all my life. All of them dead. Slaughtered. Torn apart. There was blood on the walls. On the floor. Everywhere.” He spoke faster now, as though trying to purge himself of the memories, in short, staccato bursts. “You saw the aftermath. When one of them got away. What you didn’t see... Whatever that was.” He smiled hollowly. “Guess I should start from the beginning. What do you know of Hemalurgy?” “Insert spike, things happen,” Wyl said. He remembered the murders at the Soothing station only too well. The way the perp had fought. If it wasn’t for the fact Kast had known a good Smoker... “Guess that’s a start,” Kast shrugged. He held on tightly to his whisky glass, though he wasn’t drinking. “They were...we were experimenting with it. Hemalurgy. There’s...I don’t understand most of it.” He shifted the glass to his left hand and rapped on the spike with his knuckles. “This is bronze. Had it checked. It was meant to steal Bart’s powers. I don’t think they succeeded, though.” “Why not?” “If they had, wouldn’t they have taken the spike with them?” Kast pointed out. “Maybe they were interrupted.” “By whom?” Wyl shrugged, a tad irritated. He certainly didn’t know, either. “Hemalurgy is...messy and fiddly. Spike has to be of the right metal. Has to go in the right place. Has to target the right person. Allomancer, or Feruchemist. Spike left outside a person for this long, it’d have degraded. By now, it’s just a bloody stupid way of trying to kill someone,” Kast said. He turned back to his whisky and drank deep. “So you’re saying someone is going around Fallion’s Tears, maybe trying to whack people for their metals?” It was Kast’s turn to shrug. “Feck knows. Leas Fel was no Misting. But if there’s anyone spiked on the loose...You can’t trust anyone at all pierced by metal. And the more spikes they get, the stronger they become. And then—” his expression turned grim again. “That day in the safehouse. Waes was experimenting, and...I’d never seen so much blood in my whole life.” “Right,” Wyl said, trying to head off the morbid thoughts before they came. “So what can we do to stop them? What does this give us?” “Spikes have to come from somewhere,” Kast said. “Not everyone has the know-how to use them. But then, what’s the connection to Leas Fel’s death?” Too many unanswered questions, and Wyl didn’t like that at all. They were juggling a number of unknowns here: the firebug, Leas Fel’s death, and the peculiar way in which Bart had died. They’d never found the weapon that’d killed Leas Fel, but Wyl and Kast had both figured it for an ordinary stabbing. Now, Wyl had wondered if it was another attempted kill with a spike, but Kast had shot that down with the statement that Leas Fel had been no Misting. He shrugged again. “Tomorrow’s problem,” Wyl said, curtly. “It’s late. Get rest. Don’t stay up here too long.” “And you?” “Going home,” Wyl said, raising an eyebrow. “Obviously. I value my sleep, at least.” “Sleep is for the dead,” Kast muttered. “Hey. You gonna be okay?” “I’ve drank enough to take the edge off, and El left the medication. I’ll be fine,” Kast replied. “Besides, it’s only pain. I’ve had worse.” “Been one hell of a day, huh.” “Sure has.” As Wyl made his way home, he worried at his thoughts again and again. Instinct told him that the murders and the riot were likely connected, especially in a place as quiet as Fallion’s Tears; the issue was trying to work out what the connections really were. The mists were out tonight, though they seemed strangely thin and insubstantial. He marked that down as another oddity of the day. He had to talk to the metallurgists, at the very least. The spiked they’d fought in the Soother’s station that day had been subdued by an entire squad of Watch. It’d been years since, and Wyl wasn’t getting any younger. No, he thought. He was getting sloppy. Complacent. He was losing his edge, those sharply-honed instincts that had kept him alive for so long on the streets of Tremredare. Wilson. He thought again about that flash of—that furtiveness. She’d said Leas Fel had come around for genealogical research a couple times. Wyl didn’t doubt that, but this made her one of the clearest connections to Leas Fel in the village, which meant he needed to do more digging as well. The hardest thing about being an investigator was handling all those irons on the fire, deciding which had to be taken off, and which needed more heating. There was a scream. Without further thought, Wyl pelted off into the mists, down the streets of Fallion’s Tears. He gauged the direction of the cry and kept on going. Not another one, he thought, and felt the anger burn deep within him. Not in his village. Not on his watch. He skidded around the corner just as a flurry of coins ripped through a youth and kept on going. Reflexively, Wyl burned iron. A tracery of blue lines came to life around him, and he tugged on the bloodied coins and kept them going, flinging them on the cobblestones past him. A splinter of stone drew a line of pain against his calf, but he ignored it. He glanced around. To pursue, or not to? The youth—Niru, Wyl remembered, his name was Niru—collapsed on the pavingstones, blood gushing out from his wounds. Wyl assessed them, but he wasn’t one for medicine and all he could figure was that they looked pretty damned bad. “Who was it?” he asked, urgently. “Did you see him? Where did he come from?” “Ash,” Niru breathed, blood bubbling from his mouth. He gave a quiet, gurgling chuckle. “The ash, look at it…” He pointed, though. Down a side-street due east. Wyl made a snap judgement, one he thought he might have to live with for the rest of his life. He left, pelting after Niru’s assailant. Whoever it was, Wyl wasn’t about to have a rogue Coinshot murdering people. Not in Tremredare. Not in Fallion’s Tears. Not on his watch. Not when he could stop them. Not if he could help it. “Niru, ruin,” Niru whispered. No one was left to hear him. Elsewhere in Fallion’s Tears, a random bystander was staring at the writing scrawled on the outside of the walls of The Steel Crow when someone grabbed her from behind and tried to stab her. She slipped through their hold—a simple one, she’d picked up the trick of it on Roshar—and ran for it. She’d quite enough with Scadrial and this town, Jalisa decided. Getting murdered when all she wanted to do was entertain and play music put a damper on things. Perhaps it was time to try a different world, and a different audience. She was never seen again. Ventyl has been killed! He was a Village Smoker! Random Bystander has been killed! She was a Regular Villager! The Day has begun and will end on 3rd March 2021, at 2300hrs SGT (GMT+8). PMs remain open. The Writing on the Walls: and
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And yea, the Night grew longer and the mists faded and the first of the light began to touch the village. And Wyrm Kas spake unto the villagers saying, yea, stoppeth thy posting and thy PMing, for 'tis rollover now and your GM needs to figure out who died and write them a suitably boring sendoff. And also if thou shalt still have PMs. And the Spiked asked, "But are we not Spiked? Does this stricture apply to us too?" But Wyrm Kas was wise from years of dealing with Wyrm and Aonar and Maili and he said unto them, "Damnit, you know what I mean." And all activity did cease.
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Quinn is correct. Copperclouds do not affect a Thug's passive life, so it would still take two kills to take down a Thug. There is no interaction on this level between Smoking and a Thug. Yes.
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Hi everyone. This is your final timecheck. You have just under two hours to rollover. I have also been informed that I am morally obligated to clarify that I am fine, it really was a work emergency, my account has not been hacked. Also, Wyrm is good people and a friend, and I trust him enough to ask him to help cover for me in the event the emergency took longer to resolve than expected, e.g. If I had to be recalled. Thank you for both your concern and the PMs—you know who you are—as well as the second weirdest GM statement/clarification I've had to make this game. I'm definitely Kas, your GM, Kas out.
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Reminder: you have just around eleven and a half hours left in this cycle. Get those orders/actions in, or hold your peace forever... Until the Night is done anyway
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It will be mentioned in the write-up that Shshsh was attacked but survived.
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No worries, it's what I'm here for - I just don't want to double-add questions >>
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As clarified previously, the names will not be shifted. There was some early issues due to my having to rush the rollover but I think it's been largely ironed out - the numerical tallies will reflect the actual vote shifts, while the names remain intact. Yeah. Both are previous questions so I won't be adding this to the stock of clarifications. I am your GM
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Alright, it's happened twice this game now, so I'm going to issue a reminder to everyone. Don't worry, I know accidents happen, but all the same: please refresh yourselves on SE's General Rules and Etiquette, guys. As a brief reminder, you can't hide your post unless it's an actual double-post from you, and editing should be restricted to things like formatting, changing grammar, or adding new content - clearly demarcated. Editing to change tone or remove info is not allowed. Another rule clarification: How do Rioters interact with Smokers? Must the person who the vote is moved to be unSmoked? Okay, so first, let's distinguish between the Rioter's target and the vote target. To do this, I'll use a simple illustration. Suppose Ren has voted on Gamma. Now, because he's Wyrm, Wyrm is Rioting Ren's vote onto Kas instead. The Rioter's target is Ren, and the vote target, i.e. the target that the vote is being moved to, is Kas. Whether Kas is Smoked is irrelevant as Smoking only preserves Kas's vote. For Ren's vote to have actually ended up on Kas, one can deduce that Ren cannot have been Smoked. Elementary, my dear Wyrm. God, never rush a rollover after clearing work emergencies - thanks for the catch @Gears, I did indeed miss it. Edited for the millionth time. Clear case of PEBKAS here.
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Right, bunch of clarifications: Yes, PMs remain open. They sort of have to, but my apologies for not including that in the write-up. If a Rioter attempts to move the vote of a Smoked person, will the Rioter's own vote disappear? Yes. Smoking is not a roleblock, it merely renders the vote immune to change. As a result, the Rioter's own vote still vanishes. If a Smoker targets a Rioter, will the Rioter's own vote disappear when they try to Riot someone the next Turn? In line with the previous ruling, that Smoking is a preservative, the Rioter's vote would not vanish.
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Can confirm this was in error. Kas was rushing near the end of the Turn >> My bad, corrected final tally has been updated and I've checked through the entries (...and this was El's amazing spreadsheet too, confounded by simple human error ) For reference:
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Player List Rule Clarifications
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Night One: Strangers In This Town “Strangers in this town They raise you up just to cut you down Oh Angela, it’s a long time coming Oh Angela, spent your whole life running away.” —’Angela’, The Lumineers Small village like Fallion’s Tears, everyone knows everyone. That’s how it feels, sometimes. There are people here whose many times-great grandparents knew each other, back when. Take Leas Fel, for instance. Far as anyone can remember, there’s always been a Fel in Fallion’s Tears, if not in the area. El once speculated that words shift over time. Maybe they do. She figured the name ‘Fallion’s Tears’ had its roots in the Fels. Seems possible to me. What do I know about names, or how they shift? I knew someone, back in the day, who pored over maps and histories. Said the Mir that flows down from the mountains and runs past Tremredare was named after someone or other in House Heron. Wouldn’t surprise me, if it was. We name things after people all the time, as though we’re terrified we’ll vanish. Drop through the cracks, and nothing will remember that we once existed, that we once were here. Anyway, was a little rough for Wyl and I, moving in like that. I guess it’s how we’re built: we close ranks about our own, and we’re naturally suspicious of strangers. It’s as though there’s something deep inside us which tells us to protect our kin, our clan; which tells us that those not within our circles could harm us. First couple of weeks, people were polite, but they watched us, as well. And they whispered, of course. No one knew what to make of two strangers from Tremredare, I suppose, much less two washed-up former Watch, saying we’d open up a business and run our own investigations. Can’t blame them, really. “Nothing ever happens in Fallion’s Tears,” they tell us, over and over, as though by saying it, they could make it true. And they weren’t wrong, either. Back in Tremredare, it was all you could do to keep up, really. Crime never sleeps and all that. Watch drowned in cases: theft, assault, stabbing, murder, rioting… City as big as Tremredare, there’s always something going on, somewhere. Back in training, the instructors used to talk about the crime triangle: means, motive, and opportunity. And in Tremredare, ancestral seat of House Heron, and jewel of the West, there has always been opportunity for those cunning and ruthless enough to seize it. Little wonder Wyl and I had our work cut out for us. In a quiet place like Fallion’s Tears, though, we’d be lucky to stumble on anything big. Usually, it’s something odd—theft of ducks, or someone getting cheated of their boxings. Sometimes, it’s a wary wife, sometimes it’s a jealous husband. Stunningly boring, utterly predictable, and you want a good deck of cards to pass the time while on stake-out. But it pays the bills. High-profile cases though? Wyl was right: anything like a murder in Fallion’s Tears was like a large stone chucked through a storefront window. Shards of broken glass everywhere. Everyone was running scared. Problem is, when people are scared, they aren’t thinking. Can’t afford that, really. You have to push past the fear and keep thinking. Fear is the mind-killer, as they say. And sometimes, fear can have fatal consequences. Later in the day, Mayor Wilson called a meeting in the town square. Most of Fallion’s Tears showed up. Kast did, too. The volunteers had helped to clean up the shed, and he’d made a few quick sketches of the scene for reference. In Tremredare, they sometimes used chalk to mark the position of the body for reference, but he wasn’t going to get his hands on chalk here, so he committed it to memory instead. The spike made him feel uneasy. Corpses on the blood-slicked floor of the safehouse, and laughter… Kast shoved the memories deep down, into that single vault in the memory palace. Not now, he told himself. Not now. He stuffed the spike into a small cotton bag. He wanted to forget about it, but it was a constant ominous weight, reminding him that sometimes you couldn’t run away. Not even somewhere like Fallion’s Tears. Sometimes, old ghosts haunted you anyway, with ruin for their eyes, and he woke up gasping at night, pathetically grateful he was still alive. Sometimes, old ghosts haunted you, and you had to pay your debts. Kast figured his bills were all coming due. Not the ones on the office, or his room though. Both Wyl and himself were usually good about settling with Arenta when the rent came due. The first thing Kast did was the old investigator’s trick: he talked to the intimates. Neighbours were instantly ruled out. The stench from drying hides was awful, and Bart’d lived on the outskirts of Fallion’s Tears for that precise reason. This meant that there was no one to see any suspicious comings and goings, though Kast made a mental note to talk to Rowan and Slart, the town’s hunters. They might have seen someone, especially if Bart had died in the early hours of the morning. Finding Pie Roayong was another issue. As far as Kast could tell, the kid had been okay with Bart. He’d always wondered what the tanner saw in the kid. Name and features like that, he was clearly foreign, and Kast hadn’t known that many to be kind, even to those of their own blood, much less a stranger. But it seemed Bart had been kind, even though Roayong was fairly downcast, answering most of Kast’s questions with a flat monotone. No, he hadn’t noticed anything unusual. No, he wasn’t sure his adopted father had enemies. No, Bart wasn’t in debt—Kast resolved to check that out with the local moneylender, anyway. Sometimes, people kept these things from their own families, out of guilt and shame. And it wouldn’t be the first time that unpaid debts were the motive for murder. No, there was nothing unusual, Bart had been heading out before dawn to check on the hides, and he’d spoken briefly with Roayong which was at least helpful, as it gave them a definite upper limit to the window in which Bart had been killed. “I want them to pay,” Roayong said, flatly. He seemed strangely emotionless to Kast, but Kast supposed it could have been… Grief did strange things, he thought. Sometimes people reacted differently from how you expected. Sometimes, it was something else altogether. “We’ll find your father’s killer,” Kast promised, clapping the kid on the shoulder. He didn’t know if they could. Sometimes, the hardest thing you could do was to admit you didn’t have what it took to crack a case. It was too early to give up at this point, though. But you never told that to the vic’s family and friends. He hadn’t really thought about it, once. He’d come since to see that a single murder had more than one victim: that the lines of pain and sorrow and loss radiated outwards from that one death, touching all those the victim had laughed with. Had loved. It put steel in his spine. They would find the killer. They had to. But the spike. It haunted his thoughts, all the same. If this was a simple murder, then what was a bloody, Lord Ruler-damned spike doing in Fallion’s Tears? Perhaps it wasn’t a Hemalurgic spike. Perhaps Kast was jumping at shadows. He didn’t know. Pain stabbed him in the hip and the knee. It wasn’t a good day, and he wasn’t as young as he once was. He limped over to where Wyl was watching the gathering crowd. He supposed it was a former Watch thing: you got used to being an observer, and you did it reflexively. There were whispers of the murders and the koloss, and Kast wasn’t sure he like the mood of anxiety and fear that seemed a humming undercurrent here. “Any luck with the Mayor?” Wyl shifted to regard him. “Moderately,” he said, drawing on his pipe. “You?” “Got a timetable,” Kast said. “Other than that, working on leads.” Wyl smiled. More a slight upturn of the corners of his mouth. “Good,” he said. He seemed distracted. “Brief later?” Kast made a few mental adjustments to the list of things he had to do. You had to be flexible, in this line of work. Get your priorities right, and shift them when you had to. Back in Tremredare, a case could be suddenly on the boil, with the call going out to the Watch. Sometimes you had to drop what you were holding and get moving immediately. “Sure. I take it the Mayor was helpful.” Wyl shrugged. “We’re about to find out.” Mayor Wilson was one hell of a persuasive woman, Kast would give her that. As she spoke about how the talk of the koloss was just that: rumours, talk, empty air, everyone knew that the koloss were under the Lord Ruler’s control, Kast noticed Wyl tense up, out of the corner of his eye. Strange, that. “What is it?” he asked, pitching his voice so the others wouldn’t pick up on it. Later, Wyl signed. Well, all right, then. Kast supposed that made it two of them sitting on pieces of information, though he wasn’t looking forward to actually having to talk about it. Wyl knew just enough, and if he’d had his way, Kast wanted it to stay that way. His hand tightened about the cotton bag with the bloodied spike. “But someone here must’ve killed Bart!” one of the villagers was calling out. “It’s been two murders,” shouted another. “How many more of us do you want dead before we act on this? Everyone remembers what it was like when someone killed Leas Fel, and for all we know, the killer still walks among us!” “Please,” the mayor called out. “I need everyone to remain calm. Yes, it is distressing that Bart was murdered so shortly after Leas Fel—” “He wasn’t just murdered,” the cordwainer snapped. “It was horrific! All that blood, and someone said the private eye found a bloody spike at the scene! Someone rammed a spike through him! If that isn’t twisted and fifty shades of fecked up, I don’t know what is.” After all he’d seen, Kast agreed with that, at least. The scene had been staged, meant to appear gruesome, meant to terrify. And it was working. The village meeting descended into shouting and finger-pointing, as much as Wilson called for calm. For some reason, Kast thought, her appeals were falling on deaf ears. There was something strange about this crowd, about how fast the mood was turning ugly. Almost as though… At first, Variel the storyteller was deemed suspicious. Another stranger in Fallion’s Tears, so it was only natural. The villagers were closing ranks on their own, and the itinerant storyteller was a convenient figure of suspicion. They did not, after all, know him. But as further arguments broke out, with some defending Variel’s character and others turning on Illwei, the mood of the crowd shifted again and again, turning uglier and uglier, even as Wilson appealed for calm. It wasn’t right, Kast thought, frowning. Wilson was usually more persuasive than this. It was why he didn’t trust her—he always felt as though she was trying to sweet-talk him into things, even if he’d rather not do them. Or at least, it was the haunting suspicion that you could never be sure at all. He hated it. Hated the idea someone with a silver tongue could make him dance to her tune. And anyway, he wasn’t much for dancing, especially not with his leg the way it was now. A hand gripped Kast’s shoulder. It was Wyl. “Get Wilson,” Wyl breathed. “Get out of here.” “What?” Kast asked, stunned. “What the hell, Wyl?” “Can’t you feel it?” Wyl asked. “Look at them. They’re getting more and more worked up. They’re pushing and shoving. They’re getting more and more angry.” He’d picked up on it, the way the crowd seemed exceptionally volatile, the more they worked themselves up. Perhaps it was just the crowd, but something tugged at his instincts, and Kast had long learned not to ignore his gut in this line of work. “Too fast, isn’t it. And too volatile.” Wyl nodded. “Find somewhere secure,” he said, urgently. “And get the Mayor out of here.” “Yeah, and what’re you going to do, hold them off? You know the book as well as I do. Nothing you can do in the face of an angry crowd.” “Not alone,” Wyl said, meaningfully. “Erik.” “Good,” Kast said. Time was, he’d worked riot duty in Tremredare before, both of them standing fast against the mob. He’d trusted Wyl to watch his six, just as Wyl trusted him to hold fast. Now, with all the weight of the years on their shoulders and his leg the way it was, he couldn’t help but feel as though it was all wrong, even though the rational part of Kast had figured out what Wyl was thinking. “Also, I was going to find a damned Smoker. Because if you ask me, it looks a lot like someone’s fanning the flames.” He grimaced. “Emotional Allomancy. Gotta love it.” “You don’t say,” Kast breathed. “I’ll get El.” Far as he knew, El was a Smoker, and El was steady. They didn’t need someone prone to losing their head in the tumult of a riot. Emotional Allomancy. Someone wanted a bloodbath in the town square. And they didn’t care about how many people it would hurt, or how many lives might be lost in the process. Wyl nodded in acknowledgement, his lips pressed together in a thin line. “Do it,” he said. “Go now.” Cursing his leg, Kast ran. It hurt. It fecking hurt. But it was only pain. And El could yell at him later for screwing up his leg again. Kast ran, as best as he could. A dam seemed to burst as the crowd started to break into fisticuffs. The mood shifted, irrevocably, turning ugly, and then outright violent. He thought he saw the village alchemist, Lasalen, go down in the middle of the melee, even as Wyl was shoving through, trying to join up with Erik and some of the other volunteers. Honestly, Kast would take anyone with a steady head and heart over brawn in a riot. You needed someone you could utterly rely on, someone who wouldn’t break, someone who wouldn’t lose their cool. He’d been that man, once. A villager charged at him, and cursing, Kast swung his cane, jabbing it at the woman’s kneecap. She went down, and he limped on. Another one tried him, and Kast dodged with surprising grace—his hip screamed profanities at him, but it was only pain—and clubbed the man with his cane. Different from a staff, but you worked with what you had. “Come on!” he screamed at Wilson. “You need to get out of there!” “They’re killing him,” Wilson said, stunned. He recognised the blank look on her face. He’d seen it in recruits working the lines on their first riot. “The alchemist. Lasalen. The one with the ducks. The—” “Later,” Kast snapped, and yanked at her, none too gently. “We go now.” Damned if you did, damned if you didn’t. They ran, and Kast hoped to hell that Wyl was watching his own six. A crowd like this was a maddened, bloodthirsty beast, and the thought struck him that if he had to go into business solo, he was never, ever going to forgive that bastard for having the temerity to get himself killed without Kast. Flyingbooks/Lasalen was a victim of mob violence! They were a Regular Villager! PMs continue to remain open. The Night has begun and will end tomorrow, 1st March 2021, at 2300hrs SGT (GMT+8). Apologies for the delay - work emergency came up, my gratitude to @Wyrmhero for kindly agreeing to take over for me and manage you lot. It's an unfortunate reality in my line of work that my off-hours are not always my own.
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Just a reminder that rollover will occur in under two hours. In the meanwhile, here is another batch of rule clarifications: Can a Rioter self-target? It is possible, but their vote would be removed. How many actions are there in a Turn? Depending on the actions you have available (e.g. metal, Spiked kill), you have one action per Turn. Voting is not an action. Can a Rioter change a vote to a no-vote? Yes. They can. What happens if a Rioter and a Soother target the same person's vote? The vote manipulations cancel out and the vote is unaffected. If the Rioter has placed a vote, their vote will be nullified. Will Rioting show up the same as Soothing? The vote tally I will give you will reflect the original voters - only the vote totals on each player will change. So suppose that Kas and Ren vote on Wyrm, but shock at this sudden act of betrayal from Kas has led to vote manipulation taking place. This is what you'll see in the final tally: Wyrm (1): Kas, Ren Players will not be told whether this is Soothing or Rioting. I should also clarify what @Araris Valerian has said since things have changed as of my submission to the Committee - I'm no longer using the vote counting script as I'm test-driving El's new fancy spreadsheet. (Thank the gods for automation!) As a result, my requirement for bolding and retraction is to ensure I can track your votes correctly as I am, for the moment, only human And very old and very tired. Please have mercy on me and help me not mess this up, okay?
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Apologies, I've been dealing with a few game issues. @Tani— You do not have to vote if you don't want to. Please be reminded that the cycle ends in slightly under ten hours. Get those votes and actions in! Please also be reminded this is a game y'all Chill, make friends, kill people, okay? Don't make me feel like I'm teaching in uni again
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From the rules post:
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Important Announcement/Reminder: I managed to confuse myself when posting the write-up. Please note that the current Turn ends at 2300hrs SGT (GMT+8) on Sunday, 28th February - rollover lasts an hour, and the Night Turn should be expected up at around 0000hrs SGT (GMT+8) on Monday, 1st March. This is as sign-ups ended at 2300hrs SGT on 26th February. Apologies for the confusion. Midnight and anti-pyretics were trippy for me Please resume your usual Inquisition.
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Further rule clarifications (please note that I delay posting them at intervals in order to prevent identity guessing) - Can a Rioter cause a person to self-vote? Yes. They can. Can a Rioter affect the vote of a person who hasn't voted? No. Flavour-wise, you have to go after someone with an emotional connection to their vote, not the apathetic >> First warning. I still have a kill list, you know
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Wow, this hurts
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Technically no, but it's a matter of wording. Regular Villagers will be told they are Regular Villagers, Regular Spiked will just be told they're Regular Spiked. In practice, yeah, there can be vanilla Spiked and vanilla Villagers which is really what you were asking.
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Because Meta liked to start the game with a Night. Felt it let people RP and gave people something to talk about for the first lynch, whether it be via action results, or the NK victimology. There are trade-offs, the most prominent being that a player dies before they can start playing, which can be pretty rough. As a result, I've chosen not to do that here.
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Player List: Rule Clarifications:
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Day One: Bury Your Doubts “Fold down your hands Give me a sign Put down your lies. Lay down next to me Don’t listen when I scream Bury your doubts and fall asleep.” —’Goodbye’, Apparat Stick around long enough with this line of work, and you see enough drek. Sort of things I’ve seen, sometimes, it’s hard to fall asleep at night. That’s when all of it comes back to you, when your head’s too busy to do the decent thing and just let you kip. Can’t win ‘em all, and the ones you lose… Well, they’re the ones that stick with you. Someone whacked Leas Fel. That was one thing. And now someone’d gone and whacked Bartholomew, and done it to make a spectacle. Like I said to Kast, it’s pretty simple. Isn’t common in somewhere like Fallion’s Tears we have to deal with a murder. Mostly, it’s cheating, or theft, or an argument over missing ducks. Two murders, barely a week between them, and something starts to stink worse than Bartholomew’s hides. Bloody as it was, I’d seen far worse. First months on the job in Tremredare were rough. A stabbing where the vic was barely alive when we got there, still trying to hold loops of gut in. Died of course. The stench told us he was as good as dead. A tavern brawl turned ugly and you ain’t seen ugly until you see what’s in people’s heads. Poor bastard never woke up. I like to think that was for the better, sometimes. No, I wasn’t especially disturbed by the murders themselves, but what they meant. Hell of a way for Bartholomew to go, though. Best as I could tell, as I wasn’t a doctor, looked to me from the blood as though Kast was right. Bart had died right there. In fact, from the amount of the blood, he’d lost most of it when they rammed that spike right through his chest, meaning he’d been aware and fighting them when he died. As I said, hell of a way to go. There aren’t many good ways to go, really. If I had my way, I’d pass quietly from this world in a comfortable bed, in my sleep. If you’d asked me a couple of months ago, I’d have put the odds of that as being pretty damned good. Somewhere like Fallion’s Tears is a far cry from the docks of Tremredare at night, where anyone’s as likely to whack you as the next. Now though? With the murders going on, I was starting to get worried all over again. Of course, maybe they weren’t connected. And maybe I was Lord Heron, Steward of Tremredare, in disguise. My gut told me that wasn’t likely at all. For one, the MO was the same. Chest wounds, and losing a drektonne of blood at the scene. For another, two murders barely a week apart in a sleepy little village like Fallion’s Tears? I just needed to tug at enough threads until I figured out how they were all connected. Or things could get ugly, real fast. Wyl took charge. It was what he always did, stepping up to the plate, because it was clear as day that if he didn’t, things would spiral further. He didn’t like the way people were whispering about koloss and murders—of course, it didn’t make them wrong, especially where the murders were concerned. But back in Tremredare, last thing you wanted was gawkers on your scene. Even crowding around it. The ragtag group of volunteers that passed for a watch in Fallion’s Tears though, wouldn’t have known any of that. Keeping the gawkers from tramping all over his crime scene was pretty much the most he’d expected out of them. Their crime scene, he supposed. Kast was staring at the spike, and he looked like he’d rather be working ten rioting cases back in the city than at this particular scene right now. Wyl didn’t blame him, but all the same he filed a mental note to talk to Kast afterwards. He hadn’t cause to be unsure of Kast in years, but… he supposed you never really did know. Not now that someone was going around killing people in Fallion’s Tears with spikes. Plenty of people whacked in Tremredare, and until their dying breaths, they’d have sworn they trusted their business partner or their family members, or whoever their Nigel was. Honestly, sometimes, Wyl was sick of how predictable it was, the same bloody script playing out again and again. So no: a definite yes on talking to Kast, and just feeling him out. Part of the reason he’d had Kast called down to the crime scene, really. He valued Kast’s eye on the problem, figured Kast knew a bunch more about spikes than he did, and more than anything else, Wyl wanted a clear, sharp glance at Kast’s reaction. What he saw wasn’t especially helpful. Kast looked as though someone’d gone up to him and punched him repeatedly in the gut, which was a hard reaction to fake. So that was a point in his favour. He hadn’t expected the spike. Wyl hadn’t either, to tell the truth. Leas Fel’s death had looked like a stabbing. Straightforward, if you discounted the fact that killings weren’t thick on the ground, somewhere like Fallion’s Tears. Sure, they’d had their share of gambler’s disputes, and there wasn’t anything quite like boxings for showing up the darkness that lurked in everyone, but even then, Leas Fel’s death had sent shockwaves through the village. But Kast hadn’t had much of a reaction until the spike. He’d been surly, closed-off, which Wyl figured could’ve just been the pain, but it was setting off red flags in his head anyway. So yeah, they needed to talk. He caught Kast’s eye, and Kast grimaced. Later, then. The other problem at hand, and the really pressing one was keeping the villagers from panicking. These many gawkers at the scene set Wyl on edge. Sure, they were docile now, but who was to say they’d stay that way? Sometimes, scenes turned ugly, and crowds were always a devil to manage, especially if this one got itself all worked up chewing over the way Bart’d died, and especially all that mention of koloss. Everyone was already on edge from the Leas Fel stabbing, too. Last thing they needed was more public order drek, right on top of the murders. He didn’t really have authority here, he figured his best hope of getting everyone to disperse was if Mayor Wilson showed up, but she’d left shortly after Wyl worked the scene. Something about a dispute between a storyteller and some other guy. Wyl hoped it was that important, and said so, because they needed her there to keep everyone calm. She’d asked him what he needed. So he’d told her the truth: he needed Kast at the scene, yesterday. Wyl wouldn’t have minded going to get Kast himself, but someone had to hold down the fort at the scene, and none of the Watch volunteers were going to be able to handle that, so hell, Wyl it was. Of course, Kast wasn’t the guy you wanted if you wanted to actually give the gawkers some kind of direction, or get them to disperse, so that was bloody well going to be Wyl, all over again. As far as Wyl was concerned, this entire day was shaping up to be a real pain in the arse: just one bloody thing after another, really. Tremredare had been that way. You had maybe ninety irons on the fire at once, if you were lucky, and Lord Ruler help you if you dropped any one of them. “All right,” he called out, loudly over the murmuring of the crowd. “Fun’s over—I know you love your free shows, but poor Bart’s dead, and it won’t do anyone a lick of good if half Fallion’s Tears is staring at his body. You wanna think about what his family’s going to feel about this?” Bart had a boy, far as Wyl could remember. Foreigner kid by the name of Pie Roayong. Took him in, near seven years ago. Lord Ruler, this was going to be hard on the kid. That, at least, had shamed some of them into moving off. Rest of them, he had a word with one of the volunteers—man by the name of Erik, solid as they came. Wyl knew the type: back in Tremredare, they were the ones you asked to do the difficult work, like interviewing the family of the vic when the corpse was still warm, and asking the questions that had to be asked. Running crowd control. UC work, too. The good liars weren’t always the reliable ones. Erik had a farm on the outskirts of the village. Wife in the ground nearly a decade ago, as Wyl recalled. They’d moved from the Northern Dominance before Wyl had even come to Fallion’s Tears. But if you needed something done properly, Erik was your man. Right now, he needed someone to talk the rest of the gawkers into leaving. “I can do that,” Erik said, nodding, when Wyl explained. “I’ll get some of the others, and we’ll clear the last of them out. You think the Mayor’s going to talk about it?” “The murders?” “The koloss,” Erik grimaced as he glanced at the bloodstained walls of the shed. “I’ll get someone to clean this mess up, once you’re done here.” “Probably has to,” Wyl said, though privately he doubted all the whispers of koloss. There were wild bands of koloss in the Remote Dominance. One of the Watch was prone to jawing while on duty, and he’d always talk your ear off about the tales of his uncle’s adventures, back in Tremredare, but Wyl’d never placed much stock in them. Koloss this side of Tremredare? Without the Lord Ruler’s say-so? Doubtful, though Wyl figured he’d talk to a few of his sources, see what they made of it. “Be good if you could do it, yeah.” A most bloody business, murder was. He strode over to where Kast was staring at the blood on the shed walls. Probably trying to commit them to memory. “Your play,” Kast said, without meeting Wyl’s gaze. Work with someone long enough, and you developed a kind of short-hand, a way to read each other without needing so many words. They were both getting into the flow of things, ticking the boxes, doing what needed to be done this stage of the investigation. Right now though, he wasn’t getting much off Kast. Wyl figured they’d have to talk about that later. “Split,” Wyl said. “Mayor or Bart?” The cheating case could wait, as far as Wyl was concerned. He’d put in some time later. Another murder put a whole different complexion on things. Way he saw it, they could keep on filling in that timeline of Leas Fel’s movements and connections, and compare that to Bart’s, or they could talk to Wilson. Wyl wasn’t sold on the Mayor, but someone had to take charge, what with the murders and mentions of koloss. And he remembered that the Mayor and Leas Fel—they’d been friends once, hadn’t they? Always another connection to nail down, if they could. “Bart,” Kast said, almost at once. He smiled half-heartedly, as though more from habit than because he felt it. “Leave you to make nice with the politician.” “Sure, leave me to do the dirty work,” Wyl scoffed. He glanced over at the bloodied spike that Kast had retrieved, gleaming ominously in the morning light. Curious choice of weapon, Wyl thought. Normally, if you wanted to whack someone, you got a knife. Or if you were angry enough, you got whatever was ready to hand. Spike though? That was something different. Far as Wyl was concerned, that meant planning. He didn’t like that one bit at all. “Hell of a way to go,” Kast said, quietly, echoing the direction of Wyl’s unspoken thoughts. “Yeah,” Wyl said, and left to go see the Mayor about two dead men and a bunch of koloss. The Mayor’s house wasn’t all that different from the others in Fallion’s Tears. Sure, it was in a nicer part of the village, but It wasn’t especially big or grand, the way the nobles and merchants in Tremredare sought continuously to outdo each other, building grand mansions while the skaa outside laboured and starved. Never was a shortage of those willing to build their palaces on an edifice of human misery. Still, hard to build big in a small place like Fallion’s Tears, Wyl figured. He knocked on the door and waited. A lot of investigative work went this way. You showed up and asked questions, and listened. And maybe if you were sharp, if you asked the right questions, if you noticed the way people’s bodies talked and betrayed them, you’d get some answers. And if you were very lucky, you got the answers you needed to crack the case wide open. Wyl wasn’t feeling lucky, but it had to be done. Just as he figured he needed to knock again, the door swung open. “Sharpe,” Mayor Wilson said. “Figured you’d be by.” “Didn’t imagine there’d be reason for doubt,” Wyl said. Stealthily, he wedged his foot in the crack of light between the doorframe and the open door. Didn’t think the Mayor would shut him out like that, but well, force of habit and all that. “Was always going to be me or Kast.” “Kast?” Wilson scoffed. “Distrusts everyone. He’d probably prefer to jog three laps around the village than come talking to me.” “Yeah, well, trust’s a rare commodity in our line of work,” said Wyl, even if the mental image was an amusing one, and even if Kast did have a tendency towards extreme paranoia. “Came by to ask you some questions, really.” He didn’t really have any authority here. It wasn’t like they respected the badge either, in Tremredare, but there was a Heron in the Watch, and Herons had a way of getting things done. Must be nice, being related to the ruling Steward of the city. Here, they had to find more creative ways of getting people to talk. Wyl wasn’t sure if he’d have taken the Leas Fel or Bart cases on his own—he wasn’t Watch anymore. Hadn’t been in years. But two people getting whacked just like that. It left a bad taste in his mouth. Law had to mean something, or it was pointless, all of it. Even somewhere like Fallion’s Tears, in the arse-end of nowhere. He didn’t like the idea that the world was coming apart at the seams, just enough that you could whack two people in Fallion’s Tears and no one would give a rat’s arse about that. Someone had to give a damn, and it looked like damn-giving was Wyl’s job, if no one else’s. And the Mayor was paying. In theory, anyway. So that was the way it was going to be. “Of course,” Wilson sighed. “Well, then. I suppose you’d better come in.” She let him in, showed him to her study. He kept his eyes open, of course. A good investigator was observant, and after all these years, Wyl’d liked to think he knew enough of the fundamentals of his craft. He’d been to the Mayor’s house a few times, but as always, nothing jumped out at him—a few nice drawings on the wall, couple of fancy cups and plates on display in a cabinet, knick-knacks on a few shelves, but everything else was kept away neatly. Her study was crammed with books and charts. Wyl craned his neck, trying to make sense of the crabbed handwriting and the links. “Genealogy is fascinating,” Wilson said. “Though I’d consider myself a dabbler, more than anything. Have a seat. Can I offer you anything to drink?” He was tempted, but he shook his head. “Just some answers,” Wyl said. He let his gaze drift across papers and charts. He thought he saw a flash of what might have been some numbers, maybe something financial, but Wilson was already tucking that sheaf of papers away into a drawer. She shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said. “Well, how can I help you, then?” “Lots of people out there running scared,” Wyl said. “Leas Fel, and now Bart. And all the talk about koloss. You going to talk to them?” Wilson frowned. “I’ve sent Rowan out early to go have a look,” she admitted. Rowan was a hunter and tracker—Wyl figured if anyone could figure if there were koloss in the area, it’d be Rowan. “Don’t spread this about, understand, Sharpe?” “Spread what?” “Good,” Wilson breathed. “Rowan found tracks, some distance away. He says he isn’t sure if they’re human, but they’re larger than human tracks have a right to be.” Wyl leaned forward in his seat. “Hell,” he said, at last. That didn’t leave very many palatable options behind. “But if they’re koloss, what are they doing, lurking and waiting?” Everything Wyl knew suggested that koloss were wild, difficult to control. Why would they be sitting anywhere near Fallion’s Tears as though they were Watch on a stake-out? Hell, the idea there were koloss somewhere out there sat poorly with him. He felt as though he was walking through the docks district on night patrol again, the way any shadow or noise could be someone looking for trouble or ready to tangle with the Watch. No one with any desire to keep on living tangled lightly with koloss, or at all. “If I knew, Sharpe, I wouldn’t be sitting on this,” Wilson snapped, impatiently. Was she on edge because of the murders and the koloss? Wyl wondered. Or was there something else lying beneath that impatience? “Yes, I’m going to talk to them. Call a village meeting later this evening, probably. More than anything, we need everyone to keep calm rather than panicking, and that means not worrying about koloss that might or might not be out there. And we need the militia to be ready. Just in case.” Seemed to him to be contradictory, but Wyl wasn’t going to point that out. That was the Mayor’s job, not his, even if any thinking person would see the Mayor was insisting there wasn’t koloss out there, and also that the militia had to stand ready. Politicians. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Wyl just wanted to get his job done. “Right,” he said. “I guess you have things well under hand. What about Leas Fel? Heard you were both close.” This time, he got a reaction there. Wilson looked surprised, but also for an instant, Wyl thought he saw something that set off alarm bells in his head. Furtive, he thought. Wilson looked furtive. She blinked. Once, twice. Liar’s sign, said the former Watch in him. “He came by a few times,” Wilson said, at last. “There’ve been Fels in the area at least for the last two centuries or so, and he wanted to see if I could trace a branch of cousins.” “That it?” “We had our jokes,” Wilson added. “I guess he enjoyed the company. Gave him something to take his mind off his time in the army.” He’d worked that much out. Leas Fel had been a former veteran in the local garrison, and had retired to the village he’d left. Far as Wyl figured, he’d either seen too much or too little. You didn’t retire without any visible scars unless you were pretty good with a sword. But that just added another wonderful layer of complications to everything. “You got any reason why someone might want to whack him?” Wilson raised an eyebrow. “You’ll probably be in a better position to figure that out,” she told him. “I’m as much at a loss as you are. Losing Fel like this, and now Bart…” she pressed her lips together in a tight line. “I don’t want the killer on the loose in my village, Sharpe.” He got the point. “I’m doing what I can,” Wyl said. It was the only promise he could safely make. Sometimes, your best just wasn’t good enough. And yet something deep in him rebelled at the thought. It was the same part of Wyl that cried out when they were told to drop a case because some noble got their trousers in a twist, call it integrity, or just a fundamental belief that the law applied equally to everyone or it wasn’t good for anything at all. Lady shouldn’t get away with whacking someone, just because he was skaa and she had the bluest blood this side of the Channerel. But that was how it always went, wasn’t it? Same old script, same old play, written in power and privilege, and always, always blood, since the Lord Ruler had vanquished the Deepness built the Final Empire on the ruins of the old world. Or so the Steel Ministry told them all. Wyl wasn’t sure. He wasn’t much of a believing man, had never been. They hadn’t liked that, not in Tremredare, the ancestral seat of House Heron. They hadn’t liked that at all. “I’ll see myself out, then. Thank you for your time.” “Watch yourself, Sharpe,” Wilson said. He tried to decide if it was a threat or warning. “The last thing I need is for you to end up dead, too.” “Thing is,” said Wyl, “A lot of people’ve been telling me that. Still haven’t been whacked, though. I guess that must count for something.” Probably made him the luckiest bastard the Watch had seen, really. Though he guessed surviving this long, being this hard to kill was some kind of skill in itself. He left. The Day has begun and will end at 2300hrs SGT (GMT+8) on 28th February, 2021. PMs are open. Please remember to include the GM but not the IM in them.
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And time. Sign-ups have closed! PMs to be dispatched soonish and write-up to be posted at midnight, after I get a bunch of anti-pyretics >> Here's some soothing music to tide you over while I sort things out.
