The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty
Corporal Motuy Tribe Muck-Laugh has decided that, after weeks of nightly guard duty, he deserves some time to himself. Before his shift starts on the evening of the 15th, he heads over to the Squirting Squid, which he has heard gives discounts to law-enforcement personnel. Sure, he’s a security guard for the Intelligence Corps, but that’s pretty close to law enforcement, and he’s been noticing the lovely exotic women who work there wandering around town at night. Motuy is even pretty sure one of them winked at him earlier in the week.
He walks in to find a large common room, with a well-stocked bar, expensive-looking wall hangings, and a few women of various species lounging about in harem outfits. The room is permeated by an odd sweet scent, and hookah smoke drifts through the air. “Hello?” At the sound of his voice, a large gnoll of indeterminate gender strikes a pose, but says nothing.
After a pause, a well-dressed halfling woman comes over to welcome him, “Can I offer you some booze?” She gestures at the bar.
“I would love some booze, yes. What are you offering?”
“Our best goblin ale for this fine gentleman!”
“Is that made for goblins or from goblins?” Motuy has seen some stuff in his time with the Royal Intelligence Corps, even if he’s not technically cleared to know about any of it, and he’s learned that this is the sort of thing you need to ask.
“For. And by! We only purchase local brews.”
“We’re stimulating the local economy,” the gnoll chimes in, with an eloquence completely at odds with… his? (yeah, that’s a male gnoll -- the females are taller, right?) … glassy eyes and lolling tongue.
“We stimulate a lot of things here,” says the halfling, regaining control of the conversation. She must be Madame Smith, Motuy thinks. He’s heard about her.
Mme. Smith seems to possess a practiced blend of charm and professionalism [Diplomacy check: 27], and Motuy relaxes onto a seat at the bar as the barkeep presses an ale into his hand. “Maglubiyet… why haven’t I come here before?” He takes a sip. “This is delicious. It’s just like mother used to make.” Mme. Smith gives him a funny look. “Mother kept a copper still in the woods outside town.”
Hiddlebatch OOC: I like that it’s his mother. [Other GM] is always sexist and all the NPCs are men.Cpl. Motuy is, as Quimarel puts it “wined and dined”. He finds himself pleasantly inebriated, and the gnoll -- “Makpov”, was it? -- is being very friendly, leaning on the bar with him. He’s even feeding Motuy little morsels of dire rat, which is nice. He may not usually swing that way, but what the hell, you only live once…
GM: Isn’t that mostly because of a lack of female miniatures?
Hiddlebatch OOC: Okay, there’s that.
Makpov’s player has decided to act this out.
Quimarel OOC: Let’s hope the guard is making a less distressed face than the GM just did.Various innuendos ensue, and Makpov’s player spends a few minutes playing hyena sounds on her laptop and asking whether she should roll for this. I tell her she can roll Dexterity if she really wants to, and she gets a 7. Makpov just isn’t feeling it tonight. More innuendo ensues, and eventually the game gets back on track.
GM: I wasn’t expecting to be fed. Anyway, let’s fast-forward -- um -- fast-for -- quit trying to feed me things. Let’s fade to black on Makpov and the goblin.
Cpl. Motuy comes back out (or, as I was forced to phrase it after the rest of the table spent some time cheerfully turning my narration into more innuendo whenever possible, “he emerges from the room, through the door, with his opposable thumbs”). Quimarel, having decided that the afterglow is the best time to get him to talk, asks what his job is like.
“Oh, I spend all night walking back and forth carrying a big pike… it’s like I’m an NPC in some magitech video game.”
“That sounds terrible; really a waste of your abilities.”
“Well, pike-carrying is part of my core skill set.”
“I like a man who knows how to handle a pike.” The table collapses into laughter again.
“...anyway, I spend my nights guarding a building that nobody ever tries to break into. I mean, who would break into a building full of spies who like poisoning and checking up on people and hunting down their loved ones and that kind of thing?”
The table spends some time being entertained by the idea of dangerous spies sitting around in the records room doing paperwork.
Quimarel OOC: But everyone knows they’re in there? That’s the opposite of spying!Quimarel knows an opportunity to ply her trade when she sees one. “You know what would be fun… if we came by to liven up your guard duty.”
GM: Everyone knows where the CIA building is, too.
“That would be fun… but we’d have to make sure my bosses didn’t find out about it.”
“We could arrange that; and I bet your co-workers would like to have some fun too.”
“I bet they would… and that does sound fun, but we would have to be careful, because my bosses can be extra strict.”
“Who are your bosses? I mean, they can’t be watching you all the time.”
“Well, not all the time, but we do have to make reports… and they have a way of finding things out… ultimately, I guess my boss is Spymistress Zubynna. And she’s old and cranky, and I don’t think she’d be happy about us having whores over while we’re on duty.”
A note: in the previous campaign, the players recruited several goblin tribes to assist in a war effort, and Tribe Muck-Laugh, the tribe who founded Noroiras, was one of them. They assigned Muck-Laugh to intelligence-gathering efforts, and formalized a sort of spy network, Over the past century, that has evolved into Tribe Muck-Laugh running the local arm of the Royal Intelligence Corps directly -- the head of the tribe gets the Spymaster/Spymistress title automatically.
Quimarel: How old is she?“I don’t know,” Motuy dithers. “It sounds really fun, but I’m just not sure.”
Motuy: She’s… about forty.
[The table is reminded that goblins are short-lived; they hit “venerable” at 40. Motuy is probably not yet 20.]
“Well, if you can get enough of your co-workers in on it, we can probably make sure no one bothers us.”
“That could work...”
“It’s not like your boss is going to actually be there.”
“She could still find out… she has ways.”
 |
| Ve haff vays of makink you talk. |
At this point, Quimarel starts having fun with the drunken, slightly-dazed goblin security guard. “Like… spies?”
“Exactly! It’s like she has spies… oh, right.”
“Do you think your co-workers might be spies?”
“Oh, Maglubiyet… they all are!” Pause. “The real question is, are they spying with me… or at me?”
Quimarel deflects the conversation back on track. “Isn’t it scary being there at night? I mean, with all the traps and stuff, you’ve probably got to be careful.”
“Well, I think the only trap is the one in the basement, and we don’t even go down there.”
“Because…”
“Oh, because we don’t know where the switch is to make it not kill us all. That’s above our pay grade.”
“That sucks.”
“Yes. But we just keep people from going into the trapped room.”
“That makes sense.”
“Yeah. It is kind of spooky in there, though.”
“What makes it so spooky?”
“Well, it’s dark, and there’s not many people there, and who knows what these people leave lying around. It could be, like, poison… or… I don’t know what spies have. You know, the things. The things that do the things.”
Makpov, entering the common area, chimes in. “You work for the spies.”
“Yeah, but I’m not cleared for any of this. I just carry a pike. I don’t get to do the actual spying.”
“So… if we were to stop by to break up the monotony, what time would be best?”
“Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I guess. When there aren’t a lot of people around.”
“What if someone inside the building sees you? Aren’t there guards inside?”
“Yeah…”
“Where are they stationed?”
“They move around a lot… I think we’d have to get them in on it too.”
“We can do that. The more the merrier!”
“But how are we going to get them all in on it? I can’t just ask, ‘hey, y’all want to shirk your duties and bring in some whores?’”
“I think it would be different if there were already whores there. It’s easier to say ‘no’ to a hypothetical situation.”
“That could work. But you gotta not tell them that it was my idea.”
“I’m good at keeping secrets. Tell you what; if they’re not into it, you can lead us back off the property. And while we’re out of earshot…”
“Okay…”
The conversation drifts back to general small talk. Motuy eventually leaves for his shift on duty, sobering up as much as he can.
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