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Belmarniss shows up early the next morning for her consultancy meeting, munching a pastry from her breakfast spread. "Hey - I was told to meet with a Luay?"
further adventures of belmarniss
not_born_evil
"Yup. In Noctimar they do bowing - you don't get down on the floor, but you do take your eyes off the royal, which can be scary. I never met one, though."
the-snake's-name-is-snake
"Did your city's ruler have a particularly bad reputation or was she elaborately saying something entirely different when she said that?"
not_born_evil
"Oh, Zalun's current rajah specifically doesn't like Shazeunt folks because one killed her favorite daughter-in-law."
the-snake's-name-is-snake
"I figured. But that's par for the course, really, for royalty, hardly a drow thing."
the-snake's-name-is-snake
"No other countries are involved! My father blames his father's second wife for the death of his mother, the first wife, and as an extension of this hates all her descendants, and when I was younger it came to competing intrigues and murder accusations and occasional drawing of swords but they've mostly grown out of it now."
the-snake's-name-is-snake
"I'll tell them you said so. Or I would if I could explain how I met you."
not_born_evil
"They don't have their own version of the funny story lever where you could sneak me in somewhere?"
the-snake's-name-is-snake
"A bit. I mostly figure - if they asked then probably at some point they'd get more concerned with stopping me."
the-snake's-name-is-snake
"Yes, but it hasn't caused any embarrassment or inspired any kids to bad examples yet, and -" Shrug. "Maybe I could tell them all about it and it'd go fine."
not_born_evil
"I mean, I wasn't suggesting you tell them the unvarnished truth, just, like, claim you had an adventure on the moon, claim you've been spying for the crown in Qadira, claim you spent the last six months transformed into your snake and your snake into you and she was hiding under your bed and why didn't any of them try speak with animals on you huh, claim you've been palling around with drow, claim you were apprenticed to a pearl diver."
not_born_evil
"Unless you're already run ragged coming up with funny stories for me and Fazil and Mahdi. Speaking of, you've been so quiet, I think I want one right now."
the-snake's-name-is-snake
"Well, I hear you're in charge down here. Once upon a time, Fy and I were offered a secret mission by an elderly man, deeply paranoid, stalked (he told us) by enemies who would notice his work unless all our communications happened via Fy. So I booked a room nearby and Fy would head over to speak to him in the window of his home. He offered us thirty thousand gold to steal the immortality serum produced by the city-states of Thuvia We protested, of course, that Thuvia does not actually produce any immortality serum and that that's a silly old myth, but our client was very determined and very insistent that the myth was cover for a genuine immortality-serum operation. So I got work as caravan security and made my way on over there to the site where, my client claimed, the immortality serum was brewed. It was a brothel. We had magic mirrors; I communicated this. He agreed that it made sense that they would have a brothel to cover their underground serum operation. We paid for an evening with each lady on the ground floor and looked for trapdoors. There was one; it led to the wine cellar, which had dust and three rats. Fy ate them.
At this point our client's mirror was seized and we lost contact. It was in the possession of his wife, who told us that he was not allowed to spend more money on this and didn't even have thirty thousand gold and she was very sorry and we should please come home.
A year later I got a note from Axis. He said that there had too been an immortality serum and should've been another trap door under the rats, but I admit I haven't checked."
