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a Lucy is born in Geb
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What about...information. Papers, the guy's got to have some kind of papers. 

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They're probably somewhere. Does she have any ideas to help her find them?

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Well, look through all the rooms, firstly. If there are any rooms, or any chests or drawers in rooms, that are locked, apply Camellia to the problem. Check the depths of containers against their heights for false bottoms. If that yields nothing she'll have to get slightly more creative. 

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Then she will find the store's business ledgers, a handful of import contracts, the inventory spreadsheet, and the owner's hidden store of alchemical silver, but their formula book, cash reserves, and any incriminating documents fail to turn up.

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...Okay, even she will smile a little about the alchemical silver. Next is to tap on the walls to identify hollow spots. 

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Yep, that'll do it. 

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Camellia and Luzai manage to find the alchemist's safe, hidden behind a panel held on with some adhesive rather than nails. Unsticking it is a bigger problem, but with Seelah's strength and an improvized crowbar involved they can just take out the surrounding wall instead to get a better angle at it, and without a time limit picking the following lock is mostly just a frustrating experience rather than one she could fail.

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Inside is a tidy sum of gold and silver, a notebook containing a number of formulae for extracts and other alchemical items, a few doses of fiendgore unguent, and a missive telling the recipient to be ready to take a 'special order' that happens to correspond to the day of Deskari's attack.

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Jackpot. 

Does the missive have any identifiers for the sender? Does it say anything about what the special order is?

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The writer signs the letter as Othirubo, but otherwise it doesn't contain anything particularly identifying as to what is being paid for; it seems clear that either both were already sure they knew what they were talking about, or they were worried about the mail being read en route.

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Oh well! Maybe Anevia will be able to get more out of it. 

 

...Does there happen to be, around here, any kind of cart, to carry away their significantly-more-licit-than-usual stolen goods in, Villibor found kind of a lot of ingredients and she doesn't reeeeaaally want to try to talk him into leaving any of it behind. 

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The shop appears to not do deliveries, and if there were ever any unattended carts lying around for use in transporting goods someone already took them, possibly to do just that.

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Yeah fair enough. 

Maaaaaaybe, if they repack everything carefully enough, they can fit everything into a number of containers that--mostly Seelah and Ulbrig, honestly--can carry?

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They have to leave most of the glassware behind, since between the internal volume and the need for careful packing it's not exactly easy to transport, but they can get most of the more valuable ingredients; everything that Topaz Solutions had a particularly large stock of was also a relatively easy ingredient to source. 

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...Villibor will accept this, but he will also hide a bunch of glassware in whatever hiding places they haven't destroyed, like a squirrel burying nuts. 

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...She's been putting it off long enough. 

"Luzai? Can we talk, for a minute?"

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“—Yeah, of course.”

Hopefully this doesn’t mean Seelah got Dominated by a hidden succubus and is now going to kill her, but if she has, well, this is how she dies.

Wait, no, Detect Magic can check for that. 

Seelah isn't Dominated! That was the expected result but better safe than sorry. 

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"I've been doing a lot of thinking, these last two days. It hurt me a lot, to learn things like that... but when I tried to see it from the goddess' view, the reason it hurt so much was that I trusted you. If we hadn't been friends, and I had just learned about what you were trying to do despite your heritage, I would have been happy to hear it. That doesn't make it not hurt, and I'm not sure we can or should go back to the way things were, but... I don't hate you, and I don't think you're a bad person.

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"...Thank you. That means a lot." Blinkblinkblink if at all possible she is not going to cry. "I--don't think I'm sorry that I didn't tell you as soon as we met, it--really would be bad if it became common knowledge, but--I should have told you sooner." Oh no she is not succeeding at preventing tears from happening. Maybe if she holds her face very still and pretends it isn't happening Seelah won't notice. "I think the point at which I should have told you is when I realized we were friends and not just allies of convenience, but--I'm not sure."

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"I'm not sure either. Maybe after the grey garrison, but that would have had problems of it's own. And I'm not going to say you have to tell Camellia, or Lann, or Daeran - I definitely wouldn't tell him, in fact - but you're not stupid, Luzai, so I think you know it's not going to stay secret forever."

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“Yeah, I know.” Sigh. “I’m definitely not telling Daeran, though, yeah. The fact that I like him doesn’t mean I’m blind to the fact that he’s an objectively terrible person. The problem with Lann is that I worry he’s too honest to keep it a secret. And Camellia…” She makes a face. “But—I’ve already messed this up once. I’m not saying it’s your job to figure out who I should tell when, but if you or Irabeth or Anevia—or Villibor—tells me I need to tell someone, then I think that’s probably correct.”

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"I'm not sure how much it'll help, not when I don't really have the same concerns here you do, but if I do see something I'll let you know."

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“Thanks. I—thought at first that I could just live as a normal crusader, and keep my secret from everyone. You’re why I realized that that was wrong.”

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Seelah laughs, a genuine smile on her face.

"Oh, that one was definitely doomed from the start. You're a lot of things, Luzai, but normal is about as far as you could possibly get from being on that list."

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"Well. Well. Okay, yes, but." 

She laughs a little, and shakes her head. 

"...I understand that things can't go back to the way they were before. But--you're still really important to me. That part isn't going to change." 

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