Just finished an exam so I can keep working on my quest report. So far I've added A bandit attack on the way to gelderholm, visiting an inn, wrote about how the region doesn't have much adventurers.
Waking up as soon as the sun set, Liana got dressed and washed her face. Feeling hungry from not having a 'meal' for 2 days, the new-born vampire licked her lips as she pondered over whether to order a blue steak again, or to risk finding a live source to 'nibble' on. Not wanting to have to deal with Hejlikka for the third night in a row and possibly attack her for her truly delicious blood, Liana thought to look at the quest board and see if there was anything else she could do since she had the feeling Guard Captain Harrison would still be unwilling to let her work in the prison again.
Leaving her room and locking the door, she noticed what appeared to be a male elf kneeling in front of the door next to hers with some metal tools in his hands at the door lock.
"..."
"..."
They both looked at each other for a few seconds before the male elf smiled awkwardly and got up and scratched the back of his head, "Hahaha, I left my key with my girlfriend and it seems she locked the door behind her and fell asleep, so I couldn't get back in. I'd tell the staff, but I don't want to wake her up. Gods knows how wrathful she'd be if I interrupted her beauty sleep, hahaha..."
"...I see." Liana replied in a detached tone, not really caring about what he was saying due to the sweet scent wafting off him. "Are all elves tasty?" She thought to herself as she left the man and headed downstairs, walked through the already noisy tavern and left for the guild quest board.
Reading through the quests, she saw one that seemed interesting, plus it would give her the excuse of finding some 'food' along the way. Taking the quest off the board, she went got the report from the receptionist at the guild, read through it, took the room key and then quickly left before Hejlikka could see her.
Not inspecting the room key for the moment, Liana thought to look for some adventurers she'd met while doing her customer service quests. Walking through the city streets, she found some of them and asked them how they were doing before subtly asking if they'd heard of a Level 3 adventurer called Claire since she'd left the guild before getting her reward from the receptionist. None of them seemed to have heard of her, and so she left it at that and said bye to them after asking them how their own quests had been going.
After walking around for a few hours with no results, she decided to inspect the key that Claire was found in possession of. Looking at it carefully, she noticed how it was very similar to her own tavern key. Thinking that she'd found a clue to grasp on, she made her way back to the tavern and looked for the least busy maid.
"You found this key on the side of the road? Let me check who it belongs to." The maid put down the empty drinks tray she'd been carrying, wiped her hands on her apron, and went over to the logbook to check who owned the key. Running her finger down the pages, she eventually stopped on a name and tapped it several times. "Ah, this belongs to Claire! Such a sweet girl and so talented at making potions."
"...Making potions? Is she an alchemist, then?" Liana asked in a detached tone as she desperately tried to hold off the instinct to pounce on the nearby obese human drinking heavily and feed on him.
The maid giggled at the question, "Hahaha! No, she's an adventurer. A talented one, too. She joined about a few weeks ago and is already Level 3 in the guild. In fact, just a few days ago she left to go foraging for herbs to make more potions. Oh! She also got a boyfriend recently: an elf, I believe."
"...Oh? Is he an adventurer, too?"
"Hmm, I don't think he is. He tends to prefer working with his tools, making various contraptions and trying to sell them in the market." The maid glanced around before leaning in and whispering, "If you ask me, I think she could do better. I hear he has a bad history with some not very nice people from a few decades ago."
"A few decades ago?" Liana slightly raised her eyebrows at that.
"Ah, don't you know? Elves can live for hundreds of years and age incredibly slowly after they reach their teens. Not to mention they all seem to be really good-looking, too. Ah~! I'm so jealous of Claire for getting such a good-looking boyfriend! Ah...but I wouldn't want someone with a questionable past." She looked a little embarrassed from her complaint.
"...I see. So, how did they end up meeting?" Liana tilted her head inquisitively, yet with a detached look on her face.
"Hmm, if I recall, they met while she was helping at the temple. He'd supposedly been stabbed by someone and she treated his wounds with her potions. Apparently it was love at first sight."
"...Apparently?"
"Well, I believe Claire really did fall for him, but him? I highly doubt it. The way I see it, she was a meal ticket for him. I mean, they even share the same room but she's the one who pays the rent and owns the key. Ah, come to think of it I saw him earlier going upstairs, but then leaving after a few minutes with a big sack on his shoulders. I wonder what that was about..."
"...Out of curiosity...is Claire's room next to mine?"
"Hmm? Let me check." She flipped through the pages to the most recent one and found Liana's name. "Yes. How did you know?" The maid looked up in surprise.
"...I think I saw the boyfriend using some tools to unlock the door just before I left to do some work..."
"EHH?!"
The maid then closed the book, took the key and headed upstairs - with Liana following close behind. As they reached the room, the door was unlocked when the maid tried the handle. She pushed the door open to see a ransacked room. The drawers in the dresser were left slightly open with the clothes half hanging out and in a mess, the chest that had been used for personal storage had the padlock open and lying on the floor with the contents mostly gone. The alchemist equipment that Claire usually used for making potions was on the floor - with broken vials and bent metal tools.
"...This...this...this is terrible! I knew he was a good-for-nothing!" The maid looked angry and was ready to storm off to tell the tavern owner, however Liana grabbed her arm to stop her.
"We don't know if it was him. He might have come back, found the door locked without Claire there and chose to wait inside for her. Then, once he opened the door, he saw this and fled with his own stuff in fear." She said in a detached tone.
"..." The maid didn't really think that was the case, but chose to give him the benefit of the doubt. "Okay...but I still need to report this to the owner so we can explain things when Claire gets back....Oh...poor Claire..." She started crying as she tried to tidy up the mess a bit.
Thinking about her quest, Liana asked where the boyfriend might be found, to which the maid said he usually hung around the market or the forge areas. Having another clue to go on, she asked for the name of the boyfriend - which was Karl Jakobsson - and then left the tavern.
Walking in the direction of the forge areas after seeing some soot-covered blacksmiths coming from a certain street, Liana looked for any signs of the male elf she'd seen earlier that night. After an hour of walking around all of the different smithies and other industrial buildings, Liana got a whiff of blood in the wind and followed where it came from. After following the scent for a few minutes, the new-born spotted some dark puddles of liquid on the ground trailing towards a dark alley with the puddles increasing in size the further away from her they were.
"..."
Looking around to see if there was anyone else in the area, Liana stepped into the alley to find a body lying in a pool of cold and drying blood. Feeling an ache in her throat - as well as her fangs involuntarily lengthening - she could see it was a male elf barely breathing. Creeping closer with great restraint over her hunger, she asked, "Are you Karl Jakobsson?"
Seeing the woman's glowing red eyes in the dark alley, the male elf was alarmed but thought there was no point in being scared since he felt he wouldn't survive the next few minutes anyway. Nodding his head with great difficulty, he recognised the woman once she got close enough, "You're...hah...that...ngh...tavern...hah...neigh...bour...?"
Liana didn't answer as she continued her questioning, "Are you Claire's boyfriend?"
Karl's eyes widened at the mention of his girlfriend, before tearing up, "...I was...I doubt...hah...she's alive...now..."
"What makes you think that?" Liana asked coldly - her fangs already digging into her lips and making a mess of them.
"...I don't...hah...deserve...good...things ngh...and hah...she was...the.........best thing...I hah...ever...had..." His breathing was getting more laboured as he struggled to speak; blood coming out of his mouth with every word he spoke.
Gulping hard with difficulty, Liana stuck to her task, "Who did this?"
"........................A flower...of metal...bright hah...as the sssssssun ngh....with thorns...full of...mal...ice.........................and roots hah...digging..........deep..........................." He passed away from his many stab wounds as well as blood loss.
Not wanting to pass up a free 'meal', Liana knelt on the ground and greedily licked the blood like a starved animal. She then crawled towards Karl's open wounds and sucked the remaining red nectar before it dried up. Regaining her senses after a few minutes of sucking and swallowing, she released her mouth from the rapidly cooling body and wiped it on a dry patch of her prey's clothes. She then got up and patted down her clothes and legs to get rid of any dirt from when she was crawling.
She looked at Karl's corpse and pondered what to do next. Seeing as how she'd found out where Claire had lived - as well as that she had a boyfriend - and that she knew the tavern maid last saw her leaving the tavern saying she was going to collect some herbs for more potions. She then thought about how her boyfriend had died the same way that she had: multiple stab wounds, and that it was related to Karl's past affiliations most likely.
"A flower of metal as bright as the sun, with thorns full of malice and roots digging deep..." She muttered to herself as she recalled the male elf's final words, his answer for who did it. Not really knowing what to do about this supposed organisation, Liana decided to head back to the guild, making a mental note about where Karl's body was so it could be cleaned up by the city guards.
It was past dawn when she finally arrived at the guild, where she lethargically wrote her report and handed it in, her gold eyes looking weary once she finished writing. Wanting to go to sleep, as soon as the report was evaluated she hurried back to her tavern room - did her usual routine - then fell into a deep sleep.
Asked around the city for info on Claire, but nobody knew her
Found out she lived in the tavern
Found out she had an elf boyfriend with a questionable past
Found her room broken into and ransacked
Found whereabouts of boyfriend
Boyfriend was also stabbed like Claire and died shortly after being found
Before dying, boyfriend gave enigmatic answer to who killed him: 'A flower of metal as bright as the sun, with thorns full of malice and roots digging deep.'
@Epsil
[OOC: Don't know if I did this right. I also didn't know if it was okay to incorporate a bit of the Golden Rose into this, or not...
Sorry, if I've messed things up!
>w<]
Just finished an exam so I can keep working on my quest report. So far I've added A bandit attack on the way to gelderholm, visiting an inn, wrote about how the region doesn't have much adventurers.
Don't forget the Shogun and her guards in the Yato Machi up on the actual mountain, but the distance between the mountain and the forest villages makes it difficult for the guards to be stationed in them.
So I'd suggest that the defences work like this
Mountain cities: Shogun's Guards
Forest villages: Barrier + Guardian Spirit(s). Maybe go with the traditional Four Sacred Beasts if you wanna.
Finished my first Spire Reef quest. Prepare for some chaos as I would be living there for a while in the next quest, robbing the rich while drinking rums!
"Well...I still don't get it. I can't imagine anything strong enough to take someone to the moon. Heck I can't even imagine anything like carriage flying. But, you know for a criminal you don't seem that bad of a person. Granted, I'm not the best person for that kind of thing. I used to be thief after all.
Don't forget the Shogun and her guards in the Yato Machi up on the actual mountain, but the distance between the mountain and the forest villages makes it difficult for the guards to be stationed in them.
So I'd suggest that the defences work like this
Mountain cities: Shogun's Guards
Forest villages: Barrier + Guardian Spirit(s). Maybe go with the traditional Four Sacred Beasts if you wanna.
When you tell the assassin that is dedicated to her "God" and thought everything she was doing was just and right that she wasn't a bad person. View attachment 1928
