Good Answers, Bad Answers

Inn - 


 * Maybe the walls are just for show, perhaps some requirement of modern society. Or maybe they're only there to hold up the roof. At best, their only noticeable purpose seems to be privacy. A perpetual draft leaks through cracks in the walls and down through the thatched roof into the inn, and the activities of the tavern below can be seen through cracks in the ancient floorboards. At least it lets some of the heat from the fire up in the colder months.


 * The doors leading into the inn's rooms cannot be seen through, thankfully. Even so, they might as well be curtains for all they block the sound from behind them. They line the corridor, all the way to the grimy window at the end of the hall. Creaking, groaning steps lead down from here into the Hangman's Noose tavern.

The group has taken turns pulling watch on the as of yet unconcious prisoner. It seems like that punch in the jaw that he got, plus the copious amounts of alcohol made him unconcious for almost a full day. Right now, Lucius sits in front of him a few metres away, shield and spear in close reach but not on his person. Larrin is tied up to a chair.

Leaning against the closed door is Caprice, who stands with legs crossed at the ankles, idly cleaning her nails with the point of her dagger.

Blackfox has found an out of the way corner and is doing her usual good job of blending in with the wall.

Uncomfortably tied in a chair. It's enough to even drag him awake, given time - well. As he sobers, at least. A groan, and an attempt to twitch a hand toward his face - it's enough to snap him fully into this world from the one of dreams.

And to his credit, Larrin's panic is short-lived, his eyes narrowing, a bit blearily, at those around him, looking down at the chair, then the rest present. Calculating - or as calculating as he can be.

"Where's our pathfinder friend?" Lucius asks, not to Larrin but to the others, motioning at the door with an outstretched finger.

"More likely than not, he keeps watch," Blackfox says softly.

The other Pathfinder says nothing, glancing up from beneath the deep shadows of her cowl to blow specks of dust from the blade's tip. Then, she simply switches hands, picking dirt from the nails of her right hand, now.

Larrin's voice is gravel, "Pathfinder my rosey arse. Let me guess - the bitch sent you. To do what? Shut me up?" Calculating still.

Lucius Nepos shrugs, burping up something from last night's meal. "Looks like we'll have to do this ourself, then. I figure he knows more about the whole deal but... eh." He gets up from the seat and pulls his waterskin from his belt, taking a big gulp and then offering some to Larrin. "Relax, Larrin. Have some water, y'were bloody done last night when we picked you up. If we wanted you did, we'd have killed you, right? It's the Shadow district."

"You know this man?" Blackfox asks with a frown.

Reese thumbs grit from the flat of her blade with a quick flick, listening to Lucius but not caring to observe his methods.

With bound hands, working a waterskin isn't easy. Larrin doesn't bother to try. Instead, he just grunts, noncommittal. Luc gets a glare, but little more - fox, something a bit more appraising.

"Head of the Silveredge Merc Company. Or was." Lucius says, "Open your mouth." And thereafter pours some water there, if the man should do that. And if not? Well he's still pouring.

"He does not look like much," Fox says, "Yet they are the ones responsible?"

Larrin, then, gets wet, giving Lucius a glare. A roll of his eyes. But for now, he just stays quiet. He's not being asked anything, after all.

At Fox's comment, Reese lifts her chin to consider Larrin narrowly and skeptically, but her eyes sweep over his figure for but a moment. Her head is bowed again in the next instant.

The door to the room is opened, Wolfsbane poking his head in, before slipping through fully. Closing it in his wake, he considers those within, nodding in greetings to everyone whom he didn't kidnap the previous evening.

"Ayep. Looks can be decieving, ya know. This ain't no Shadow creature from the depths of the Wilds, doesn't need to look menacing to be. But that's besides the point. I'm sure he thought what he was doing was right. Now, Master Larrin, that you look stupider than afore, I'm going to ask you some questions. If I don't like the answers I reserve the right to get rough. S'all in the law, afterall, to do whatever it takes to criminals. So - who was this Churchie who came to hire your lot?" Asks Lucius, eyebrows arching as he pulls the waterskin away.

Blackfox falls quiet, then, watching and listening.

Larrin blinks. Oddly enough, that question startles him. "... huh?" A long, long pause ensues, and his eyes narrow again. "Who are you lot?"

When the door suddenly opens, Reese peels herself from its face, her dagger transforming in an instant from an instrument for personal hygiene to a weapon in truth. Her grip tightens, that arm comes back, and for a terrible split-second, it looks as if Wolfsbane may be skewed on the pointy end - but his identity is confirmed, thankfully, before any more blood is shed. When the door closes, she leans right back against it, and goes right back to what she was doing.

Vhram casts only a brief second look at Reese, grunting, before moving to peer at Larrin. "Retribution. Tell us everything about him. Everything."

"I don't remember telling you that it was time for you to ask questions, Larrin. You'll know if and when you need to know. We can be gentle or we can be rough. It's up t'ya... I'm pretty well damned sure you'd perfer the first one. Answer the man." Lucius grins toothily, removing his conical helm from his head, followed by his gauntlets. He cracks his knuckles, nodding at Wolfsbane.

Blackfox lowers her gaze to the floor, shifting uncomfortably, not happy with what was coming but realizing the necessity of it.

Caprice has decided to give her nails a trim, too, while she's at it. Five fingers splay before her so she may observe them, then she begins carefully carving the elongated thumbnail into a more rounded shape.

"Retr.. what?" Larrin shifts, tugging at the chair. "Shades. What are you /talking/ about? Retribution? Pathfinders?" Okay. Touch of panic there.

"The other night, when you were piss drunk, and I asked you who hired you, you said they called themselves Retribution," Vhramis answers, subtly reaching down a hand to his ringmail armor as if to emphasize one of the points Larrin spoke of. "You'll tell us about that now."

Lucius Nepos doesn't speak anymore, simply watching Larrin's reaction intently.

Blackfox looks up enough to watch the man's reaction to the question but still remains silent.

Larrin shakes his head. "I owe m' nothing - " That's /surly/ - more to himself than those asking the questions, but to Vhamris, he simply points out. "I tell you, you cut me loose. I vanish - you did not hear it from me."

"Tell oos," Caprice finally pipes up without looking up, her voice as gentle as a lover's caress, "whit he looks like."

"Tell oos," Vhramis adds in emphasis to Caprice's point, expression rather neutral, drawing the kris from his belt again to scrape it across Larin's chin, lightly shaving off some of the stubble.

Lucius Nepos is actually somewhat taken aback at the shaving thing, until he realizes the humour in it that Larrin will have one patch of uneven growth stubble on his face. He smirks broadly.

Still Blackfox is quiet, swallowing uncomfortably but not intervening.

Larrin flinches back from the knife... and.. well. talks.

He tells a simple story - of how his patron turned up dead, the Zahir falling down at one of his manor-homes, out of breath, out of the blue, and dying that night before the healer that was sent for could arrive. In a flat monotone he talks about the confusion, the questions in the men, in their work - and then how a few agents met with him, how they offered a similar deal for one last set of jobs.

Freedom for a little torch-work.

A fair trade, the men thought - and then he relates how he was set aside, a man in golden armor, wearing a golden mask, calling himself 'Retribution' above marks of the Church of True Light taking control of the mercs.

"Not what the boys wanted to serve the Church. Cult, Church, all the same in the end - but smash a couple murals, get out, get papers - and then the boys started dying." His smile is more bared teeth than anything. "Spent them like they didn't matter. Meant to kill 'em, I think."

"Di' he talk like a noobleman?" Reese asks softly, pausing in her nailcutting to fix Larrin with a slanted look. "Or th' soon o' a merchan'?"

Wolfsbane listens, casting brief looks to Caprice during the telling, and leaving the follow up fully to her as he waits.

"Shades - church, and in a mask? I listened - could have been either. Light only knows." Larrin tugs at his arm, coughs once.

"Has he said he was going to meet you again, sometime? Did he give any indication of how to contact him?" Vhramis asks Larrin, rounding back to regard the tied up man, wandering over to stand behind him.

If Reese is satisfied or dissatisfied with this answer, she gives no indication, letting a stray lock of silver-blonde hair fall into her face as she attends once more to her fingers.

"So. You want the best for your men, right Larrin? I understand. Believe me, I really do." Lucius says to the prisoner, and he appears empathetic. "If you're a real troop commander, that's the only thing that matters to you. Question is - what do you do? What are you planning to do to get your troops back and safe? Get drunk? Light, don't be so damned pathetic."

"He's done with /me/." Oh, that's bitter. "He's destroyed them all. Two came home - he had them shot. It is /done/." It's simple. Quiet. Broken.

"Kill hi'," Reese offers up, buffing her freshly-cut nails on her chest with a zing of keratin against ringmail. "Gif' o' mercy."

"So you want revenge on him. Free of politics, just for your boys' sake. Again, I understand. Tell us how you'd find him and how we should, and we'll let you go." Lucius says, bluntly, to the mercenary captain. Reese, he gives a somewhat distraught look.

Larrin shakes his head. "I never knew. Never /will/ know - but they are in the north, somewhere. Aegisport, maybe, or Northreach. Shades. I got no idea."

"That makes sense with what's been going on there. One last thing before I let you go." Lucius reaches into his belt's sheath to pull out a shiny obsidian dagger. "Do you know anything about the associates of this Retribution fellow?"

"Asso.. er. He has a few - but not as though I were in his camps." Larrin shakes his head, staring at the floor. "Were just a job. The last job.

Lucius Nepos moves behind Larrin's chair to cut him loose. "Go now. Forget you ever saw us or... you remember how we took you from your alcoholic solace? We'll find you and take you again. Unless you want to help us, you'll forget everything." He motions at the door. "Go."

Go he does. Not quickly, not steadily, but go, he does.

Lucius returns to his gear once Larrin is outside and begins to swiftly pack up his belongings.

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