[i]Thud! Thud![/i] The thundering of a solitary pair of steel boots on hard ground quickly approached the keep. A lone dwarf, panting, and quite understandably so. Despite his high endurance, dwarven legs were not built for speed. Add in his heavy armor, the warm weather, and the keep's position on a mountain, and the result is quite possibly the most exhausting jog Joric had ever experienced in his entire life. Finally, he came to a stop, red-faced and breathing so heavily he could barely form a sentence. The guards looked at him with questioning glances. "I... I..." He sputtered out. Despite his exhausted, fatigued state, he somehow managed to grin. "...wouldn't want to [i]keep[/i] you, but I've 'eard your call for aid, and came to see what all the yammering's about. You could say that getting here was... an [i]uphill[/i] battle." One of the guards chuckled. Another took his gauntlet off, just to bury his face in his palm. The rest had looks of either mild amusement or confusion. A few moments of silence passed, before their leader finally spoke. "The meeting's already underway. Head on in." ----- Darius fought valiantly to conceal his boredom as the old man rambled on. But he knew that if he tuned out, he might miss an important detail, like what they would be facing or - more importantly - how much they would be paid. When the subject turned to the undead and ancient legends of curses, Darius's eyebrows raised in surprise. In his years of traveling, all the foes he had fought were mostly living, sentient humanoids, with the rare aggressive wild animal here or there on the road. Never had he encountered an undead, and rarely did he have to deal with anything magic related (with the exception of his enchanted gear, of course.) His own experience with magic mostly consisted of having to avoid magical traps, wards, or alarms in the homes of particularly paranoid nobles. The amount of wizards he actually fought could be counted on one hand. The actual pay for the job was one hundred and seventy-five gold. No meager sum, of course, but surely whatever he could find in those tombs would be much more valuable? He was just opening his mouth to negotiate higher pay, when suddenly a late arrival - some sort of knight, it seemed, spoke up to warn them against doing exactly what Darius had been thinking. Those knights - such spoilsports. The elven gypsy then cut in, arguing almost exactly what Darius had been thinking, before asking for a rather... ambitious increase in pay. One seventy-five to three hundred was a huge leap, and with so many faces in the room and the rather modest furnishings in the household, it could turn out to be a ridiculous sum to ask from this man. Still, he said nothing. That was how haggling worked, after all. You start with an outrageous counter-offer, and after long negotiation you eventually end up somewhere in the middle. For now Darius kept his mouth shut, to see how it would play out. ----- Joric strolled into the meeting room, the sound of steel plates shuffling together immediately notifying everyone of his entrance. His breathing had calmed down significantly, and there were only a few beads of sweat on his face. "Sorry I'm late." he announced with a grin, walking up to the nearest unoccupied chair. "But you could say that I'm bringing a lot of skills to the [i]table[/i]!" And he sat down at the table, as if to emphasize his point. "Now what's this about? I 'eard something about tombs and undead. Sounds like a task I could [i]dead[/i]-icate myself to!" The dwarf gave off a bit of an odor, which the elven gypsy he sat next to would probably be able to notice - it had been days since he last bathed.