[@POOHEAD189][@Culluket][@Austronaut][@Eisenhorn][@Shorticus]


"We can fill her in later if need be. But are ye gonna tell us what kinda mission we're here for?"

The Duke had been a little too preoccupied with trying to figure out what the Greenskin was saying to concentrate, his train of thought more often than not completely derailing itself at the slightest distractions, but it seemed now that the Dwarf's words had refocused his mind and, with an almost constantly quivering hand, he slipped it into his night-shirt and pulled free a talisman that had been draped about his neck; with more than a little worry on his face he showed the item to the group, a simple item it was, smaller than a pebble and roughly carved from jade, the piece itself shaped into the crude likeness of a lizards head - the Sauran visage in profile, the tongue protruding aggressively, and something...a faint, sickly, glow emanating from it even as Duardo held it up between thumb and forefinger.

"[B]This,[/b]" hissed the disturbed Tilean, "is the creator and bringer of all my misfortune, for it was not until I discovered it within a long-forgotten ziggurat that my life began to crumble. Many is the time I have sought to rid myself of it, and always it has simply reappeared back in my presence one way or another," with a sigh he placed let it drop to hang about his neck, a warning and the purpose of his hiring a group of mercenaries in the first place, "I cannot simply give it to you to take somewhere and return or destroy, you understand, so what I require of you is the procurement of someone that may help destroy it."

At a gesture Alfredo got to his feet, scurrying off into the innards of the keep for a moment or two, before returning with a dusty and slowly disintegrating scroll of parchment. Another gesture caused him to roll it out, shifting plates and platters here and there to create more room on the table, to reveal a surprisingly detailed map of Tilea and the surrounding nations, the closer ones - Estalia for example - far more detailed than those further away.

"Her name is Josephine Arnaud, a Damsel of Bretonnia but a minor one, and he dwelling is said to lie within this region..." A skeletal finger reached out to place itself over the name '[i]Ducato di Aquitania[/i]', the Bretonnian Dukedom of Aquitaine, "there is a small settlement here where she is said to dwell, and it is from here that I would ask you all to bring her." Before anyone could answer, he held up a hand to silence them and spoke once more, "you may consider this kidnapping..and you would not be wrong! I have attempted to contact her before, pleaded for her help but to no avail, and this is my last, bitter, gamble before I take my own life out of depression and woe. Please, my friends, I shall pay you almost anything you wish to undertake this charge of mine - if it is within my power - you have but to name it."