[@Andreyich]

Hilde moved quickly through the cluttered street of Marienburg. Although the sun blazed overhead, the streets were still wreathed in a thin layer of smoke. All around her came the smells of cooking meat, pork, beef and other less wholesome game, roasting over street vendors charcoal stoves. The smell was almost maddening complex, mingled as it was with spices, perfumes, unwashed bodies and the ever present stench of sea water and rotting fish.
 
Merchants of every stripe cried their wares. Candied fruit from Araby, Dwarven clockwork, Carlosburg sausage and other things that defied easy description in Hilde’s mind. She didn’t find it difficult to resist their entreaties, not because she was particularly strong willed, or because she was driven to her goal, it was easy because she was flat broke.
 
It had been a lean year for Hilde. She had been with a group of mercenary pistoleers in Averland, but they had come out on the wrong side during a local border skirmish down there and too many of them had been killed or wounded to carry on. Going their separate ways had proved expensive as caring for a horse between contracts was nearly ruinous. She had drifted steadily west into Riekland and the safer trade routes there where she had finally sold her damned horse. From there, all roads logically lead to Marienburg.
 
The tavern she was searching for was in a state of tidy disrepair. She compared the flier looking for crew to the almost unreadable sign bearing the taverns name. She hefted the pack, containing her few possessions and adjusted her weapons belt, trying to settle the brace of pistols and the sword comfortably across her hip. Working as a sailor wasn’t appealing, but she had put her time in on river boats to make ends meet. It was probably too much to hope they had positions for marines.
 
The inside of the tavern was warm and smoky. There was fresh straw on the ground which did alot to smother the stench of stale beer and old vomit. She was just about to start asking after Captain Florian, when a big man stood and called out for the Captain, apparently a fellow potential crew mate. Hilde started to move towards him and as she did so realised there was something familiar about him.
 
[b]“Jan?”[/b] she asked, narrowing her eyes to better regard his face, [b]“Jan Wiesen?”[/b] She dimly remembered him in an Imperial Marine uniform on one of the long ale fueled nights in Altdorf a few years ago. He and his buddies had been sucked into a brawl between mercenaries in the dock district, it had been a little hairy for a while there.