DoubleChecker

[IH] Great Northern Dungeon Early Floor Arc

Having been dropped just a few yards from the entrance by the caravan, Marcelin Brightfeather walked with a spring in his step. His spirit was especially high after successfully bringing the children back to their parents in the previous quest he had embarked on. “The vile forest spirit, nothing but an overgrown thicket, trembled in fear as the roaring flames of the deformed monster turned hero, engulfing its surroundings…" The storyteller dictated aloud, his voice carrying across the yard as the quill scratched against the parchment.

His bright, emerald eyes lifted from the paper, hovering on both the well-off-looking young lady and the golden-scaled man. He smiled, his golden mustache twitching. “Huzzah! What a great gathering of fine individuals!” Approaching with a theatrical glide he put both paper and quill inside the leather satchel slung around his neck.

First, to Clarisse, he removed his feathered bonnet, bowing low. “My lady, what fortune to make your acquaintance! To think someone of your apparent status would care about those not even fit to clean the dirt from your shoes! That speaks volumes of your gilded heart!”

Then, turning to Solvaris, he repeated the bow. “And you, your eminence, to have such a merciful heart and notion of duty that you would leave your godly matters to tend to the mundane and unworthy problems! That speaks volumes of your noble soul!”

Finally, rising to his feet and placing the feathered bonnet back on his head, the storyteller spread his arms wide. “This is turning out to be the beginning of a grand epic! An epic whose sheer scale rivals the ancient tales of woe!” His arms fell to their sides. “I’m Marcelin Brightfeather, nothing but a humble storyteller.”

[IH] Great Northern Dungeon Early Floor Arc

Character Name: Marcelin Bright Feather
Titles: Prime - Mundane, Bard
Goals: Spin tales and influence the world
Points At Start: 105
Points Spent: 210
Points Earned: 105
Points Unspent: 0
Standing Grade: E
Character Grade: E
Strength: F
Precision: F
Intelligence: A (35)
Vitality: F
Speed: A (35)
Skills:
Magic E (7) - Born For This Discount
Magic Range F (7)
Magic Targets F (7)
Affinity Drain [STR] E (14)
Affinity Drain [INT] E (14)
Affinity Drain [PRE] E (14)
Bolster [STR] E (14)
Bolster [INT] E (14)
Energized E (14)
Fast F (7)
Educated [Bard] E (14)
Focus F
Deception F
Persuasion F

Abilities:
Vicious Mockery - Magic E + Magic Range F + Magic Targets F + Affinity Drain [STR] F + Affinity Drain [INT] F - Marcelin hurls wounding insults up to five opponents, possible making them perform poorly - Grade E 1 Post Cooldown
The Tale of Victory - Magic E + Magic Range F + Magic Targets F + Bolster [STR] F + Bolster [INT] F - Marcelin inspire tell tales of grandeur of his comrades, affecting their outcome in battle - Grade E 1 Post Cooldown

Equipment:
Catalyst Quill E (14)
Assets:
Changelog:

[Widersia] Big Dom’s Champion

Gears’ grin widened at Marcus’s suggestion. [“Other side? Sure. I know two ways around this rat hole.” She tipped her hat toward Elora. “Lady wants to come, she comes. Just keep up.”

Piero gave the pair a quick nod. “Do not start anything before we know what we are looking at.”

“Then tell trouble not to start itself,” Gears replied, already slipping away with Elora through a side cut between soot-stained storehouses.

Marcus’s Haunter received its instruction with a solemn nod before drifting toward the shadowed buildings, ready to follow anything that fled. Hwicce’s blade came free with a soft rasp, while Piero drew no weapon at all, though one hand settled beneath his coat as the three advanced beneath the broken red lantern.

The voices sharpened as they neared the narrow lane.

“I told you, I don’t know when he’s coming back,” a thin, strained man said. “I did my part. I got the carriage. I brought you here. I was told to wait.”

“And I was told nothing,” snapped the second voice. A woman’s voice, furious rather than frightened. “I have been locked in this moldy closet for hours, I missed morning conditioning, my hair is a disgrace, and if you think I am missing the Derby because some gloved scarecrow paid you in coin, you have vastly misunderstood the scale of your mistake.”

Marcus, Hwicce, and Piero reached the corner of the side lane. Through the cracked opening of an old service building, the scene finally revealed itself.

Milo Wick matched Havel’s description almost perfectly. Thin, brown-haired, narrow face, left shoulder held a little higher than the right. He stood near the door with a cudgel gripped badly in both hands, sweating through his collar.

Across from him sat the Calabrese “little comet.”

Not a horse.

A young woman in expensive, rumpled racing silks, with chestnut horse ears twitching above disheveled hair and a long matching tail lashing irritably against the dusty floor. One ankle was secured by a short chain to an iron ring bolted into the wall. It had not made her meek. If anything, it seemed to have concentrated her outrage into a sharper form.

She leaned forward in her chair, eyes blazing at Milo.

“Open that door,” she hissed, “or when Big Dom finds me, I will personally make sure he has to identify you by your shoes.”

[Widersia] Big Dom’s Champion

Titles: Prime, Prime - Mundane - ed1c24

"Oh... so you aren't crazy and was just talking to yourself back there?" Hwicce asked Marcus, one eyebrow raising slightly, even as his lips settled in a rare, thin, serious line. "I guess greed ended up biting Milo in the ass afterall." The mercenary murmured, quietly listening to the ongoing discussion at a distance.

"That seems like a good idea. Blocking the exit paths means that whoever tries to bolt can't... or at least not without too much problem." With his palm wrapping around the hilt of his longsword, Hwicce drew the blade with a rasp against the scabbard. "So, is it possible, 'arms'?" He asked Gears with a smirk.

[Widersia] Big Dom’s Champion

Havel stared at the notes for a long moment, then at the wax, then at the coins left behind on the desk. Whatever loyalty he had to Brass Lantern seemed to be fighting a losing battle against the obvious.

“Milo Wick,” he said at last, voice low. “Thin. Brown hair. Sharp nose. Usually clean shaven. Walks with his left shoulder a little higher than the right. Old carriage injury. He wears spectacles when writing, but not on the floor. Nervous man. Talks too fast when cornered.”

Gears snorted. “Sounds like he’s gonna talk plenty, then.”

Havel’s jaw tightened, but he did not argue.

As they moved back down through the carriage house, Marcus caught the first flicker of familiar movement near the wall. One Haunter drifted after him, then another, then two more, all returning from their scattered errands with the solemn urgency of children reporting a fire they only half understood.

Their reports came in pieces. One had found the coach with the missing faceplate. It smelled “like flowers, wet dirt, and angry kicking.” Another had listened to stablehands whispering that carriage fourteen was “the one with the sick passenger who cursed through the curtains.” A third insisted someone inside had said “Bell went under the arch where the red lantern is broken.” The last proudly reported that “the quiet clerk was not quiet after all,” and that Milo had been seen heading for Cinder Arch before dawn.

Outside, the polished calm of Brass Lantern gave way to the district’s colder service streets. Ahead, beneath the glittering race avenues, the road sloped toward the old undertrack passages of Cinder Arch.

---

Into the Cinder Arch

The road down toward Cinder Arch sloped beneath the brighter avenues of the racing district, leaving behind polished storefronts and lantern-lit marquees for damp stone, soot-dark brick, and the echo of distant wheels overhead. The city above celebrated speed. The city below existed to make that celebration possible without being seen.

Old service tunnels opened beneath the streets in broad arched passages, once used to move feed, tack, coaches, and injured racers between track grounds without clogging the public roads. Now half of them had been bought, rented, forgotten, or quietly claimed by people who preferred their business one level beneath respectable notice.

The arch itself was easy enough to recognize. A massive curve of blackened stone bridged the road ahead, its name carved into the lintel in worn letters. Beneath it, one red lantern still burned dimly. The other hung shattered and crooked, its remaining panes catching the light like bloodied teeth.

Beyond the arch lay a small pocket of service yards and shuttered storehouses. Most doors were closed. One old betting office had its windows boarded. A coach shed leaned against the tunnel wall, its painted sign peeled down to ghosts of lettering. Fresh wheel marks scored the pale clay near the road’s edge, turning sharply toward a narrow side lane half-hidden behind stacked crates.

There were other signs too. A scrap of expensive black fabric snagged against one crate corner. A boot print overlapping the carriage tracks, narrower than Havel’s description of Milo would suggest. A faint smear of blue silk thread caught on a splinter near a side door. And, somewhere deeper within the lane, muffled but unmistakable, came the sound of raised voices.

One was nervous, quick, and male.

The other was sharper, angrier, and very much not afraid.

[Widersia] Big Dom’s Champion

Titles: Prime, Prime - Mundane - ed1c24

"I doubt that it was Bell himself. Those who pay don't get their hands dirty." Hwicce murmured, looking at the fine material a bit closer, before motioning towards all of them. "An uniform so he can enter somewhere where he otherwise wouldn't be able to. Maybe that it was..."

He then waited for a moment longer, hoping that the grunt who followed them wouldn't be so thick as to not give them the description of his missing fellow worker before being ready to tread on to the next place.

[Aslan - The Grand Duchy] The Starry Entrance

Equipped Titles: [Isekai], [Human], [Adept Magus], [Ethereal Luminary Academy Student] F, [Magno Sapiente Victori - Grand Magus S] E, Narrative Booster [Arcane Seeker] S, Connected [House Ashford] F, [El-Melloi's Scion] - 0054a6

Adelhein let out a haughty scoff upon hearing Alicia's words directly into his mind. "Barbaric? Oh, you don't even know the beginning of it. But I suppose it is a way to separate the wheat from the chaff." He wasn't, however, discounting what she said. He followed her movement by the corner of his eyes.

He watched as the fireball from Sa'Saori hit and spilled against two of the constructs, the mechanoids leaving without a scratch. His crimson orbs would only narrow with how the constructs were maneuvering right in the middle of the room, showing hesitation towards him. The index kept tapping methodically against his biceps, observing the developments with quiet intensity.

[Aslan - The Grand Duchy] The Starry Entrance

OOC info: Sa'Saori moving and using magic without either Focus or Componentless, would have made her spell fizzle (I'm waiving this penalty). Since we don't work with reactions or prepared actions in IH, her 3rd action is a miss.

Sa’Saori’s fireball bloomed across the right side of the arena in a fierce wash of heat and light, but the constructs answered with practiced precision. Guardian Two met the spell behind its shimmering ward, the barrier flashing bright as it swallowed the brunt of the blast without leaving so much as a scorch upon its lacquered frame. Guardian Four moved at the instant of detonation, slipping clear along the outer ring with mechanical grace before the flames could properly catch it.

The guardians adjusted as one. Guardian One advanced toward the southern half of the central floor, while Guardian Three shifted to hold the left side of the arena. Guardian Four angled along the outer edge, its attention turning sharply toward Alicia’s position near the pylon. Guardian Two closed on Sa’Saori directly, its forearm blade extending in a clean arc of condensed light as it drew back for a strike. [Incoming 2d4-1 (meaning I will roll 2 dices of 1-to-4 and subtract 1 from the result) against Sa'Saori]

At the pylon, Alicia found more than decoration. Beneath the crystal crown, threads of mana coursed through layered runes and sank into the glowing channels beneath the floor. The structure was not commanding the constructs outright, but it was tied to the arena’s enchantments. Its signature pulsed in rhythm with the ward that had protected Guardian Two, and the flow briefly intensified whenever one of the guardians crossed near a pylon or along the adjoining light-veins.

There were seams in the enchantment, too. Several small sigils near the base flared and dimmed in sequence, suggesting the pylon’s output could be disrupted, redirected, or perhaps temporarily suppressed with the right interference.

[Widersia] Big Dom’s Champion

The room gave up its secrets reluctantly, but it gave them.

The pouch held only a modest handful of coins. Not enough to matter to Brass Lantern, but enough that a clerk who meant to flee would likely have taken it. Havel watched Elora check it with narrowed eyes, but said nothing when it was put back.

The basin proved fouler than it first looked. When Marcus dipped his hand into the cloudy water, his fingers brushed the bottom and came up with pale grit clinging to the skin. Clay. The same color as the flakes on the floor. Beneath it, caught against the drain, was a small sliver of dark wax stamped with the edge of a broken seal.

Piero leaned closer. “Not company wax.”

At the stove, Elora recovered what remained of the burned paper. Most of it was ash, but a few words survived along the folded edge.

...fourteen returned...
...mat disposed...
...Wick paid after...

Gears let out a low whistle. “That’s ugly.”

Hwicce’s black thread, once held to the light, showed a faint sheen. Not wool. Finer. Torn from some expensive coat or veil, perhaps the same sort worn by people who paid extra to leave no name behind.

Then Marcus worked charcoal over the indented form. Slowly, crookedly, the pressure marks surfaced.

No questions. No clerk talk. South service route. Bell pays second half at Cinder Arch.

For the first time, Havel’s professional stillness cracked.

“Milo, you idiot,” he muttered.

Piero smiled without warmth.

“Cinder Arch,” he said. “That is undertrack territory. Service roads, old race tunnels, private doors, bad lighting.”

Gears flexed her gauntlets.

“Finally,” she said. “A place with manners I understand.”

[Widersia] Big Dom’s Champion

Titles: Prime, Prime - Mundane - ed1c24

"That was some progress. Quite a bit of it, in fact. Nice work." Hwicce believed in giving credit where it was due. Inside Milo's room, his eyes darted around quickly to the state of it. He let out a long hum, catching the lonely black thread stuck behind the door. "I guess he could have been yanked outta the room and forced somewhere else." The mercenary grabbed the thread, bringing it right in front of his eyes.

"Even in desperation, those who work for a living don't go around 'forgetting' their coins." Agreeing with Elora, he looked at the paper Marcus had found. "So, what does it say?" He wondered.