Crow Hunting | Intro OTA

[imbroccata]

WHO: Lino Nieri & YOU
WHAT: Recruitment of a Crow, ensuing insult and injury
WHEN: covering a span pre- and post-holiday
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Possibly some description of animal skinning, otherwise it’s mostly just introductions and bandit killing

I. Hunt a Killer

Whether by assignment or volunteering, you’ve taken on the task of tracking down a possible recruit. A Crow, more specifically. A task not many would find success in, if said Crow did not want to be found, but somebody who knows someone who heard from someone else says that a man with an Antivan accent has been seen in the Hinterlands, taking on small contracts and jobs from locals to deal with Venatori, slavers, fade-touched bears, and find missing persons.

Riftwatch intel, being as it is, suggests the possibility of this man being one Lino Nieri. Allegedly, a Crow in exile. Self-imposed, as the Crow way is to punish failure or transgression with death.

It is armed with this information that you happen upon his camp.

II. Kirkwall

[ Crowds. Lino hates crowds. The only good they serve is to hide what’s truly going on beneath a tide of chaos.

Case in point, Lino snatches up what appears to be just one of a group of children, running among the people and laughing, playing. He hoists the urchin by the collar and holds out his hand, receiving with reluctant grumbles the coin purse that had just been pinched from whichever unaware sod traipses beside him. ]

Watch yourself. [ Said simultaneously to the urchin and his companion before he releases the former and returns the coinage to the latter. ]

III. The Gallows

In the first days following his recruitment, Lino spends most of his time familiarizing himself with the layout of the Gallows. The armory, the courtyard and its defenses and weaknesses, the uses of the individual towers, he scrutinizes all with the look of a man planning fortifications. Attacks will come from there, the best vantage is here, exits in a pinch are here, here, and here...

When he is found in the library, however, that hypervigilance is seemingly refocused on memorizing the books and scrolls and where they belong. It’s a different kind of vigilance, one driven by a personal interest in knowledge for its own sake, perhaps.

IV. Wildcard

((take a sip, babes))

Comments

[imbroccata]

His introduction slips in easily after theirs, a simple admission of his name. He hms and takes a slug of the wine and a moment to savor it. There was a war on when he last set foot in Antiva, too.

"Which one is that, again?" He asks dryly, passing the bottle to Bastien. "It's hard to keep track."

This is one of his favorite Antivan traditions. Sharing a bottle with strangers. In antiquity reserved for friends, thereafter common among enemies in times of tenuous truce. The idea being that in order to drink with someone, there is a display of trust; one cannot drink from a poisoned bottle and expect it to kill only their enemy. A cute thought, and about as true as fairy tales, but nevertheless Lino finds it just a little bit charming.

[cozen]

Bastien, without a lick of Antivan to his name, uses the time he spends drinking from the wine bottle to optimistically file away the syllables of here and there as the name of a village to search for on a map sometime later. Then he looks at the label while he swallows, eyebrows slanted in appreciation.

"They do run together," he says, "but in this case the aspiring tyrant is particularly ugly—" The bottle is returned to Fitcher, along with a smile and little nod for her taste. "—and the threat particularly dire. They have resorted to employing printers and clerks as envoys."

[unshut]

"Which, as I'm sure you can appreciate, is no way of going about things. Flattered though we might be with the responsibility."

Fitcher accepts the bottle, takes her requisite second swig and then passes it on despite her preference to set it there on her knee. Lacking such an occupation, she instead busies her hands with retrieving the smooth white pipe tucked in her belt and packing its bowl.

"Alas, here we all are and so I must ask the question. Are you especially fond of all this?" She gestures with the pipe stem to indicate the camp, the woods, the general environment in which one might scream and never be heard. "You see, we have a bet going about which tack would be best to take in convincing you to return with us, and mine relies rather heavily on you being sick of exposure to the elements."

[imbroccata]

"Well, I would hate to make you lose that bet," he says. He looks down at the bottle as if reading the label, leaving the unspoken but hanging in the air until he takes a drink. He hands off the bottle after an appreciative nod.

"So I won't. You're correct, it is wearing on me a bit."