MISSION: Life Ruiners

[unshut]

WHO: John Silver, Petrana de Cedoux, Fitcher
WHAT: How to ruin a man's whole career.
WHEN: Early Bloomingtide, pre-Orzammar trip.
WHERE: Gwaren
NOTES: OOC Info

Happily, despite it's remote location, there are in fact reasonably comfortable rooms to be had in Gwaren. Rustic? Absolutely. But surely they've all stayed in worse places than the Brecillian Hare. The beds are soft enough, the food is good, and there is just enough transit through the southern port that no one has asked too many questions of a few newcomers. It must also be noted that the proprietress had been more than happy to have a table brought up to one of the two rooms between them so that they might dine in private.

"Not that your front room isn't lovely," Fitcher had assured the rose-cheeked woman, all smiles and laughter. "Only I find that in my old age, the volume doesn't agree with my ability to keep track of conversation. Yes, yes, three chairs as well. Thank you, you really are too kind."

In any case, one ought to have a working space over which to arrange all their working pieces. It is so much easier to see a thing when it is all laid out before you. Currently, the sum of these parts consists of a few first hand accounts (noted in broad terms on scrap paper, easily burned in the bowl of candles at the table's center or in the little fireplace squeezed against the wall's interior room), a copy of letters from a particular woman out of Denerim written to their target, a very brief bit of correspondence from an alleged Venatori agent, and a loaf of rather good loaf of spiced bread accompanied by a pot of honey butter.

(Those last two have little to do with the work materially speaking, but when it comes to questions of morale...)

Fitcher, seated in one of the chairs about the table and having at last set aside her pen, is in the process of spreading a generous measure of the whipped butter across a slab of bread.

"Well then. It seems the man's at least done us the favor of giving us every opportunity."

Comments

[hornswoggle]

"He's very comfortable," John agrees, mock solemn, as he tips a generous slice towards Petrana in silent offering. "It's made him forget how to guard against consequence."

Though by all accounts, the man had made a tidy little life for himself after having toed the limitations of his powerful friends' indulgences and flexing more or less within those boundaries.

"I don't know that we'll have to work very hard to coax him into jumping for bait. It's just a matter of making sure he doesn't manage to spring free before the trap closes. I assume he has a talent for that," John continues, a man who surely knows nothing about wriggling from traps of any sort. "I'm curious to see if he's personable enough to warrant the protection, or if it's nostalgia that's kept him shielded so long."

[ipseite]

Accepting bread, and taking a moment to cover it in butter — congratulations: Fitcher and John have now witnessed the sum total of Petrana de Cedoux's kitchen skill — she says, “Opportunists must have a certain degree of amiability, else they soon find they've no opportunities. Though in having said that,” a little bit critically, “habit does a great deal for one, at a certain point. And a habit sufficiently long-standing,”

such as shielding someone who almost certainly doesn't deserve it from the consequences of his behaviour,

“I suppose at a certain point it's simpler to carry on trundling along than overturn the applecart. Better not to look at what's underneath the apples. I am quite certain,” breaking her bread into smaller pieces, “that I can easily reproduce his hand.”

[unshut]

"It goes without saying that we will need someone reliable to take up the accusation against him. A reliable business associate, perhaps? Have we an obvious in with any of them?"

With her healthy slice of bread in one hand, Fitcher uses the other to casually paw through the stack of papers littered about the table. 'Sometimes it is helpful to look at everything all at once, don't you agree?' she had said, which accounts for why there is very little depths to their evidence but quite a lot of sprawl.

"Happily, it seems acquiring a sample of the man's hand should be simple enough. Truth be told and all orders aside, I wonder whether the Venatori agent ought to be among our chief concerns as well. It is all well and good to ruin the one man, but I should rather like to arrange a meeting with, what was his name?"—she lifts the relevant paper and squints down the length of her arm at it—

"Frederick."