"Hey Dor!" came a light trilling across the stones just before Dornr reached for the door to the antechamber of his fathers office. He hadn't announced his presence to anyone other than the people he'd met on his walk upstairs, so nobody had been expecting him. Still, Dornr knew full well as he turned that he was turning to face his younger sister Bryngwrla. Seeing the young woman's face for the first time in months, perfectly wreathed in loose hair and braids alike, Dornr considered how strange it was that only the men of other sentient races grew beards. Like all female dwarves, Bryngwrla grew and cultivated a beard that would make most human men jealous. In this case, thick red locks circled the round, innocent face of the young dwarf girl, but like all dwarf women, her beard was not made up of the same scratching, coarse fibers of their male counterparts. Rather, feminine dwarves can be distiguished from their brothers by a softer, thicker coat of infinitely more pleseant hair.
Dornr was still too young to have his chwuzak, literally "man's beard" for only the dwarves could need such a distinction, and so his own facial hair was just as soft and naturally luscious as his sisters, but he'd always found it strange how she did so much more with hers. Leave it to Bryngwrla, the youngest girl of the Strongarm family, not only to grow the largest beard for her age of anyone in living to memory, but also to take the distinctly masculine activity of growing a beard, and making it girly. Every time Dornr saw his sister, there were different delicate chains of simple jewelery and flowers adorning her facial braids than the last time. Today she must have found a grove of lavender.
"Hey Brynnie," he said with somewhat less enthusiasm than he had intended, far less than she had been expecting. Brynnie slowed her jog as she neared her brother and noted his subdued expression, lowering her own to match. Dornr, not wanting his sister to worry about his moodswings, made a spirited effort to smile at Bryngwrla, and said "We got attacked by draugr three days ago," and watched all signs of concern vanish from her face.
"Draugr?!" she gasped. "Where? Three days you said? So how close were you to Tarlock?" Dornr's sister was the one who really wanted to be a sailor, it just happened that Dornr was older, and seamanship was the path to all of the aristocratic career's in the Kytaran sea, in one way or another. Bryngwrla would get her chance, bur for the next fifteen years, she'd have to rely on her brother to sate her appetite for adventure.
"That's the thing, we were really close," Dornr teased, giving his sister the dramatic flair of a bard. "Captain Karima couldn't figure out why it had happened so close. We were ferrying this gnome wizard from the Fey, and the Captain had to ask him why he thought it happened so close. But they couldn't figure out-" Brynwrla's face looked as though she would burst from excitement from the story, and Dornr decided it would be wise not to mention the carrion golem. At least until she had digested this detail.
"Well, it was really strange is all," he finished lamely. "There were a couple hundred. The wizard and his apprentice had to finish them off." This caused Brynnie's face to twist lightly with confusion.
"The wizard let his apprentice fight?" she asked. She'd always been better at deductive reasoning than Dornr. It was commonly known that most of a young wizards training did not involve any actual spellcasting, that is if their master had anything to say about it. Magic just wasn't something you wanted to be used in the hands of anything less than an expert. "Are they about to be graduated?"
"No, he was- she was fighting with a spear. The wizard's apprentice is a fighter. Like, just a fighter. I didn't see her doing any magic," Dornr emphasized the oddity of the encounter in the hopes that his sister wouldn't have noticed his slip of the tongue. Brynnie had the annoying habit of all younger sisters in that, when she sensed that her brother didn't want to speak about something, she would latch on like a crocodile.
"So, like a fighter that's apprenticing to a wizard? Why would she want to?" she said after a beat. "Why did you say he first?" And, of course, the deductive reasoning.
"Because she wore a visored helmet for the entire trip," Dornr answered, trying to make it sound unimportant. Which it was. "I was working with the deck seamen, she and I didn't interact at all. I think she was probably busy being a wizard's apprentice." That was probably too much, he thought. Brynnie had begun to grin slyly.
"I don't know if you've ever noticed, but women have other qualities that you can use to tell them apart from men. Even some you can see if they're wearing a helmet, I've been told."
"Not this one," Dornr said, before he heard his own words and to quell the rising flush in his cheeks, he ammended, "At least, I don't think she did. I didn't really look. She was human." Immediately, Brynnie sank, and lost all interest in this line of interrogation. "Oh," she said, "Never mind then I guess."
Human's and dwarves did not mix. Not like that anyway. Most scientists of the day theorized that it may not even be possible, but ethical science has been unable to find that particullar demographic of union. To the best of everyone's knowledge, for however much good the knowledge of everyone truely can be, humans and dwarves have never really gotten along with each other, even before the Nightmare War and the dwarven subjegation under the Acredian Empire. They had never been on terms as bad as they were between dwarves and orcs, or dwarves and elves, but except in cases such as human caravans setting up towns just beyond the great stone halls of dwarven kings, or parties of dwarf miners who've negotiated access to an ore vein near a human city state, history clearly shows that primordial man and ancient dwarf did not care for each others company. Not that this was relevant in this day and age, where dwarves did not mine and humans did not seek to rule others. Besides, while the elves had retreated back into the fey, and the orcs had all but disappeared without a trace, humans and dwarves could be said to have come out on top. In Kytar, anyway, if you didn't count any of the native races.
"Never mind about all of that for now," Dornr said, wrenching control of the conversation away from his sister. "I'll tell you about the interesting things later, but don't get your hopes up cause there weren't many more of them. But first, how has father been lately?" He didn't miss the sympathetic look that flashed across his sisters face.
"He's... alright," she said noncomittally. "Not bad anyway. He said he wanted to see you as soon as you arrived." Brynnie's eyes were full of sympathy. She knew he had no way out of this meeting, as did Dornr.
"Has he..." Dornr sought the best way to phrase his question, "... raised his voice... recently?"
"No," Brynnie was quick to assure him, "It's just the usual stuff, a few pennies going missing here and there, but he's taking it harder than usual. I think he's trying to make an example." Dornr nodded grimly. His fathers "usual" was unpleseant enough, and Dornr couldn't be convinced to face the stern disapproval coupled with the barely contained rage within the bank president's office if he had been paid to do so.
Unfortunately, he hadn't been paid. He had been given a command in triplicate; once when he'd departed on his journey, once on his arrival and once more, here, with his sister. Dornr Strongarm, for all of his knowledge, his mental fortitude and given that he was now technically a pirate, was cautiously creeping his way into the mindset that he would soon be able to do almost anything he set his mind to. One thing he was sure he would never be able to do, however, was disobey his father. Without another word, armed with nothing more than one last comforting smile from his sister, Dornr pushed through the office door less that two seconds before the timestones throughout the building began chiming midday.
Harzon Strongarm, contrary to popular belief, was a dwarf of great patience. His meeting with the spy was not going according to plan, and the casual observer, if there were any, would no doubt have assumed that the long silence held by the Lord of the Bank of Tarlock would indicate the quelling of fires of rage behind a stern visage. In truth, Harzon was trying to digest the news that this spy, a formless sillouhette hidden by a hooded cloak, had just delivered to him. A mutual business undertaking between Harzon and this spy's patron had not gone according to plan, directly because of the actions of pirates based on this very island, and Harzon was at a loss for how to deal with them. Had these been normal circumstances, with the Banker needing to answer to no authority other than his own, this would be simple, a few well placed heavy cudgels in a few well paid hands, and the pirates in question would either comply, or be forced to leave the island, finding a false sense of saftey among the waves before Harzon's more dogged associates brought them to heel.
This new partner, however, posed new and unknowable variables in Harzon's mind in questions that the banker had believed he had answers for years ago. Was this the sort of affront that needs a heavy handed retribution? Harzon himself had not been involved in the logistics, and had only been required to provide intelligence to whatever fighting force had been contracted to steal- to redistribute- the cargo that his partner was after, as well as a modest amount of funding. Whatever the plan was, events had not gone according to it. Now, they spy was back in the Lord of the Bank's office, speaking to Harzon as if this were his problem, mounting fear in Harzon's mind as he slowly decided that it was.
"So they still have it," Harzon concluded, inturrupting the spy. "They have it, we do not, now we must get it. There, eleven words. I've summed it up for you so you can stop speaking now." He turned from the hidden figure to walk back behind his desk. The figure did not make any movements. Harzon stopped at the foot of his desk, leant back on it and tiredly rubbed his face with both hands, both in genuine exhaustion and to hide his uneasiness at this shadowy figure. "Sorry, I meant to say let's move on." He crossed his thick arms and looked into the space that he believed the spy's eyes to be. "How do we move forward?"
The spy, having long ago come to terms with the disconcerting reactions they brought forth from others, and having decided that this was something to be encouraged, took a long few moments to respond to Harzons interruption and change of the subject. This was a dangerous assignment for the spy, and they had decided at it's conception that they would need to take full advantage of the natural mystique afforded to the profession, just to stay a step ahead of this ruthless businessman.
"We. Try," began the spy, slowly rasping every sylable," Again." Harzon raised an eyebrow, undaunted.
"Why do your masters think a Vo Merkyn is worth all of this trouble?" he said. "And how exactly to you intend to try again without a necromancer?"
"Any wizard worth his robes can animate a few draugr," the spy said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "That isn't important right now. What's important is getting them back out to sea, preferably far away from any of the Free Islands."
"And do you have a plan for that?" Harzon said, visibly growing more smug, indicating to the spy beyond any doubt that the banker had a plan of his own. The spy did not need this to be indicated however, as he had been listening to Harzon and his cronies formulating their idea from the safety of a 12 inch wide crawlspace between the banks walls.
"No, but you do," the spy said, deflating the banker somewhat. "And it is a good one. We only need the right ship, and a reason for them to board it, even for a few moments if the everything goes according to plan." This was an area where Harzon unambiguously held advantage, and both men knew it. The spy was not from Tarlock, and had not even spent much time in the Kytaran Sea, but Harzon Strongarm didn't make his millions from banking*; he made it from gathering, trading and selling information.
"The Octopus is in port for the next few weeks, but I wouldn't expect the captain to keep his nose out of our business," He selected a form seemingly at random from the middle of a pile of identical forms and read from what turned out to be a harbor manifest. "The Infernal Master has been making it's evangelical calls for the past three days, but I imagine they'll be gone once they realize Tarlock citizens don't really need to worship a demon king, when you can worship a thousand other random things without being spat on at the market. They're going back to the mainland, though, so that wouldn't work. The Dogged Pursuit wouldn't take too kindly to us if they find out what we'd be using them for."
"I can keep that from happening," the spy said, earning a glance from Harzon.
"You're going to go with them?" he asked
"Can't allow for any more mistakes," the spy said dismissively. "Whatever ship they take next, I'll be with them." He paused as a thought occured to him, at the same time that Harzon heard a muffled "Hey Dor!" sound through the door. It appeared that his son was home on schedule.
"We also need to make sure that they actually board a ship and leave the island soon," the spy noted. "He was overheard saying he plans to hole up in the governor's library for an unspecified amount of time. We need something to push them out the door."
"Any ideas?" Harzon asked, but the spy did not answer. The best kinds of plans, in the spy's opinion, were those that were concocted entirely by one person. That way there were fewer variables, less opportunities for someone who thought they understood the mission better to stick their fingers in it's workings and ruin everything. The spy was commissionned specifically to work with the criminal leadership of whatever islands he landed on in the pursuit of his contract, rather than around them as he had done on the mainland. As he saw it, this did not mean that they spy had to share all of his thoughts with Harzon. As it happened, the spy's plan was still in the larval stage, and he needed to be alone so that he could nurture it into perfect adulthood.
"It is nearly midday," the spy said. "I have some thoughts that I need to organize, and you're son is here. Let's adjourn for now and I'll be back at this time tomorrow with anything I've come up with." He walked towards Harzon, briefly giving the dwarf a moment of panic, before he realized the spy's intentions.
"Don't come back with nothing," Harzon said gruffly, keeping his eyes on his paperwork in mock uninterest as the spy opened the window. "If you have nothing by tomorrow, come the next day. Just don't come back with nothing." Harzon hardly had the words out of his mouth before the spy was gone. Plummeting to some previously placed soft landing spot, or ascending to an untracable escape rout along the city rooftops, Harzon did not know, he only rolled his eyes at the melodrama.
Dornr tried not to hesitate at the sight of his father working at his desk after he closed the door. He stood, watching his father write, and waited to be addressed. His father had pressed into Dornr and his sister the importance of not interrupting a man's work, any work, with anything short of an emergency from a very young age. Harzon finished whatever he was writing, signed the form, looked up at Dornr and smiled a fatherly smile.
"Welcome home, son," the banker said as he left his desk to clasp hands with Dornr. He did this without weighing down the corners of the document he was working on to ensure that the ink would not run, Dornr noticed, which was his father's equivalent of dropping a tray of fine porcelain to wrap a loved one in a crushing embrace.
"Sit, sit!" he gestured to the chair before his desk; down to business. "Tell me about your trip. Did you get any decent surgical experience?"
Dornr had considered the answer to this inevitable question for the better part of his journey on the Requiem. The surgeon he had been apprenticed to very quickly insisted to the captain that Dornr should not be in the med bay, after a crew member had stepped on a nail on the third day of their voyage. Dornr had vomited and passed out. When he awoke, Doctor Arton informed him that he would be working directly for Captain Karima from that point on. Through all Dornr's considerations, he couldn't come up with a way to phrase this honestly that would sound any better than the complete and unfiltered truth.
"I don't think it would be wise for me to continue pursuing a career in medicine," he said as clearly as he could, using the professional language that he knew put his father at ease. Harzons straight, thick eyebrows creased to meet in the middle, but his left hand began idly stroking his short black beard, a sure sign to Dornr that he could continue.
Harzon was aware of Dornr's inability to stand the sight of blood or injuries, and Dornr was aware that Harzon was not expecting surgery to work out. Dornr believed his father had only agreed to this charade as a way to prove to Dornr that the bank was the best course for him. Dwarves could live very long natural lifespans, and with that comes the patience to try out a few careers before finding one to dedicate oneself to.
"Doctor Arton and I went through all of the surgeons apprentice tricks to make me able to stand the sight of surgery, and none of them worked. He even produced a few of his own to try and my constitution wouldn't respond to any of them. I think, at this point, we've exhausted enough options that it may be time for me to dedicate my remaining apprenticeship years pursuing another vocation." Dornrs mouth had lost all saliva almost immediately after he began, and it took all his concentration throughout to keep his voice from cracking.
Encouragingly, his father had still not visibly reacted. Instead, he continued to stroke his beard, and his eyebrows had migrated into a more pensive position closer to the center of his forehead.
"So," he said slowly after letting Dornr stew for a while, "what use has the past year been?" There, Dornr thought, he's not angry yet. If he had been angry, Harzon would have asked if this past year of training had been for nothing. Dornr was still in the danger zone, but he wouldn't have been Harzon's son if he didn't know how to get his way back out of this.
"Quite a lot, actually," he began. "For starters, Doctor Arton was able to teach me his procedures, even if I could not stand to watch them in person. While I wouldn't be able to utilize those that are more specific to surgery, they are the kinds of skills that might make me invaluable in an emergency by telling those with stronger stomachs what to do or what to look for. I may not be able to act as a doctor on my own, but the knowledge of medicine automatically opens avenues to all kinds of other respectable professions. Like, biology."
"Biology?" his father interjected. "Are you about to tell me that you've decided to study monsters in Kytar?" Dornr honestly had not been about to tell his father that; he was prepared to speak uninterrupted for another fifteen minutes before bringing this up, if he could remember the third page of his notes, but he had made some last-minute revisions that morning and decided to take this exit instead.
"Not necessarily. Biology is very broad, but my main point is that medicine, and therefore, surgery, is an offshoot of biology, and the best way to salvage the skills and knowledge that I've already learned is to find another vocation in roughly the same area." He paused, expecting his father to want to continue. Harzon, apparently did not, and instead said, "Such as?", and took the wind from Dornr's sails somewhat.
"Wildlife biology," he said lamely, and fully expected the forthcoming disapproval.
"So, you have decided to study monsters," Harzon said, disapproving. Dornr needed to find a way to bring his father to his way of thinking, if he wanted to avoid being impressed into an unfulfilling career of banking.
"How many ships do you contract to go to other islands that disappear without a trace?" he asked. Harzon waved his hand dismissively.
"Pirates. Pirates and Acredians," he said, even though the Acredian Empire basically didn't have a presence in most of Kytar, unless you counted the perpetually undernourished and struggling outpost on Thrum. Dornr pushed on.
"And what about those you find adrift covered in teeth marks? And the sailors that wash up babbling about giant turtles and crabs?" Harzon did not have an answer for that one. Mysterious gargantuan monsters were less of a problem among the eastern most islands of the Kytaran Sea, where the all-encompassing magical aura known as the Farraíochta exhibited a lesser influence. Deeper into uncharted waters however, all manner of wild magics were known to manifest seemingly at random, and giant mythical creatures could materialize virtually out of nowhere, then just as suddenly disappear without a trace beneath the waves.
"Who is out there who knows anything about these monsters? These animals?" Dornr pressed to his father, "How do we expect to get anything substantial done further into the Sea of Kytar unless why know what else is there and how to interact with it?"
A glazed, pensive look had come into Harzon's eyes, and Dornr knew this was working.
"The Strongarm family should have a monopoly on all foundations of society in the Kytaran Sea, and that includes expansion. Expansion can't happen if everyone we send past the Isle of Endowment gets eaten by a sea monster." Time to reel back, Dornr thought as his father seemed to come around to the idea.
"Do not misunderstand my meaning, I wouldn't have suggested this if I didn't have any problems with surgery, but I think this is the best way to turn a liability into an asset." Just as Dornr was thinking that last bit might've been too much, he heard his father mumble to himself, "...an asset." Harzon spent a few moments of silence further considering the proposal before re-establishing eye contact with his son.
"Alright," he said, "and what was your plan in the event that I agreed with you?" Dornr shrugged.
"Continue to sail with the Requiem past the Isle of Endowment?" he said, honestly not having expected to be asked for his input. "Any free ship that makes regular treks into uncharted waters would be sufficient. At this point, I would just want to start categorizing and researching what I find out there."
"Speak with Ghrunig before you retire for the day," Harzon said, naming his head clerk. "Ask him for a few of his blank ledgers to take with you and ask him to arrange your next set of voyages. If you're actually going to do this, you need to do it properly. I'll want reports every time you return to port." Harzon's instructions rang like music to Dornr's ears. It indicated all at once that he agreed with Dornr's proposal, that he was prepared to dedicate bank and family resources to it, and that this meeting had come to an end.
"I'll go and find him right away," Dornr said, rising from his chair.
"One more thing," Harzon said in slightly higher volume as Dornr reached for the office door. Dornr turned to find his father looking straight through him.
"You will not be sailing with the Requiem again," he declared in tones that would broker no argument. A chill ran through Dornr's bones as he was reminded of the past instances when his father had chosen to use that tone. He remembered how those instances usually turned out, he thought of the scars under his clothes that he used to remember them.
All moisture suddenly vanished from Dornr's mouth and throat, and he tried to choke a breath into his lungs to respond.
"That won't be a problem," he said more quietly. "May I ask why not that one?" One corner of Harzon's mouth twitched momentarily in the vague direction of a smirk.
