My heart thumping out of my chest, I sit back down and try to calm down.
(lurking whilst geyde progresses)
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āThings down south have been heating up again. Terrible for business, you know, unless youāre in the business of war.ā He lowers his voice. āThey say one of the counts got mad at House Khavortorov, started pushing into their territory, and House Khavortorov decided they couldnāt abide by that. But I didnāt stick around to find out if thatās true .ā
(As far as you can tell, you donāt think any of that is false . But from the way he ducks his head and bites his lip as he talks about the attacks, you get the sense itās personal ā more personal than youād expect from a merchant concerned about his bottom line, or even about his customers.)
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āThatās smart of you. A count getting mad at a house is just asking for conflict back. More anger than senseā¦why might they have been so frustrated?ā
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He lowers his voice even further, until you have to strain just to make out his words, as he glances around the room. āItās hard to be certain. There are rumors about some kind of succession dispute, rumors that one of the Khavortorovs lost their temper and dealt the count an insultā¦ā
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Wanderer nods, noting that itās probably not worth the time to get him to talk more without buying something. But if he didā¦then thatād be enough.
In a conspiratorial tone, he grins before asking āWhat do you sell, my good man?ā
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(iāll voluntarily fail to bluff if he wants to sense motive me)
āA bit of this, a bit of that. My most popular item is buttons, but I also have needles and other supplies for sewing, and smaller quantities of a few other goods. A few pictorial stories, too ā I thought they might be the next big thing, but no luck.ā
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(frankly iām wondering who he thought would buy those pictoral stories)
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āYouāve struggled to get those pictoral stories to sellā¦thatās understandable. What would you be willing to part with them for?ā
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āIf Iām going to sell them, I want to at least make back what I bought them for. But Iād be willing to part with them for one link to the page, and most of them only take up one page.ā
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(a link is a silver piece, correct?)
(yes)
(this isnāt an unusually high price for what heās selling, but itās not hard to see why most people donāt want to shell out a dayās wage per page)
Wanderer will pull out a gold piece from his bag.
āOf course, I understand.ā He lowers his voice. āGiven the circumstances, I believe it would be fair if you tell me more about earlier in exchange for this transaction.ā
Heās attempting to imply a message. The message is obvious.
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āI am here to relay a message to the Demir family. May I speak with them -or at least, the father- in private? It will not take longer than a minute.ā
((ā¦I pray I wonāt have to roll for CHA for this.))
roll diplomacy to convince them to allow you in unsupervised, yeah
((All things considered, Iām just happy this is not capped to 10.))
((-1 modifier.))
@discobot roll 1d20
20
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Heād raised his voice to a normal volume when talking about his wares, but now he lowers it again, if anything even further than last time. As he speaks, he retrieves some of the pictorial stories; they seem to have been printed using custom woodcuts, and the person who crafted them is clearly quite skilled to have included so much fine detail. The stories are supplemented with a small amount of text, but it isnāt necessary to read the text to understand the stories (or at least not the top one, which is about Choral the Conquerorās conquest).
āItās like I said, all I know is rumors.ā He looks down at the table. āBut Iām closer to the rumors than I let on. Iāve been telling people Iām just a merchant, and that I sell on both sides of the river, and thatās all true ā but Iāve been letting them think Iām from Issia, and the truth is, I was born on the other side of the river.ā
The way he phrases it, itās obvious that he wants you to think that he doesnāt really think of that as a meaningful distinction, but despite his best efforts it clearly matters to him.
āā¦and I donāt want to spread a scandal, but the rumor I heard is that young Khavortorov was suggesting the Count was a bastard, or maybe that his heirs were ā that they werenāt really his . Maybe it was just empty talk, but itās not hard to see why he wouldnāt want people saying that.ā
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āOf course,ā says the militia member. āI will be keeping watch over the entrance to the building, so donāt try to pull any funny business, but their cells are right down that hallway.ā He points.
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