Tavern

Minerva approaches and smiles....

"I believe there is something about this night in Astorea. Do I need to make it clearer?"

 

Roland huffed as he approached the door, the tavern had been almost impossible to find after all. After spending most of the night tracking the place down. Looking around inside the tavern he spotted a fair haired night approaching a door, only to be turned away. Wasting no time Roland practically growled as slammed his fist into the door, only to be asked for a password. "Finally I found the right place. You don't understand how hard it is to find this place in the night, Astorea is truly in need of better architects. So be out with it what's with this wild good chase."

 

Hm. Now this looked like the place. Claire eyed the door, hanging back a moment to see if anyone would approach. When it appeared that nobody else was stepping forward, so she shrugged and decided to step up.

Upon being asked for a password, she hummed for a moment before saying, "I've been up and down all of Astorea the whole night looking for this tavern in particular. Something about a vigil, was it?" she asked, purposefully keeping her voice somewhat low to prevent others from overhearing.

 

The Drowned Mermaid. This tavern should be the right place, with its name written on a small sign hanging around. Corvella had never been in this tavern, so it's understandable that she took time to find this out. There's a thing that stuck on her mind, the weird door in the corner. Looking left and right, doesn't seem that anyone use it. Approaching the door, a voice could be heard asking for a password. This is the place after all. She knows the procedure, it's just like in the spy movies. Maybe.

"Uh. Drowned Mermaid, right." She processed hard "Looking for a place in Astorea to drink the night." Corvella worded one by one slowly and quietly. That actually sounds really bad. "...Or so I've been tasked, forcefully."

 

He was able to find the place it was tucked into a neat little corner that would have been hard to stop of a person wasn’t looking. Well, that was good planning if nothing else, he doubts that most people would even have given this place a second glance. It was a dive bar though he was right there; it had just the right amount of drunks and hopelessness. Taking off his hood as he entered the place and grabbing a tankard off the bar counter leaving a coin in its place. The best thing was always to blend in as much as possible, drinking enough of the stuff to give him that smell.

Throwing his voice to give it a rougher feel. “Oye I’m looking spot to drink *hiccup* this Astorea night.” Leaning on the side of the door to add to the act just in case anyone was watching him. His voice coming out steady at the end. “Know a good seat?”

 

Azure eyes peered downwards from the rooftops, alight with inquiry and curiosity, as down below, the machinations of the Astorean King came into play. It had been a silver pin, sparking in starlight, that first caught his attention, and from there, the youth became plenty aware of what exactly this was. Such pains taken to keep the recruitment secretive could only mean one thing to his healthily paranoid mind: a scoop.

This wasn’t a Royal Guard, after all, nothing that they could ask the best and brightest adventurers to partake in. With the meeting being in the Drunken Mermaid, with passwords and with solely ‘loyalty’ asked of them, it didn’t take much effort to connect the dots. A Secret Service. Unlike the Warriors of Light that the Mad King of Falderen had, it was quite clear that King Astor was taking a more sublime, if not equally sinister approach.

Fascinating.

A league of black hearted scoundrels, willing to damn their souls and dirty their hands for the sake of the King. One so clandestine that even one of Astorea’s Dukes, Roland Rutledge if his memory served him, came to this closed Tavern with no knowledge of this. Oh, this was definitely getting him excited. Under thick indigo blankets, he grinned, sharpening a stick of charcoal with his canines before scribbling away at a small scrap of paper. Names. Most of them were unknown, outside of Duke Rutledge and Aalam Abungu of Duke Seto’s inner circle, but he could draw well enough. Each of those adventurers were distinct enough for that.

And the teasing winds, picked up by keen ears, elucidated him on the password as well.

‘A night in Astorea’. That was the verbal oddity that each one of them shared, a statement as strange as claiming that one wanted a drink in ‘Falderen’, instead of ‘Stokbon’ or ‘Rivercrest’ or ‘Honeyhome’. It was true, though, that attempting to mask a statement such as that was a tall order.

He’ll approach that tavern himself later. For now…

Blonde hair in a bun, green eyes and beautiful armor…
As frail and as white as snow…
Dirty blonde and slim, despite the heavy arms…

The stick continued to glide soundlessly, smoothly. Another skill he picked up throughout the years.

 

"You what?!" Growled through the closed door. He had enough of this nonsense storming out the tavern shaking his head in fury. "Cessia." He said in a not so quiet tone, "This will not be the end of this..." And with that he was gone, not just from the tavern but the town itself.

 

The door swung behind him, eyes narrowed in suspicion as he gazed around the Tavern, seeing the occasional familiar face here and there. And quite a few not so familiar faces. So, this was the place alright, a Tavern in the Drunken Mermaid, and a Door in the back. Dark blue pupils scanned from side to side as Zelrius tried to remain inconspicuous. He needed somewhere to answer a question to, and it wasn't that hard to guess where one might be asked for a password before entering.

And just like clockwork as he approached the door, a voice asked the question that he wasn't sure he knew the answer to. The man thought back to the note, the highlighted words coming together in his head. Now it was time to think of a clever way to say it that wouldn't tip off anyone else in the tavern, lest the drunkards get curious. "Astorea has some beautiful Nights, no?" Was his way of phrasing it, hoping the voice would read into what the Golden Haired man was saying and fingers crossed that Zelrius was right, or even remembered what the note said by this point.

 

Emerath had pushed himself into multiple taverns through the course of the night after reading the oddly glinting note. Many were dead ends. Not to mention their names had nothing to do with drowning fish people. Hell, one wasn't even named at all! But it had a very large picture of a... drowned fish person. Well, this had to be it, right? The picture itself even had a label that said Drowned Mermaid. Not that he had looked. At least not in an obvious manner. But the drunks didn't care. The bartender didn't even care. But there was a door that seemed to care, and it was staring him in the face.

Emerath walked over to it, and leaned around it, searching for anything out of the ordinary. He was trying not to seem too obviously interested in this door, but subtlety was not one of Emerath's strong suits. As he started to poke at the door, a gruff voice asked him for that fateful phrase. "Password?" it uttered, simply. Emerath chuckled nervously, and stood straight up in front of the door, before shrugging and saying, "Open sesame?" And then quickly thought better of this before saying, "No, no, I'm kidding! Please don't leave!" Though, that was probably dumb too, as the man was obviously at his post and Emerath was just being a numskull. "Really though, the password is Astorea Night. I'm not going to sugar coat it here, I saw that note and came to talk to Cessia. I have other business with her, and I like helping people, and blah blah blah you probably don't even care..." he said as he trailed off from his rambling, realizing that he was really probably talking to the wrong person anyway.

 

Her steps, which were executed with finesse and speed came to a sudden halt as her purple eyes caught a glance of something she had been looking for a while. Indra checked the note on her hands, tucking it inside her cloak after confirming that it matched the information she gathered. She entered the tavern, eyes glancing left and right between the people inside.

Of course, to no one’s surprise, she wasn’t acquainted with any of them. Her lips let out a monotone sigh as she removed some of the snow that accumulated on her shoulders. At the corner of her eye, a door stood out unlike others — that was her destination. Thanks to her ability in stealth movement, Indra managed to reach the door in question while unnoticed. As expected, someone asked for a password.

She glanced back at the people in the tavern to make sure no one noticed her reaching for the door before replying. “Hasty. Please, hurry up, Astorean Nights are busy and short. I can’t waste the entire night here.” After that, Indra remained in silence waiting for an answer.

 

Quinn sat at the corner opposite to @Indra, he has been here for a while after noticing a number of people inconspicuously entering this unnamed tavern with the creepy drowning mermaid as its main decorative piece. To make sure no one sees him, Quinn put hid his presence behind a man with a massive frame, observing the creepily out-of-place door on the other side of the room. That was when he noticed his friend sneakily walking up to the door, and within seconds, completely disappear into thin air.

"Oh shit, where did she go, did that baka get kidnapped? Right out in the open?" Quinn stood up and shook the giant man who was drinking with him, however, the large oaf had apparently fallen asleep with a tankard still in his gargantuan grip.

He looked at his surroundings inquisitively, not knowing the truth in what he saw. After rubbing his eyes, he asked around the tavern if they had seen a girl in the corner of the room and a door, however, everyone replied with "what girl? There was a door in the corner of the room?"

What the hell is going on? Quinn thought to himself. This was something he must get to the bottom of.

The idea then popped into his mind, he opened his palm menu and shot Indra a PM asking where she was.

 

Joen had been travelling for a rather long time, to him it felt like it had been years but of course that was just his boredom making the trip seem longer. Normally he never found himself bored in the world of Terrasphere but on this trip however nothing even remotely exciting happened, he hoped to be attacked by bandits during his search for the Drown Mermaid at the very least but he had been disappointed. It seemed like there weren't even any good criminals left in this day and age, finally Joen came across a rather unimpressive and kind of rickety looking tavern in the middle of nowhere, as he stood there he looked for some kind of sign or indication of any kind as to the name of the establishment but came up lacking once again "Well, I suppose it beats sleeping outside", pushing the door open the first thing that he noticed was the distinct lack of patronage inside the tavern, but he supposed that was to be expected with its visage.

It took him only a second to lift his eyes and rest them upon the massive painting upon the wall, it appeared to be a mermaid that had under some unknown circumstanced come to drown. Staring at the painting for a second Joens eyes widened slightly as a realization came to him "This is the Drowned Mermaid?" looking around a slightly disappointed sigh escaped his lips before his eyes rested upon a suspicious looking door that seemed as if it had no place inside the tavern. As Joen made his way over to the door a deep and gruff voice seemed to grunt out "Password", Joen stood there for a second trying to remember if he had been given a password before he decided to try the words on the note that had made no sense to him at the time "Astorea Night" after he spoke the words Joen stood there and awaited to see what happened.