Open - A House Worth Having

The sky was growing dark as Blank collected her things from the square. Her mission had been a complete failure. She had, had a great plan or so it had seemed, before she arrived. In fact her plan had been much more thought out than typical. She had researched, and questioned those she could find to make it feasible and still here should stood with nothing to show for it. How did she get here anyway? Well it had started several weeks if not a month ago when she was tasked by her mistress to head into the city of Stockbon and capture some stones of power. Inside the city they quickly learned the location of the stones was an old mansion. What were they to expect with such a place? A mansion filled to the brim with gold and jewelry? Regardless, of what they might have been expecting what they found was a decrepit, and abandoned mansion filled with an eerie sense of loss. Blank remembered at the time, thinking how it was almost perfect in every way. Its only deficiency was that it was missing was a secret underground laboratory where a practical witch could practice her spell craft in peace and quiet without having to deal with annoyance such as 'nosy neighbors' or the 'local authorities'. Of course, as her and her team of hooligans continued the trek through the mansion, they did in fact stumble upon a magical locked door, that led deep down into the earth, farther than any normal basement would be built.There they fought some robots, but that didn't matter, the mere existence of such a basement meant one thing to Blank. This house had to be hers.

So once the robots were slain, and the prize was taken, Blank set to learning how to acquire property in Stockbon. Unsurprisingly, most capital could directly be bought assuming the deed owner was present and that Blank had the purse to use for it. Sadly, she knew both of these would prove a tricky issue, as the owner of the house was apparently as absent from the picture as could be, and the amount of gold she has often was routinely spent on witch craft items of no benefit to this cause. So that left her in quite the situation. A bit more research pointed her in a helpful direction. However, it seemed that if a house is derelict enough, one could make a claim on the property and if none tried to claim ownership, the alleged could pay the local government a fee to take it over. With that in mind, she began an exchange with the local court house, putting up a bid of a claim, to acquire the house. A few weeks passed leaving Blank free to head that way... which is why she had returned today.

The first part of the plan was to obtain the necessary capital to make good on her claim (something she had managed to weasel her way out of while it sat awaiting approval). To do this, she had merely planned a very straight forward robbery. With her magical abilities, she'd be able to make mince meat out of any kind of structure made to stop her, and realistically she didn't even need that much. So she had gone out of her way before hand, to find a rich jewelry store that catered to only the most wealthy. Without much trouble, she located the store front, entering in and pretending to look for a magical gem and waited for the store to empty itself. Once it did so, she merely froze the shopkeep, before giving her a quick kick. The result was her falling and shattering sending her remains throughout the bottom of the store front. It'd be a mess once it thawed, but Blank had plenty of time before that happened. A quickly shattered lock latter and she had a bag full of gold which she easily stored within her UI.

Several minutes later she had arrived at the local courthouse ready to put down her deposit and finally obtain her long-sought dream house. That's when she received the news. However, her dream house was under investigation due to a variety of murders that had occurred on its premise. She didn't care at first, as she attempted to hand over her ill-gotten bag of gold, but then she learned that she couldn't purchase a house that was the site of over five murders some of which included children. In fact, it had seemed her mere intention to acquire the home had somehow managed to put her on a short list of suspects for said murders. With a quick turn, she saw that there were indeed a few officers ready to take her statement regarding her presence of the night in question, as well as questions regarding her desire to purchase the property. Blank didn't have time for said questions though, so she froze everyone.

Which lead us to the current place in time. Blank collected her bag of money, opening the now frozen door of the courthouse and headed out into the dusk. A bell could be heard in the background; she wasn't really sure why, but it seemed something urgent was happening nearby. Little did she know it was the militia, giving the order to rouse up a group of trained mage killers and head to the county court house, where a psychopath had just cast a powerful blizzard spell in doors, trapping and killing at least twenty government employees in the process. Blank was mad that there was no way she was every going to get to own that house at this rate!

 

Endo was in town for just a few minutes. He wanted a place to rest for a while, him be exhausted from all of this work and zero breaks in between. Finally some rest. Not quite.

Whole he was walking, some NPC's were talking about a psychopath and and a frozen courthouse door. That sounds like rather a failed heist or successful stopping of a heist. He had started to follow a small lead on who could be this notorious "psychopath". It had to be a player, because an NPC causing a frozen door? Not likely. The bell in the background was very annoying, but it gave him a basic details of was about to happen, someone is about to be arrested.

He arrived at the square where the original crime had happened. He looked at the frozen door a couple times, then turned his attention towards the lady who was still standing in front if the courthouse. Endo walked up to the lady who he suspected did this crime, since she was obivously a player.

"I assume you killed the reps inside of the courthouse?" Endo said to her, waiting for a response.

@Blank

 

It was a hard day's work at the Fancy Pepper, as Bradwynne had gone from the place after another brewer would start the shift after him. He felt guilty after leaving the brewers with a lot of work following a huge workload in the manor of Duke Rutledge, and the battle against Titania almost shortly after that. He had to brew a monstrous load of alcohol to meet the daily quota of the bar, and, fortunately, as he had went on leave to rest from the battle, he had a good amount of time to brew for the bar. And so, before he left the shop, he received a good amount of money for his salary, since it had been a good number of days since he had set foot here to do his job. Now having a good amount of money in his pockets, Bradwynne then set out to one of his most favorite spots in the city: the shopping district near the district of the rich.

Hidden: Bradwynne's clothes at that moment

Although he had always liked to glance at the display of clothes regal enough for nobles (and nobles were a common sight in this part of the marketplace due to the lavish displays of clothes, jewelry, and other luxurious if not masterly-crafted things at the store fronts), he only went in here for one thing: that store at the far end of the shopping district, quite near from a known jewelry shop that only catered for the ultra-rich and nobility. The displays of that particular shop were comparable to those styles which were common in the real world, the owner being a player, but were made within the constraints of the game. The displays were brilliantly made, as one would never be in this fashionable shopping district without both skill and elegance. He was to go there to have the owner make him another set of elegant clothing, as the previous one got wrecked in the fight against Titania. But as he was about to pass through the jewelry shop, he noticed something odd: there are a handful of guards and quite a number of bystanders flocking towards the always seemingly lonely area. He then was about to move towards the jewelry shop, when he saw some guards carry a bloody hammock from the inside of the jewelry shop. He then moved towards the guards to know what happened, but they just said that the dead person, who was the shopkeep, was just found there, mangled, decaying, and lying in a pool of blood and water, and all the jewelry in the shop had been stolen... blood and water?! Bradwynne wondered how it would happen, but quickly came to the realization that it was the work of someone who was skilled with Hydromancy. The supposition was proven true when news broke out that someone was attacking the court of justice with ice magic, and a band of militia was being amassed by the city council in order to stop the magician and arrest her. He then moved out quickly, not waiting on the militia, and then contacted everyone in the Witch Ops about this emergency situation. He knew that the shopkeep in that jewelry shop was not an ordinary resident, and so are the people in the courtroom in Stokbon, and they being killed easily meant one thing: the person was not an ordinary hydromancer. And he knew only one such person with the ability and the compunction to do it.

Bradwynne then rushed to the location of the Stokbon courtroom, and then found everything within his deductions: the one who committed this series of murders was no other than this person called Blank, one of those who had given in to a power quite related to Dissonance. He then materialized the crystal longsword which was his new main weapon, which appeared on his back sheathed, and then analyzed the situation. He saw another person quite near him, who he knew was that newbie who had been manhandled by orcs last time (@Endo) and then said to him, "If you mean to battle with her, you should expect instant death. Those mooks that she killed had capable ability, and her instantly killing them should serve a sign that she was more powerful than you think." He then turned towards Blank and then said, with his voice filled with consternation, "Looks like I am regretting my decision last time to heal you, seeing you have killed a lot of innocent persons in this city. If I had known you would do this, then I should have struck you down then and there."

@Grand Witch Majolica @Iván Carl @Corvella @Haru @Janet Reilly