Fate - First Reply A Dangerous Job

[Petrus Ritus Iskandar]

The call for an experienced mercenary, one willing to perform a "dangerous and highly confidential expedition", has gone out from the Allirian House Iskandar. No details beyond this vague description have been provided, save the incredibly lucrative sum on offer for any applicant successful in it's completion.

A daunting prospect, considering the half-dozen names noted below the brief job-posting that are crossed out. Any in the sphere of mercenary work would recognize each name as a professional mercenary who had gone missing in recent months. Evidently they had failed whatever expedition the House Iskandar had sent them on. Consequently there is also a running tally, a record, of the reward upon completion climbing with each failed attempt.

So come one, and only one, who would risk traveling into the unknown and the deadly. For coin and, perhaps, noble favor in equal measure.​

 

[Vaezhasar Drakspae]

Petrus Ritus Iskandar

Vaezhasar went down the long hall. The marble lay bright and slick; some dutiful hand had rubbed it fit to blind a monk. Crystal hung above and winked. The walls held tidy landscapes—blue hills, tame rivers, a sunrise that kept its place and behaved. He approved; order beats squalor, even in palaces that breed it.

His armor moved with him. The plates breathed a little. The lining held his skin and then let go, like a polite octopus. Warmth lived under the metal; a slow pulse ticked in the joins. The stuff felt like latex with minds of its own—slick, gripping, clean. It trimmed his stride and set his weight right. His soles clicked, neat and steady, as if the suit counted steps and liked even numbers.

“This should be it,” he said. The visor made the sentence round and hollow, as if a minor spirit spoke from a jar. He faced a double door: tall leaves, dark wood, ivory chasing set into curls and knots that meant wealth rather than wisdom. The hinges looked greased. Someone here respected small mercies.

He set a gauntlet to the latch. Flesh under steel flexed and found the fit. Pads in the glove drew on and eased off, sure as leeches at a bathhouse. He rapped his knuckles—short, firm, exact. The sound ran along the clean floor and under the quiet pictures, and came back straight. He stood square to the seam, cloak still, staff at rest. A sensible man tests his gear; a clever man lets his gear test him back. If trouble sat inside, the door would hint. If work waited, he would take it. Either way, the hall kept its shine, and the suit kept its slow, helpful beat.

 

[Petrus Ritus Iskandar]

Spoiler: Petrus

The rapt, firm knocking was met with a breathe of rapt stasis. A crux of possibility contained in the silence of seconds before, with firm authority so casual it was all but a force itself, a voice from beyond the door answered. Clipped, imperious, but not cruel or ringing of undo impatience.

"Enter."

As the door swung wide and the amber eyes of the head of House Iskandar laid upon the figure who had answered his general summons he would straighten from the map he had bee considering. Two guards, clad in plate and with blades that hummed with minor, but no less potent, enchantments would stand raptly at attention to flank the door. Taking a moment to size up the giant of a man who now graced his presence Petrus would return his eyes down to the map before him, taking up a quill with ample dexterity, and wave the hand holding the quill at a chair across the table.

"Sit, should you desire the comfort."

Striking something off the map with a harsh stroke of the quill Vaezhasar could be forgiven for thinking, upon distant glance, that the map was to some intricate board game or other. But upon approach it was, instead, a map of the Allir reach and it's surrounding environs. Each piece representing, judging by the livery of the styled pieces, troops of the House, while the freshly drying ink across the name of the Falwood would be all the hint he would need to know what Petrus had just discarded from his considerations. In the next motion Petrus would set down the quill, take up a half-full glass of wine, take a single sip, and then flick his fingers to the guards at the door.

"Leave us. Ensure none intrude."

Sighing and placing the glass down Petrus would lean back in the chair and give his guest a slow, level sweep of the eyes before he spoke. His tone professional and ordered as the tides but, like the selfsame sea, carried an undercurrent of some inscrutable emotion. A dryness to his tone to outdo even some of his own vintages.

"I trust, you understand, that what I request in service to my house holds no bearing on my relation to the College, nor it's business?"

At odds with, well, everything about him until this point the magical aura about Petrus was not a thing of gilded glamor or wealth. He was not practitioner of metal magics nor of flames that could weld or shape. Instead about the nobleman's person Vaezhasar would sense... nature. An orderly, swirling wind of the scent of grapes and the earth itself conveyed entirely by his presence. Utterly, entirely out of place compared to the artificial opulence in which Petrus resided.


Vaezhasar Drakspae​

 

[Vaezhasar Drakspae]

Petrus Ritus Iskandar
Vaezhasar saw the chair and took it. He lowered his weight a notch at a time. The wood groaned, held, and earned his respect. The suit eased him down; the inner lining gripped and let go, neat as valves. He set the horned staff by the leg. It stood straight on its own. He let it.

“I am not here for the college,” he said. “Set that worry aside.”

He tipped his helm. The horns drew a slow arc, like a compass on a map.

“I do not plan to meddle with your underlings,” he went on. “You need hired muscle. You said so without saying so.”

He drummed his fingers on the blue breastplate. The metal answered with a small, living thrum.

“That, I can provide,” he said. “But it costs. Coin will not cover it. I want favors—plain ones, due on demand. No ifs. No buts.”

 

[Petrus Ritus Iskandar]

The man before the Patriarch of House Iskandar was making a decidedly horrid first impression. He at least had the care and decorum to remain civil but all that he said in relation to the venture on offer was utterly, completely wrong. Petrus's lip curled, a show of disapproval, as he gently set the wine to swirling in it's glass and let out a low sigh. His voice absolute, firm and near enough to dismissive to almost make him seem tired.

"No."

Came the simple reply before he took another drink, using the silence to let his words hang in the air before he removed the glass from his lips and closed his amber eyes.

"Not muscle."

His eyes opened, meeting the visor of that living metal helmet, and his gaze was piercing enough to reach the man inside and lay upon him the severity of the situation.

"What I desire....."

He began, pointedly not stating that he needed anything the man could provide.

".... is discretion. Not force of arms."

Petrus corrected pointedly before his eyes narrowed.

"As for your.... ambition in asking for more than the offered price.... I can respect a man who knows his worth."

Another drink, another drowning silence, before he sighed.

"However, such a man must also know the worth of what he is able to offer at any given time. As well as be aware of the risks too much trust, given too quickly, can cause."

The glass was set down, the gentle sound of it's impact with the table acting a period to end that statement.

"Should you desire more clandestine, more appropriate recompense, then that trust must be earned. One singular, brief employ affords you no such frivolities. Repeated appearances, however, could allow such a relationship to take root."

Vaezhasar Drakspae​

 

[Vaezhasar Drakspae]

Petrus Ritus Iskandar
Vaezhasar snapped his fingers; from a brief fizz of octarine sparks there materialized a neat scrap of parchment. Pinched between forefinger and thumb, it looked less conjured than simply borrowed from some nearby bureau of records. He cleared his throat in the deliberate manner of a lecturer beginning his notes.

"It appears," he intoned, "that your past retainers consisted chiefly of mercenaries, and that a preponderance of them either perished outright or vanished conveniently during the assignments you contrived. Such statistics hardly inspire confidence in your notions of discretion."

He crushed the parchment into a pellet, rolling it idly between the armored palms of his hands, as though weighing the matter with mechanical detachment.

"Still," he went on, "the precise nature of the undertaking is immaterial, since I shan’t be the one soiling my hands with it. Instead, I can supply a sizable menagerie of familiars to discharge the labor. You may consider each familiar a distinct hireling, whose collective exertions should equal—indeed surpass—those of any single mortal underling. Besides," and here his tone assumed the airy casualness of a man discussing expendable ledgers, "they are delightfully replaceable."