27 May 2024

I was evenly split between which of the two perspectives I should take for this scene (including the bit right after; still need to write that). Sasha could have been fun, but I’m still parsing how both the player and the character think, as I don’t know them as well as the other players.

George was dead tired, and didn’t want to bother much with people, especially when his stomach still felt like it would rebel at any moment. So as soon as the Sunkeeper commander finished his spiel, George booked it to the nearest tavern.

He ordered his usual remedy after a long sea voyage; one sip was enough to confirm it tasted as terrible as it did at any other tavern. Once he finally settled in, he started listening to what other folks were saying. Never hurt to get a lay of the land. A few conversations in particular caught his ear.

“Has anyone seen Charlotte lately? Don’t think she’s been snagged by whatever’s roving the slums these days, did she?”

“You hear what happened at the Rose Temple? Apparently, one of their priests went nuts and murdered a priestess. They say vampires got to him or summat.”

“Anyone else see that ship as just came in? They say it took on a bloody kraken. Codswallop, I say. Wouldn’t be a ship left to come in if one o’ those nasties attacked.”

The last worried George a bit; if they realized he’d been on he ship, they’d pester him about it, and he’d really rather be left alone. He noticed the genasi girl, Sasha, doing her rounds, asking about some fellow named “Stuart”. General consensus seemed to be that he was one of the ones who’d been “disappeared”.

Eventually, Sasha decided she’d learned what she could here, and asked the bartender if she could play a bit of music. George thought he recognized the melody; it was a beautiful rendition of an old Kadrashan tune. Didn’t quite fit in with a place like this, though, and… Well, it brought up memories George would rather leave buried for the time being.

The rest of the crowd didn’t seem to care much for it, either, based on all the booing Sasha received. She muttered something under her breath–George figured some Kadrashan curse words–then stepped down, glowering out over the crowds.

That’s when someone recognized George. “Hey, wasn’t you one of the ones that was on that ship? The wrecked one?”

George leveled a glare at the man, but the man ignored him. “Yeah, you was! Hey, tell me. What the bloody hell happened?”

The exclamation drew a large crowd, and it took far too long for him to work his way free and get outside. That’s when he noticed Sasha stalking off toward the temple, and decided to follow her.