World of Warcraft®

The man sat at a back corner table of the Slaughtered Lamb. He nursed his second mug of ale for the night, waiting patiently for the new recruit to arrive. He was to be the new recruit's handler.

To everyone else the Assassin's League was a farce. A fairy tale meant to scare little children and to keep good and honest folk good and honest. It was a fiction that others used as a scapegoat for whenever something bad happened that defied explanation.

To this man, however, the league was all too real. And the real stories, he knew, were often times stranger than the fiction.

In the distance, through the low hanging cloud of smoke and dim light, the man saw the entry door open partially then swing closed. This must be her, the man groaned within. He took another swig of his ale, mentally cursing himself. Of all the newer recruits with raw talent just waiting to be molded into master thieves, assassins, or out right stone cold thugs, he gets stuck with a veteran. A promising rogue who decided one day to up and leave the league. To go it solo. As if she were too good for the likes of the league.

The man spit on the floor at the thought. Too good for us. He grumbled. We'll see about that. The man watched with a sour expression as the gnome subtlely wound through the crowded tables to the seat opposite him.

"Gnomes." He grumbled with a gaze of disdain. "You make me sick."

The short gnome pulled the human sized chair back and climbed up to stand in the seat. The edge of the table came to just above her knees. She was clad in fitted leather armor of apparently common craftsmanship. A mixture of dark browns and blacks, the ensemble matched perfectly the idealized image one might have of a skilled thief or killer.

She bore only a single leather shoulder guard on her left. A wide collar lined with soft wool wrapped her neck, covering everything from the collarbone up the lower half of her face. While a few metal clasps and buckles were evident, they had been dulled and muted so they never gave even a glimmer. At fist glance it appeared she was unarmed, as her belt only held a series of common pouched. She folded her arms and silently stared at the man as he spoke.

"The lot of ya. Your entire race. The only use you lot have is your brainy contraptions. Other than that you should all be herded into a camp somewhere. Kept away from the normal folk."

So far so good. This one has some steel in her. She hasn't broken her gaze yet, and so far no sign of emotion. That's good. The man pushed his mug aside and leaned forward.

"Eh. Do you know who I am?" The gnome remained silent. Her cold dark eyes stared from behind two long locks of black hair that dangled before her. "I'm yer handler. You need a job, you come to me. You don't do anything unless you pass it through me first. If yer on a job and somethin goes wrong, you come to me. You need clean up, you come to me. You get into something unsanctioned, you're on your own."

"You gettin me cutesy?"

The gnome remained silent and still.

The man leaned in with a snarl. "Listen. I don't know who you think you are, thinking you could just leave the league like we're some sorta fan club. An' I certainly don't know how you ever got back in after flyin solo. I'm tellin'ya, clear as day, non'a that means squat. Right now you're nothin to me, which means you're nothin to the league, and you'll stay nothin until I says so."

He held her silent steely gaze for a long moment. Nothing. Not a response. Not even so much as a eye bat or a brow twitch. Who was this gnome? He sat back a little, keeping his elbows on the table.

"So it seems you've been given a chance to prove yourself. If you ask me this job is far beyond the likes of you, but the higher ups seem to like you... else you wouldn't be here. I'll suppose then that you either prove yourself or you die in the process, which as far as I'm concerned is a win-win all the way around. Now, to business..."

"A new client contacted us recently. She needs someone to procure a particular item from a heavily fortified location. A vault of some kind. We've done some poking around and its specification aren't a matter of public record. Hell, as far as we can tell no record of it even exists, and we combed through all our resources. Nothin. Its the damnedest thing. So the higher ups want me to send out someone to take a little peek. That's where you come in."

The man slides a folded parchment across the table. "Go there, take a look see, come back. Quick and easy. Once we have an idea what we're looking at, we'll form a plan from there."

The silent gnome unfolded her arms and took up the parchment. It read only:

Northshire Abbey
Northwing Library

* * * * * * * * * *
OOC:

[Edit]
In-Game Event
Oct.2:Thursday:Evening

((What was here no longer applies.))
[Place Holder]

In an isolated chamber, the books and parchments flew about, guided back and forth in an elegant dance to the waiting touch of an armada of floating quills. A blend of runic magic and subtle direction established the music's composer. Just a twitch of the wrist and a pinch of manipulation to route the natural arcane energies through the subtly cut lines along the arm of the arcanist. Stolen ledgers, pilfered receipts all converged to form a tapestry of information, entities too numerous to count, expressed in exquisite detail, yet consolidated into the larger whole.

A network formed before her - shell companies and their puppetmasters, extensive and well-thought out laundering schemes, zigzagging within an endless sequence of connections, with the peripheral data arraying itself.... well... on the periphery.

Three separate quills recorded notes in waiting books. "Loading up on inventory, sign of adverse operational trends." read one. "Poor debt to equity" read another. The final one recorded calculations, before writing "no significant trend noted".

Verronia gave brief preference to writing down her usual recommendations the usual way before a piece of the unrelated peripheral data caught her eye. The text and the digits swam in the animated blue dust that arrayed the other data. Tilting her head once to the side, she began to scribble something else.

"Scrying selection picked up possible additional lead, follow up with Warden Raintree."

((Consider that a tentative sign up))

[Edit]
In-Game Event
Oct.2:Thursday:Evening

07/01/2014 08:15 PMPosted by Verronia

((Consider that a tentative sign up))

((Awesome! Thank you :D ))

< Eth's main :)

((Also, for all you Conclavengers, I have posted up on our Guild Site. Feel free to utilize those threads as well.))

Cyburn, I said on the gchat i'm up for it, and here I am just solidifying my position

((Thanks Cy! Glad to hear it :) ))

Ettin here, I think I can join on Firin depending on when it is. I don't believe Ettin would join in unless it really catches her attention and she believes it is worth the trouble. Firin wouldn't actively join in on the Heist but he could distract people or protect those that get caught.

((ops! That should have been posted by Ethereål :/ ))
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The silent gnome stood in the saddle between two peaks overlooking the Northshire Valley below. To her right some hundred or more meters into the distance sat the white stone Abbey. The encroaching twilight of night darkened the woods surrounding the abbey, but did little to mute the structure's grandeur.

Memories of a conversation held not too long ago replayed in her mind. A discussion held with her once estranged sister, Lilith. Life is funny and occasionally fickle. It drew them both into different courses that would one day eventually draw them back together. And now here they were, working (as it were) in tandem.

Of course these things needed to be handled correctly. Now that she was back in with the League, requests needed to go through certain channels so that everything remained legitimate and that everyone got their cut. Whether in gold or in blood, everyone always got their cut.

She took a moment to double check her gear, confirming she had enough pressurized gas. She had plenty. More than enough to run her gadgets. She checked her daggers and tested their straps. She had all of the customized drone prototypes she needed, thanks to The Gnomerian, her unwitting benefactor.

This was just a fact finding excursion. A way to test defenses, locate obstacles, note weaknesses. The first of a few encounters, she would return another day in disguise by day to have another look. On jobs like these, this was her way. She needed to know everything she possibly could by heart before making a play, and even then it all had to be planned step by step. Things seldom went according to plan, but that was what plans are for, something to offer a clear direction and then to fall back on when things go south.

Confident and excited, energized with the anticipation she felt before every such task, Ethel activated the small collapsible glider on her back as she stepped off the sharp cliff face and into the night.
********************************************
((I'll be posting her IC finding soon. Something that she would be sharing with the Assassin's League and all those wishing to be involved in this Heist.))

The nights' reconnaissance went smoothly, as usual. The inclusion of stolen drone technology helped a great deal.

Avoiding detection while moving through the valley revealed a few minor challenges, mostly from local wild life. Situating herself high in the crook of a large tree beside the abbey, Ethel removed her few mechanized drones. When everything was in place, Ethel began her remote vigil.

By mornings' twilight she had a full spectral mapping of the interior of the abbey, thanks to tandem scans run by a feline drone and two small roaming mouse sensors. It would take another full twenty four hours to decompile the data collection nodes, but when it was finished that information would go a long way toward uncovering the secrets of Northshire Abbey; paramount among them being the general location of Conclave's hidden entrance to their archive.

High within the nook of a different large tree somewhere in Elwynn, Ethel relaxed into a gentle rest. In a crook beside her rested a rather weighty yet still portable cube. Another stolen prototype from The Gnomerian's proprietor Nixim Henris Dibik Blackwrench. It's functions were limited, but sufficient for her purposes. In hours it's processes would be complete.

As she drifted off into an easy slumber she wondered what wonderful things Conclave could be keeping. What could possibly warrant such stringent security that it needed to be kept hidden away, presumably beneath the abbey, and behind a hidden door?

Better yet, how much could she get for a few of those items?
Who would she even sell them too if she could get her hands on an item?

Time would tell....

Little more than two and a half days had passed. She had used a sworn courier of the League and in short order had confirmation of her package delivery. All she needed to do was wait.

... two and a half days. Ethel sat at a corner table lightly stabbing at the wooden table top with a dagger tip.

Somethings required patience to be done right, however patience never came naturally to her. She was impatient by nature, especially when things were out of her hands. Years of training, experience, and a litany of near-death mistakes had tempered her impulse to just go, do, get it done. Even if it meant going 'it' alone just to get it done.

The dark haired masked gnome sat in the corner of the Slaughtered Lamb. It was eerily quiet except for the faint dull taps of her dagger tip piercing the wooden table top again, and again.

She hated waiting. The gizmos of her mind twirled, considering ways to bide her time until she heard from Lilith.
Perhaps a bank robbery was in order. Nah.
Strong-arm robbery was never her thing. Still, it did present a wonderful challenge. For giggles she began mentally planning out how she might hit Stormwind's Trade District Bank..

A flutter of something over head caught her eye and with honed reflexes she spun the dagger in her fingers and thrust out at the anomaly. She felt the tip pierce something, but it didn't feel like flesh. Glancing up, she drew the dagger back to eye level. She quirked an eyebrow.

A strip of parchment? She drew the thin blade's tip closer.

A note.

Tilting the blade so she could see the message scrawled in ink across the long thin strip, she also tilted her head to read.

shhh come and see come and see a gift I have for thee
assent to enter where none wish to go and from where they can never leave
where devils and rogues know nothing else save starlight
there speak what men love more than life
hate more than death or mortal strife
that which contented men desire
the poor have and the rich require
the miser spends and the spendthrift saves
what all men carry to their graves

Her brow drew together in a dispassionate scowl. You have got to be kidding me. With a flip of her wrist she dislodged the note from her blade. I am not amused.

She twirled it in her fingers as she thought. Well, I wanted something to do. Might as well play along, see where this leads.

With a mental sigh she drove the blade back home where it blended nicely, nearly unnoticeable, with the rest of her armor and attire. Ethel rolled off her chair and drifted silently to the door, leaving behind the long strip of parchment.

Ward Chaser.

A curious little creature. Standing hunched he... it... was a little shorter than the gnome. Ethel couldn't make out exactly -what- it was. Gnome. Goblin. Grelin. Whichever, the creature calling itself Ward Chaser spoke in riddles with a squeaky-hoarse voice and always in the third person.

She would have thought it strange or odd, but being a gnome she'd seen stranger.

Whatever the case, it didn't seem intent on harm though she thought the creature appeared quite capable. It wore a strange goggle-mask and hood combination that covered its head. In the darkness and shadows it was difficult to discern of the erie smile was a mask or actually its own.

None of that really mattered to Ethel however. She had quickly solved its simple riddle, which was a meeting location, and met the creature. Being a mute, Ward Chaser did all of the talking which made the meeting short and rather curt. Not that the gnome would have had much to say anyway. It was all pretty straight forward.

As the masked gnome silently drifted her way down the canal streets she pulled the small package Ward Chaser had given her. Nearing a quiet nook along the canals she turned and found a small table beneath a tree. Private and relatively secure, she spread the small bundles contents across the wooden surface.

Her fingers held up a small red crystal of curious make. Her natural affinity to the general ebbs and flows of magic spoke to her, revealing that it was indeed a thing of magical origin. Setting it aside she fingered through a small stack of delicately crafted square parchment sheets. Each sheet bore a different sigil. They looked to be crafted from demonic runes. She couldn't read them, but knew enough to recognize. Finally she hefted a much smaller leather sack. Opening the draw string she poured out small circular emblems, also of a curious magical make.

Sitting backward on her stool against the tree she pondered her collection a moment before opening the short letter that came with. Devoid of any reference to person of location the letter simply gave terse instructions on the implementation of everything.

Make sense. She thought grimly. I can't say that I am a fan of the method. Gruesome and cruel as it will be, it would be the swiftest method of entry.

She took up one of the small medallions and turned it over in her hand. I would rather avoid the use of blood magic, especially that tinged with fel, however so slightly it may be... the fact remains.

Tapping her other finger on the tabletop Ethel sat in silent contemplation for a long moment.

Everything is set. The pawns are in place. I'll take everything to the League and move forward from there.

((Tentatively, the date for the In-Game Event is set for Oct.2 (Thursday) in the evening most likely.))

Scrawled in spattered ink as if by a childs hand across a long ribbon of thin parchment. At a glance its message is illegible.

To some it flutters from a darkened corner to drape itself across your path like a bit of debris dancing a dauntless dream.
Perhaps instead it found its mysterious way to your desk where it listlessly lays like a lazy lover.
It may be drifting across the floor of your abode to adhere to an appliance or to an archive of apparel, or be apprehended between an accounting of albums.

However it is that this came to you the curious twisting thing catches your eye.
Handle it as you may, but if you attempt to read the ribbon with minimal effort the scribbles begin to make sense.

A fertile shire north of the wynn
cradles an ivory priory within.
To the devout of the light this priory doth beckon,
to an opportunist it invites to come and to reckon.
Wondrous treasures within a vault are held,
until doors burst open and its secrets expelled.
Come the second day of the harvester's bandit
see what is wrought and partake in the gambit.

There is nothing malicious about the medium. A simple and common enough charm of magic laces the parchment and ink. Regardless if you understand the message or not, the words are legible by you for only a short period, mere minutes at best. Afterward they appear only as they had before, an abstract rendering of an abstract work. An abstract of an abstract. In a days time the ink fades. A day later the parchment ribbon turns brittle and useless.

-------------------------------------
((Just a little something for all you thieves, bandits, and villains if you'd like to get hooked in.))

Ethel had been stalking Northshire Abbey for nearly the past week.

Each day she'd return at a different time in a different disguise, each carefully crafted to hide her most distinguishing feature (other than being a gnome), the massive scarring and slight deformation of her lower jaw.

Most of the time the necessity for total ambiguity drove her to play her part extra safe, relegating her to positions on the outside of the action as it were. Getting too close to the abbey itself might get her noticed. Best to play down her presence as much as possible. Humans tended to not pay much attention to gnomes anyway, but even a momentary suspicious glance could spell danger much later.

In and out. Clean as a whistle. Ethel paused her yard work, raking the small cemetery beside the abbey clear of leaves. Strange idiom, she reflected for a moment.

Whistles are seldom so clean, always being blown into. Full of spittle and partially chewed food particulates.

She finished up her job and continued as normal, finding a quiet moment to slip into the shadows. She disappeared to a distant tree growing on the other side of the riverbank, far from the abbey. High within its full branches she'd stashed some simple supplies and gear, among them the security drone prototypes she'd stolen in Thelsamar. High in the tree, unseen by the very few who may venture near, Ethel changed out of her disguise and back into her meticulously crafted leather gear.

In her stakeouts so far she'd noted several individuals that appear to be the clerical sort, coming and going with books and reams of paper. Always seeming to be in a hurry. Most were young at that, likely just beginning their priestly training... or whatever it was they did inside. It had never held any particular interest until recently.

Securing a pair of small throwing knives, and a pair of circular throwing stars for 'counter balance', Ethel took up a pair energy blade dagger hilts thinking of where to place them on her belt. She double checked the baffled gas-compressed grapple lines also on her belt. One small circular node on each hip. More stolen prototypes from The Gnomerian in Thelsamar.

The grapple lines were a great steal. She'd tested them time and time again and the system hadn't ever failed her, though the gas-compression system required a bit of maintenance and could be touchy at times. The energy blade hilts were something completely new. She'd hadn't had a chance to test them beyond powering them on and off once or twice. Modified from a design used by New Tinkertown guards, they were meant to be as small and wieldy as a dagger with a more efficient power amplifier. Placing the hilts on her belt brought with it a small grin and errant thought.

I wonder if Tink knows that her professor, employer, and unrequited love interest is so much more than a simple genius inventor and robotics engineer. Ethel silently chuckled to herself while slipping on the tall neck guard that also served as a mask, covering everything from the bridge of her nose down to her collar bone.

I'd like to see her face when she discovers he's also an advanced weapons engineer. More of a hobby, but if he ever got into distributing his tech...

Ethel sat back in the nook of a thick branch and relaxed, closing her eyes. He'd make a killing.

As she drifted off into a short restful nap the small silent gnome walked through the next step in her plan. Singling out the right clerk on which to plant the small blood-red crystal given to her by her older sis...

No. This was business. Best remain focused.

... small blood-red crystal given to her by her current employer, a warlock of dubious nature. No easy task. The right clerk will have access to Conclave's Vault -and- be inside around the correct time. They had to be predictable in almost every way.

Thankfully the abbey was full of the priestly type. These were usually nothing if not predictable. Persons of stringent habit and ritualistic behavior usually were.

High in an unseen corner of the north library wing of the Abbey clung a small mechanical device. Its mechanical eyes watching the coming and going of the priests, clerics, bishops and various other usual staff.

From behind a modified gnomish cloaking device it waited and watched.

The pair of soulless orbs fixated on one. A man. A cleric, possibly, draped in simple clerical garb. He was thin and studious with salty dark hair. Clean shaven. A man just past his prime entering his advanced years. He paused for a long moment, holding a monocle to an eye while looking over a manuscript of some sort. Other priests glanced at him but continued on their way.

The room slowly cleared while he remained, standing silently in the corner of the room several feet below the hidden watcher. When the chamber was cleared the man shut the doors and moved to a long blue curtain that hung along the same wall. By all appearances it was simply an adornment of the Church of Light donning the colors of the Alliance along with emblems of the Alliance Lion's Head. Moving to this area of the wall, the cleric showed that it was so much more than this.

Manipulating an unseen switch, lever, or possibly a button of some sort, the wall dropped away with a very soft grating sound. The man stepped into the void and the wall rose back up. In the matter of a few seconds the man had disappeared behind an ingeniously fashioned false wall.

Some distance away high within a large tree sat Ethel. Her silent studious eyes gazed through the soulless oculus of her cloaked watcher. She grinned to herself behind high-collar wool lined mask.

So. Now I have my mark. She mentally sighed. And it only took six days to find him. Tapping the controls on her hand-held remote device, she began sending commands to her cloaked watcher.

Time to enter phase two...

He was well known in this section of the abbey.

While the specifics of his tasks eluded Ethel, she had observed through her cloaked mechanical watcher as the man came and went quite a bit the past few days. She noted all those that spent an inordinate amount of time within this particular library, and he was at the top of her mental list.

More than once she'd lost track of him while observing from an awkward angle. Not knowing he was the one to watch, she'd often lose track of his whereabouts only to have him strangely reappear some hours later. She could almost set a watch to his appearance and disappearances.

Keeping an eye out for him, she repositioned her watcher and waited. Finally her patience had paid off.

Inside the empty chamber Ethel's small mechanical watcher shifted. Its cloaking device deactivated to reveal a small mechanical squirrel. Modified for just such a specific task, tiny electromagnetic pads on its feet allowed it unprecedented agility while clinging to the smooth stone surface of the block ceiling. The device scurried upside down across the ceiling to the opposite wall. Tucking itself into the crease where the ceiling met the wall, it positioned itself and waited, reactivating its cloaking device.

Hours passed.

Like clockwork, on the dot, there was movement below the watcher. The false wall opened and out stepped the man. He turned to watch the false wall close. The watcher's cloaking device wavered, shifting from a blending mode to one that roughly imitated image of squirrel fur. Ethel crossed her fingers, hoping that it would be enough to fool anyone that might see her mechanical sentry into believing it to be just another nuisance creature.

When the man turned back to continue on his way, the mechanical squirrel pounced. It landed precisely where it needed to, on the man's lower back just above his wide padded cloth belt. Gripped in the mechanical squirrel's hind claw was the small blood crystal. The fall provide ample force that when it landed the blood crystal was deposited deep behind the man's padded cloth belt. The watcher then scurried like a made squirrel up the man's back, onto his head, down his chest and round his back again.

The man yelped and screamed. Each time he swatted at it, his assailant switched positions. His screams and cries drew swift attention and a couple of librarians entered the room to see what was the matter. Just as they did so, the mechanical squirrel (cloaked to roughly appear as a regular squirrel) leaped off the man and scurried through an open window. Pausing on a nearby tree branch Ethel fixated the watcher's audio/visual components onto the commotion inside the open window.

The two librarians laughed at the man, who was thoroughly embarrassed. He straightened his garments and continued on his way in a huff.

Ethel activated the watcher's return protocol and stowed away her remote control. The crystal should be in place so that the next time he sits it will crunch. So long as its against his skin and he's inside the vault, all else will go according to plan.

If the man remains true to his habits, he should be returning to the vault shortly with his dinner and some other material in about an hour's time.

[2 hours later]

Ethel's head spun. She blinked but it did little more than worsen her vision. Everything hurt. Sher muscles ached.

This...this isn't right.

The dark haired gnome slowly raised her head and the world spun. She splayed her limbs all about attempting to halt the motion. Something hard and sharp poked her hands on either side. Her feet kicked against something solid. Her eyes ached but she forced another blink.

Something's not right.

Everything was numb, from head to toe. Sensation slowly returned, which is how she knew she was shaking. She was on her back, facing up. She pulled her limbs in and crunched (as best she could) into a ball.

It all hurts so much. Why won't it stop? Please, make it stop.

She rolled to one side, curled like a fetus. Suddenly she felt warm. Very warm. It was shock. She was in shock. She had to be in shock, right?

That smell. Distinct. Copper.

Her vision finally began to focus. The world gradually eased and righted itself. Ethel turned her head and gazed upward. No sky. A ceiling of stone blocks. She wasn't outside hiding in her tree. Where... Was she... She pushed an elbow beneath herself and slowly rose. She was inside alright. Bookcases, tables, crates, and shelves littered with oddly shaped items. This had to be Conclave's infamous archives.

No. No, no, no....