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Kezrin and Derscha-

I saw the note about those journals from Caer Darrow and don't mind taking a closer look to see if we can't find the set. I've gone up to look through our old offices and see what I can find.

-Brae

It seemed like the perfect project to keep her mind occupied. Brae thumbed through the log for more details as the boat rolled up the river towards the Plaguelands and Caer Darrow. On a purely intellectual level, they were interesting enough without the bits of necromancer spirit. She had to admit, though, that the bits were what had her going. The kind of power those spells required would always interest any practitioner of magic, arcane or otherwise.

There wasn't really much to go on. She bit her lip and tugged a curl again. Tearing off in the middle of the night had probably not been the best option, but she was here now. She'd have to make the best of it. The boat dropped her down shore some way from the place. Captains were especially wary about it, given the circumstances surrounding the AAMS's move. She didn't mind walking. Brae hiked her bag higher on her shoulder and made her way northward, keeping mindful of her surroundings as she walked and thought.

Aeldgyth glanced at the note, even though it was addressed to Derscha. The AAMS maintained absolute secrecy for their clients, but within the organization, information flowed much more freely -- or that was what she told herself, anyway.

The name "Caer Darrow" leapt right out, and Aeldgyth winced at the memory. The Caer Darrow Renewal Project had been her signature program during her time as CEO -- and it had been a miserable flop.

She'd bought the deed to the entire island off one of the Barovs (she couldn't remember exactly which one) for a song. A song! Ruined, abandoned, and neutral, it had been the perfect place to build a peaceful, cooperative trade hub for both factions.

Well, apart from the ghosts, anyway. And the crazed cultists. And the screaming heads popping out of the lawn to insult you while you worked, and the curses, and the lack of indoor plumbing, or for that matter a non-ruined "indoors" to put it in...

...yes, all in all, it was probably for the best that Aeldgyth had retired to the Hot Springs Resort, leaving someone with a better understanding of real estate in charge of the AAMS. Still, given what the older staff knew of that unfortunate time out at the Caer Darrow Renewal Project, they probably had a responsibility to send someone after this elf, before she got herself into TOO much trouble...

Brae tugged a curl in aggravation. Loa! How could she have been so stupid? Had she taken the time to read the log properly, she would have known the original journal was in the vaults. The journal that probably held all the clues she needed to finding the whole set. Yet here she was, covered in cobwebs and dirt and trading insults with the screaming heads in the garden (some of them were quite amusing) trying to pull the proverbial water from stone.

A string of invectives- most of which were in Zandali or its related troll dialects- filled the air of the ruined outbuilding. She wasn't about to just go all the way back to Booty Bay now. She tugged her curl again, chewing her lip and trying to shrug off the restlessness that had driven her here as an unnecessary distraction.

Telirra tromped into the office after the accursed rain had cut her most recent training session short. Passing by the board for any new Shield work she noticed the note from Brae. A small frown crossed her face and she made a mental note to keep her Stone on her persons at all times until she returned. The Light only knew what trouble Brae could get into up in that place...

Spriggel watered the garden skulls, quietly humming the Jingle to herself.

She never really paid attention to what the skulls were saying which was only fair as they obstinately returned the favor.

She'd water them, weed around them, and sometimes just lay back among them and watch the cloud dragons and cloud flowers float across the sky, the skulls' natter-natter, click-click, scream-scream providing an unusually soothing background sound.

The AAMS office had moved out a long time ago, but she still came up here anytime she needed to get away. Lately, with the desk repairs delayed, that was almost weekly.

Any day now, Derscha was going to realize her desk was gone these past few months and then it would only be a matter of time before she penned its absence on yours truly.

((Brae, it is very possible for Spriggel to have not noticed you there. Short of tripping over each other, Spriggel would attribute any evidence of ya'll there to debris blown in by the wind. And she only comes up to tend the garden then leaves.))

It had taken a bit of work to get Yoresh to agree to let her out of his sight long enough to teleport back so she could get the original journal. Brae nearly tore up the pathway, since she'd been rather a bit longer than expected, having arrived during Lounge in Hardwrench and didn't want the troll getting...restless.

In her rush through the garden as a shortcut, Brae didn't notice the gnome and ended up quite literally tripping over her with a yelp of surprise. The journal skidded across the soil and Brae was thankful she'd warded it and herself before coming back. She blinked, squirming away from one head that was feeling particularly bitey that morning. "Loa! What did I trip....oh!" Spriggel finally came into slightly swimming vision and Brae switched to Common. She'd seen the gnome around the offices in passing, but had only really been introduced maybe once.

"It's...Spriggel right? I'm so, so sorry about that...are you all right?" As if the day weren't going to be interesting enough, she couldn't wait to try to explain to Yoresh that not only did she work with gnomes, but technically for one, too.

Yoresh stopped his agitated pacing when he heard her yelp and hurried out the door, nearly tripping over his pack and a little down the road to the bizarre garden of heads. "What happened?" he asked her as he lifted her to her feet with one arm. He reached for the journal and grabbed it for her, when he finally noticed the gnome. It was without thought that he stepped a little in front of the mage. "What's that doing here," he sneered. "Did she attack you? Are you ok?"

“Garble, garble. It’s . . . Spriggel right? I’m so, so sorry about that . . . are you all right?” the elf lady said.
-----
Spriggel had been weeding a bit of the garden, quietly humming the jingle, when she heard someone approaching. She looked over her shoulder to see who it was and was presented with a peculiar puzzle.

An elf lady in a hurry. In deserted Caer Darrow. With a book.

Not recognizing at first that the elf was a fellow AAMSer, Spriggel deduced that the elf lady must be a librarian delivering a book. But to whom? There were no current residents in Caer Darrow. Well, unless you counted the planted heads. Oh and Spriggel, but no one knew she was here. Puzzled, Spriggel paused and gave no verbal warning. And kneeling, she was unable to scramble away fast enough to prevent the collision. The gnome and the book sprawled in the garden dirt.

“Garble, garble. It’s . . . Spriggel right? I’m so, so sorry about that . . . are you all right?” the elf lady said.

Getting to her feet, brushing herself off, pulling her hat back on properly, Spriggel barely had time to reply “I’m o. . . .” before a troll came barreling out of the old office building to Spriggel’s rescue. “It is apparently raining Horde in Caer Darrow today”, Spriggel thought to herself.

He grabbed the elf and shoved her behind him and a safe distance away from Spriggel. Then in a language the gnome didn’t understand (probably some arcane troll dialect, she decided), he garbled something at Spriggel, obviously asking if she was okay and if she needed him to protect her further from the elf.

Afraid he might take it upon himself to preemptively defend the gnome by attacking the elf (those two races were known to have “issues”), Spriggel began circling to his left trying to get between him and the elf to protect HER from HIM. Well maybe not “protect” (the handful of weeds she still held wouldn’t likely do more than confuse him); “block” might be a better word; "trip" if nothing else worked.

And thinking of blocking – What a peculiar defensive position he was in, what with the elf BEHIND him. She shook her head in disbelief.

Well once she made herself understood, she would be sure to have him sign up with one of the AAMS Shield Bearer’s courses to learn proper and effective defense.

For now as she tried to circle, she addressed the troll in pidgin Orc with a strong Gnomish accent,

“I O K she O K.”

Brae was dusting herself off when it all seemed to go a bit !@#$-eyed. She hadn't really gotten around to explaining the AAMS as of yet, or how it worked. She blinked at the gnome, who was moving to get between..oh, that wasn't going to be a very good idea at all....

Rapidly, she replied to Yoresh first- before he decided the gnome was a threat. "No- not at all, love. She's a colleague, actually. It's...a bit complicated, well not that complicated really, but we work together. I just didn't see her in the garden and tripped. Perfectly fine." She offered him a smile that covered a faint sense of panic. She'd heard things about when happened when Spriggel was about, and most of them ended in 'complete disaster'.

She switched back to Common for the gnome. "Don't mind Yoresh, he's a touch grumpy, but otherwise perfectly sweet. He's with me." She offered another smile. There was no way a long day was going to go much better, was it?

Yoresh had shifted to keep the gnome in front of him, his body easing into an aggressive stance. "You be mock me?!" he snarled in common. The way she spoke she must take him for a complete moron. The thought that she might not know anymore orcish didn't even occur to him right at that moment. However, Brae's words gave him pause and he stared at her, careful to keep the gnome in view, his body straightening up again. "You work with that?" he said rudely, jabbing a finger in her direction.

He nearly choked when Brae told the gnome he was 'perfectly sweet'. "I am not!" he blurted indignantly, not realizing how childish that had sounded till after it had left his mouth. "What exactly are you two working on?"

Brae gave him a long, assessing look before continuing. The fact he understood any Common at all was...news to her, anyway. One ear twitched slightly, although she continued to smile. "He is, too, when he's not being a big baby." She chose not to answer the rest for the moment.

He was with Braedorialai?
A troll librarian assistant.
How unique.

Although one would have to wonder how practical.
The elf had also accused him of being a big baby, so the two of them were obviously on good terms.

Spriggel was musing over this when the troll addressed her with much enthusiasm, if she was reading his body language correctly. “You be mockme?” he asked.

This was getting peculiarier and peculiarier: Mockme?

Luckily her years of translating allowed her to quickly determine the import of this trolloquism. He must be from a backwater tribe that still practiced cannibalism, and was asking,

"You be mock meat?"

Not mockme (whatever that was), but mock me't with the troll silent "T". As in not food meat, but faux meat - not to be eaten.

So as fast as she could, Spriggel agreed (in her “excellent” orcish since his common was only passable), nodding enthusiastically while pointing to herself, assuring him before he got hungry: “Me mock me’t yes.” Then pointing first at Brae and then at the troll, she continued, “Like she mock me’t and you mock me’t too.”

Yoresh narrowed his eyes and growled angrily when the Gnome nodded, but the words leaving her mouth made no sense to him and he sneered in irritated confusion. Is she making fun of me? "She's making fun of me," he growled at Brae. "Come here brat," he snapped in common, advancing on the Gnome. He grabbed her by the collar and lifted her up to his eye level. "You think I funny, yes?" he growled out. "I burn you up, no more mock then, eh? Crazy one."

Brae made a strangled sound. This was not going well at all. "Love, please put her down. I'm not sure you understand each other properly." That's putting it mildly.... "Just set her back down and we can try this again, shall we?"

She'd eased in next to the troll and set her hand on his wrist, encouraging him to lower the gnome. "Let's try -not- to murder my co-workers over a misunderstanding, all right?" She pitched that last bit in quiet Amani for his ears only. "As you're well aware, Orcish is difficult enough without a filter of Common in front of it."

Spriggel cheerfully swung her legs back & forth through the air, almost but not quite applying her shoes to the troll’s chest.

He had called her a brot, one of those delicious meaty dwarven sausages only available during the Brewfest holiday and then he’d threatened to “burn you up, no more mock (me’t implied, obviously).”

For just a second, she thought, “Oh Light,” but then realized that this was a real world example of the very droll troll sense of humor one heard of. She giggled. Then her stomach grumbled at the thought of festival sausages, which made her giggle even more.

Meanwhile, Braedorialai had put her hand on the troll’s arm, coming to Spriggel’s “rescue”.

These two needed to get their act together.

They clearly had not worked together long – (1) Braedaorialai hadn’t giggled at the troll’s jest and (2) they kept flip-flopping who was the rescuer & who the meanie.

Spriggel giggled again, smiling at the two librarians, while patiently swinging her legs, waiting for the troll to set her down. The elf clearly had him in hand, as the superior librarian should. She’d let her handle him. She glanced back and forth between the two, smiling.

As Yoresh became more and more distracted and confused by the Gnomes behavior, his anger seeped away and he frowned, staring at the little woman swinging her legs like a child and giggling. It was just too bizarre and he wondered if all Gnomes were like here. If so, his prejudice towards her kind was not wholly unfounded.

When Brae put her hand on his wrist he heaved a heavy sigh and lowered his arm, dropping her the last foot instead of setting her down.

"Is there something wrong in her head?" he asked in his native tongue, annoyance lacing his words.

Remembering he still had the book in his other hand he held it up for Brae to take.

He was rewarded for putting the gnome down with a bright smile. "Thank you, love." She answered his question with a faint shrug. "She's...Spriggel." To be fair, such an explanation was entirely enough in the office. Brae glanced at the gnome with another slight smile, idly wondering what her step-daughter would have thought about the whole thing. She tugged a curl and gently took the book from his hand. Lanth would have rolled her eyes at him, probably. Brae felt a pang of guilt. So caught up in her own head during the mess, she'd lost touch with the girl. It might have saved them all time if she hadn't, but who knew, really?

It was old and beaten and with an enormous rent in the middle from some kind of blade. A gleeful sense of malice faded away the longer she held the book and the mage made a face. The thing was decidedly bad mojo- and if there were intact journals out there, they had to find them before some fool picked them up.

Oh, you're no fun. Barbecued gnome would have looked -lovely- in the garden.

Brae froze and blinked at the book. She frowned slightly and tugged a curl. That shouldn't have been possible.

Oh, it's possible, girl. You think a few little wards and a knife are going to keep me locked up in here? That's laughable.

Frowning, Brae shoved the journal roughly in a pocket and smoothed her features into a smile for the other two. "Well, now that we've got introductions out of the way..." There was a faint air of distraction and the smile didn't quite sit right. This was bad, bad, bad moj- and she'd seen some seriously bad mojo in her day.

She thought the priestess had been fun.

The spirit could sense that her book was being handled once again. How interesting that it was in the possession of that hypocritical little company from before. She recalled the little gnome, although the the elf and the troll had not been present last time. Oh, no, she would have remembered those two.

The priestess had been powerful, had she dared to admit it and stop limiting herself. She had been so intent on self-control and moderation that it had sickened Avanidra. Only the weak were unwilling to pursue their desires. So she'd played a game, removing the unsuspecting woman's inhibitions and watched with glee as the priestess practically threw herself on the closest object of desire. A shame the young man showed more restraint than she expected.

The incident had scared the priestess. After that, it had been easy to prey on her insecurities and send her mind into a spiral of self-doubt, allowing Avanidra to seize control. Unlike the priestess, she had no compunction against using shadow magic against anyone who stood between her and her goals.

Avanidra sensed something similar in the elf, a wellspring of doubt, although this one was on guard. It would take some work.

And the troll. . . oh, what a delight.

The two presented so many possibilities. The gnome, too, perhaps. It would be so much fun to play with them, but limited as she was, she would have to be careful. Weakness was such a hindrance.

She would simply have to get stronger.

((I hope Khromie & Sizy don't mind. *waves literary license towards them*))

Spriggel dropped to the ground; the assistant clearly had forgotten that his feet were a bit further down. She didn’t want him to get into any more trouble than he was already due, so she quickly brushed herself off and smiled up at the two.

The situation here was getting clearer.
She’d seen the book.
And Yoresh was definitely going to be in trouble.

Maybe he had thought the book was trying to get away and had stabbed it to a table? Trolls didn’t read many books from what Spriggel had learned from her studies (a couple of Alliance cross-cultural books that she’d borrowed from Khromie & Sizy’s immense library; one could learn many interesting facts about other races in those books). He might not have even known what it was.

Which again called into question, Brae’s selecting him as a librarian assistant.

And its condition explained why Brae had been in such a hurry coming here with the book, why she’d been distracted and run into Spriggel. It explained why the troll was here – hiding out but found out anyways. It explained everything.

Yoresh queried the elf with a fearful tone and then handed her the book. The book with a knife gash through its heart.

Brae froze, staring at the damage the troll had done to the book.
(He was in for it now.)
She was clearly upset and shoved the book in her pocket. Trying to dismiss the gnome so that she could wreak vengeance on her assistance, Brae said, in a distracted tone, “Well, now that we’ve gotten introductions out of the way . . . “

Who knew what plans Brae had for Yoresh once Spriggel was out of the way?

Spriggel needed to diffuse this situation fast before someone got hurt. Luckily her stomach grumbled again. “Yes. What were your meal plans? I have a few items in my pack I would be glad to share.” She tried to squeeze between the two, pretending her pack was behind them, hoping to break them apart and prevent any altercation from occurring.

The bonus was she might get some keen insight into troll/elf disciplinary actions if she could stay longer.