Quoted By:
<span class="mu-i">Presently, on Olier’s Wharf in Scrimshander Mount: </span>
Your name is Chlotsuintha, and right now, even though you are in a lifting oil Refinery that is in the process of burning down – or in certain places, exploding – you cannot help but smile. You have unexpectedly managed to find the payroll for the entire operation, tucked into the tight little shelves of a steel strongbox. In purses, all made of the same decent leather as the one that you swiped off of the body you picked clean just minutes ago.
The sound of wood cracking somewhere nearby snaps you out of your avarice-induced reverie, and you actually physically lunge at the open safe, plucking out purses with both hands until there is nothing left in the safe but loose papers and receipts. You carry the lot of them over to the desks, cradled in your arms, grinning all the while. And you grin grows even more broad when you hear the sweet clinking thud that they all make when you drop them down on the lacquered wood surface. Moving quickly, you unsling your dress from over your shoulder, untie it, and then loosen the belt that you sinched it shut with. Suppressing the urge to cackle, you shove the purses inside, then bolt over to the other strongbox, on the other side of the room.
You start with the key that opened the other strongbox, and no surprise … it opens this one as well. Unfortunately, this one does not have payroll purses inside, just binders that have CONTROLLED stamped on their spines, along with the year. The records here just go back three years. If you had to guess, any older records would probably be taken by the Imperial Arms and kept in some secret reference library somewhere. Or maybe they would just be destroyed. On a whim, you pull one out and flip through it, but you can barely make heads or tails of what you are reading. You are not sure if it is some sort of shorthand, or if it is actually a cypher, but either way, you can think of no way that you would profit by taking these books. Before closing the ‘box, though, you pull several more of them out at random, to make sure that there is nothing else hidden behind them. Satisfied, you start to walk away from the box, only to stop, as soon as you notice the vicious looking pistol – a duckfoot – nestled in a specially modified holster, on a belt hanging from a peg. You do not even really think about it, you just grab the thing, and start adjusting the belt and holster so it sits as comfortably as such a cumbersome contraption can sit on your hips.
Oddly, the powderhorn, shot and the loading equipment for the pistol are nowhere to be found in the room, even after you take the time to rifle through both of the desks and some free-standing cabinets. That is not to say that it is time wasted – just the opposite. At first glance, all of the books in the room were just accounting ledgers, like the ones that were in second strongbox, but you found some more interesting tomes mixed in here and there.