Chapter 14: Problem Solving

July 12

Neiia goes to look for clues on the street. She spends about four hours on this activity. Kieron also wanders around in taverns, etc. Kieron only manages to confirm that Saul doesn’t have doesn’t have clean hands. Neiia finds out that there has been some disturbance near the moneylender and apparently there’s someone here who wishes Saul harm. Additionally, that crime boss Clegg Zincher has possibly gotten involved in the matter.

The group thinks about what could be done, and Kieron says she could disguise Neiia to look like a stranger, and then Neiia would go to the moneylender to talk about a loan. At the same time, her purpose would be to talk with the moneylender and try to get information from him about the matter. The disguised Neiia manages to talk her way inside and gets herself a 10 gold loan, but when she hears that the interest is 25% per month, it’s a loan shark loan. Neiia takes only 5 gold as a loan. In addition, she finds out that apparently the moneylender isn’t involved in the matter himself but blames Saul for it. Neiia convinces the moneylender that it’s actually probably one of their common enemies, who wanted to hurt them both, meaning it also harms the moneylender’s business when word spreads.

Neiia returns to the others and tells them about it. Saul visits the moneylender and gets him to return to the original payment plan.

July 14

All the city’s seagulls start flying in a circle. The seagulls fly in circles for about five minutes, and after that, they start flying straight toward the sea but crash into the upper part of the gate, and 90% of them go splat. 10% continue their journey to the sea.

July 15

The seagull corpses start to smell bad.

July 17

The week’s situation at the casino remains the same as last week.

Neiia gets really good information for the group’s adventurer guild mission. She gets her hands on a relatively complete report of who is studying with whom and who is in whose service, and such Said report is the work of the central kingdom’s intelligence service.

The group copies the paper and sends the report to the adventurers’ guild. They decide to destroy the original so it can’t be used to find out who got their hands on it.

July 24

Next week. The situation remains unchanged. Neiia finds out that some group has discovered that it’s an echo of some spell and it’s an ongoing ritual into which someone has already put quite a lot of energy.

July 27

An earthquake occurs in the city.

August 2

A response comes from the adventurers’ guild saying it would be good to continue investigations for a couple of weeks and try to see if they can find out anything about others’ research. Kieron notices from the letter that it’s signed by Am Dana, that is, Ra’s brother. Since Ra doesn’t feel entirely positive about his brother, Kieron doesn’t mention this information to Ra.

On the same day, Samaritha also announces that she has now gotten a post as an apprentice to one of the Cipher Gate researchers. So this researcher has gotten tired of studying the cloud and continues his own old research, and Samaritha now gets to do what she originally came here to do.

During the day, all the weather vanes also suddenly decide to turn to point at the cloud as well as they can.