Chapter 18: Isekai Life & Dwarfseye

Tresens, like many cities that depend on mining, had, over time, attracted a sizable minority of dwarves, who came looking for work, mineral wealth, or came with their families. And, also over time, apathy and distrust fomented between the culture of the dwarves and the human rulers of Tresens, as dwarves occasionally consider things like filial loyalty, ancient codes and personal honour paramount over trifling human laws, and human lords often prefer that their laws and decrees be followed. And so, as often happened, crime began to get organized among the dwarves, initially as a sort of militia to police dwarves dealing with dwarven problems and, eventually, this and that happens and now they’re a full blow mafia, right down to the racketeering, smuggling, turf wars (the docks had their own, thriving human-based thieves’ guild), and all.

Voss explained the situation fairly basically as we walked, but it wasn’t difficult to fill in the blanks with my previous life’s knowledge of how the Italian mafia got started.

As for what Shafttown was ... apparently, mountain dwarves in particular often have difficulty with sunlight allergies, something that doesn’t quite affect a third of their race. Of course, anyone with a minimum of sense would posit that maybe moving overland to a human surface city would be a bad idea for such afflicted individuals, but the dwarves eventually accommodated this problem by buying up a bunch of spent mining shafts and literally cutting out an entire district from the inside of a mountain. The dwarves called it home, and the humans called it Shafttown.

And so, our objective of the moment: go to Shafttown, try and find a member of a ruthless and semi-racist mafia, and maybe find out that we’d be fighting an entire thieves’ guild on their home turf that most assuredly was not designed to accommodate humans and elves.

When I pointed it out, Katriana asked, “Well, do you have any better ideas?”

But, I did not. Give me a dungeon or a trap or a rules situation and I bet I could outthink it or at least come up with a solution to try. But a lot of this investigation nonsense was mostly new to me.

“Don’t worry, Theodore!” Ashryn said in an attempt to cheer me up, “I checked out astrological forecast last night, and it predicted that we’d have good fortune!”

Somehow that didn’t cheer me.

But still, we walked on, only taking a small break for Voss to grab some more snacks off a street vendor and for Ashryn to cast Cure Light Wounds and heal Katriana’s hand the rest of the way.

We were drawing closer to the entrance to Shafttown when an armoured man fell in beside me, slowing his pace to match.

“Good morning, sir Theodore, how are you today?”

I looked to the side to see the smiling face of a familiar guardsman.

“Headed into Shafttown for any particular reason? Meeting someone, perhaps?”

I grimaced. It was the same man who questioned us at the Lazy Ox three days ago.

Katriana was immediately on guard, and Ashryn didn’t seem to happy either. Voss seemed to be trying to fade into the background, though.

“What do you want?” Katriana asked, scornfully.

“Ah, nothing, really,” the guard replied, keeping pace with us, “Did you know that there’s a bounty, now, for the arrest of the arsonist?”

My frown deepened. Was this guy thinking of turning us in for the reward?

“Well, that’s good! We’re on the trail of the arsonist right now!”

I could have groaned. Thank you for your contribution, Ashryn.

“Oh, are you?”

“Yeah! We found out it has to do with a dwarven thieves’ guild, so we’re checking that out right now!”

The guardsman spun me a little bit so I could look at him better. His eyes went to Ashryn briefly, the looked back at me. “Is she serious?”

I gave him a brief nod.

He paused and thought for a bit. “Come with me,” he said, leading us into Shafttown.

I glanced at Katriana, who shrugged. “It’s not like we have any other leads right now...”

The guard took us to a pawn shop right near one of the entrances to Shafttown. I noticed Voss keeping his distance, shadowing up a few meters back in the crowd, which was probably wise. Who knows what this guy would so?

The guard led the way into the pawn shop, Ashryn and I followed. Katriana decided to hang back, maybe keep on eye from outside? Either way, we walked right into a shakedown. As in, the guard had to the proprietor of the shop, the skinniest dwarf I’ve ever seen, lifted a foot into the hair and was shaking him.

“I thought you told me that your people weren’t involved in the arson, eh, Bandek? You said that burning down temples wasn’t in the best interests of the guild, didn’t you?”

“Aye, Captain Hawkins, aye! Word is, the Guildmaster doesn’t want no temples burned in case ‘e ever needs a rezzie ‘imself!”

“So what’s this I hear about these fine young adventurers investigating your guild for the arson?”

The dwarf looked at Ashryn and I in a panic. I can’t imagine a short, chubby wizard and a half-dressed elf were very threatening, but he was scared all the same.

“Alright! Alright. We smuggled in the fire snakes, but when the guildmaster ‘eard what they were meant to be used for, he put the kibosh on the whole deal.”

The captain slammed the dwarf into the wall of his own shop. Wait, was he doing it to be threatening or because his arms were tired? Either way, Ashryn gripped my arm in worry, and I kind of felt bad for the dwarf. Clearly, police brutality was just fine in this city.

“But the temple burned anyway, didn’t it?”

“Aye! W-we think they got an unlicensed thief to do it!”

Captain Hawkins unceremoniously dropped the dwarf, who collapsed in a relieved heap on the ground. Then, he pointed at me.

“A guard can’t walk into Shafttown without making trouble, but if you and your party capture this thief, we’ll split the reward money five ways. That’s fifty gold a pop for you all.”

I thought about it. “Yeah ... alright, but we’ll need a name and where to find this thief.”

Captain Hawkins reared a foot as if to kick the pawnbroker on the ground, who raised his hands defensively and began babbling again.

“Smokey Enna is ‘er name! Lives in the back end of Dull Corner! But you’ll have to be quick, the guildmaster sent a brute squad to take care of her for disobeyin’ the guild and stirrin’ up this kind of trouble!”

Great, I just agreed to maybe go toe to toe with a bunch of dwarven hitmen. But, if we do make it ... that’s five hundred gold to split, and that’s not nothing.

I’ve got a kingdom to take over, after all.

We left the pawnshop, to where Voss and Katriana were waiting. Captain Hawkins gave them a nod, and pointed back up the street. “I’ll be in the East Docks Guardhouse with your reward, come meet me there when you’re done.”

And with that, he walked off.

“See? I told you we’d have good luck!” exclaimed Ashryn.

I explained the situation as it stood to Voss and Katriana. Turned out, it was Katriana’s turn to voice concerns.