JWTS1

So, to start with, the vessel Rising Gull and her rag-tag crew of misfits pulled into Lookshy's busy harbor in the late afternoon. The ship's cargo, about two dozen species of rare and curious beasts, for this is no ordinary merchantman, but the home of a traveling menagerie.

Anyway. Ship lands, the owner/captain/kubernetes Tarla Sha disembarks with her proreus et al, and hit the Harbormaster's office. Harbormaster registers them and assigns them warehouse 4A2. Staff oversees unloading of animals and setup of menagerie in warehouse 4A2.

The troupe plans on being in Lookshy only for two days -- a half-day spent setting up, a day exhibiting, and a half-day loading back up and sailing off to the next port. Their arrival in Lookshy coincides with the "Big Annual," the city's Festival of Re-Enlistment. There are beer tents, clog-dancers, red and black banners, and so forth, all being set up for the festival tomorrow.

Tarla knows a Guild liaison whose office is in Lookshy, and who keeps an eye open for exotic animals to sell her. She hoofs across town (noting as she does the lack of trash in the gutters, lack of beggars in the alleys, and the way everything has been built in accordance with strict fire codes and so on) to the Pavilion of Perfumed Rattlesnakes, the office block in which her contact, Supportive Tiger, keeps his books.

Traffic in the Pavilion is very light; it seems most of the staff and officers have taken the half-day off in preparation for the festival. Tarla finds the (broken, then set back in place) door to Supportive Tiger’s office, but he does not answer when she knocks. She steals a pencil and paper from the unoccupied receptionist’s desk, writes him a note, and slips it under his door before returning to the warehouse.

At the warehouse the crew is still setting up. Tarla confirms that the banners and signs she wants to attach to the outside of the warehouse will not violate Lookshy’s fire codes. She can hear the brass band in the warehouse next door rehearsing, which is making a lot of noise and scaring the hell out of the menagerie’s panic monkey.

She’s about to investigate the warehouse on the other side, which rumor has it is serving beer already, when a trio of Lookshy soldiers drive up in a carriage and inform her she is needed for questioning.

“What is this in regards to?” she asks them. “No, no, you misunderstand. We ask you the questions,” one of them responds. “Come with us, please.”

Seeing as how she has little to no choice, Tarla gets in the carriage and is taken up to the Manse, where she is questioned by Lt. Zumi Narikan. She deduces from the questions that Supportive Tiger is missing and his office ransacked, and that the MPs found her note to him. Narikan releases her after getting her went-to-the-Pavilion story and advises her to send word to him if she “remembers anything.” Tarla walks back to the warehouse and lets the ship’s officers know what happened. They’ve finished setting up the menagerie, so everyone heads back to the ship (minus a few guards), roll call, bed.

After roll call the proreus, who had stayed with the ship all day, tells Tarla a package for her was delivered and is in her room. Tarla goes and finds it: a cardboard box with a label from a courier service and her name on it. She pockets the label and opens the box. Inside is another box, an ornate puzzle box about 9”x9”x18”. She fiddles with it for a bit and manages to snap out one side, making it 9”x18”x18”. She’s distracted, then, by a commotion up on deck.

Two burly sailors are restraining a very drunk man as he babbles loudly that he must speak to Mankon Sha. Tarla explains to him that Mankon Sha is dead, she is his widow, and perhaps he should talk to her. The drunk man identifies himself as Tripartite Seer, and says he has a message for her, if her husband is dead. He refuses to tell her out in the open, however.

Tarla takes the drunk man from her sailors and leads him to the galley, where she gives him some water. Tripartite Seer hems and haws for a while and finally admits that a man (whom he does not name, but whose description matches Supportive Tiger) paid off his bar tab in exchange for his warning the Rising Gull’s captain to leave Lookshy immediately, and contact a man named Ghaan in Paragon. He takes frequent breaks and is extremely circumlocutive. Tarla tries to glean more information out of him about Supportive Tiger’s current whereabouts, but he is unable to answer her and asks to leave. She lets him go. When she returns to her quarters, the box is gone. The cardboard box is still there, but the wooden puzzle box is missing.

Irritated, Tarla checks with the sailors on watch and is told that no one came on or off the ship except Tripartite Seer, and she was with him the whole time. She checks the quarters of Eight-Planks, the carpenter's woman and recovering kleptomaniac, to no avail. Disgusted and tired, Tarla breaks up the cardboard box, stows it under her bed, and goes to sleep. So, next morning. Everyone gets up early, on account of it’s festival day and they’ve got loads of work to do. The menagerie is opened to the public and they showcase the animals and so on. Tarla confirms that everything is running smoothly and doesn’t require her direct attention, then remembers she still has the delivery label from the cardboard box. She takes her late husband’s uncle, Penorn Sha, aside and asks him point-blank: is there something about Mankon’s business, possibly with Supportive Tiger, that she hasn’t been told? Penorn, however, is as baffled as she is.

Tarla pulls out the label and examines it more closely. On the reverse is a stamp identifying the label as coming from the Office of Elementary Artisan, which she is totally unfamiliar with. Tarla finds a guide who tells her where the office is located (seven blocks over and three blocks up), and she walks there, through the festival. The Big Annual is in full swing, with loads of line-dancing and music and drunk, but very well-behaved, soldiers being bought congratulatory re-enlistment drinks.

At the OoEA, almost no one is in; there’s just a solitary receptionist who looks like she’d rather be having a good time out in the street. Tarla shows the receptionist the label, and some identification, and the receptionist confirms the package was delivered. OoEA, it turns out, is a courier service. Tarla learns that an officer in the Legion, Oko Iemitos, dropped the package off five days prior with instructions for it to be delivered yesterday, the day before the Big Annual.

(That’s right, Lookshy’s springtime re-enlistment festival is popularly known as the Big Annual, I say. Not apologizing.)

Heartened, Tarla returns to her ship and writes a message to Iemitos: she received the package, she wasn’t able to open it, it was stolen, please advise, and by the way, who the hell are you?

As she is on her way to the nearest messenger stand, walking down the Rising Gull’s gangplank, she is unexpectedly assaulted by three men wearing burlap sacks for masks and brandishing clubs. Understandably surprised, she freezes and positions herself on the gangplank. When the first man moves to attack her, she kicks him such that he falls into the water below, and shouts for her sailors to rescue her. The other two men (now apparently unwilling to rush her) throw their clubs at her head, but she dodges them. Then they pull out knives and throw them, and Tarla suffers a nasty cut across a cheek. She retreats back onto the ship, as the sailors finally move in with belaying pins to protect her.

(“Well, that was odd,” the player character said. “Ho ho,” said I, “this is when it starts to get odd!”)