The next day. In the Heroes Guild.

Emerald is laying sideways on the easy chair next to the fireplace, grabbing her toes. She is distracted, staring at the ceiling. There is a parchment or two laying on the chair's backrest, wedged between it and Emerald. She has a quill in her mouth.

Lurking in a dark corner is a hooded figure pouring over some old tomes.

Lucky steps into the guild and smiles at the cute sight of Emerald.

"Ink isn't the best of candies I would think," he chuckles, "But perhaps combined with the flavor of toe cheese?"

  Terdisas would think that in most cases, proper lighting would make for better tome pouring.  Of course with all the people that have Low-Light vision and such hanging around the guild who knows.

  "I think perhaps it may be coffee time for the little fox.  Of course, this one's mine so I would have to make a return trip in such a case."  Caffine before chivalry apparently.

Emerald spits the pen aside and ewes. "That's disgusting, Lucky." she gets up to be sitting straight. "I'll have you know, I take very good care of my feet. I wash them 3 times a day." She discretely puts the parchment away. "So what's the latest?"

The shadowy figure puts his books away.

"Just teasing, Emerald," Lucky answers apologetically, "Allow me to buy you a drink to make it up to you?  Latest news is that Grayhawk will not be going to war.  Terdisas and I were there for the peace talks.  We were hired along with Mittens to escort the ambassador.  Interesting situation there."

  "The shortest peace talks I've ever heard of, let alone been a part of.  But the end result was still better than some."  If there is less than four minutes worth of conversation, pauses included, does it qualify as peace talks?  Or peace comments?

  Superbird considers Lurksy McLurk,  "Tweet, finally got bored reading?  I know how that goes, a few pages and I nod off, chirp."

"Always nice when a war gets averted..." Emerald doesn't stick her nose into the lurky guy's business, so she's glad Superbird just did. She looks his way as though Superbird was the only reason she payed the lurker any mind.

Lurky mclurk headshakes and moves to examine the quest posts on the board.

"Long enough that you were being bitter about cutthroat politics as I recall," Lucky teases, "But yeah.  Good results, but very upsetting to say the least that war was even being considered.  Especially for the reason of 'because everyone says Grayhawk is weak and makes fun of them.'  Infantile."

  Bird based conversation hook averted, going back to default conversation.  "Any amount of political interaction with lives on the line is enough to consider such things, Lucky.  If it were a meeting on the percentage of taxes utilized to repair roads then such comparisons would be of little need."

Emerald is still looking at lurky smurf. "Well you gonna introduce yourself, or are you a lone wolf? My name's Emerald. The shifter's name is Lucky and the human with the bird is Terdisas. The bird's name is Superbird."

"Panch," the hooded one answers with a slight Transylvanian accent in a voice that sounds like whispering metal, "I heard talk of war.  What news?"

He steps forward to be close to where Emerald slipped her papers.  When he thinks everyone's distracted enough, he'll try for a sneaky thievery check to snatch them.  ( Up to Tim if it's more fun for him to succeed or fail such. )

"A pleasure, Panch," Lucky answers, "Thanks for dealing with introductions, Emerald.  Fortunately, no war in the immediate future as far as we know."

  Alas, Terdisass isn't perceptive enough to notice Panch is being a dick.  "While it seems Barrowmount's ruler is less than entuiastic about the current peace, they at least have enough restraint not to offhandedly declare war."

Emerald (especially this early in levels) doesn't have much in the way of perception. Which goes right along with how she is; VERY good at stealing.. not that good at spotting someone doing the same to her. Panch will see they are letters to the authorities that list qualifications of certain individuals who Panch likely isn't familiar with. Especially if he's new to town. Especially since this Barrowbank bit is news to him.

Emerald says, "What was the ambassador like? I heard she supposedly represents every god in the pantheon."

"Including the evil ones?" Panch answers, returning the letters to where he found them.

"Well..." Lucky hesitates, "She did seem to speak with authority when claiming how the evil god churches would react to a declaration of war.

"She was a nice young lady.  Very down-to-earth.  And yet, also quite spaced out.  Hard to describe."