Chpt 1b - Titans Gate
Although Kaizen sat quietly like a church mouse seemingly poring over the pages of a reasonably maintained ironbound tome, he didn't hide off in a corner like a mouse however. No, he sat alone at a centrally-located table in the common room of the Scoundrel and Dirk tavern. Occasionally, his his left hand meandered away from the tome and stole a spoonful of barley porridge with watermelon chunks for his mouth from the steaming bowl on the table before him, or one of his feet tapped along with the lyrical beats provided by the dragonborn minstrel briefly. However, he remained surprisingly idle overall. Contrary to appearances, Kaizen wasn't reading the tome. Rather, eavesdropped on the conversations of the tavern's patrons. Sure, most of what he overheard consisted of mundane, tall, or tawdry affairs, but he learned long ago the value of taverns when searching for information. "The scummier, the better," Nyshma used to say. In fact, he was in Titan's Gate because of something he'd overheard in a tavern in Pallem. Now he waited, listened in the hopes of catching a new lead in his search for his estranged sister, that was until he caught a glimpse of something that stood out among the crowd gathered in the tavern almost as much as he did: an on-duty member of the city guard.
Kaizen lowered his tome slightly and peered out over it at the guardsman as the man tacked yet another sheet of parched on the already cluttered bulletin board across the way. He couldn't read anything on the bulletin board from his seat, and already he wondered what sort of business was important enough to drag the city guard into an establishment like the Scoundrel and Dirk. "One way to find out," began Kaizen indistinctly before he pushed his chair away from the table he sat at then hopped up. After he secured the tome it appeared he'd been reading to its holster at the right side of his waist, he weaved through the crowded common room for the bulletin board. He arrived moments after Jor'en, whose remarks he overheard as he approached but chose to ignore, for now, and stood just off to the man's left while he too read the new posting. "Equal number of men and women." Again Kaizen spoke in a low tone as if his words were for him alone. "The neglected perhaps?" After retreating into his thoughts for a few seconds more, Kaizen looked up to Jo'ren. Unlike before, the words that followed were spoken loudly and clearly enough for Jo'ren to understand easily.
"It seems your wish has been granted. Tell me, what do you make of these disappearances?"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:23, Tue 20 Mar 2018.