[IC] Inside The Walls
"He is the head of the family. It is his opinion which matters." Said the younger one, in careful measured tones.
The robed woman's face was impassive. Ernesto nodded.
Argent's head twitched slightly, as though he recognized the voice, but he said nothing, and he quickly turned his face into a blank state.
After an awkward pause, Ernesto shrugged.
"Well said. I value the judgement of my family, but on this, we are in agreement.
To be clear, it was not our attempt to be insulting: we Alfonzi have a reputation for blunt, simple statement of fact. We deal with fishermen a great deal, of course.
Please do not take our position as insulting: it could take days for a minor family head, captain of the guard or even a guild head to address the council. I am on the council, and my time to address it is extremely limited. Embarrassment to the council could cost my family, and even the city, greatly."
The younger man hid a sigh. The mage, again, remained impassive.
"For nearly six months, we have lost an absurd number of fishing ships. A few always vanish, but after losing five times as many ships, with no wreckage spotted, we began to become quite concerned and scrambled the watch and began scrying the harbor, and combing the beaches for wreckage.
We have found nothing, and more and more ships keep vanishing without a trace.
We have ruled out all sensible causes. Desertion was unlikely - these are mostly good, family men. The vessels make no sense for piracy: pirates would not bother specifically targeting fisher vessels and leave even small traders alone, and we have sent out patrol craft and they spotted nothing unusual. Pirates who attacked this close to the city would usually offer ransom, at least. The weather has not been unusual other than that earthquake a few weeks ago.
We found no wreckage or bodies, and made sure to sweep the usual riff raff for stolen hulls - nothing has been found, even when scrying. As a naval man yourself, I'm sure you realize how absurd that is. Nearly 40 hulls have been lost, and the currents would carry some of that towards the shore.
Decent sized trade ships are not struck, nor patrol vessels. Only the deep sea fishing vessels have been attacked. Or at least, I am presuming they are, since we've no evidence to account for it. We did find a keel plate of one of the missing ships, once, up against one of the city's furthest island forts. Sympathetic magic to find the other remains of the vessel completely failed. It has either been warded or utterly destroyed without wreckage. I'm not sure what could do that so consistently.
These attacks must stop. In addition to the loss of our citizens, the cities very food supply is threatened, as is our trade, not to mention a large segment of my houses's cash as we underwrite many of these vessels.
If you stop the attacks, I will pay you a large amount of money and enable you to meet the council. If you are somehow able to recover some portion of the men and boats, I will award you a sizable salvage fee. Hell, if you just find out what in God's name is going on, I'll make sure you are well compensated at least."
He was clearly very upset about this, though it wasn't entirely certain if this was due to his own financial loss, his family's loss of prestige, or the loss of lives. Of course, altrustic Vissio merchant head was practically an oxymoron.
"If you have have questions, or thought of some more reasonable explanation to what is happening, feel free to present it, though I warn you we've gone over this with in some detail. If there was a simple explanation for this, one of us would have found it."
He shrugged.
"And if you don't think that's within your ability, I understand. We can just make an arrangement for the ships if you'd prefer."