Editing City-of-Rumors-and-Favors

This is the main landing page for '''[https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/city-of-rumors-and-favors-sharps-of-the-knife.885761/post-24016678 City of Rumors and Favors]''', a game using '''Sharps of the Knife''' as the rules.

Here we will record the ''characters'' and ''key events''.

== The City ==
[[File:MapoTheCity.png]]
== Characters ==

=== Yevon, the Thelavian Alchemist (Pandorym) ===

=== Munawara Grana, the Berudine Mercenary (Regular Guy) ===
{| class="wikitable"
|-

! Statistics/ Background
|- style="vertical-align: top;"
| rowspan="7" | [https://i.imgur.com/DhVPy9M.jpg Munawara Grana]
|''''''Origin''': Berudine: Luck 9, Vigor 12. +3 Skulker.'''

|-
|'''Occupation: Mercenary''' 

|-
|'''Escapades:''' Relationship with the Captain of the Queen's halberdiers; Lost his inheritance on a game of Senet; Nearly was taken by a Djinn; Watched his siblings get eaten by trolls...

|-
|'''Explanatory Paragraphs:''' 
*"Are you sure of this choosing EmGee? It is quite a bit to wager."  EmGee smiles, knows his play will defeat all others at the table. He lightly pats the other man on the forearm. "We will be very rich after this game..."

The music softens but the entertainment continues to circle the table. EmGee looks around to see the room quieting as murmurs and prying eyes try to guess his next move.  He can see money change hands under each table as side bets become the name of the game. He nods nearly imperceptibly. Both sets of pawns, positioned perfectly on the board, awaiting the opponents next move.

What happened next depends on who you ask.  'I heard that...' generally predicates the explanation. Some stories say the opponent had used an additional pawn, others say that EmGee had overplayed his hand. Both stories do give detail of the table being flipped over, knives drawn, and a stream of curses that would make some too embarrassed to reveal that they even know words of that type. Some accounts give that a Sacred Dancer immediately began to tear up, some have the Dancer running and screaming from the room. Either way, EmGee had lost a substantial fortune and many now fear his wrath.

*The tattoos and scarification surrounding Munawara Grana's eyes are more than simple adornments.  They are years of torture and sacrifice that he has endured. Well, that's the story he tells.

As he laid on the shaman's table for his rite into adulthood, many children began to gather to watch. One little might sneak out to grab his older brother who in turn would run to grab their father and so on.  As the ceremony began, Munawara noticed the crowd gathering. "All of these scars each tell the story of demons I have defeated in my youth. Although there is still one that lives among us that I have not collected."  Ooohs and gasps bring a hush to the crowd as dozens begin to draw nearer. "I will tell this story as best as I can remember as I was only a child in those days."

"Father had sent me to the village to collect feed for our animals. Along the narrow and steep road I met a simple farmer who was also going over the mountain into town. He offered me a ride on his wagon and said he needed to travel into the village for other items as well."

"We had travelled for some time making small talk until we met a mysterious person also on the road heading in our direction. A heavy and dark robe covered this person's face.  The farmer looked to me and I shrugged. He asked the stranger where they were headed and a long bony finger came from the sleeve an simply pointed in our continuing direction. I noticed sores and other maladies upon this hand and I moved closer to the farmer clutching at his jacket. Nevertheless, the person was offered a ride and climbed into the very rear of the wagon.  It was only then did we notice the large burlap sack the figure carrying. Swinging the sack over its shoulder it landed in the wagon and a sickened thud and a sullen squish..."

The crowd, silent, creeps a single step forward. Munawara smiles.

His pace becomes faster. "The farmer and I immediately exchanged glances and noticed a red liquid stain beginning to spread upon the bag. I nervously begin to nod, and as a youth at this age, I became very frightened. I could only assume this to be..." EmGee whispers, "a djinn."  Gasps are heard throughout the crowd and many begin to clutch at personal religious tokens and icons. "Of course the next next thing I experienced was the smell. The stench of rot and decay began to fill the wagon and spiraled around the traveler. The farmer noticed it as well and whipped the horses into a faster cadence.  As we traveled quickly, I could only imagine the djinn had taken a life to join our world and began the collection of those who owed a debt. Were those heads in the bag??? Scared, I turned to look at the back of the figure only to notice that it was gone. The only remaining item in the wagon was this travelers sack. By now, the stench of decay was unbearable and the farmer stopped the wagon." 

His rite and tattooing almost complete, Munawara began to bring the story to a close. "With his long stick, the farmer prodded the bag. The tip became deep red. He slowly pushed me behind the wagon itself but I wanted to the see the sack and it's contents. I climbed under the rung on the wheel and watched the farmer.  He slowly swallowed and with a bravery I had yet seen in my age, he opened the sack." Another gasp from the crowd brings the throng in closer.

"The stench overcame him and he retched behind the wagon. As he dumped the contents, I could see what we feared most..." He waited until the scarification was complete.  He arose slowly with a slight trickle of blood dripping down his forehead.

"...Three rotten heads of cabbage and a dozen squashed beets." A roar of laughter rolls through the crowd. "Our 'djinn' was a sickly farmer who was trying to sell off the last of his harvest..."


*Tending to the horses as a young man, Munawara suddenly noticed his younger brother Sabawoon was missing. He collected a torch and set off in the direction of the western caves. Slight footprints could be seen trampling over the dunes and around the small creek bed. EmGee noticed a slight trickle beginning to run downhill, but nothing to make father aware of. His father had trained him to track larger animals through the desert, but this was something completely different. Munawara had a taste for the hunt, especially after the first shot had been fired, but now he was hunting for his little brother. The stress was different, the air was different, his emotions began to run their course and refuse to let him think objectively. Stop. He dips his hands in the water and dries them quickly on his smock. Concentrating on the air and heat around him he exhales slowly and opens his eyes. West.

The time seemed to stretch as he walked further towards the caves on the horizon. As it always does in the desert, one step closer seems like one step further away.

Arriving at the mountain, Munawara sits in the shade and sips from his water slowly. Any solace from the sun was always welcome, even if it is in the belly of the draw. He knows where this trail leads. Berudine myth calls this the Mountain of the Trolls. Thought to be only 'ghost stories' to keep inattentive children in their tents at night, EmGee clasps at his dagger and waits for the sun to sink before setting off again.

With a quick flick of his flint, he lights the torch and begins his trek in the direction of the footprints. Climbing and grasping for each step, he suddenly hears a shrill scream. Too human for a goat, too piercing for another animal, Munawara quickens his pace. At the next finger in the mountain, he feels a large rush of stinking humid air coming for the bowels of the mountain. Loud grunting, followed by a sickening crunch, and then a final ear piercing wail, breaks through the silence. Munawara extinguishes the torch and crawls to the opening in the earth. A gargantuan creature is seen ripping a small body into pieces and then devouring them whole. A second monster bites down on the lower half of... EmGee gasps! As a the second creature smashes an enormous boulder on the pile of flesh, Munawara has only enough time to recognize the meat as his younger brother Sabawoon. Terrified, EmGee slinks behind a boulder and begins to vomit.

The next thing he remembers is waking up cold and shivering with sharp pains in his stomach. He refuses to look into the cave, but his curiosity piques over his fear.

Nothing.

No fire. No smoke. No monsters. No rush of air.

Did he imagine this??

A single and very slight drop of what looks like blood is the only thing the Munawara can find remaining of Sabawoon.

|-
|'''Favor''' : ''None'' 

|-
|'''Gear/ Load:''' Stomach Pains; a sword, a pistol, a shield, a chain byrnie, a flask of wine, a bag of silver lunars, two small daggers, a flint and steel, a belt and bandoleer of ammunition, robe/scarf/hooded smock

|-
|'''Tough'''
|}

=== Neru, the Jugalian Illusionist (Astronocky) ===
'''Origin:''' Jugalian ‎<br />
'''Occupation:''' Illusionist ‎<br />

'''Lucky'''‎<br />
Luck 12 Vigor 9 ‎+2 Brute +2 Skulker +1 Erudite<br />

'''Load/Gear'''‎<br />
Crooked foot, multi-layered hooded cloak, fancy hat, ornate staff, bag of bits and pieces for illusions, knife, bag of silver lunars. ‎<br />


'''Escapades'''‎<br />
Grinned his way out of a beating by thugs ‎<br />
Laughed off the pain of a broken foot ‎<br />
Had a prophetic vision in a sandstorm ‎<br />
Was arrested by the Royal Guard ‎<br />


'''Explanatory Paragraphs'''‎<br />

''Grinned his way out of a beating by thugs''‎<br />
Having offended a minor noble, Neru was in line for a beating in return. The thugs found him a few days later at the market at the end of day, as he bargained with a stallholder for a nice, well-ripened melon. They trailed him from the market, looking for an opportunity to give him the beating somewhere less public. Becoming aware of his situation, Neru gave thanks for the failing light as he turned down an alleyway, and quickly prepared a surprise for his would-be assailants. As the thugs turned the corner they came face to fangs with a grinning horror looming towards them with Neru’s broken body at its feet and his severed, dripping head in one outstretched claw. Its grinning, glittering fangs opened wider, its jagged shadow stretching towards them in the moonslight. They rapidly decided that Neru’s savage death at the claws of the grinning horror absolved them of a need to beat him senseless. Waiting until they had gone, Nero flipped his cloak back from over his head, concealing the metal and glass shards sewn to the inside; he tossed the battered, dripping remains of the melon to the side of the alley and gathered up his other bundles from the cobbles in front of him. “Amazing what you can do with a few improvised props and clever use of light and shadow,” he said to himself, “shame about the melon though.” ‎<br />

''Laughed off the pain of a broken foot.''‎<br />
Back before leaving his home village, Neru and other bored youngsters took a large woodland bison from its stall, covering its head with blanket, and took it to the entrance of council hall during a prolonged meeting of the elders. As Neru pulled the blanket from its head to release it into the hall, it stepped heavily on his foot, but the pain of the broken foot didn’t register in the hilarity of watching the elders scurrying around the hall like frightened mice, before the angry bison smashed its way out through a wall. The pain came later when his foot swelled up like a balloon and it turned out that a broken foot wasn’t a good reason to escape punishment for exposing the elders to ridicule. Still, it had mainly healed by the time he finished making amends by collecting bison dung and turning the dung heaps for the next month. He has a crooked foot as a result. ‎<br />

''Had a prophetic vision in a sandstorm''‎<br />
Neru couldn’t necessarily explain why he joined the caravan heading out into the desert lands to the south. Maybe it had something to do with needing to make himself scarce for a while after a certain glassware related incident. Barely a day out from the city they were hit by a sandstorm, and Neru lost his bearings and wandered off into the swirling sands. Blinded and disoriented, he was lost in moments; this was like being in a snowstorm back home in the mountains, but at least there the very landscape itself didn’t shift in the wind. As he kept walking to avoid being buried in drifting sand, he began to see, or to think he saw, visions of scenes from his life appearing and disappearing in the sand clouds. Mostly they were brief glimpses, recognisable as past events, but one vision repeated - Neru himself seen from a distance, standing by a fallen figure on a platform at the top of a tall tower; and then a dizzying refocusing back into himself at the top of the tower, standing over the fallen figure of someone of great significance to him, followed by a tumbling fall through rushing wind to blackness. Neru came to himself, half buried in sand at the bottom of the steep face of a sand dune. Neru has replayed the vision in his mind many times since then, but finds nothing reassuring in it. He is only thankful that, as yet, he has seen nothing in the city that resembles the tower in the vision. ‎<br />

''Was arrested by the Royal Guard''‎<br />
While doing a favour for a friend by carrying a heavy crate of glassware for a wealthy alchemist, Neru took a rest sitting on the crate against a convenient high wall. Having caught his breath, he took advantage of the bright sunlight to practise throwing shadow images on the wall, to the delight of the passersby. A crowd gathered, which drew the attention of the Royal Guard because the wall happened to be the outer wall of the royal palace. When the Guard arrived to disperse the crowd they arrested Neru as the instigator of the “disturbance” and took him and the crate to the barracks. Neru spent a night in the cells, then was thrown out along with the crate, leaving Neru to explain a crateful of broken glassware to the alchemist. ‎<br />

'''Favours '''‎<br />
''Owes :'' A youthful fishmonger who helped him dispose of a clever clockwork contraption. ‎<br />

The youthful fishmonger helped Neru dispose of a clever clockwork crocodile; it went into the sewers among a load of fish guts. Neru was using the clockwork device to poach fish from the estates of the nobles, and was selling those fish at bargain prices to the fishmonger. When it all went sideways, Neru had to get rid of the clockwork crocodile quickly, with a noble's retainers on his trail, and the fishmonger buried it among a load of fish guts knowing the retainers wouldn't look there, but that load then (unexpectedly) got tipped into the sewers. Neru suspects that the crocodile is still roaming the sewers... ‎<br />

'''General description'''‎<br />
Neru wears loose fitting trousers & shirt/jacket, and a multi-layered hooded cloak - things which make it easy to mask/mimic form so that it enhances/creates illusion when arranged right. The cloak has arcane symbols on the outside and takes the place of robes, which are impractical for running (away or towards). ‎<br />
He also has a fancy arcane looking hat, which can double up to be used to collect coins, and a staff which is ornately carved - and getting more ornate as Neru continues to work on it - and which is useful in all sorts of ways. ‎<br />
He has a bag holding a range of bits and pieces to use in illusion & shadow show - "everyone knows” the illusion is assisted by having the real to hang it on. Whether or not it's just clever use of light and shadow to deceive the eye, or whether there's more to it than that. ‎<br />
More mundanely, he carries a knife for self defence.

=== Zhuldyz, the Onderban Bailiff (Sam I Am) ===

== Key Events ==

A ''youthful fishmonger'' helped '''Neru''' dispose of a clever clockwork contraption. Why? Where? What was it?

'''Yevon''' helped '''M G''' get out of an embarrassing relationship with the ''Captain of the Queen's halberdiers''.

''Artvam'', a disgraced butler, approached the group at a table in the basement of Pretty Birds while they were listening to Dhal Sard spit rhymes. He offered them an opportunity to purloin and purvey a pure blue cat.