Eddard: Chapter 3 (Con't)

The Weapons Shop

 

Being from Waterdeep, I was used to large settlements, all the hustle and bustle.  People moving this way and that all on mysterious errands, conducting their business in the secrecy that only large crowds can give.  Being from rural areas, others were more taken aback.

 

I was astonished to note, Scornubel being what it is, how simple it was to enter and leave the town.  With merchant camps surrounding the place on three sides, and the river on the last, there was so much coming and going that we weren't spare a second glance upon entering the town proper.  Even though we were heavily armed, and on horseback, we entered the town without incident.

 

Thoram's business friend had his shop near the riverfront. We went straight there.  The shop, naturally, was run by a dwarf, and after greetings, we questioned him about any Dwarven weapons making an appearance in town. He hadn't seen a thing.

 

I gave the shopkeeper the armour we took off the bodyguard of the slave merchant, asking if it could be modified to fit Ulf.  This was relatively simple, but as there other orders, the refit and repair was expected to take up to two weeks.  This was acceptable, and he was paid in advance for the work, largely by trading the jewelled dagger I was using.

 

I was looking for a better set of short swords, given that one had already broken in combat.  All of the swords on display, while of decent quality, didn't seem to be an improvement on the one I already owned.  And then he showed me a blade, somewhat shorter than I was accustomed, with metal that seemed to shimmer in the light.  He told me it was a vermin slayer's weapon, but that the metal cold be forged for a more standard sized weapon.  I lifted it off the counter.  The balance was exquisite, and metal felt marginally lighter.  And its ethereal beauty.  I wanted them.  I thought that those weapons would definitely be for me.  He told me 120 gold.  I didn't have it, but I did give him a 40 gold deposit.  He even asked me if I wanted them inscribed.  I gave him the holy symbol of Mystra, to put both on the pommel and on the blade.

 

In the meantime, I purchased a serviceable short sword to replace the dagger.  I felt better fully armed.

 

Everyone had a good poke around his shop.  Azzarrak wanted to use his services as an armourer to reduce the cost of whatever he bought.  The shopkeep, unsurprisingly, wasn't interested.

 

We left the shop and went to nearby inexpensive inn, so we could plan this leg of the investigation.  Clearly, the party was going to have to split up.  Thoram and Azzarak would try to find work using their "talents," I suspected that would  mean working the docks as labourers, certainly in Azzarak's case.  Wren and I would work as a team.  She was playing the of a high cost dancer, and I was to be her bodyguard.

 

But what we would learn would set everything everything spinning out of control.