Food of the middle class, a premium price paid on a meal served atop dinner plates and eaten with forks and knives.

Four officers sitting together on the far table at the corner of the mid-sized restaurant, the entire police division associating themselves with the grease and protein of the Alliance’s capital city. Gold lettering across the window, a rainy day somehow enhancing the advertisement of its ownership and name.

ARKO’S SUPPER AND DINNER.

An afternoon filled with businessmen and simple workers, nearly every seat filled in the lunch rush of the workday on a busy crossroads. Conversations filling the room with immense chaos, the demand for preprepared food clogging the businesses of South with economic blood.

The order arrives with respectable speed, the red-skinned hobgoblin waiter quickly depositing four plates onto the table of the four officers. A casual carefulness in the action, ten thousand plates before theirs condensing together into actionable skill; a memorized order distributed without any questions to each meal’s owner.

A hearty bowl of soup and bread for Sergeant Jarka, chunks of vegetables and meat floating through a broth thickened with flour and colored from tomato puree. Warmth from food, a comparative misnomer from the mage’s selection off the menu.

Full sized burger and a complete serving of deep fried potato slices; the liquefied fat and caloric energy utterly insane when compared to that of a tiny body barely able to sit on the chairs. Officer Underfoot doesn’t even seem phased by the items in front of him, an arcane spell cleaning off hands in preparation for the feasting.

Ican’s plate was a simple creation from three sections of the food grid; boiled green vegetables, mashed potatoes, and a flank of steak. Simplistic but nutritious, a taste rejected for the practicality of modern fitness.

“Simple is good.” Sergeant Jarka speaks up, interrupting the collective thought process of the group. She waves away the waiter with a smile. “Thank you.”

“No problem ma’am.” The waiter replies.

They all turn to the subject of the comment, Jason Ford’s simple sandwich almost exploding with ham, lettuce, tomatoes, and mustard sauce. Big enough to require a toothpick stabbed through the thick cut slices of bread for structural integrity, the entire square shape sliced into two even triangles.

“I should’ve ordered that.” Jarka adds with a bare hint of jealousy, a napkin placed across her lap. “Oh, and you should watch Officer Underfoot here eat. It’s a miracle you shan’t miss.”

“Shut up ma’am.” The halfling rolls his eyes, now cleaned hands grasping the massive burger from its place. “I’m hungry. Casting takes up a lot of calories, I gotta eat my way through the day alright?”

“You’re a weave caster, that’s not how it works.” Jarka objects to the understood falsity. “I gotta eat, Tan’s gotta eat. But not you, or our rookie. Right Ford?”

They all turn to the half-caster, the half-orc nervously staring at the rest of his team. A sandwich untouched on the plate, a quick reply stuttered out. “M-Ma’am?”

Sergeant Jarka simply waves away the question, a conversation nipped in the bud as she focuses on her soup. “Nevermind, let’s get eating.”

A working lunch, the presence of four officers acknowledged by passersby and customers but soon dissipating into the mundane of life.

Come on, you gotta eat. Food’s good for you.

Sandwich filled with sodium and flavor, the smooth taste of cold cut meats blending into the sharp spice of homemade mustard filling. Crisp and cold lettuce snapping into his mouth, tomatoes washing it all down in an easy first bite.

A hunger somehow unnoticed through the young man’s first day, his primary stomach suddenly growling as an empty void is suddenly occupied; satisfaction through volumetric fulfillment.

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Jason Ford’s consciousness simply listens to the diner; a sampling of the Midtown restaurant created as he quietly unfocuses himself in the midst of consumption.

Two human businessmen on the bar engross themselves in conversation, a corporate proposition slowly going under obvious through the hurried hushes of worried voices. Formal wear upon aging faces unable to hide anxiety, interrupted by the question of desert from the hobgoblin waiter.

An entire company of construction workers take up nearly a quarter of the population, somewhat dirty work clothes mismatching against an honest payscale. Multi-species but skewed towards those of more physical prowess; blue collar work aiding itself to the hobgoblin, orcish, and goliath tribes; dragonborn and dwarvish bloodlines.

It ends with them; the four police officers of the South Police Department’s Arcane Crimes Unit.

A conversation now headed towards lethal results; the discussion of off handed topics suddenly reaching back to serious work. Sergeant Jarka speaks first, with nearly three quarters of her soup evaporated in the first fifteen minutes of eating. A police instinct asking the question at hand, now towards the halfling mage. “So, you wanted to talk about that card you two found?”

Officer Underfoot rubs the napkin across his face as he scoffs down the bite, a mouth comically full of food. A hand raised, request for a moment of processing before answering. “Yeah we did.”

A one handed spell, casting forth with immense skill. An image brought from a perfectly memorized card, the mage consulting a keen mind for an exacting image.

The enlarged card rotates slightly above the table, officers taking a long glance at both the advertisement atop its face and the arcane writing on its backside.

“Elvish?” Officer Ican quietly asks as she reads the backside, a meal mid-consumed with concernedly well placed manners.

“No I mean the other language, the one above it.”

Sergeant Jarka narrows her eyes. “Old Aiagean.”

“That’s a bit too general.” Underfoot shakes his head like a disappointed teacher. “I wanted specifics. It's the northern mountain range of Aiagon, specifically where all the dwarven refugees that ended up here in South came from.”

“Same magic as the gate Ryce and Tan had to deal with?” Jarka asks.

“Oh yeah.” The police mage stuffs three fries in his mouth in quick succession. “In fact, it's an incantation in Old Aiagean proto-common. Ford!”

The young man blinks at his name, a mind still monitoring the conversation called for a pop-quiz. His senior asks the question. “Verbal components of spellcraft are broken up into…”

Oh come on, you know this.

“S-sequencers, fillers? A-and c-concentrators?” The half-orc replies nervously through a stutter.

“See, good foundations of spellcraft right there. Nice work kid.” Officer Underfoot points to him, leaning back with a cheeky smile towards the other two across the table. “Old Aiagean’s the only verbal language that can be used to concentrate pre and mid cataclysm magic, and this right here is a concentrator verbal component for an unknown spell.”

“So an activation phrase?” Jarka narrows her eyes in the simplification.

“Basically that.” The mage allows the interpretation of scientific casting. “So this right here, is a way to activate some sort of old magic. I assume, it’s used to put charge into something; and well given our suspect’s primary method of casting it’s probably for charging arcanite dust.”

“But you found this…” Sergeant Jarka narrows her eyes, neurons igniting in the midst of a mid-meal investigation. “In his clothing at home?”

“Which might explain why he accidentally triggered the gate.” Underfoot explains through an immense intelligence, turning to involve the half-caster next to him once more. “What do you think?”

“I-is this the L-Leon Gate?” Jason Ford attempts to remember from a distant morning newspaper.

“Yep.”

“T-then is possible? T-to not m-mis-cast you need to be… to be accurate. A-accurate to the verbal w-words. Sir.”

“And you aren’t memorizing this pronunciation let me tell you.” The Mage taps the card, his finger going straight through the illusion.

Sergeant Jarka smiles as she finally makes the connection. “So he accidentally miscasted and activated the gate. What does this have to do with anything?”

Jason Ford speaks up to answer her, an instinct spilling words forth. “Old magic is hard to use. S-so it’s not like he could do this… a-alone. Ma’am.”

“There we go.” Underfoot chuckles. “He’s not a one-man team manufacturing this stuff. He’s part of a bigger chain.”

Jarka frowns slightly at the notion, putting her spoon back into the bowl of soup as she motions to the mage. “What was on the other side of the card?”

An illusion shifting, the logo appearing at the center of it all.

Club Dazzle.

5236 Augustine Rd, Diamond Bay, City of South.

Let’s pay them a little visit, shall we?