Empirical Gnollage: Installment 70 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment070.png]
Al's exhaustion made it difficult to meditate on complex arcane matters without falling asleep, but as the sounds of uncontrollable mirth settled down from the other side of the walls he was able to at least relax.
It's just a matter of convincing an area of space or an existing manifestation that it is supposed to be on fire...
Between brief periods of dozing off as he rested his head on the side of the tub, and moments of sleepy consideration of magical matters, Al felt he might at least be getting closer to understanding. He just needed a proper rest and maybe some more paper to write out diagrams and notes on, and he might be able to start experimenting.
His half-conscious state of relaxation was interrupted a little later by a polite knock on the door, and Stephen's voice informing Al that both his time and Gruntle's in the bath would be up soon, since they would need them to leave so that they could make the baths ready for the next clients. He thanked the man, and heard him move over to the bath next door to inform Gruntle.
The heat of the water had begun to make Al sweat anyway by this time, so he dragged himself out of the tub and dried himself off. He put his magically-cleaned clothing back over his naturally-cleaned body and went next door to meet up with Gruntle.
The door to the gnoll's bath opened, and an entire field of wildflowers rampaged out into the hallway and brutally smashed a flowery fist right into Al's face...or at least, that's what it smelled like.
Gruntle was the cleanest Al had ever seen him. Even the leather flaps that he wore like a loincloth were cleaned, and the leather collar gleamed with the polishing it had received. He looked a bit absurd with his fur combed or brushed into neat patterns which would no doubt look wild again within the hour, but he no longer stank of swamp and rot and blood. Instead, he smelled as though someone had dunked him in a barrel of perfume.
The last couple of weeks with Gruntle had given Al time to become somewhat familiar with the meaning of gnollish facial and body language, and he thought Gruntle seemed pleased, perhaps even smug. In one hand, the gnoll held a glass bottle about the size of Al's fist, just short of three-quarters full of a pink liquid. He held it out proudly for Al to see. The dwarven runes etched into the bottle spelled out Blütenblattgeruch.
"Smells good. Pretty. Hides scent. Good for hunting," Gruntle insisted.
"Pretty?" Al repeated back, completely bamboozled to hear that word coming from a gnoll in any context.
Gruntle grunted in response. Al wasn't sure Gruntle really knew what the word meant, but whatever he thought it meant, pretty clearly described the overwhelming floral miasma appropriately for him. Al looked past Gruntle into the room where he'd been bathed. The bath attendants looked tired, including the manager - Madame Marge - who had returned at some point. The floor around the tub was littered with completely emptied food-trays and a large bottle that once had wine in it.
"He kept complaining about his scent," the professionally-calm Madame Marge explained, "so once he was cleaned we offered him a selection of colognes and perfumes. He chose...frugally, but he seems to like it very much."
"Yes, I can tell," Al agreed, trying not to cough. The smell wasn't inherently bad, but it was far too strong. Al inferred from the level of liquid in the bottle that Gruntle hadn't been very cautious about the amount that he'd dumped on himself.
The door to the bath Bote had gone into opened, and they emerged with their dark-bearded bath attendant. Bote's breastplate now gleamed without a hint of corrosion, though there was still some etching and small holes in it. The two dwarves wrapped their forearms together and clasped hands for a moment - Al recognized this as the dwarven equivalent of a hug. He couldn't tell whether it was a friendly acquaintance hug or something more intimate, but he decided it wasn't any of his business anyway. The two dwarves unclasped their arms, butted heads gently, and parted ways. Bote headed towards Al and Gruntle as the attendant left. Their reddish hair was clean and tied back, their beard neatly combed, and even their clothing and armor was bright.
"This is a much cleaner Bote than the Bote who arrived," Bote remarked cheerfully, if tiredly. "Greta was able to halt the corrosion of my breastplate where the creature from the tomb touched it. It will still require repair or replacement to fully serve its purpose again, but at least it will not get worse."
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As Bote approached, Al was a little comforted to see that he wasn't the only one who wasn't ready to encounter an over-perfumed gnoll. Bote's nose wrinkled as they blinked.
"Is it our inhuman friend who has so fully embraced the flower-nature?" they asked. Al just nodded and pointed to the bottle the gnoll held. Bote squinted at it.
"That is an industrial product," they said, "it is meant to be diluted before use."
Further discussion was interrupted by loud applause and cheering from down the hall where the public baths were. The door burst open, and people of widely-varying size, shape, ancestry, and state of undress began to pour out into the hallway. They casually wandered off in all directions to wherever their next destination was. Al and Bote moved up against the wall next to the door of Gruntle's bath while portions of the crowd headed past them. Some of the passers-by seemed to recognize Gruntle, Al, and Bote, offering a small cheer, wave, or congratulatory fist-bump as they proceeded past, though Al was sure he'd never met any of them before. Al thought he might have heard Baron Wulfcynn's name mentioned but any other details of what was said were drowned out by the rest of the crowd's conversations, and coughing as Gruntle's perfume hit them.
Eventually the public-bath doorway disgorged Wikwocket with a few other people who seemed to be expressing thanks for her performance. She spotted Gruntle, Al, and Bote waiting for the crowds to pass and pointed them out to the people around her, earning the three adventurers a variety of gestures of approval. Then Wikwocket said farewell to her new fans and followed the thinning mob of freshly-bathed people in Al's direction. She had a human-scale towel wrapped loosely around herself like an elven toga, and her wet brown hair hung down, combed straight. She looked as tired as Al felt, but happy.
"A few verses are a little rough, but they seemed to like it!" she enthused, "By the way, it seemed like there were some other people in there besides me who understand Baron What's-his-name's phoniness. There were also a few people that didn't seem to like hearing the truth about him either, but other than that my story of our adventures so far seems to be popular!"
"We've only done two real quests so far, and we've only been at this for a couple of weeks, really," Al insisted.
"Yes, we're like adventuring geniuses! Just imagine how popular our stories are going to be in the future, when we've done even more!"
She coughed. "Hey, what smells like an evil florist in here?"
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They made their way back to their room without incident, besides a few startled reactions from people who hadn't expected a gnoll to be the avatar of whatever deity is in charge of the smell of flowers. On the way, Al asked a passing member of the staff about finding Stephen and was assured he'd meet them at their room as soon as he could.
The room was dark. The absence of windows in the walls due to being one of the more inner rooms in the building had probably been a factor in the room being less expensive than some of the others that had been available. Fresh candles were in candle-holders on nightstands next to each of the four cots, and Al decided to take the opportunity to practice fire-conjuring again with his candle-lighting magic trick. He tried to pay more conscious attention to the concepts he pushed through his mind as he commanded each candle in turn to light itself, feeling like he was close to understanding what he needed. Then he dug his draft copy of Melissa's On Gnolls out of his pack to try to read for a while, until Stephen came to knock on the door as Al worked his way through Melissa's discussion of gnollish clan structure and social dynamics.
Wickwocket answered the polite knock on the door, still wearing her towel-toga. Stephen was there with a small, neatly-folded bundle of Wikwocket's cleaned and dried clothing, which he offered to her.
"Is everything to your liking so far?" Stephen asked the adventurers as he subtly sniffed the air while Wikwocket unfolded her clothes and admired how bright and new they seemed.
"Yes, thank you, this is the cleanest and most relaxed I've felt in quite a while," Al answered him from the cot that he had relaxed onto, "Uh, our large, odd fellow seems to have been over-enthusiastic about the scent he got from the attendants but that's not your fault."
"Well, we are happy to know he enjoys it, but please refrain from getting it on the floors, walls, or furniture, or we may be required to charge a cleaning fee to make the room ready for the next clients. Is there anything else we at Hell's Bathtub can provide for you?"
Al had originally considered asking about food, but he still wasn't feeling especially hungry and even Gruntle seemed to not have an urge to eat.
"No, I think...no, wait. We have a meeting tomorrow morning, right?" he asked Wikwocket.
"Yes, two hours after dawn, in caldarium room number three," she reminded him, "a secret and mysterious meeting which will no doubt alter our fates forever!"
"Uh, right. Anyway," he said, returning his attention to Stephen, "could you tell us how to get there?"
Stephen explained how to navigate the building to find the caldaria and determine which one was number three, and he also promised to arrange for someone to knock on their door to ensure they were awake early enough to get there on time. Then he left them to rest. They were all yawning and their eyes drooping after their very tiring journey. This time, Al hardly noticed when Gruntle squeezed himself underneath Al's cot to sleep, just as he had back in Silveroak. Al blew out the candle on his nightstand, and then Al himself was out almost as quickly as the candle was.
Al's sleep was disturbed for a while by the parade of gnolls clad in nothing but hats made of flower-petals - which were on fire for no coherent reason - who all offered him plates of special food. If he'd remembered what was on the plates when he awoke, he'd have been very embarrassed.