As the three siblings headed off on their various errands, Abad walked to the side of the Green Lady and down the nearest alley he could find. Once there, he looked both ways to ensure he couldn't be seen, then adjusted his [Mask of Many Faces]. Rather than use the facsimile of what he thought he would have looked like had he been born of the sun, he instead changed appearance to something he had grown familiar with as of late—he made his skin tan, his eyes blue, and his hair black. Once he felt the spell take hold, he looked into a nearby puddle on the street and smiled. He looked just like a common elf. The mental image he held was that of A-Nis and Shani, and it worked perfectly. No one would recognize him now.
It took Abad quite a while to meander back onto the road they had come in on. The streets really were a maze. Along the way, he got up close and personal with the many, many side streets of the town that were in various states of disrepair. He also came up with a common elf name as he walked: Arun-Sun. He had killed a man with that name centuries before, and it was the best he could come up with on the spot. Abad hoped none of the dead man's descendants were in the region to give him his retribution. Just as he decided on his new name, he arrived at the main road.
As he emerged onto the thoroughfare, he was greeted to the sights and sounds of hundreds of people, animals, and even some tamed monsters, heavily muzzled and wrangled, going about their business. Each shop seemed to be busier than the last, with everything one would expect from a town being available. Fruit, vegetables, assorted goods, a blacksmith, a cobbler, there was everything a frontiersman could need. Looking to the east, he could see the gates they had passed through earlier still admitting carts and wagons into Farnfoss, the guards lazily admitting them one after another. Considering he could barely move without risking bumping into someone or something, he could hardly believe that more wagons could fit in the space, but somehow the people flowed around them as they went about their business, seemingly oblivious to the sheer density of the place. Abad sighed. He hated towns like these.
He had seen plenty of towns just like this in the past. Busy in the late morning, hot, and smelling worse than any place had a right to by the evening. It seemed like a fairly average town for the Verge, though the three-and-four-story buildings lining the main road did mark it as a fairly large and profitable one. Most of the buildings seemed to have apartments above and storefronts below, and many of the buildings were in decent repair. Most needed a healthy coat of paint or two to look truly new, but they weren't falling apart or abandoned. Everything was in relative repair, at least in this part of town. When a woman opened a window above him and tossed the contents of a chamber pot a few feet from him, he was pulled from his observations and decided to keep moving.
To distract himself from the smell of everything, Abad focused instead on the chatter around him, soaking up any useful information he could glean from their discussions. Many of them discussed goods and sales, the arrival of more caravans and wagons that brought fresh supplies, and several talked about "Darkfall," coming, which he remembered the siblings mentioning. He still couldn't quite believe that the towers were in such a state that the light actually failed every year. They had stood for thousands of years in his time, and they had only gone out once—when the Dark One first bubbled up from the Depths and into the lands above. Had the towers been failing and the walls crumbling in his time, he and his siblings would have been far more successful in their war. There were countless monsters and beasts in the Wilds that would have easily fallen under his sway if he could have been brought into Elysium.
Another thing he couldn't believe was the variety of the mortals around him. There were many of the usual suspects: humans of course, some dwarves in heavy leathers hawking metallic and stone wares as one would expect, nearly invisible halflings flitting through the crowd. There was even the occasional elf here and there, though they, like him, seemed uncomfortable with the stench and sheer proximity to others Farnfoss forced upon them. The latter group made him chuckle inwardly. He didn't often feel much affinity for his people, but he realized their prissiness was one of his primary character traits.
However, among the old faces were new faces too. Goblins had apparently been civilized in this time, and somehow they had acquired significant social status. Many of them were merchants and vendors and were dressed in relative finery compared to the muted browns and greys of the commoners. Alongside them, there were a variety of people that looked like humans but had animal features. Cat ears here, a wolf tail there, goat eyes in a hawker's head. Those certainly hadn't existed in the past. This last group interested him the most.
The animal people reminded him of all of the experiments Zaros had done in the past. The man had crossed all manner of monsters and beasts together, like the orc-troll cross Thrakkar that he had been reminded of in their fight days before. However, the beast creatures in Farnfoss were far more domesticated than anything Zaros had created, and they lacked the aesthetics that the man had preferred. Unlike his creations, which were often horrific and monstrous in appearance, most of the animal people looked human or perhaps elven, save for the ears, tails, fangs, and patches of fur that covered them in no discernible pattern. Some of these people looked more animal-like, but most were somewhat "normal" looking. The only unifying marker each had was a brand on their necks. He decided he'd have to ask someone about their history when he had the chance.
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He realized to his delight that his desire to collect information was still as alive as ever. He was particularly known in the past for his assets, and one of the most important assets he offered was information. And bathhouses were often excellent places to get it. Whether through the idle words of others or the perfumed words of a bathhouse attendant, there was much to learn in such places, and his desire to collect information was how he had first been introduced to their luxuries. Selene had been a fan of frequent baths, and the woman had dragged him along enough times that he had acquired her refined tastes in leisure. In time, he had solidified many deals in their perfumed interiors, made dozens of connections, and learned the subtle gossip that was the undercurrent of every village, town, and city. He wondered what he'd find in this one.
As he weaved his way up the road, another type of creature stood out to him. They seemed like a cross between a halfling and a dwarf, standing shorter than the latter but being stouter than the former. Their hair and eye colors were far more varied than either of those races as well, with brownish greens and bright reds seeming to be fairly common among them. He overheard a man arguing with one, who screamed that he was a "crooked gnome." He figured gnome must be the race's name and hopefully not an insult. Most of them wore beards similar to dwarves, though he noticed that their women didn't have small beards like dwarven women. He concluded that he was quite certain these creatures hadn't existed years ago, but he still was struggling with gaps in his memory. After thinking on it for a time, he was fairly certain that he wouldn't have forgotten an entire race.
He had branded members of each of the races in his time. It was a personal challenge of his to collect two of each for his collection, and he wouldn't have let one go uncollected. He shook his head at the memory. How frivolous had he really been back then?
He began to wonder if the Tower had called another race to Elysium over the past five hundreds years. The humans and halflings had arrived on Reial at the end of the third age, and the dwarves, goblins, ogres, and the like had arrived in the second age. The towers and Elysium had been established by his people under the Goddess's direction at the beginning of the first age when the Dragon Emperor arose in the far north, bringing with it the monsters from the Depths and sparking the cycle of the ages in the first place. Perhaps other races began to be called to Reial with the birth of each age? Again, he decided he'd learn the history later. After he got a bath.
He had always had a talent for finding the lotus symbol that marked bathhouses no matter what corner of Elysium he found himself in. At least in the old days he could. He was hopeful that the symbol hadn't changed since then. The symbol for bathhouses was modeled after the lotus stones, which were typically large stones imbued with special enchantments that enabled water to flow from a hole in their center in quantities based on the amount of ambient mana in the area. They could be designed for a number of uses, but the most common was in his time had been for bathhouses. They were difficult to make, at least in the past, so they weren't terribly common in households, but most towns had at least one bath with a stone large and reliable enough to provide the populace with both a bath house and clean water for a population. He prayed to the Dark One that this was still true today.
After weaving down the street, he finally found what he was looking for. The symbol was on an archway that led down a narrow alley that was capped with a large wooden door with the lotus symbol emblazoned on it. He walked down the alley eagerly, reached for the door, and opened it. When it cracked open, he was greeted to the warm, moist perfumed air that signaled that a bath truly was available inside. A surge of emotions washed over him then. Before that moment, he had come to the conclusion that he hated this town, but the fact that a bath existed within it elevated it in his evaluation. He knew that their offerings would be limited when compared to his own vault's, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
For a moment, as the door swung open, he thought about his vault for the first time in a while. He didn't know when he'd see it again. Just getting there would take months, and then he'd have to dig his way down through the stone and into the depths, were countless monsters kept themselves hidden below the surface, and he was confident that was a task that was well beyond him at the moment. Even if he did so, he didn't even know if the vault survived Nocturne's meddling. He hoped it had.
He sighed, but that brought more perfumed air into his lungs, thus returning him to the present. He was greeted to the gaudily decorated interior of the establishment. There was chipped gold plating on just about everything that could be plated, and the furniture looked old and worn, but he figured it would do.
It would be fine. He would enjoy it... stepping into steaming hot water again... cleaning the grime of the road off... washing in warm water...
The familiar scent of perfume, even if it was cheap, brought a smile to his face. However, his smile faded when the gangly head of a goblin popped out from behind the counter on the far side of the room. The creature had a seedy grin on his face. He never trusted goblins in his time, and he suspected he shouldn't now.
"Welcome, honored guest. How might we serve you on this fine afternoon?"