image [https://i.imgur.com/6kQQQSg.jpg]

Growing up on the East Coast, I’d seen my share of big cities and knew how to handle myself in bad neighborhoods. My secret involved walking as if I’d been there before. You didn’t want to look like you owned the place, which incited a challenge, but that you’d proverbially been around the block. Projecting boredom or a world-weary attitude made others assume you belonged. What’s more, the lack of recognition threw the local tough guys off their game. It made them second-guess themselves as being the ones in the know. Pulling off the act was simple. No matter what violence, noise, or squalor surrounded me, I forced my eyes forward and minded my business.

The Tenderloin proved to be no different. I found Tully’s place with the aid of locals. When asking NPCs for directions, I wasn’t overly polite or wasted their time with phrases like “excuse me” or “Hi, my name is….” I didn’t blather about being new to the area. In big cities, bluntness showed consideration for other people’s time. After a few questions, I located the neighborhood called the Bottoms and got directions to Tully’s.

I became nonplussed by Tully’s feral clientele when I stepped through the twelve-foot-tall doorway. Furry ears raised as I entered the joint. The gnolls’ thick fur hid their weapons and armor. Willing myself to relax, I turned to the gnoll barkeep. “Is Ruk around?” I asked him as if I’d done so a hundred times before.

The bartender’s eyebrows lifted. His canine facial tick told me my boldness surprised him. Gnolls towered over me, so it unnerved me to stand beside them. The low growls in the background did little to assuage the tension. Their nameplates identified them as The Gang of Three members, but I counted almost a dozen. Most fell a few levels below me, but I represented the only human in the joint, so I took care not to insult anyone without showing fear. Dogs respected alphas.

“Whatchu want with Ruk?” the bartender asked.

“Rolly mentioned he might translate some writing I found.”

An older gnoll with graying fur beckoned me to a table in the back of the room.

The other gnolls visibly relaxed, and their guttural conversation picked up again.

The nameplate over the graying gnoll identified the level 17 speaker as Ruk—Gang of Three Boss. “Rolly’s a good dog. If he sentcha, I’m inclined to raise an ear. Whatcher problem, friend? The kobolds keeping you up at night, or what?” Ruk spoke in mixed consonants. He pronounced “kobolds” as “gobolts,” and pronounced his TH sounds like a D.

He must have smelled the kobold corpses from the dungeon or the arc weaver’s lair. “Kobolds? Yeah, I mean, maybe they’re involved. It’s hard to be sure.”

I offered the copy of the original journal. “I purchased these pages from someone, but I can’t read the writing.”

Ruk leveled a heavy stare at me. “I don’t think so. I think the guy who found it is you.”

His matter-of-fact declaration stunned me. How had Ruk known that he held a copy?

He tapped his nose. “I don’t smell so good, no more. But I’m still wise. These weren’t gathering dust in no shop, my friend.”

The gnolls around me chortled, and Ruk sniffed at their amusement.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to….”

Ruk shrugged and held up a paw to show he’d taken no offense. “I ain’t sore about it. Where you got ‘em is yer business. I’m saying, just one right guy to another—this here ain’t from kobold country.”

I put away the copy and handed him the original.

“There we go. Now we’re talking about the genuine article.” He held the journal under his nose before opening it.

His doggy eyebrows lifted in surprise as he read the foreign glyphs. “It says this is from Roog the warlock.”

Ruk straightened himself to a more businesslike posture. “Ya know, I saw this warlock once when I was a pup. A very smart hound, he was. Am I to understand you should want me to read this here book and tell you what it says?”

I nodded and looked for clues to see if his questions had hidden implications. The other gnolls looked amused but remained unreadable. Their relaxed posture reassured me I hadn’t insulted them.

Ruk leaned back and appraised me with a prolonged show. “Okay. This I can do. But whatcher asking for is information. Not cheap. Not cheap at all.” His hang-dog expression offered tacit remorse as if he couldn’t help but overcharge me.

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I sighed. I knew this would not be easy. At least I had the wherewithal not to ask about the price. This wasn’t the time for bargaining, and he’d already made it clear he would not dicker. Ruk showed me he could walk away from the deal, and I had to respect that.

He shook a furred digit at me. “Ya know, you’re a funny guy. You smell like pine trees, butcha eat things I don’t recognize. I like a good surprise now and then. But like I says, information is gonna cost. I’ll put you on fifteen gold for the whole schmeer.”

The bar of onlookers shifted and murmured. They looked like werewolves, or rather, werehyenas, and sitting down, they didn’t look so big. Some made jokes in their language, and others giggled, sounding like hyenas in cartoons I watched as a kid.

I couldn’t believe his price amounted to only fifteen gold. Suppressing a grin, I agreed with as much hand-wringing as I could muster.

Ruk’s face darkened at my transparent ruse, knowing he could have charged me more. After a beat, he nodded to show he would be a sport. He had to keep up appearances in front of his pack. “A deal is a deal, I guess.”

His sudden resignation posed a red flag. No hustler I ever knew gave up so quickly. I slid fifteen gold to him, coins we’d acquired from the arc weaver. He scrutinized them and clearly didn’t recognize the arc weaver’s odor. “You’re more interesting than is commonly known.”

Ruk tracked his paw along the glyphs while he read.

I ordered an ale to prove I felt comfortable enough to order an ale. I regretted my decision after the first sip. It tasted terrible, but I drank it while my graying translator examined the parchment. I wondered whether he could read at all, as he sometimes skipped from one page to another with questioning looks. The pages weren’t bound, and when he shuffled them, I realized he sorted them. He then hunched over to his task and finished in ten minutes.

“Some words don’t make no sense. But the gist of it is, Roog the warlock, left his last words. It’s a diary, I guess. Roog’s journal. His boss sent him to find something important. Something about a lost civilization. I dunno—it’s screwy. Smells like a goose chase. The kobolds find Roog digging, and they think maybe they’re onto the same scent. He kills some kobolds and finds coordinates in a temple of some kind. It says here that his boss wants ‘em.”

NPCs understood some interface mechanics and coordinates counted among them. Like directions on a compass, you could say (-120, 150), and anyone on the continent of Miros could find the location.

“His boss wants the coordinates. Who is the warlock’s boss?”

Ruk tapped the journal. “I dunno, and it don’t say.”

“What’s at the coordinates?”

“I dunno, it’s some glyph I never seen of before.”

“And the coordinates lead to whatever the warlock’s boss wanted?”

“Well, yeah, that’s why he sent this warlock fellah. Ain’tchu paying attention, pal? This thing that they’re looking for ain’t no word I ever seen, so don’t ask.” He waved one paw to emphasize his confusion while his other pointed to the glyph.

I made a mental note about which squiggle Ruk indicated. If I could translate it, I’d know what the warlock’s boss wanted. Whatever the glyph represented, its worth equaled a bag of orc diamonds.

Ruk moved his attention down the journal and onto another page. “Then a bunch of kobolds come back. He breaks out demons to hold ‘em off, but then he’s dying of thirst, so he kisses it all goodbye. And that’s it. No more writing. It’s enough to make a fellah weepy.”

His deadpan sarcasm didn’t deter me from asking one last question. “What were the coordinates?”

He pointed to the glyph, hesitated, and studied my face. “The location says (-65, -63). That’s kobold country, so bring plenty of cheese.”

Giggling rippled through the bar.

The degree to which he studied my face gave away his deception. He lied about the coordinates, but I knew enough not to accuse him of it. When I nodded, he relaxed his shoulders.

“So if there’s anything else, you just whistle, huh?” Ruk’s dismissal prompted several gnolls to giggle in that infernal hyena cadence. Others picked up on the boss’s cue and stood.

I looked around, but the other gnolls wore only amused stares. After a long pause, one of them spoke. “Buddy, this might be a good time for you to blow.”

I grunted, picked up the journal, and left. Perhaps I could find other gnolls in the city to help. Chortles and giggles erupted from the closed door of Tully’s Pub. While the hoodwink didn’t surprise me, it hardened my resolve to determine the writing’s meaning.

The long walk back to the Cross Keys gave me time to think. Besides, carriages didn’t frequent this part of town. After my exchange with the gnolls, I didn’t feign boredom to discourage people from harassing me. I felt irritated and tough—and played the part, stomping through the streets, daring anyone to mess with a level 18 player.

No one did.

Everything Ruk told me made sense. The warlock summoned the demons as a last-ditch defense. When he died, they couldn’t return to their home plane because his corpse lay in the protection circle, and that’s why the kobolds sealed up the ruins. All the bodies in the dungeon looked only a few weeks old, so the timeline checked out. Ol’ Ruky-dog didn’t lie about everything.

What then of the orcs? It wasn’t likely the orcs would pay off kobolds to locate some demons. As much danger as they posed to us, the demons seemed low-level, bore no unique names, didn’t grant wishes, or offered to strike bargains. No, the demons seemed coincidental—the orcs wanted whatever the warlock pursued.

Fabulosa and the Sternways hadn’t known of other gnolls in Grayton, and even if they did, I doubt they’d be more amenable than those in Tully’s.

When I left the Tenderloin, I got directions to Grayton’s biggest library. I learned its location rested in Grayton University, in a much nicer part of town. A carriage took me there for a dozen copper pieces.

Unfortunately, the library closed its doors before I arrived in the early evening. After a day in the Bottoms, bribing my way inside seemed a perfectly reasonable solution, but no one answered my knocking, no matter how hard I pounded.

I conjured scenarios on how to use their place after hours but couldn’t concoct a plan. I could probably use Hot Air and Slipstream through a high, unlocked window, but stumbling into a room of after-hours librarians made me reconsider. What would Mr. Fergus’s reaction be to such an intrusion? What if the librarians were high-level wizards? No—the risk of burning bridges seemed too great. Accurate translations mattered more than time. I could return tomorrow. Besides, what kind of reprobate breaks into a library? Waiting until morning also would make books easier to read.

I took the carriage to the Cross Keys and ended a frustrating day.