When you first step out into the streets of New Draconis, your eyes are drawn upwards, to skies filled with dragons. Some in flight, gliding on thermals above the city, some sunning themselves, laying on the buildings and some on the ground, towering over the press of the crowds, even when on all fours. No known world can match Maulkir for variety, size, and, most of all, the civility of the dragons in the sky. For while they are of different colors and breeds, they are shockingly polite. To other dragons, at least.

Once the shock of dragons has settled in your mind, the next thing you notice is the wildly varying architecture. No building matches its neighbor. A log cabin, built to a dragon scale, is across the odd brown street from a high rise that would not be out of place on the streets of New York City. A amphitheater of stone has a neon sign advertising blood sport and combat games, next to a lake with no sign of a river feeding it has a pirate ship moored, slightly rocking in the scant wind.

The eclectic nature of the buildings is jarring, but then your eyes land on the people. And again, a cacophony of colors and styles, both of what they wear and what they are. Most of the people are bipedal, or at least, sharing some of the similar structure. Hippo people express joyful shock at the capabilities of a rifle displayed in a shop window. A woman with her lower half the body and legs of a massive spider sells clothes, freshly woven, from a street stall. A man with four arms juggles an impossible amount of items, thanking passersby who place a coin into the hat in front of him. A centaur passes a handful of golden coins to a bipedal lizard and takes the loaves of bread and places them in the saddlebags draped across its flanks.

A melting pot of cultures and people, Maulkir was a place that didn’t care who you were or where you were from.

Actually, that’s not exactly true.

What Maulkir cared for was whether or not you were a dragon. If you were, then your opinion mattered, you mattered, in a way that would be impossible if you were not.

But after that distinction, everything was just about equal. Mostly.

Shaphine Woodvale followed behind in the wake of her ‘senior’ partner. With the streets packed with the midday markets, it was much easier to follow behind her than to blaze your own trail through the press of the crowds. It was a bit comical to watch, the large amethyst scaled warrior apologizing to everyone she bumped into.

Smarter citizens see a Vs'shtakvi and get out of the way. It was a little disheartening, for there to be such a disparity between people, but that was just the nature of Maulkir. In a world where dragons were treated like gods, why wouldn’t half-dragons be treated like demigods?

Still, as annoying as it was that Joyassa was appointed the one in charge of their pair, she was a good egg, as the Vishys say. Polite as could be, and smart as a whip. Shaph could appreciate that, as it was where she was weakest. No schooling, except for decades on the beat of the ever changing city. Joy shored up one of her weaknesses, and Shaph covered for the dragonborn’s inability to handle people. They made a good team.

Shaphine’s eyes were constantly moving as they proceeded along their route. At morning call, they’d been given a complaint from a gnomish shopkeeper and Brannonth had assigned the pair to go check it out. Luckily for her feet, the Mytair Market was in Teldraig, the same district as their guildhouse.

The Mytair Market is the sort of oddity that on first glance, seems like it could only exist in Maulkir, but once you cut out the oddest, element, in this case the central tower that Mytair uses as his main lair, the rest of the establishment is seen on hundreds of worlds. It is, to put it plainly, a mall. Beneath the glass roofs that separate the market from the rest of New Draconis lie a hundred shops. Most are the sort that you would see in any mall. A bookstore, clothing ornate and functional, small eateries, candy shops, and those places that sell warm pretzels that are somehow better than they smell. Somehow, despite the press of people, the Mytair Market always smelled like baking bread and searing meat.

The Dapper Dragon was sandwiched between a store with musical instruments and, funnily enough, a sandwich shop. It had a few manikins in the windows, one bare and empty, the other one sized for a child or similarly sized adult had a cloak of dark fur that reached to it’s ankles.

“Welcome in to the Dapper Dragon. Be with you in just a second, good sirs” The voice called out from the back as the duo entered through the open entrance. A quick glance around revealed no mirrors or bells, nothing to convey the arrival of new customers to the back room.

Joyassa caught her eye and smiled a toothy grin. “It’s magic, obviously.” She whispered in Xanalre, the tongue of the dragons. Shaphine spoke it as well, although with a bit of an accent. It was a requirement to get beyond simple guard duty in the Claws.

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“They have a permanent alarm spell woven into the doorway. Chimes in their head when something passes through. Part of the standard package in the Market.” continued Joyassa.

It’s good security, thought Shaph. There was just the one doorway, and it looked like once the rolling gate was deployed, the place was basically sealed.

Out from the back emerged a gnome carefully carrying a large bundle of black fur. “Ah, madams. My apologies. How can I help you today?”

Joyassa gestured and Shaphine stepped forward, a senior ceding the initial questioning to a junior. The dance ignored the fact that Joyassa had trained under the elven woman, and instead, gave face to all the dragonfolk who need to maintain the racial pride.

“Good day sir. We’re officers Canorae and Woodvale, from the Claw Security Force. Captain Brannonth dispatched us here, saying you had some sort of disturbance?”

The gnome’s face dropped the polite customer service smile. “Ah, yes, Mytair said he’d arranged for something. We had a theft of some of our new and popular Night cloaks. Three of them went missing, one right off the display. About fifteen hundred gold, gone overnight.”

Shaphine made a few noncommittal grunts as she took notes. On the mention of the cloak, Joyassa picked up the cloak from the counter and spread it out.

“We noticed your store has alarms set. Did they go off?” The gnome frowned.

“Not that I heard, and I was here all night. We have a small apartment above the shop. When anyone comes through the door, it should let my wife or I know. Both of us were in plenty range to hear someone enter, and none did.”

“Would the sound of the alarm wake you up?

“It’s part of the magic. Goes PING! In your head, and you wake up. No way to sleep through it.”

“I see. You said these cloaks are popular. Are they just a fashion statement?”

“They’re fashionable, but they are more than just that. Night Panther hide is the name of the fur. Some of the Gray Hunters came with a stack of these, taller than me. The beasts moved entirely silently, no matter the terrain. They had some sort of silence aura and the cloaks can convey a bit of that. They sound like absolutely terrifying beasts, but the hides are the finest I’ve ever worked.”

Shaphine sighed. “So not only are they rare, magical, and fashionable, but they are something a ne'er do well would find useful. That’s certainly going to make this harder Mister…?”

“Balick”

“We’re not going to promise anything, Mr. Balick, but we’ll put out some feelers and see what we can find. We’ll return your property if we can, but, from the outset here, it looks like an unlikely road.”

The pair left the unhappy gnomish proprietor behind as they exited the shop to begin their investigations.

--

Their investigation began in a separate part of the Market, on the mezzanine overlooking the food court. The Towerview Tavern was aptly named, with a pit of the space outside of the main shop itself arranged to look out on the Mytair Tower. The moonstone dragon who operated the mall was showy, and loved to put on a performance to the watching crowd.

The inside of the tavern, however, held the more serious drinkers, the ones who came to drink with purpose and vision, not to cheer for the landlord. A bit past noon, the place was not full, but getting there. The proprietor, a portly dragonborn with chromatic white scales, was busy pouring ale to a dwarf with a braided beard when he saw the pair enter.

“Ah! Joya! It is good for you to visit your uncle. Come come, let me clear a space. Sit! drink! Talk!” He shooed the dwarf away from the bar, as the two approached.

“Just a small one, for family’s sake Uncle.” said Joyassa, sitting in one of the bar stools. Shaphine stayed standing eyes on the room as her partner accepted the small glass from her relative. While her eyes watched the room, her ears were focused on the tavern keeper behind her.

“Uncle, can you tell me more about your door alarm?”

“The doors? To my tavern? They’re the same as other shops. Why? Is this not a social call?”

“Sorry Uncle, but I am on a job, and we think the alarm might have something to do with it.”

The white dragonborn frowned as he considered. “The door alarms come with the shop. There’s some settings you can adjust, but most leave it as is. The system in each shop is put in when the Merchant makes your shop.”

“What settings can you change?”

“You can turn the system on and off, change who can hear the sound, some triggers to how it knows to go off. But most in the Market keep their setting the same.”

“Can anyone change the settings?” asked Shaphine, turning around. The tavern keeper looked a bit affronted at the intrusion, but with a glance at his niece, he said “No, only the one marked as owner, or those the owner permits can make alterations.

Shaphine nodded. Joyassa finished her glass raising it in toast to her uncle and the pair of them headed out.