24 Fentuary, 5A 169: Planning to Rebuild
As per the plan, I begin my search for the items I need to rebuild King Alvis’ statue at my inn, the King’s Axe. I ask the innkeeper whether he knows anything about an axe belonging to the King, but he says he doesn’t: his ancestor named the inn that, for whatever reason, but there’s no axe around that he knows of. A search of the inn, to see if the innkeeper might be lying, turns up nothing, either, so I proceed to the second part of my plan, the visit to the Consortium palace.
I enter the palace through the garden doors, and am surprised to find none of the trappings of a royal court, or even a well-appointed bureaucracy. Rather, the activity that seems to be taking place is commerce, with multiple little shops arrayed in the palace’s chambers. Their nature varies greatly, but I begin with the one selling clothes. The owner, Agmundi, is none too glad to see me: she seems to be prejudiced against humans, perhaps with good reason, as the only clothes she sells are tailored to the dwarven body, and human customers just waste her time trying on wares that will never fit them. I ask her why she won’t make human-sized clothes, and she replies that I should bring that up with her supplier, her sister over in Keldagrim-East. She doesn’t seem to have an opinion of her, either, holding it against her that she’s ‘lazy enough’ to be living in such a dump. Well, I’m no economist, but if she’s working for you, you’re not entirely lacking in responsibility for her living conditions…
The clothes Agmundi sells are of decent make, but nothing fit for a king, so I move on. The shop next to Agmundi’s is a weapons forge, selling war hammers made of metal up to adamantium in quality. The owner’s a bit of a jerk and there are no axes on sale, so I move on to check out the shops on the other side of the foyer. Along the way, a dwarf approaches me and ask whether I can recommend an item for him to spend his money on. Eventually, I steer him toward the idea of getting new clothes: the ones he has on, he admits, are a bit drab for Keldagrim-West.
Also on the bottom floor are a general store, which sells more than the usual range of stock, but nothing eye-popping, much less useful for my mission. There’s also a machine shop that services dwarven steam technology and sells tools for others to do the same in their own right. It’s not up my alley, either, but it did seem to attract a gnomish professor (this one, I can say with confidence, actually from the Grand Tree) who’s been studying the dwarven race’s technological advances. The shop also employs an apprentice, who tells me he used to be a great engineer, but seems very much down on his luck, now. I wonder what happened to bring him to grief…
The upstairs of the palace is where the real action is at: a grand trading floor athwart the Kelda, called the Trade Octagon, ringed by the offices of the various trading companies that make up the Consortium. The stairs from the lower floor bring me very close to the offices of one such company, the Yellow Fortune, which is notable, I find out, for employing only women. I continue around, visiting the offices of the eight major companies and stealing bits of their employees’ time to ask them about their business. I first visit the offices of the Blue Opal and Purple Pewter, which appear to be quite typical. Past them is the office of the Red Axe, about which I’ve heard a fair bit, not all of it good. It turns out, unfortunately, that I can’t assess the rumours for myself, because the company staff are busy in a meeting with those gnomish emissaries and shoo away visitors.
I cross the Octagon, which is loud, very busy and utterly uninterested in a human who’s not selling anything, and see what companies can be found on the other side of the floor. For starters, there’s the Brown Engine, which is known for only accepting men into its membership. Kind of a patronising policy, if you ask me, but then again the Yellow Fortune does the same, and I don’t know enough about dwarven gender norms to pass judgment. There’s also the Silver Cog, which prides itself on its superior management, the White Chisel and the Green Gemstone.
All this is interesting enough, but I have other things to do than watch the trading, so I climb the stairs at the back of the Octagon to see what’s on the upper floor. This turns out to be a great, yet empty, throne room, dominated by an eight-sided table and a throne draped in brown cloth. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say this is where the Consortium leaders hold their councils. It’s a stately place, but completely deserted right now. Since there’s nothing for me to see, I descend all the way to the ground floor and check out the gallery on the eastern side of the Kelda.
Unlike the shops on the western side, the businesses here are market stalls, selling a more specialised, but not necessarily any less fine, set of wares. The tenor is very dwarven, and some of the items on sale sound downright odd for human ears, such as the ‘freshly baked’ bread at the bakery stall that’s only two months old and hard as a rock. Next to the bakery is a gem-cutter’s stall, whose owner, a dwarf named Hervi, dragoons me into some work: he needs tin, and he needs it now. Not wishing to disappoint, I dash of to the bank, but alas, I don’t have enough tin there to fulfil the order. That means a trip to the mines outside the city. Fortunately, there’s tin in abundance there, and I’m able to satisfy the order in good time. Hervi pays me quite generously for my services, and after looking at his wares out of politeness, I move on.
The shop next to his is selling crafting equipment, albeit with a smaller selection of items than the really renowned crafting stores in Al-Kharid and suchlike. Since I’m not in the market, I move on, stopping at a stall that sells crossbows. The craftsman running it, noticing my interest, is kind enough to walk me through the process of crafting a crossbow, from whittling the stock, to smithing the limbs, to boiling sinew for the string. In addition, the guy talks me into buying a pouch for my bolts, which promises to be quite a space-saver when I’m out in the field! Otherwise, his stock right now mainly consists of crossbow parts, and I’m not much of a fletcher (I blame my early dependence on chargebows), so I keep going.
The final two stalls of interest are a silver stall run by the Silver Cog that sells various wares of that metal, including holy symbols, and the clothes stall of Agmundi’s sister, Vermundi. She doesn’t happen to have many clothes in stock— most of her production, except the drabbest items, go to her sister— but she’s willing to listen when I tell her I’ve got a special order for her consideration. It turns out she’s more than willing to make some period-authentic clothes to model the statue on, but she doesn’t know much about the typical designs of the day. For that, I’ll need to speak to the librarian in Keldagrim-West.
I thus head over to the library and ask Hugi what he knows. Being a competent librarian, he is able to point me toward a book called the ‘Scholar’s Guide to Dwarven Costumes’, which contains drawings of many of the outfits of the dwarven kings. He tells me it should be on one of the top shelves, being an old and infrequently consulted book, but doesn’t know exactly where. So I look for it, and in short order find it on one of the shelves upstairs. (I somehow missed that the library had an upstairs, last time I was here!) I check it out and bring it back to Vermundi, who studies it and tells me what I’m asking for should be very doable. The only problem is, her sewing machine (another masterpiece of dwarven engineering!) has run out of fuel, and I’ll need to supply her with coal and wood before she can make anything. Fortunately, coal and wood are something I have on hand, and I light up the machine. Vermundi makes very short work of making the clothes, for which she charges me the cost of the materials: two hundred coins. She even promises to return the book to the library for me: I get the feeling she really enjoyed this assignment!
Well, that’s one item down and two more to go: the boots and the axe. I have no idea where I might find those, but perhaps Veldaban might, at least for the axe. I go over to the barracks, but it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t, in fact, know anything, and is quite busy to boot. So I go over to the weapon smith’s next door, Santiri’s, and ask him if he knows anything. After I explain to him that I need the axe to rebuild the statue (an incident that he suspects was no mere accident) he reveals that the axe has been in the possession of his family for some time, after having been lost for several centuries. His ancestor found it in the river, and unfortunately this means it’s in a sorry state, partially eaten away by rust and with the sapphires on the hilt missing from their sockets. He’s not even positive that it’s the King’s original axe, but no one has a similar claim, so for all he knows, it is. He’s generous enough to let me borrow it, but cautions that it’ll need to be restored before it’s in a fit state to be used as a model for the statue. The sapphires should be easy enough to replace (indeed, I do so right after I’ve finished talking to him), but the metal will need the expertise of an Imcando dwarf to bring it back to its former glory. Well, as luck has it, I know where the last of the Imcando dwarves lives, and I can probably get him to work on this project.
The last item I need for the statue are some boots of suitably fine make. I spend a few hours traveling the city, but none of the clothiers have any leads on where I could find a pair (and Agmundi even makes me bring her tin from the mines— hell knows what for— before she reveals to me her ignorance!). Finally, I get a lead from the armourer, Saro, who tells me he had something like that in stock: a pair of boots fit for a king! Unfortunately, the boots were bought by Dromund, one of the wealthiest dwarves in town and a notorious eccentric, and since him having the boots in stock was very much a one-off, I’d need to negotiate with Dromund directly.
I visit Dromund in his house by the bank and Black Guard HQ. Unfortunately, negotiations don’t go well: he initially suspects me of being some kind of spy for the Black Guard, and then flat-out rejects my offer to buy the boots off of him. And he’s not wearing them, either: he’s got them on display in his front room as some kind of strange… art exhibit? Ostentatious show of wealth? Who knows? Anyway, it becomes clear that I shall have to swipe the boots, hopefully without getting caught. Given how suspicious of me Dromund is, though, I can’t just simply lift them… I’ll need to use magic! I think it’s time to try a new spell that I’ve had in mind for a while, but never deployed: the telekinetic grab. I grab a law rune and try casting the spell, but Dromund objects to magic use in his house, so I’m forced to stake out the outside. It turns out I’m in luck, though: the display table is within sight from an open window, and all it takes is one quick hand gesture and some muttered words for the boots to come into my possession! How long before he realises what happened, I wonder?
So, overall, quite a successful day. The only thing I need to do before the reconstruction of the statue can commence is get the axe repaired, so it’s time to leave Keldagrim and get on my way. I think I shall travel overland to Ardougne, following the readings on the enchanted key, and visit Karamja from there to return Kangai Mau’s tribal totem and check in with my friends in Tai Bwo Wannai: they tend to be in need of help quite often. It’s getting late, but I get going all the same, and make it to Seers’ Village, where, of course, I have free lodgings in Camelot.