• Solo • Late In Vhalar

[Yrmellyn Cole]

Late In Vhalar

Rharne, Trials 111-123 of Arc 717

Trial 111

When the flutterbus (a big insect if you asked her, no matter what people might try to make her believe) approached Rharne, it was the first time Yrmellyn Cole saw her whole home town at the same time, with all it's quarters, the surrounding landscape, the river and the lake. She had seen the city so many times during all the years she had lived there, but it was different to see if from above.

The trip from Desnind had only taken fifteen trials, but higher speed had its price in terms of comfort. Fifteen trials on a flutterbus is a long time. Yrmellyn felt happy that the journey was finally over. She took her backpack and went over to the horses that were waiting for travelers who wanted to ride to the city proper. For one gold nel she got the same kind of nice and docile horse she had ridden on from Ne’haer to Treth, earlier in Vhalar. This was nearly forty trials ago, and Ne’haer felt very far away. There had been rumors about political tensions in that city, and reports about pirate attacks. In general it had felt very unstable. The authorities of the city hadn’t seemed to do anything about it, not openly, but she assumed there must have been a lot of secret activity.

Well. It had looked like the situation was about to go south. She might very well have left in the nick of time.

Yrmellyn did as she had been told to do last time she had been riding. This time she already knew that it was important to check the equipment before mounting, use a mounting block to make it easier to get up on the horse and make someone hold the horse’s head while she put her foot in the stirrup and mounted up. She found the stirrup on the other side with her other foot and pulled in the reins. She was about to make the horse walk, when the animal handler stopped her to tell her about how to sit correctly in the saddle. She needed to have a good seat in order to keep herself and the horse safe, he said.

“A good seat?” She wasn’t totally sure what he meant.

“Yes. You need to sit sort of squarely. You should be in the middle of the saddle. It gives you the best balance. Relax...no, don’t that much, don’t slouch! Sit tall! No, don’t be stiff!”

Yrmellyn adjusted her position until it was okay. “Like this?”

“Yes, that’s more like it. Now, you need to make sure your feet is aligned with your knees. If you look down to check you should not be able to see your heels or toes, if you get what I mean...yes, you are doing it right now.”

She did as she was told. It wasn’t hard, just somewhat new. She had a question though. “What do you mean, sit tall?”

“Turn your gaze up, yes... that’s it ... and look past the ears of the horse. It makes the horse feel like you are lighter, compared to if you slouch.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Now just remember to breathe naturally and smile and do your best to feel like everything is perfect and fantastic. If you aren’t used to keeping a correct seat you may actually start to feel a bit strained, but stay patient and be in a good mood. If you feel nervous the horse will be nervous. ”

Yrmellyn felt relieved when the animal handler finally decided to let her ride away. She did her best to follow the instructions she had been given, albeit she felt she hadn’t asked for lessons just because she had hired a horse. All inclusive, they had said when she paid. In Ne’haer it had meant carrots for their horse was included. Here in Rharne it seemed to mean being made to shape up and ride properly was included. Some would perhaps have felt annoyed, but Yrmellyn just felt like laughing at it all. Riding lessons were perhaps better than carrots...she had at least gained useful knowledge she would keep.

A monotonous riding trip followed. The painter did nothing else than ride, until they reached the gates. There she followed the annoying city law which stated that all mages must declare themselves upon entering the city. She was issued a document as proof of the declaration, and knew her name would recorded by the Lightning Knights. It was nothing new with it, because she had been travelling in an out of Rharne a number of times. They she continued into the city proper and she handed the horse over to it’s owner and went to find a room in an inn.

Ledger: -1 gn for a guided horse trip

Loot: Mage registration document issued by The Lightning Knights of Rharne

[Yrmellyn Cole]

Trial 112

One night at The Harpy Inn in Earth Quarter had been enough to convince Yrmellyn that it would be profitable to buy an apartment in Rharne instead of renting a shamelessly expensive inn room. She was up early. The day would probably become an ordeal, as it would take time to find apartments, have a closer look them, compare them, negotiate about prices and take decisions. She knew it could take more than one day too, but she hoped it wouldn't.

Being from Rharne she knew that that she wanted to live in The Earth Quarter.

Yrmellyn had spent her youth in The Dust Quarter but moved fifteen arcs ago. She would never go back to live there again. The Dust Quarter was the name implied, the quarter where people were poor and lived "in the dust". It was often literally true. The Dust was a slum where the homes were in best case shackles but in worst case just temporary shelters made of random materials.

The streets lacked proper pavement and most of them were just mud paths. All kinds of garbage was piled up those streets and other open places between the ramshackle homes. This was not because the poor people living there had so much to throw away, but instead because they kept gathering and saving up materials and items which people who were better off thought of as garbage. The poor people thought of the garbage as things that could perhaps be of use, eventually, for example for bartering. It was better to have something than to have nothing. Garbage had a value in Dust Quarters.

When it came to the sewage, of which there was plenty on the streets of Dust Quarter, it was just sewage. People were accustomed to it and tended to not pay so much attention to it. Yrmellyn recalled this with mixed feelings. It terrible, but she hadn't felt like it was terrible when she grew up there. She had just accepted it as natural, like children use to do. If she would go there today it would only be to visit The Dust Market.

Her interest in Alchemy would perhaps also take her to Hannah's Healers, the tonics and potions shop, when and if she had something to use for bartering. In The Dust, where garbage was valuable and easy to hold on to, money could just make people a target for robbers, so many found it better to play it safe and barter even when they had something they could have tried to sell for money. Hannah's didn't accept money at all, at least not officially.

Oh, well. No idea to think more of The Dust Quarter right now.

To go there was a later thing.

[Yrmellyn Cole]

Trial 113

The apartment hunt of the previous day hadn’t been successful. People who were travelling away from the city had mostly sold in Vhalar, before the flutterbus trips stopped for the arc. Newcomers who were looking to stay in Rharne during Zida and Culys or more had bought in good time. The painter was late to the commerce. Only less attractive apartments seemed to be for sale now, but due to the low supply the prices were as high as if they had been in top shape.

It was annoying, but after visiting several quite bad apartments the painter had started to feel it was inevitable that she would have to pay more than an apartment really was worth. This meant she had a new strategy now: she would perhaps have to pay for garbage, sort of, but this made her remember that it’s possible to see value in garbage, for people with more creativity than money. She was an artist and magic crafter. She was a woman who didn’t have the thumb in the middle of her hand exactly. She ought to be able to succeed with a renovation project, yes? One possibility would be to buy a place in so bad shape that nobody else wanted it. A place with a negotiable price...but that was just wishful thinking. What she aimed for was an apartment at average price, but lower than average standard, instead of average standard at ridiculously high price.

“It seems like some think this is The Glass Quarter, not Earth Quarter” she muttered angrily to herself while she walked along the street.

The Glass Quarter was the most expensive district in the city where all the rich people lived. Yrmellyn thought of how impressed and awed she had been when she had first moved there, to live as the mistress of rich men who provided her with luxury the girl from The Dust hadn’t been able to imagine until she experienced it. She had felt like she had unbelievably good luck when she had been installed in a small but elegant apartment not far from where her first “protector” lived with his wife and children.

It hadn’t bothered her that her lovers were married. She hadn’t felt sorry for their wives, because she thought these women were well off, with nice and comfortable homes, expensive clothes, a safe future for themselves and their children and lots of food. Today...she was another person, older, perhaps also a bit wiser. The thoughtless gold-digger she had been was only a memory now. Her wasteful lifestyle of the past was over as well. Even the period of time when she had been a carefree wandering artist who didn’t care that she was a pauper seemed over...the new responsibility for taking on an apprentice had made her save up the money she earned instead of squandering them like garbage.

[Yrmellyn Cole]

...and it was still the long, long trial 113 of Vhalar...

Still thinking about the Glass Quarter she continued down the rustic Earth Quarter street she was in. In comparison to this prosaic part of the city it was so beautiful there in the quarter of the wealthy. Well maintained houses with amazing windows of stained glass lined the equally well maintained and clean streets of stone. There were lovely green gardens and if there ever was any garbage she hadn’t seen it...not in the Glass Quarter that was, but she had perhaps seen some of it turn up in The Dust. Where there’s people there’s always also things they throw away and sooner or later it reaches the final destination in a district where everything has value and nothing is ever thrown away. The Dust Quarter, she thought, could be seen as a kind of dump where everything from the many shops and markets in the Glass Quarters would eventually end up.

At the end everything would become dust.

She kept walking.

A bit later she had a look at an apartment which originally must have been a workshop, as it was located halfways under the street level, with small windows high up on the wall towards the street so she could see the boots of bypassing pedestrians if she looked up and out. The view was depressing to say the least. It wasn’t a basement...but nearly. Some would definitely have called it a basement. When Yrmellyn mentioned this, the landlord immediately pointed out that the apartment had really good and solid walls so it was guaranteed to not be drafty. He confirmed that it had really been a workshop in the past, a shoemaker workshop to be exact. When the business had closed the location had been redesigned to an “affordable apartment”. There was one room with a fire place. It was furnished with one small table and a couple of chairs that looked used and crappy and in one corner there was a simple bed for one. It was obscure in there despite the early break. Yrmellyn felt a vague unpleasant smell, which she supposed must be something that “sat in the walls”.

It seemed unhealthy. Seemed? That smell felt like a warning she shouldn’t ignore. It actually made her think of...drugs. As she was worried that she wouldn’t manage to find another apartment for sale, it was hard to decide against buying the place, but she felt she couldn’t knowingly make her young apprentice live there. When she finally said that she didn’t want the apartment the landlord went rude and ranted at her for having wasted their time. Yrmellyn left in a hurry, relieved to get out on the street again.

She looked at several more apartments during the trial. All of them were renovation projects bordering on heaps of garbage. Yrmellyn hadn’t thought these kind of decaying places existed outside of the Dust Quarter, but obviously there were some shabby backstreets in Earth Quarters which could offer housing of nearly that low standard.

She returned to the main streets, where she found her way to an affordable but decent little tavern with a simple and short menu. Yrmellyn ordered soup and bread and ate it slowly in the warm serving room. The tavern had a yard outside, but this time of the year nobody used it. It was a nice place, nothing like the bigger and more well-known taverns of the quarter, but not bad. It felt good to just sit there and rest and think for a while. She drew it out until the waitress started to ask if she wanted to order something more.

“No. I must be on my way. But tell me, have you heard anything about apartments for sale here on this street?” It couldn’t hurt to ask, even if her expectations on the answer were low.

“Oh...yes...actually, there’s apartments for sale in the house adjacent to our yard. I heard it first time today, in the morning. There seems to have been some kind of accident on the top floor, and now they are selling...I don’t know more, but it’s in the house over there.”

Yrmellyn paid for the meal, tipped the waitress and went to investigate if there was still an apartment for sale in the tree-story house on the other side of the tavern yard. She didn't dare to get her hopes up too much.

[Yrmellyn Cole]

...trial 113 continues...

When Yrmellyn inquired about the apartments she had heard was for sale, she felt surprised by the immediate and unusually cordial response she was met with. There were workshop locations on the first and second floors, and those were currently rented out to the businesses that used them, but on the third floor, which was the top floor of the house, it was for sure housing for sale.

“Good price at fast deal” the seller said as she guided Yrmellyn to the stairs and took her up to the apartment in question.

Up there, on the third floor, there was small hallway that spanned over the street and connected the building to the hose on the opposite side. There were two doors to the house Yrmellyn visited, but she couldn’t see any doors to the other building at the other end of the hallway. The small space seemed to be used as storeroom. It was a very plain and boring little room. Simple shelves lined the grey walls, mostly empty.

“The hallway is extra space if you need to store things you only need sometimes and don’t want to keep in the apartment.” The seller sounded enthusiastic. “You get this whole storage room into the bargain!”

“Oh...” Yrmellyn estimated the small space to perhaps seventy square feet, at most (six and a half square meter). It wasn’t something she wanted to pay extra for, but she suspected that “into the bargain” meant this drab little storage room would be used a reason for demanding a higher than average price for the apartment she was about to enter.

The seller opened the door to the left and they entered an apartment which was...a totally normal plain standard apartment of about four hundred square feet, with a fireplace and an assortment of simple kitchen utensils, a simple table with a couple of simple chairs and one simple bed. The only thing that stood out were the two unusually big and good windows towards the tavern yard adjacent to the house. They let in lots of light, those windows, which the painter immediately noticed with great interest. In order to conceal that she was starting to feel exited she did her best to look critical and started to walk around and inspect everything like she was looking for flaws...and finding them.

She wanted this apartment! She would need to speak down the price though. Yrmellyn wasn’t unrealistic, but she felt it would be enough to pay the normal average price of two hundred and fifty golden nels, not more, or at least not that much more.

“It’s a fantastic apartment with a lovely view. I haven’t had time to advertise it yet, so you are the first to have a look at it. In case you are interested in a quick deal it would spare time, so I’m gonna make a special offer for you.”

The seller’s wide, wide smile did perhaps not bode so well. Yrmellyn waited for her to continue.

“If you buy this apartment and the other apartment next door so I don’t need to bother with the selling of it, you will get them both for only six hundred golden nels and the storage room into the bargain. It’s a good deal! It’s only because I’m so busy that I’m prepared to pay a bit if someone takes this extra work off my hands. Well? What do you say?”

“I’m only looking for...”

The seller interrupted Yrmellyn there. “I’m looking to sell it all to one buyer and as soon as possible. You can just sell the other apartment to someone else, right? You can even earn some money on it, if you sell for a higher price than you bought it for. It’s not easy to find apartments this time of the year! But, well, if you aren’t interested in buying both apartments, say it now, at once. I only sell them as a pair. I’m in a hurry, so I will need to spread the word...”

“I can be interested in your special offer, but you can hardly expect me to pay that much. This apartment for example...” Yrmellyn tried to come up with something to complain at. And actually... “The windows are too big. All that glass! It will be too cold here in the cold seasons and too hot in the warm seasons. And there’s a tavern yard outside. It’s calm now, but when the weather gets warmer again it will be chaotic. Song and music. Drunken people shouting and running wild. Brawls. I would say it’s wort h less than average. Two hundred golden nels. At most.”

“It’s a very calm tavern. The disturbance is minimal. And you can just keep the fire burning when it’s cold and open the windows when it’s hot. But if you don’t want the apartments, let’s not argue about the price. I really must be on my way soon...six hundred golden nels. Three hundred isn’t much for this good apartment, in Zida and all.”

Yrmellyn didn’t want to just leave without getting any more chances to discuss the price and try to persuade the seller to let her buy just one apartment. She thought of the obvious a relevant thing for a buyer to say: “I can be interested, but I want to have a look at the other apartment too before I take a decision.”

“It’s just similar to this one. A similar apartment. Same size. It has a fireplace. So on.”

The seller didn’t seem to find it necessary to show the other apartment. Yrmelly didn’t need to use attunement in order to feel a warning bell ring. “I would still like to see it” she said.

“It’s a bit untidy. The former inhabitant left in a haste. So to speak. Right now it’s not at its best.”

“I still want to see it before I take a decision. You can hardly expect anybody to pay up without having seen both apartments.”

She must have sounded convincing there, because after a short silence the seller made up her mind. “Let’s go and have a look at it then.” She sounded less enthusiastic now. “As I said, it’s a little bit untidy there at the moment.”

They left the first apartment, passed through the small “bargain” of a hallway and storage room and entered the second apartment for sale.

[Yrmellyn Cole]

...trial 113 continues even more...

"As I told you, it's a little bit untidy at the moment."

The woman said this in the overly cheery tone people use when they try to fool children into accepting something that isn't good at all. The enormous cheerfulness was wasted on Yrmellyn Cole, who was a grown up woman who knew what she saw with her own eyes. She was fully able to distinguish between a normal apartment and an extreme renovation project. This second apartment was worse than anything else she had seen today. It was a mess of damaged furniture and broken glass. A floor full of garbage was framed by dirty walls and a dirty ceiling. An acrid and sour smell was blended with the unpleasant stench of burnt wood and something she wasn't able to identify.

They had stopped right inside the door. The seller didn't show any signs of planning to continue further in. Yrmellyn watched the chaos and recalled that the waitress who had told her about these apartments had mentioned a recent accident.

"I heard there has been an accident here. I guess it must have been in this apartment then. What happened? Fire?"

"There seems to have been an accident, yes. The man who lived here left in a hurry . That's all I know. Now it's for sale to someone who wants to buy the whole top floor. My own former apartment, which you have already seen, this apartment, and the storage-room located over the street. Have you made up your mind yet? I don't have all day and there's other people who are looking for good apartments."

Yrmellyn digested this information a bit while she started to walk around in the apartment in order to give it a closer inspection. There was something fundamentally odd with the whole offer. An accident. Probably a fire. Broken furniture and glass. A former owner who had left in a hurry. And their neighbor, this woman who didn't know a thing about what had happened, was selling both apartments ?

"So you bought this apartment of the former owner before they left? I hardly think you paid three hundred golden nels for...this." Yrmellyn touched the wall next to the fireplace. Her fingertips went black. "How come you don't know what happened? You must have heard..."

"I wasn't here. I was with my fiancée. We were at The Harpy Inn. When I returned here everything was already over."

"But you bought this apartment? After the accident?"

"Well no, I didn't, because I already owned it. I had rented it out, to a very decent scholar of small means but polite manners. A university professor on a visit in Rharne, he said. He was never disturbing and always paid the rent in advance. I never had any problems whatsoever with him. And now this! I'm going to sell, marry and move!"

A university professor, once again. Yrmellyn sensed a pattern there... first there had been professor Doran Thethys with his researh of alchemy ... then there had been ex-honorary professor Anne Brandon, who had written the big book Yrmellyn had been given as a bribe last Cylus...and now one more professor had been in action here in Rharne, leaving a crashed and fire damaged apartment behind "in a hurry". Even as she thought of this she spotted an assortment of glass bottles on the last shelf standing, at the wall next to one of the windows. She climbed over the debris on the floor, stopped in front of the shelf and looked at the bottles. There were in total twelve bottles, all of them made of glass and with stopper's of glass. The bottles were quite small and seemed to hold at most a half cup or so of whatever they contained. Was the content drugs, poisons, alchemic concoctions, toad blood or what? Each bottle had label with figure, one to twelve. That was all . Yrmellyn figured that the person they had belonged had either been sloppy, or else extremely secretive.

"Don't touch them!" The sellers voice went shrill when she shouted out the warning and Yrmellyn took a step back.

"What is ..."

"It's best to not take any risks. Not after what has happened here. I don't want to get one more apartment destroyed. I recommend that you get those bottles removed by people who are experts at handling chemicals ... alas I can't do it because I don't have time, not me, but I'm sure you will be able to take care of them properly and get rid of them in a safe manner, once you own the place. I'll just leave them where they are."

Yrmellyn obliged. "You are right. It's best to not touch anything in this totally destroyed and potentially dangerous apartment. Let's get out of here now and get down to business."

If I really buy this mess I'll keep the bottles and try to find out what they contain. It could be something dangerous, for sure, but it could also be something valuable. I'm not going to tell her that thought. She will just try to make it a reason to ask for a higher price.

Yrmellyn wanted the normal apartment, but she could understand it now, that the woman wanted to sell the two apartments together. The damaged apartment was, to put it nicely, not possible to sell without repairing it first. As an artist Yrmellyn knew that materials could be more expensive than people thought. It could also become incredibly expensive to hire crafters to do repairs. That was just general public knowledge. To bundle this place with the more attractive apartment and the storage room outside was probably the only way for the seller to quickly get rid of the garbage without losing money.

While they returned to the first apartment to speak, Yrmellyn considered her options.

Negotiations followed.

At the end she decided to buy the twin apartments and repair and renovate the one that was damaged. Maybe she would be able to sell it for a decent price later on and loose less than she if she bought some of the worse objects she had seen. Limiting the losses was sometimes the best of the bad choices life sent her way. She refused to pay for the stupid little extra garbage chamber of useless hallway though. The seller eager too close the deal. The woman agreed to only charge Yrmellyn for the actual apartments and give her the little dump of a storage room for free. The seller tried to tried to pass that off as a favor and a good bargain, but Yrmellyn knew better. They had tried to sell the bad apartment by showing her only the good one. On top if this she would need to clean out the garbage too.

Lies and deception ... but there was nothing to win by saying it. She had her own thoughts about how to make the deal more profitable.

There's also the mysterious collection of the twelve small bottles. They are mine now ... for good or for bad. I'll deal with them later and see what I can get for them...or use them for!

Yrmellyn just signed, paid and got it one. Later in the day she would move in.

Ledger: -250 GN for a decent apartment and -250 for the crashed apartment next door.

[Kasoria]

Review Rewards

Name Miss Cole

Points awarded: 10

Knowledge:
Mount, horse: Sit in the middle of the saddle for good balance
Mount, horse: Align your feet with your knees for a correct position
Mount, horse: Look past the horse’s ears makes and relax but don’t slouch
Mount, horse: Staying patient and in a good mood to make your horse feel safe
Investigation: Examination of options for housing
Negotiation: Negotiating the contract when buying a home

Loot:
Rharne mage registration papers Granted
A collection of twelve small bottles with hitherto unknown content, only labeled with figures 1-12. Granted, caveat emptor...

Notes:
Well, look at the happy homeowner! Sort of. This was steady and easy and, yes, not action-packed but a fun little read, anyway. Not all on ST has to be quests and bloodshed and high drama. I like how you emphasized the humdrum here, the multitude of little issues that countless millions of Regular Folk have to deal with. Also really enjoyed the haggling and the depiction of the apartments. Curious to see what's in those bottles...

Deduct the expenses as shown, and we're gravy.

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