World Tree MUSH

    So it's been about a week since the renovations began on Trollskull Manor. They aren't done, it'll be about another week before the bar and movie theater area are complete, but the main living portion of the house is now liveable, with plenty of rooms and some furnishings and re-done flooring.
    Lether is, however, in the taproom poring over some ledgers. It's not her strong suit but she at least knows enough math to figure out where to send money to properly get things done.
    "Thousand gold for the renovations... two-fifty for all the guild memberships and fees and contracts... Another two fifty for proper furniture... Could see about a discount at the Bent Nail..." She mutters while scribbling notes as a flagon of beer just... Pours itself for her and floats to her table.
    Apparently the ghost is either browbeaten into subservience or genuinely pleased that the place is getting fixed up. Hard to tell for now.

"I'll be putting some things up for sale as well," Neviah explains from her seat at the table across from Lether. "Some Mulhorandi pottery - quite priceless, I assure you. The gold from those sales should defray some of the cost of the renovations."

Neviah has spent most of the week at Trollskull, helping the little gator-girl figure out what's what and doing much of the legwork in writing up and understanding the budgetary documents. Turns out she knows her way around bureaucracy and legalese. It apparently helps to be university-educated and a former professor.

She gives the flagon a pensive look, then looks up. "Ah-- master phantasm, I do believe there's a good sauvignon blanc back there. Would you mind bringing me a glass?"

    Ever since that mystery gator showed up, there's been rennovations for the manor. Dante's no good at this, but he is however pretty good at lifting stuff around for obvious reasons. He flags the ghost down, "Yo, grab the whiskey, make mine a double." Dante asks. Then he goes through some of the furniture, at least the ones that don't look like they're going to break instantly on contact with someone's bottom. "Might be able to find someone willing to buy this stuff, if it doesn't turn to splinters first."

    The renovations are probably going fairly quick with more than one superhumanly strong person contributing. One of them is on site right this moment, dressed in a tanktop and a comfy pair of work jeans. It's not that Hyouka gets sweaty with her artificial body; but dressing for the job is important from a comfort perspective, and she'd rather not wear her adventuring outfit for hard labor.

    Nevermind that her adventuring outfit is basically a particularly fashionable jogging outfit. Or the fact that it gets far dirtier on a regular basis than it would from construction work.

    However, right this moment, Hyouka is not doing extremely heavy lifting. No, she's detected something else she can contribute to... paperwork and recordkeeping. It's not her actually DOING the paperwork, so she's entirely fine with lending a bit of expertise. "Here, don't forget the ingredient budget. Replacing all the ale and harder stuff wasn't inexpensive. Probably best to note it right here."

    The floating mug of beer gets a warm smile. "Thank you. Poor dear's been really hitting the books."

There was something relaxing about this. Joanna couldn't tell quite why, but, seeing the bar counter shine again even after she had almost written it off as a lost cause was certainly satisfying. The wood was bright again, its layer of gunk, grime, and ruined finish sanded away only for a new layer of varnish and polish to take its place. The Jolteon had just finished up another layer, even though it stung her nose and made her eyes water something fierce, the result was good enough. 

 She took a step back, watching how the light played off its surface and wiped her hands clean on her already mucky overalls. "However much all this is going to dent our pockets, getting this restored just saved us a bunch." She reached for a beer of her own, this one in a bottle rather than a flagon. Normally she wouldn't have regarded it too highly. It was a Unovan import of an industrially mass brand very familiar to her. Before coming to the tree, she'd have considered it so much pisswater, but now it tasted a little bit more like home. 

 Even if that taste in this case was perhaps a little bland. 

 She took another sip as she stepped closer to the others, her eyes glancing to the paperwork before falling back on the assembled party. "Should have some gold from my last contract I can throw into the pile too, if we're running a little short. I'd wager this bar will do pretty well though. Provided we get everything set up right."

    First and foremost a chair pulls itself out for Hyouka to sit before the phantom of Lif the bartender so helpfully pours Neviah her glass of requested drink and a double whiskey is poured for Dante.
    "You sure?" Lether says peering at Neviah. "I mean... We had almost enough from the Hag's stash and plenty from the Zhentarim hideout." She says a little sulky that Neviah would have to part with her trinkets and shiny gubbinz while sipping from her flagon. She pauses long enough to rub at the back of her neck.
    "Geeze, though. Last thing I ever expected was..." She kind of trails off for a beat.
    "I didn't think I had any living family left." Lether says thinking back on the albino lizardfolk that had stopped in last week. "... Should... Probably visit her sometime."
    Thankfully Hyouka distracts Lether with the budget.
    Then she looks to Joanna.
    "Considering the neighborhood, this place'll probably pay for itself in no time." There's a pause. "We have competition but no one likes them. Bar run by a guy named Emmek Frewn. He's cheap with his pour and his drink and cuts corners. Everyone's been waiting for Trollskull Manor to open up again."
    That said there's a silent beat as Lether scribbles some numbers before...
    Windows RATTLE as the roar of an explosion fills Trollskull Alley. Charred bodies can be seen flying through the air as anguished screams sound off and the manor shakes from the impact. Lether is *immediately on her feet, a dagger in her hands as a thick cloud of acrid smoke billows outward from the blast, which seems to have occurred right outside the door.
    "The hell--...?"

Neviah /does/ get sweaty with her normal meat body. It's why she's changed into a short white sun dress and a pair of heels. It's one of the more casual and lightweight selections in her wardrobe and makes her look more carefree than she truly is.

"I'm sure," she assures Lether with a dip of her head. "You put in a great deal of effort to build a personal fortune. Getting yourself off the ground should not bankrupt you. Besides, we have opportunities here to build a continuing revenue source through the tavern."

Not long after that, something explodes.

Neviah jolts to her feet with a sudden gasp. Whirling, she nearly knocks her chair over, hand coming up as she makes to ready a spell. "What in the name of--"

    Kaboom.

    Instantly, Hyouka is up out of her chair and on her feet, and her forearms are splitting apart to allow both FISTEAU units to rapidly assemble themselves. Lines of vibrant purple lightning mana light up both gauntlets, and she gives the doors a wary look - before promptly doing the most hotheaded thing possible, and rushing right out the door.

    Dante knocks back his doubleshot without much ceremony while he lets the girls sort this stuff out. He knows he has zero braincells when it comes to paperwork, and probably better off just being an extra pair of hands. "We'll see. Maybe this Emmek guy'll choke on a drumstick and keel over, do you a favor." He winks to Lether.

    Suddenly, there's an explosion. Dante jumps to his feet with guns drawn, coat blown backwards from the force of the explosion. "Jeez-!"

Joanna ducked. Sure she wasn't faster than an explosion, not by a longshot, but reflexes still taught her to take a dive when overpressure and windows were factors. Luckily, the glass held, rattling in their panes rather than splintering and shattering into a million flying razor blades. What she said getting back to her feet, bottle of course still in hand though joined in the other now by her sidearm, was more a sequence of most of the foul language she knew rather than an actual coherent sentence. 

 She tried to put the pieces together. Windows were intact, so, the explosion wasn't of the high explosive type as such. To her mind it must have been some sort of incendiary *thing* and not a particularly huge one. She checked first to see if everyone inside the room was ok, eyes glancing from each of them in turn before the smell hit her. 

 Burning bodies. She'd smelt that before. 

 Her heart pounded in her chest, a slightly trembling hand plonking the bottle down on the table as she tried to control her breathing. 

 Focus. 

 The walls. 

 *FOCUS* 

 The smoke. Dead or worse still barely living hands reaching out, half skeletal, burnt to the bone by white phosphorous replayed in her memory, the feeling of the heat cooking through skin, blistering it, radiating even through the mess of crumbled concrete that kept her pinned. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't see. 

 She closed her eyes. Then opened. 

 She heard voices, familiar ones, yelling shouting in shock surprise. She steeled herself. "Grab that medkit and follow me! We have wounded people on the ground!" Joanna could hardly tell where that voice was coming from. It was hers sure enough, but, she wasn't quite sure she was even saying it in a way. "Quicker we are, more lives we save!"

    Lether is still standing in place, somewhere between shocked and confused. But ultimately she decides to slide her dagger back into the sleeve of her jacket as--
    There goes Hyouka out the door.
    "Wai-..." Too late she's out the door.
    Dante has guns out, Neviah looks ready to cast a spell, and Joanna looks shellshocked.
    "Guns away." Lether hisses to the hunter as she sets a hand on Jo's arm, clueless to the Jolteon woman's trauma.
    "Hey. You good?"
    Once everyone has rallied, LEther motions for weapons to go away.
    "We can't go out there weapons drawn, if the city watch finds us with blades out they might not ask questions.
    Lether never did trust the law but soon enough she's following after Hyouka.
    It's a nightmare outside; a crater scorches the asphalt and cobbles, the scorched corpse of a gnome lays facedown in front of Trollskull Alley and there are a grand total of eleven bodies...
    An elderly female human, burned beyond recognition, two cloaked male humans in black leather armor, two female humans and a male half elf in plain clothes, likely servants of wealthy families out for errands, two female halflings and two male halflings with instruments strewn around them.
    People are already milling and there's probably very little time before the guard arrive.
    Fala Lefaliir, owner of Corellon's Crown is among them, along with a noble looking woman, and a young boy seem to be particularly shocked by the chaos as though they might have seen what happened first hand.

"She's right," Neviah eventually cautions, holding one arm out as the initial surprise passes. "Don't rush in blindly. We have no idea what we will find."

When she does step outside, she winces as she catches sight of just how much damage is done. She crosses her arms over her midsection and bites down to her lower lip, breathing out heavily in a rush through her nose. "...What a mess," she murmurs, though she seems in no hurry to try and rush to help. That'd only get them into the thick of more trouble.

Besides which, she's not convinced she'd have much magic to offer.

                /why?/

Neviah looks off to one side and bites her bottom lip hard enough that it starts to whiten.

    Dante stows Ebony and Ivory without a word when Lether says so, and he notices Joanna's expression. He knows that look, but it seems like Lether's got this handled. He collects himself before going out to brave the scene outdoors. It's an ugly sight, but no bombing really is. He's been at the epicenter of a few of these, the noise, the smell, the confusion and panic around you...it never really gets easier to stomach. Dante shakes his head in horror when he sees the bodies burnt, and he slowly strides toward the boy.

    "Hey there..." He says gently, kneeling in front of the kid. "You okay? C'mon, it's not safe to be here, let's get you far away from all this." His hand reaches out to take the boy's.

    First order of business. Check if there's anyone who needs immediate ai- ...good grief, that's a lot of bodies. And no one who seems to need immediate aid, nor any obvious hostiles. Without skipping a beat, Hyouka disables her gauntlets, and in short order she's right there beside Dante, carefully kneeling down a little alongside Dante. "You can trust him," she adds with a soft little smile. "He's a bit of a goofball, but he's a good guy. And if any bad guys come for you, he'll beat them up for sure."

Joanna visibly flinched at Lether's touch, jerking her arm away. "Fuck off!" Her words came quickly, spat out as if a reflex. She had stowed her pistol back into its holster by this point, instead reaching into her pack that she had left laying leaned up against the bar and slinging it onto her back. "Sorry Lether. I didn't mean that." Her tone had softened, though, not all by that much. "Look, grab any medical supplies you can and get it brought up. We are going to be dealing with burns, blunt force trauma, smoke inhalation. If you know how to help with that, help, if you don't, stay out of the way." 

 She stepped out into the street, cursing something fierce under her breath. She was cautious, checking sightlines, corners, even random piles of trash could be harbouring a followup explosive. One more than likely timed to hit first responders just like them. With some of the victims it was obvious, no chance they would still be alive, though she moved to check the others in turn trying to find a sign, a pulse, anything that could indicate any of these people survived this attack.

    Lether jolts, blurting a chirpy laser-squawk noise at Joanna's tone at the sharp reply. ... But she gets that it was probably reflexive, and nods at the apology with a small huff.
    Joanna's internal assessment about the explosion is correct; it wasn't high explosives. It was something else. ... And yet the force and heat was enough to char eleven people dead.
    Lether is already kneeling over the gnome and the black armored men checking them first.
    As Dante and Hyouka approach the boy he flinches but ultimately takes a quick glance left, and then right.
    "Right after the explosion... I ducked behind a rainbarrel. I heard a plop and this fell in." He says holding up what looks like a necklace with a broken clasp with two orange gems left on it.
    The witnesses seem REALLY eager to talk as the noble woman steps forward and says in a hushed tone: "I tell you, it was not a man. More like a puppet shaped like a man. A puppet without strings. It was on the rooftop. It hurled something into the crowd below that caused the explosion. I saw those halflings burned alive! I saw them!"
    A whistle from Lether calls for the party's attention-- after she lifts a pouch from the dead gnome while no one's looking.
    "The two in black are Zhents. One's got the snake tattoo.Our gnome friend's been in the sewer recently, too." She says motioning for his boots, covered in a very particular type of dried grime.

For now, Neviah hangs back and listens. She worries at her lower lip a little, simultaneously trying to take in information while stewing over the internal standoff between her desire to do something more and Zehir's alignment - and the alignment he expects of /her./ For now, she seems like she's tuned out.

Only when Lether whistles at them does she jump a couple of feet. "--Uh? Oh... right...."

    Dante nods attentively as he listens to the boy. "Hey, you mind if I hold onto that?" He asks with a gentle smile while giving Hyouka a playful wink. Thanks for the vote of confidence there, drgnborgelf.

    Dante's attention perks toward Lether, "Think we'll find something down there?" He asks the gator. Only one way to find out.

    "You did good finding somewhere to hide," Hyouka replies, giving the kid a warm smile. She takes a closer look at the necklace, but very notably does not take it from the boy. Dante has the right idea - ask for it. The poor kid's been traumatized enough already. She does glance over her shoulder at the sound of Lether's whistle, though. "I'll leave the call on this one to you. What's our next move?"

Joanna did her best to try and find any signs of life, but she knew she was already far too late for any of these people. She got back to her feet, her overalls now with a layer of ash and soot, adding to the layer of grime from her efforts to restore the bar. "Nothing." She said, her voice not quite flat though far more empty sounding than it was before, even as she hurled her pack to the ground, some of its contents spilling out amongst the charred rubble. "No survivors." 

 She wanted to scream. Wanted to yell and hit something. Someone. Anything. Put a bullet in the head of whoever was responsible. Her hands clenched to fists, electricity arcing between her whitening knuckles. She focused on what was here. What she could see. It was about all she really could do. Crater, high temperature explosion, enough energy behind it to do all of this yet not blow a hole in their new manor. She wasn't well versed in magic, so instead her thoughts wandered towards more conventional means that could have done this. 

 Nothing matched. 

 Things that were hot enough were too slow, things that were potent enough were too destructive. 

 Her ears twitched towards the conversations everyone else was having, the Jolteon woman deciding to join them instead of mentally running around in angrier and angrier circles. "Sewers would make sense. Quiet way to infil, set up a device, and exfil without being noticed. If that was our bomber, he didn't get to that last part. What was this about a puppet though?"

    "I don't think the sewers are our best bet." Lether points out. "The gnome was on our doorstep. He was heading to see *us*."
    That's when Fala steps forward.
    "I was watering plants in the greenhouse on the second floor of my shop when the blast blew out some of the windows. Lucky I wasn't injured! Through the smoke, I saw a cloaked man take something from the body of the dead gnome, then start limping away. He was badly burned and casting glances over his shoulder, like he was afraid someone might be following him. He was headed past the Bent Nail."
    Sounds like a survivor. And the boy hands over the necklace when Dante requests it.
    Unfortunately aside from that one guy that got away... There were no survivors indeed.
    "The puppet..." Lether mutters, "Sounds like a Nimblewright. That's something to look into." She says when Jo brings up the puppet. "The House of Inspired Hands- temple of Gond has one we could look into."
    It is about now that the City Watch arrive and QUICKLY start shooing the bystanders to sod off. There's just one problem.
    This all happened outside Trollskull Manor.
    Lether scowls.
    The cops are going to want to question the party and that's going to be a pain in the ass.

Eventually, Neviah does make her way forward. Taking a closer look at the necklace, she clasps her hands at her thighs and leans shallowly forward, lip bitten.

"A necklace of fireballs," she murmurs. "So that's how they did it. With charges left, nevertheless...." She trails off, looking up towards Lether.

Of course the watch come trooping in. Neviah sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose.

"Just once, an extended period of peace and quiet," she mutters.

    Dante takes the amulet and nods to the kid. "Thank you. What's your name?" He asks, before holding out a business card. "Here's my number. If you get anything else to let us know, call me. Alright?" That, and if anybody tries to give you grief Dante will beat them stupid. Even those mean ol' cops over there!

    Dante then goes toward Lether and tosses Neviah the amulet to inspect. "Kid found somethin', might be a clue." He says to the gator. Neviah, being well-versed in magic, is the person to hold onto that necklace for now. When he notices the city watch, Dante furrows a brow. "Let's bail before the flatfoots get the wrong idea about us."

    Hyouka folds her arms, glancing back and forth between Trollskull Manor and a general 'down the street' direction. "If they don't get to talk to us now, they can always come back, or post someone to wait for us. We may have to just deal with it now, so it's less of a problem."

    "Playing stupid is always an option," DARGN adds. "It would be mostly true anyway. We were inside, working on restoring the building. We didn't see what happened."

Nimblewright. House of Inspired Hands. These weren't words Joanna was familiar with, save for the latter sounding like some sort of cult by her reckoning. Joanna too moved in to get a better look at the necklace. "Charges?" She blinked a couple times. "Wait, that thing did this? How's it still in one piece?" She blinked a couple times, staring at the thing until a realisation hit her. "Wait, it's not still armed, right? We shouldn't mess with that either way, that's evidence." 

 Joanna was still trying to put the pieces together in her mind, though looking at this thing she couldn't help but think her life experiences had given her the wrong puzzle pieces. She was about to say something else, likely to that effect, when she heard Dante call out about running from the law. "What? Oh yeah sure, running. Right now. After we've been seen chatting it up out here. That sure won't look incredibly suspicious after a god damn terrorist attack. We've done nothing wrong, and bystanders can confirm that we arrived after the explosion."