One coming up in the small hours, I expect XD.
Yup, done.
There are many curious folk inhabiting tiny air pockets and smugglers dens in the intricate system of caves and chasms connecting Bonnlean to the hostile and swarming Caverns of Threig - and even, some whisper, to the abhorred Deoterrum, though to admit any belief in this last rumour would be tantamount to treason. The strangest by far of these wandering wisps, traversing the rickety stairwells and bridges beneath the great Bonnlean across chasms and down chutes, living somedays off flourescent fungi from the walls of the lonlier caves, sometimes off barsnacks from the thronged Bonnlean dens of crime and underground taverns and gin palaces, sometimes off the unspeakable inhabitants of the winding and treacherous Bonnlean sewer system, is the man in the greatcoat known as Pelintrades.
A mathematician by nature, though he teaches not at Grunberg, or any lesser institution, he casts complex augurs to stay ahead of floods of bilgewater in the richest and most dangerous parts of the sewers, and calculates frantically to strip the coin of the inexperienced and uncaring in the racous underground clubs lurking like capilliaries just below the surface of Bonnlean's central market, often bleeding forth a torrent of merrymakers. These thrill seekers emerge bewildered and invigorated by the otherworldly and chic bandits and tavernkeepers that dare not venture into Bonnlean proper, preferring to lurk in the inhabited catacombs choking their sorrows in crawling slitherwines and, when not inebriated by alcoholic lizards imbued wih semi-life and imprisoned in primitive urns, use the life essence they consume on perilous trips below, digging up treasures and secrets nearly as fast as the statesmen, scholars, lunatics and misers of the city can make and bury them.
When not avoiding the traps of bounty hunters and bandits scornful of the "wandering wise man" of the catacombs, Pelintrades, though tall to dwarven folk an unintimidating fifty year old, prefers to roam the less frequented parts of the catacombs, uncaring if he earns enough to pay for his expedition, as he is able to live off algae and lichens in even the sparsest tombs and passages, having tested this for several weeks one year simply as he had nothing better to do. Pelintrades has survived my attampts upon his life, those seeking coin or reputation, as even the most devious trap or brutal assult always somehow leaves his slight, comfortable frame a means of escape, usually by some arcane mathematical rule or theorem by which the trap is turned upon its maker, or by some unsurvivable fall or climb he endures seemingly by strength of mind, letting his body become limp a second before impact, or sleeping perched on a ledge mere inches thick after a series of gantries have given way explosively to the chasms beneath him.
Unlike many true travellers of the Threigan-Bonnlean passageways, Pelintrades is not a smuggler or a bandit, robbing none and letting those that attack him come to harm by their own foolish miscalculations. He has been known, however, to carry the odd item back and forth between the obscure Threigan rulers and some high end alchemical establishment or royal tailor, in exchange for vast pecuniary sums from which he steals not even the expected vagabond's share, often forgoing his fee in this way, as he is not often paid through official means. He does this ostensibly only as an excuse for observing the lower Threigan caverns, getting past the hulking guard-ogres and bridge trolls with a thin black sealed Threigan state envelope, a lifeline he handles with the carefree attitude of the dispossessed.
Why Pelintrades is like this, so uninterested in even mortal peril, and wandering beneath Bonnlean in the dank and gloomy caves and pits when no head-money or sorcerous sigils of the royal thaumaturgical guard prevent his return to the happy sunlit surface, though it appears to have had something to do with Grunberg university, at which he, an impoverished student become janitor for a pittance in order to hear the remainder of the year's lectures, his places at which he was forced to auction off as entertainment for the wealthy and bored when he could not support his dying love with the expensive medicines needed for the prolongment of their life. After this young man died, a great rending in the life of one so young, Pelintrades became reckless, swept the loneliest balconies, the terraces most swiftly decaying and jealously guarded by Grunberg eagles, ignoring any possibility of his own death, overcome by mourning, as the university crumbled and the librarians' siege began. It was soon after this that, with his course unfinished, he left the university hurriedly, carrying a scroll of oddly beautifully arranged ink and paper for one so poor, much remarked on by witnesses as drawing the eye, and charming the sensetivities, whenever it showed through the threadbare and ragged trench coat it had been hurriedly stuffed into. Almost simultaneously, a Mariner's Heretic librarian was found drowned in a well from where Pelintrades had recntly hurried, just outside the main beseiged university building, with a scroll, presumably of infectious insanity and genius, locked securely in his flask, which was at once destroyed. It is possible, one must surmise, though only now will few begin to discuss such a thing, that the librarian had not leapt from the barricaded library in search of a safe landing and drowned, failing to smuggle a Mariner's artifact scroll out of Grunberg, but was instead a willing or unwilling martyr, part of a ruse or distraction, carrying an empty scroll on his corpse, while a certain Pelintrades... but that is just conjecture, and those prone to gossip of the positioning of the mad and puissant Mariner's artifacts soon find themselves in stickier situations than they would have otherwise hoped.
Can somebody else do the attributes? Anything roughly going along with what I wrote is fine, as I find the system a bit hard to understand/apply, and am lazy in this regard.
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Topic: Let's write a Story! (Setting and Characters) (Read 9895 times)