In Artisburg

In Artisburg, sound echoes loudly through the streets – the sound of quiet chatter can travel miles through the winding, cobbled streets. No-one ever talks about their private business in public lest they be overheard streets away. Even the sound of your footsteps can be heard if you wear capped boots as the Guard do. This allows you to hear them coming and, provided you wear suitably soft-soled footwear and move quietly, escape without a sound. And when, inevitably, you cannot escape without being heard, there are thousands of alleyways and cubbyholes everywhere: you cannot move a few feet without seeing another gap between buildings. Granted, some alleys are little wider than the depth of your body and it can be painful to squeeze through them, but they have saved my life more than I care to count. If you cannot find an alley, you can always climb up to the rooftops; no matter how many laws the Guard enact against the practice, there are always those who leave their ladders against their properties. If there are no routes up to the rafters, then you simply duck into a tavern or lose yourself in the crowds gathered round the cock-fights...or both, since most bar owners ignore the ban on cock-fights in taverns.

This city is a mess. There are drunkards and potion-addled junkies on every street corner and every shady street – which is every street, since the dark smog that coats the city seldom lifts. If you’re not being harassed by Guard for breaking some unwritten law (even if you know every line of The Charter by heart, they’ll find some regulation you’ve ignored), you’ll be ever paranoid of pickpockets and thugs wanting to take your gold. If you don’t protect your investments, you’ll lose them. Gold is hard to come by, here. The city is a hundred leagues wide and must stretch out in every direction, but there are few places where there is any concentration of wealth. That is, beside The Keep. Artisburg Keep is a veritable palace – a mighty tower where all the Nobles huddle up in to count their riches. You rarely see Nobles around the streets since they dare not leave the Keep for fear of mugging. A few hole up down here with the rest of us – usually behind ten-foot high walls with a contingent of paid-off Guards protecting the place.

I suppose I too am to blame for the state of this city, but I do not believe I am the cause. I was born into this world; it moulded me. I am a thief...among other things. And tonight, I’m going to rob a Noble. He lives in a compound much like the type I described just a moment ago – armed Guards, a big front door and all his valuables stashed in a very secure safe. That information cost me a couple hundred gold, but I have no intention of trying to get at this gentleman’s wealth. No sir. He has something worth a lot more to me on his rather large balcony overlooking the city. You see, this fine fat blueblood – named Anton Belben – likes to laude his wealth over us down below; so much so that he built his home upon a small crest. He demolished a dozen homes to do so. In this area of the city, besides the chapel bell tower he must own the tallest building. I digress: on his balcony he has a small garden in which he grows an assortment of plants including a rare lotus flower. The fool knows nothing of its properties: he just thinks it looks good and likes to make sure every downtrodden denizen of this despicable place can see it. I would be surprised if he actually knew its name (In case you were wondering, its name is ‘Geriniola’) I’m surprised no-one has taken the chance to take it already: they sell for a lot down here – perhaps more than Belben paid for it. They sell for so much because, with the right set of skills and equipment, one can produce from the flower a potent chemical oil used in the production of a certain potion. I’ll get to that later.

Now, you’re asking yourself – how can such a lowly yet equally handsome, intelligent young man like me rob a man of such stature? And how! A few of us commoners have a knack for the production of certain concoctions and materials. That is another thing that I am – I am an alchemist. You thought I was going to infiltrate Belben’s manor with just my wits and charm? Of course, I could if I wanted to but that is just not as fun, you see. I have a more creative solution; a more magical solution. To the layman, alchemists concern themselves with the transmutation of matter – turning coal to gold or shape-shifting – and to an extent this is true, but it is much more to the initiated. Elders might say alchemy is a hallowed art form – the Guard call it black magic – but I don’t care for all that; for me, it is a very useful tool in my line of work. That reminds me – there is another way you could escape the Guard: just take a swig of a particular tonic and suddenly you are as fluid as ink – you can slip down a drain or under the crack beneath a locked door.

Tonight, though, I’m making use of a different concoction altogether. According to my source, Belben is away on business tonight, so his usual twenty-man contingent of Guards has been reduced by a dozen: it is now or never. I stop by to slip a small bag of gold into the eager hands of the owner of the Grinning Cleric and change into my sneaking gear: padded boots for quiet, comfortable movement and a light leather tunic for any close encounters along with an assortment of packs and belts for carrying my equipment. I approach with speed from the east, taking care not to cause any sound or be seen outside of the darkness. The street lamps hum quietly as I scurry past them – rusted power coils sizzling behind the iron casing. I hear a patrol approaching from down the street and duck into a doorway, pull my hood over my brow and lean against wall of the small porch-way. As they pass by, I bow my head and mutter a ‘Good Evening, gents’ and they grumble some inane response and leave me be. Onwards I go; eventually I reach the wall and prepare to traverse it. An uneducated man would try to scale it or even burrow under it...I walk through it. With the aid of a potion that, for a time, gives my body the properties of a spirit, one can bypass the natural laws. I find myself in the Noble’s garden; specifically in his flowerbed. I consider, for a second, that I had been rash to assume Belben kept the Geriniola on his balcony, but even he would not be as dim-witted to keep it within the reach of his Guard – the only flowers down here are standard fare cranesbills and roses: little use to any seasoned alchemist-thief.

Inside, I slip by the Guard and somehow find myself in the kitchen. I pause to raid his pantry, stuffing bread rolls and an assortment of Halenshire dry meats into my sack. You might think it odd, but it is only fair – Belben eats enough already. I carefully make my way back through the halls to find the foyer. On my way, I encounter a particularly vicious-looking dog. The creature starts growling as I near it, but I quickly move to silence it by nicking its neck with a dart from my pouch. The poison knocks the mutt out in seconds and it slumps to the floor, gurgling and frothing at the mouth. If not for my daily imbuement of Drencromium extract, which sharpens ones senses, the hound would have surely alerted the Guard. I stay frozen for a few moments to ensure that I had made a stealthy subdual. Satisfied, I continue on to Belben Manor’s entry hall. I sneak past the sentries and ascend the grand stairs, passing a number of Belben’s trophies: foreign animal hides and skulls slung from the wall and old metal shields and swords. Belben’s study is on the fifth floor, according to my roughly-drawn map. Within minutes I am pushing open the doors; there are no Guards above the first floor, since none of them were expecting me. This makes for an almost suspiciously easy route to the balcony, where I quickly find the Geriniolas. I unfurl my belt of various alchemical tools and set about cutting them from the bed. It is not long – perhaps five minutes – before I complete my little operation and pack away my instruments and make for the stairs. As I get ready to descend the stairs, I hear shouting from below – the Guard must have found the hound’s lifeless body. I descend with a dozen darts in my hand – the same kind I had used to subdue the dog. When I reach the hall, though, I am pleasantly surprised to find that all but one witless watchman turned away from me, watching the door. All it takes is sip from a small bottle of elixir and I am able to slip past him after knocking one of Belben’s trophy daggers from the wall. Whilst his attention is drawn by the clattering on the stairs, I invisibly slip past him and exit through the manor’s front door. I close the large door as quietly as possible before slinking off into the night. I cannot stifle a quiet, echoing laugh as I glance back at the balcony from which a banner might as well now hang proclaiming: “I have been robbed!”

I pass on the flowers to my contact – a wiry, skittish man in a dark corner of the Grinning Cleric – and receive my prize. I order a drink from the bar and sit for a while, watching the midnight cock-fight from afar. The problem with alchemical substances, you see, is the comedown. Even as I talk to you now, I can feel the effects of my unbridled consumption of tonics starting to take hold of my body...I am losing my strength. I went to bed later that night, but could not sleep. You cannot sleep; you merely sweat and shake and ache and hurt for days on end. It happens to the best of us; you will be no different, friend. You will suffer here – do not hold on to any romantic thoughts of being some hero in an epic tale. No-one is a hero in Artisburg.