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HPTs:
-DG
-MS
-RC
-AY
-GA

DNTs:
-Lapa (supplier)
-Signora Shabani (supplier)
-Gard (supplier)
-Clover (saved my life)
-Shania (supplier)
-Zorbo (supplier)
-Drin (earned)

Knife (Pruned)
Plain, simple, dull (as in uninteresting, not as in not sharp). But defines the basic necessities of what constitutes a knife. Both sides a sharpened blade (though only one needs be). The point sharpest such that, combined with its relative short length and balance, means a piercing stab is the most ideal way to inflict wounds. Fourteen inch blade. Iron-grey steel. Cross guard of the same material, curved upward at the tapering ends. Light-brown leather grip. A curved, steel pommel for better leveraging.

Sharp Knife (Pruned)
Plain, simple, and dull (again, as in uninteresting, not as in not sharp) as the one described above. However, this knife tapers sooner and thus has a narrower blade tip, making its especially effective at piercing into flesh. Otherwise, its construction is also similar to the above except it uses a steel a few shades darker than plain iron-grey.

Curved Knife (Pruned)
The item in my collection that shows the first prominent deviation. Compared to the other knives described above, this has has a blade that maintains its width up until one and a half inches to the tip where it angles upwards. The blade has an overall curve up/backwards and is sharpened only on the outside edge. Combined with the curve, this knife is more effective at causing slashing wounds. Fourteen inch blade. Iron-grey steel. Cross guard of a more silver killer, curved downwards at the tapering ends. Light-brown wooden grip. Pointed, steel pommel so that damage can be done from either end of the knife.

Skinning Knife (Pruned)
"Knife" is a generalized word. It is only natural certain knives can be constructed and described for specific purposes. Specialization is an option for all things, not just people. But the time and devotion invested into a specific purpose means the others that were not focused upon are done mundanely--or even more poorly.

Built for skinning, only the outside edge is sharpened. It has an especially pointed reverse tip (the back of the blade tapers towards the front of the blade) for piercing the fur, scales, and/or skin of animals.  Twelve inch blade. Light-brass in colour and material. The cross guard is a single, gentle upward curve. Spiraled leather grip. Brass disc-shaped pommel.

Bent Iron Stake (Pruned)
"Knife" is a generalized word. A bent iron stake is a piece of trash which, through desperation or ingenuity, someone has fashioned into a knife-like weapon. Its "handle" is merely the blunt, unsharpened end of the stake looped around itself to serve as a makeshift hand guard. The "blade" is a messy thing bent at numerous points--it is a miracle it even points in the right direction. Constructed from a single piece of dark steel. The length is difficult to measure due to a lack of a clearly defined blade--but approximately fourteen inches.

Beastman Trap Tool
Found in a hoard guarded by gnolls. The back edge of the blade is sharp. As is the front edge but it is also serrated with a number of vicious looking teeth of uniform size and distance. This makes the tool especially useful for working it like a hook for--gently--pulling on rope or wire so that a machine, mechanism, or--daresay--trap can be set or disarmed. A reminder that not all tools need to be meant for killing. Not directly at least.

Rusted Knife (Pruned)
Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation. Found soaked in filthy garbage. This knife is more rust than steel. The blade tip and edge are both blunt, making it difficult to catch on flesh. Should it pierce, there is a good chance the wound would end up infected. Fourteen inches. Blade is orange from rust and ruin. The cross guard and pommel broken off and lost. A wooden handle, leather stripped.

Surgeon's Knife (Pruned)
Like all tools, a knife can do harm or do good. This knife was intended for a surgeon's hands but found use in the hands of desperate people hoping to survive a terrible fight. Lightly enchanted with some healing magics. Fourteen inch blade. Grey-iron with some hints of rust. Simple horizontal cross guard and ball of a pommel. Light-brown leather-wrapped handle.

Cauterizing Goblin Knife (Pruned)
Even goblins knows there are crude yet effective ways to treat wounds. Burning a wound can stop bleeding, prevent infection, and likely a much more fun form of medical care for goblins to provide. Twelve inch blade. Grey-iron with a forward tapering tip. No cross guard. No pommel. Simple wooden handle.

Goblin Blade (Pruned)
A knife is a simple enough tool that even the most base and stupidest of creatures can manage their construction. It is interesting to see how a knife's creator might effect its design. Being the simple creatures that they are, the goblins likely used a more malleable burnished brown metal for this knife because it is easier to work with. Its cross guard and pommel are twisted and formed to have pointed ends. The goblins, likely, thought more pointy parts means more pain or something silly like that. It is true to an extent, but only so far.

Sacrificial Knife (Pruned)
Twisted, bent, strangely curved. A cruel looking and alien thing. The blade is sharp, to cut the veins and arteries about the heart. There is a strange cold and heat to the blade, an effect of the negative magical energy infused into it, perhaps. Knifes are a symbol of many things. Death. Pain. Hatred. Apathy. Is there anything more intimate and yet not than taking a life just?

The amount of people offering me money to kill people has--thankfully--tapered off.

Sure, I will not hesitate to cut a bandit's throat, relieve a pirate of their kidneys, or cut out a necromancer's tongue, but prominent people or those clearly protected by the law is an entirely different matter.

I wanted a fresh start. Having conversations that could tie me to would-be murders that too many people would find dramatic, tragic, and--worst of all--interesting would not be the sort of changed in life I wanted. I fled the Floating City because I was already involved in too much trouble. To risk exile or worse before I even got the chance to fully enjoy the luxuries of the Well--even as poor and few as they are--is rather counter-intuitive to what I hoped to achieve by leaving Il Modo.

Offering a mere few thousands also does not help.

The notches are updated and annotated with some small notes.

It can never just be business, can it? Well, it could--if everyone were like me. Like me as I am now. Not like me as I were before. Clearly.

Coin for product. Supply and demand. Give and take. Product for coin.

I envy the dwarves of Kulkand to an extent. Their weird anti-obsession with "charity" puts things into a clear, numerical perspective. The scale must always be balanced for them. No side can owe, own, or pressure the other.

One thing pays for another. So no other, further payment can be demanded.

Demagogy. Persecution. Jingoism.

Dark eyes turn upon the Modini within the Well. Some victims of harassment and ill treatment. Others concerned and worried, forming plans in the back of their minds.

I am indifferent.

Everything terrible said of Il Modo is true. If not literally than at least in spirit. We who have fled the place know this. Though some might refuse to admit it. I would certainly expect a knife aiming for my throat to be more likely held by Modini hands than any other.

We all have more pressing concerns though. Someone wishes to persecute me for the city of my birth? Let them. I care not. I need to worry about bandits angling for my purse. Psychopaths willing to kill me at the drop of a hat. Cultists hoping to harvest my soul for god or djinn or both.

Go ahead. Make your jokes about eels and oils you puerile, pathetic, little, small-minded things.

The only true thing to worry about the are the knives pointed at our backs. Everything else can be ignored or mitigated. Or turned around into things more amusing.

How could I have known some words I said weeks ago would come back to bite me from behind? Other than such being a common occurrence. I did indeed say that woman love jewellery as gifts.

Perhaps I should have further elaborated that jewellery can be fenced or resold for a high price in case a woman finds herself in a dire circumstance?

Part of me is kicking myself for not saying that, next time, a simple bag of coins would be a more convenient gift.

Death is a funny thing. In many situations, it is a problem. A problem to be avoided, averted, dodged, escaped, ran from.

Yet, at other times, it is a solution. A solution for harassing and marauding monsters. A solution for a troublesome person existing. A solution for someone thinking too far or too deeply. A solution for someone getting too close. A solution for someone that could be a liability.

Though there is something to be said about solutions being worse than the problems. Where am I going to find shielding scrolls for such a good price now?

I feel nothing. Or at least I should. Or at least I would prefer it to be so. But not knowing what I feel is perhaps the best anyone could expect for the situation. It makes it that much easier to bluff when one does not even know what not to pretend.

Feeling things, after all, is how I lost my ring finger. While circumstances are obviously different now, I know it was not necessarily the feelings that got me into trouble but the attachment. And while I did not show it already I am maligned by the apparent weight upon my shoulders. The sort of responsibility that comes from my reaction eliciting another reaction should it be witnessed.

That was cruel of him to hint that his decisions might be affected by my own. It is a reasonable thing in reality, but that does not mean I wish to hear of it. I could have been blissful in ignorance had he kept it to himself. But he is not the silent type, is he?

I have heard a lot of saying about lies: never tell the truth when a lie will do; expect all words to be lies; the truth is valuable but people will pay fortunes to live a lie; so on and so on and so on.

Yet, oddly when I was asked what my greatest desire is, I had to speak the truth because I could tell no lie. To lie, I need to know the truth, so it can be avoided and not stumbled upon accidentally. But if I do not know the truth? Then, perhaps paradoxically, my ignorance becomes true.

I am putting more serious thought into this conundrum then I need to. Whether I spoke the truth is not what mattered in the conversation. What matters and what stumped me was that I did not know what I desired.

I had been asked the question before, many times even, and I did not have any trouble answering. In those instances, who I was speaking with directed my answer. The Banda Rossa? Strangers? Acquaintances? When answering them, it is easy to put on a facade and say what first comes to mind.

But when answering the question to a God--or their vessel? I am not an overly religious person but I hesitated when I pondered if lying to a God was a good idea or not. And then that hesitation lead to thought. Which lead to confusion--what would be the lie? What even is the truth? What is it I desire most and why could I not answer that question with anything but my own obliviousness?

A puzzling thing. Maybe in time I will dissect my own thoughts to learn the truth underneath, if there is one. But for now, I am at least amused that despite all the people who know me for so long, it is a pretty priestess who I have known for less than a few hours that has managed to, so quickly, touched my core with a stunning strike.

Why must the most interesting people get themselves killed?

Again--why must the most interesting people get themselves killed?

All the ways we are similar to one another. All the ways we are different. One hated the other and part of me wonders if it is because were it not for certain timing and circumstance, they could have been the same people. It is much easier to hate others when they embody what we hate about ourselves, after all.

I was looking forward to seeing how their relationship would develop. If it could be called a relationship. Two fascinating personalities conflicting with one another, conflicting with the anathema in the other. Would one eventually destroy the other? Would the other manage to assuage or avoid the apparent bloodlust? How would ti me tame the other, enrage the other?

Writing of time, I may be running out with him. He did say he would only wait so long, which is entirely fair of him. I do not know what to tell him. Mostly because I do not know what I feel. Such involvement with others seems like a foolish thing considering my track record.

His reaction to death and loss has me thinking keeping him at an arm's length is better. Both for myself and him. Considering my irresistible attraction to danger and gambling, being entangled with him would make things more complicated. Escape and obfuscation, if and when ever is needed, would be more difficult with him holding me back.

Besides, is he even all that interesting?

I suppose just a little.

Why must the most interesting people--

Nevermind. She was not that interesting. Just very amusing. Very entertaining. I will miss her enthusiasm for creating havoc but the more time I spent with her the more I realized she was quite the psychopath.


It is sad, really, when others do not carefully examine the behaviours and thoughts of others. And even sadder when people do not practice introspection. And, yet again, even sadder when people struggle to realize (or more importantly, struggle to accept) the reality around them.

That poor woman and that brave little boy. The answer was clear and plain enough, was it not? But no one dared to say it. Why did her husband die? Why did her daughter die? Because their deaths were considered acceptable losses, their deaths were the better of the many worse alternatives. And the reason for everybody else's inaction? Because obtaining the perfect result, obtaining "justice" requires too much effort, requires too many inconvenient obstacles to be overcome, requires even more sacrifices.

None of those confronted by the boy replied with the lesson he would need to bear the weight of the world he lived in. None of them, perhaps, wanted to admit they have yet to learn the lesson themselves.

Well, there is at least one other person who understands the harshness demanded by practicality and reality. It is a good thing she was no where near the boy, however, because she would have most certainly made the boy cry even harder.


A miserable pile of secrets?

How rude. I am not miserable in the slightest.

As much as I enjoy his company and find his brazen, brash behaviour amusing, I knew there was a reason why I could never fully trust him--apart from him being of the Banda Rossa, of course. Because I do not wish to end up like her. He must have promised her so much. He must have promised her the same things he promised me: glory, riches, family.

Family.

I learned from one family that trust can always be broken, that one's back can be turned on blood or oath. It was a hard, painful lesson and I will always be wary of family because of how much it stung.

And, so, I was familiar with the sadness I felt when I heard the news of a family dispute within the Banda Rossa turning tragic: what a loving father, brother, husband he is to kill his own mother, sister, wife.

To hoist the corpse up like a shield. To dump all of his own sins into it. To point at it as a scapegoat. To use her blood and flesh like camouflage to mask his escape.

I am not surprised that her fate is as it is. But yet I am still disappointed by his actions.

But why? Even if denied, maybe his many promises still planted some small seed of hope in me? Maybe I was sympathetic to her, yet another woman betrayed?

Or, maybe, because I have come to realize the reason I could never fully trust him: because he is so much like me.

I would have done the same to her if I was in his position. And I would have taken her knife to add to my own collection.

I am not surprised that things resolved as they did with him. Disappointed? A little. But this is for the best. I do not need to lose another ring finger.

He will be fine. I was not even the first in the Well to make him suffer. Besides, quite frankly, his expectations--once we discussed such things in greater detail--are even a little unrealistic. It is clear he is from a world not like this. Amusingly, it is not him saying demons regularly fall out of the sky of his old world that I found most bemusing but his fairy-tale standards and expectations .

I have, after all, always been the sort of woman who likes to keep my options open as long as possible.


Business is booming.

Everyone thinks themselves smarter than they truly are. Everyone thinks themselves more clever, luckier, cunning than they truly are. Than others.

I sit and I watch and I smirk and I laugh as others around me spin their webs, work their machinations, grip knife in hand, and try to maneuver to get clear sight of backs not pressed against walls.

A spider's web is a precarious thing, however, there is a reason most spiders are isolated, independent creature who do not care to share the silver-threaded homes they work so hard to build. One strong gust of wind, one slip of a leg, one person acting more out of anger than sense, and suddenly the web is no longer a beautiful mosaic of line and shapes, but a tangle of strangling rope. A net of nooses around many necks.

One makes a mistake and they end up falling far enough to snap their neck. But everyone else? They get to experience the joy and rush of choking as the dead weight pulls them down to whatever dark oblivion waits far below.

I am enjoying the show. But I need to remember I am not the only spider on the web.

Typical. I put my thoughts down in elegant and beautiful prose and it suddenly all falls apart a few days later.

When I saw the Condottiero march up to him yelling and screaming as if he was personally responsible for the death of a hundred family members, I wondered what it was he had done. The answer, a few hours later would reveal, it turns out: the exact same thing he did last time. Just how many dead women was he going to display upon the floor of the Chamber of Rule?

Yet again I am given another reason to be very assured in my decision to keep him at and beyond arm's length.

I suppose I should not have been surprised he repeated his actions. He was not exactly reprimanded in any meaningful way for the first time. If I was in his position, I would think I could get away with it again and again. But, it turns out, there are those in the Balladeer's College who do indeed have spines stiff enough to hold up their principles.

The fallout has been calamitous. And I am not merely speaking of the Wyrm taking the opportunity to invade the Palatial Pyramid. Three dead. One seemingly gone to ground with no traces left to follow. I wonder if he left of a broken heart, his relationship with her certainly seemed to have something underlying its surface. But that might just be my gossipy mind at work.

The web has, very suddenly, become very still and silent. I can feel my mind growing a little mad at the sudden loss of interesting stimulation.

At least I have her and her demands to amuse me.

"Those of the Warrior want to be warriors."

I tell myself not to presume too much. Not to forget that beneath the surface of waves is an entire underwater world. That there is likely more to the simpleton, the idiot, the zealot.

And, yet, I am still caught off guard now and then. Yet again I am reminded that I, too frequently, judge too much of a book by its cover.

Despite her rough edges and her tendency to focus like an arrow upon a single thing in the distance, there is an elaborate and mysterious elegance to her. She has lived a tale of high drama and deep perseverance. Behind her empty thousand-yard stare are the experiences that would have broken most men. She is a gem of numerous facets buried beneath dirt and gravel and sand and ash.

I knew I liked her for a reason.


Narwen's brother is quite the sight. I hope he visits the Well more often.

I need to stop gambling against mages.

You can learn a lot about a man by how he behaves in a parlay. Not that there is anything wrong with striking from surprise. But knowing that one's attitude and personality allows for such is very useful information.

I do not mind working with--for--him. Why not take advantage of a situation where I can double dip? Coin is coin. So long as I am useful, I am valuable. But I certainly shall not trust him enough to carelessly turn my back on him.

Turn about is fair play. But, of course, a table that turns once can turn again. And again. And again.

And a thing that turns, naturally, can turn quickly. Or slowly. I consider myself a patient woman and, frankly, the apparent fallout I have been getting to witness has been amusing enough as it is.

Sometimes, the greatest fun is watching things unfold as you refuse to apply the brakes.


Digging through ash and sand. Stabbing harpies in the back. Dodging undead. Speaking half-random words at a giant stone head with eyes that eerily seem to be following you.

What a romantic outing.


So I wrote that I need to stop gambling with mages. But what can I do about the most interesting and eccentric of people being attracted to the most queer of arts?

I have not done anything concrete yet. But poking at her eccentricities was incredibly amusing and should the opportunity present itself I doubt I would be able to resist.

Besides, being around someone so loose with their coin purse is a great way to make money.

"tHaT'S aGaiNsT thE lAw."

Seeing the ones standing tallest fall is always the most amusing. Even when they do not realize it or refuse to acknowledge such. Hearing one speak so surely of things they do not comprehend always makes me laugh a little inside.

He said the words with his voice tinged with terror and malice and hatred. Clearly he thinks it something to be avoided, shunned, looked down upon: "You are better than such base deceptions".

What is deception but a shield absorbing a blow so that you are not injured? Or deflecting aside an attack with your own blade? Or simply jumping out of the way of an arrow? After all, if you are true and righteous, why not let the axe strike your limb? Why not let the arrow land upon your skin? Why not let the fireball burn you?

Deception is being elsewhere than where your foe strikes. Deception is striking where your foe does not know where you will strike. Deception is, like he did, not answering a question directly, only offering coy responses, or not even offering an answer at all. Deception is a degree, a choice, an action shifted from the present.

Deception is merely existing in proximity to another's ignorance. And ignorance is a thing in ample supply where thinking creatures exist.

No one is better than such base deceptions for we all employ them one way or another. We all exist in a world where certain truths exist that we would rather they not. And we all exist in a world where we work actively to change the present.

The one he said those words to is a wise girl. And surrounded by wiser friends and compatriots. She will know that his words grind up against reality.

But him? He acknowledged that others thought him deluded. Perhaps that means he can come to the same realization.

They can twist the reality of the world with a swirl of their fingers or the mutter of a few words. They can wield force fields, fireballs, and death itself.

Yet mages can be so ridiculously inane and neurotic. Spending so much time talking nothing of substance or speaking mad drivel.

How I laughed and I laughed and I laughed and I laughed and I laughed.

Yet--

Coin is coin.