Cheating corpses

[Kerrigan Muldoon]

Quest: "A Grave Problem"
Closed to Gavrin

”When did I loose my luck…what did I do wrong?” Kerrigan pondered wretchedly. Fuelled by a sudden burst of rage she threw a stone blindly into the dark night. ”Screw you!” she cursed, frantic with anger. No one replied, in fact, it was dead quiet, much to her dislike.
The reason for the almost unbearable torment was the ironical sequence of events last night. She – the eternal trickster – had been tricked herself. Confident and proud as she felt last evening she boldly had gambled with stakes way more then she could muster. As she depended on her magical skills to fiddle with the game of luck, she was lost when her opponents introduced an artefact emitting a magic nullifying aura.

Afterwards she figured it had all been a trap. Someone from their gang must have noticed she had used magic to turn the unstable tides of luck and lured her into their trap. At first she had won quite a lot so she got more confident and dramatically increased her stakes. They had deliberately postponed activating the anti-magic artefact until she was gambling with a small fortune. When she lost her first gamble that evening she lost more money then she could come up with. Luckily she had been able to sweet talk her way out of a possibly lethal beating and whatnot by offering to work for them.

One of the dirty jobs they gave her was for the constable of Scara Brae who had either forced the thugs to this job or this was part of their bribe for him. The gang had put Kerrigan forward as a middle (wo)man to take on the task, she had no choice but to do it.

Apparently, a group of grave robbers had been spooking about in cemeteries and defiled graves. It was up to her, and some freelancer who was hired alongside her, to apprehend and capture the robbers.

Frustrated to the bone she had trouble waiting for the other guy, especially since he or she was late. Kerrigan had no idea who her college would be, but she did not care a lot either as she just wanted to get the job done.

[Gavrin]

When Gavrin was a boy, he often walked through the cemetery alone at night. He liked being afraid, the feeling that there could be something deep and dark and horrible out there waiting to devour him. His half elven, half dark elven heritage meant that he would always be cursed to have one foot in the dark and one in the light, never really being accepted by either side. His late night walks where his way acknowledging the fact that his life was not going to be all happiness and joy, there would be misery and fear. And there would be death.

When the constable told him that he needed someone who was not afraid of the dark, Gavrin had just smirked and said that he would take the job, whatever it was. “I know how to walk in the darkness, constable sir.” The other man had been a bit unnerved, but he gave Gavrin the assignment. Apparently he was having a grave robbing problem. The locals were clamoring for him to do something about it, claiming that some sort of black magic must be involved. Gavrin hoped this was just the product of superstitious paranoia; he wanted this to be a quick and easy mission, and magic certainly complicated matters.

Gavrin leisurely made his way to the spot where he would meet his partner for the mission. Apparently he had been paired up with someone recruited out of the local gang, not something he was particularly looking forward to. He had worked with other freelancers in the past, with mixed results. He wondered if he could trust someone who had been impressed into service.

“I would suggest you hurry up” Took telepathically communicated “You are late as it is, it would be a shame if the mission had already been completed by the time you got there.” The will o’wisp was right, of course. One of the many things the little ball of light was actually good for was keeping track of the time. He just had to be so damn smug about it…

“Yes, yes, I am hurrying along. No need to be irritating.”

“I know there’s no need, it’s just fun.”

Gavrin sighed as the woman he would be working with came into view. She did not seem happy to be here, and Gavrin’s early fears returned. Regardless of that, he would attempt to make friends, and hope that she would be at least civil. He jogged over to her and gave her a polite smile, and he extended his hand in her direction.

“Hello madam, my name is Gavrin and I expect that we shall be working together tonight. I am sorry that I am a bit late, I have a tendency to lose track of the time.”

[Kerrigan Muldoon]

When she saw her temporarily college approaching she sighted, hoping it would be really, really temporarily. She picked up her small backpack containing all of her current possessions – ready to jump town as soon as business would be finished – and stubbornly waited for the stranger to come to her. She figured it would be the freelancer she was assigned with working with, but in the event he was not she mentally prepared herself for an unfriendly meeting.

He introduced himself as Gavrin and made up an excuse for being late. She bluntly ignored his extended hand and started walking in a random direction, hoping it would be the correct one. Without putting any effort in hiding her frustration she replied: ”Right. You can call me Muldoon. Now let’s get moving, you do have a plan do you?”

While Kerrigan had enough time to think about how they could finish this job as quickly and effectively as possible, but in moods like this she could not focus enough to think constructively. As such, and because cemeteries where not her favourite spot to be at night, she felt somewhat dependent on Gavrin, which possibly even frustrated her even more.