The Many Lives of Vlad Krant

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Walter Grant
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The Many Lives of Vlad Krant

Post by Walter Grant »

Benkern, still poor while waiting for certain funds to come through, had little to do in between interesting sessions of the Landsraad in which he could vent his spleen. Splenetic and frenetic legislative interventions were enough to keep him busy and entertained during the days, but the evenings were bare and solitary. After a few days he returned to the Ministry of Interior Immigration Annexe and found the boy Pale still queueing and, to his amusement, thieving. Thinking that the boy might be worth saving from the ceaseless cesspit of Shirekeep's dark, Vilhelm relieved him of his duty and asked him to take him to his parents with the hidden intention of paying them (parents? guardians? owners? pimps?) off and (eventually) giving the resourceful youth a more useful employment than as a petty urban pickpocket.

Pale duly obliged by taking him to a rough corner of the Old City. The stone pavements and neat storm drains gave way to Shirekeep's older, rather efficient but deeply unpleasant combination of road and sewer. Earth and water combined, thought Benkern. The tidy office blocks turned into insalubrious taverns, the industrious workers into shifty-eyed men leaning against posts, the men of leisure into ladies of the night. They finally reached a corner around which Pale disappeared into the dark. Within moments a fist slammed into the noble's back, telling Benkern that this was a kidnapping rather than a simple street murder. He doubled forward and rolled away from his attacker, turned and faced him -- and she was in fact female. A colossal Lunatic beserkeress, bare-chested in the traditional fashion, an estimated half Benkern's height again above him and twice as wide. There was no doubt a fascinating saga behind how she came to be practicing her brutal art in the swirling morass of back-alleys of central Shirekeep, but it would never be told, for Benkern aimed his wrist at her as she came with titan thighs to crush the breath out of his chest and fired a four-inch killet laced in an ancestral Safirian venom which causes instant paralysis and death. In the usual way, the pupils of the Lunatic's eyes shrunk to nothing and as every muscle in her body lost any line of communication with her mind. She flopped to the ground in a heap and Benkern re-aimed his concealed wrist launcher at the corner, and then the darkness behind him. No-one else? He felt a drip of dribble on his head. He looked up at the blackness above until his eyes readjusted and he made out a sketch of Pale, squatting on a rafter supporting two neighbouring buidings forming the alley.

"Pretty good matey," Pale mustered, as he wiped the remaining saliva away from his impudent mouth.
"You're next unless you show me the way out of this place." Laughing at this, the boy clambered down the wood structure deftly like an ape.
"I'll show you how to get out. I thought you were just a prick nob, but you're pretty dangerous."
"I'm the most dangerous person you've ever met," Vilhelm replied as the body of the beserkeress twitched. "And you might be just as dangerous, too, if you're loyal, and smart. And being loyal is the best way to show you're smart."

Pale didn't try the same trick again. He said he wasn't bound to anyone, and led Benkern back to the government quarters, where he had his lodgings. Benkern arranged for bedding for the urchin in the hotel's stables between where the horses and dogs slept. And that was how their nocturnal association began.

***

Some days later, Benkern was flicking through the wares of a cheap bookseller. One spine jumped out at him and brought a smile to his lips -
An Original and Very True Account of the


MANY LIVES OF VLAD KRANT


Image


also known as


WALTER GRANT


whose vile contributions to the ills that have beset this Republicae Imperium have as yet gone untold


as written by a descendent of one of his agents


AGHA TREY TOMKINS
He took the book back to his hotel and spent several hours reading it, making notes, and preparing a file to pass to the Aldermen of Hawshire for them to act on.



[OOC: The contents of this book will follow.]
W. Grant, Steward-Count of Hawshire-Dura, Alderman of the City of Hawshire
Played by Benkern.

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Kaiser Dominus
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Re: The Many Lives of Vlad Krant

Post by Kaiser Dominus »

(Well, don't keep us hanging in suspense like this... :wink: )

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