[PM to Join] Unfortunate Series of Events

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A large forest in Central Anaxas, the once-thriving mostly human town of Dorhaven is recovering from a bombing in 2719 at its edge.

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Evandria Sericks
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Tue Oct 01, 2019 6:35 am

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Of all the inspectors in existence, she had the luck of sharing territory with the most infuriating man in all of Anaxas. Emrik Leverenz. They were in Numbrey together and while it was only for a season, Evandria was sure that she had enough of his cocky grins and fancy leather shoes.

“Four break-ins in a single week. That is hardly anything new in this neighborhood,” the blue-eyed Seventen said simply, leaning back into his chair as he looked up at her.

“All with the exact same modus operandi and the fact that nothing valuable was taken? Surely even you must admit there is something off about that, Inspector Leverenz,” Evandria said with deadly calm. The look she was giving him had succeeded in making countless men and women shrivel but it did not work on him.

He smirked. Gods, she wanted to punch that handsome face of his. It was fortunate that a wooden desk was standing between them. The man certainly hadn’t changed since the time they trained together. “Sergeant Sericks, I understand that you have only been stationed here very briefly. Break-ins might be a big deal in the sleepy, midde-of-nowhere town you just had been, but here… We do not have time for that.”

“You are an erse, Emric.”

“I certainly have missed you calling me that. But all jokes aside, I really cannot afford spending resources on thieves who break-and-enter then takes nothing at all. You do know that we just had a murder a few blocks away from here.”

The young woman rolled her eyes. “And we both know that the secret mistress was the killer. You do not need to spend your resources to figure that out.”

“Even if I want to, I can’t. You are more than welcome to do deal with it yourself though.”


It seemed like a small crowd had gathered during the brief time she had left to find Emric. Not that it was a surprise. The whole Dive would have found out in less than a day considering how the daughter had screamed hysterically and while also feinting dizziness to catch one of the recruits’ attention. Her second, Constable Girardi, was still questioning her, although from his expression she could tell the girl didn’t have much information to offer.

Her squad had managed to keep everyone a safe distance away from the house. Their chrovens presence probably played a big role in keeping them at bay. With every break-in, the people’s interest regarding its perpetrator had significantly increased and that did not make her job any easier. Fortunately, she was in the Dives. Less likely to offend a member of some important family or a politician’s uncle when she did her job. “This is a crime scene, everyone,” the sergeant announced coldly as the crowd parted to let her reach the house. “I am asking you all to kindly return to your homes and let us do our job.”

Unsurprisingly, murmurs of a protest started to rise. Someone said they had the right to know what is happening. Another claims that her squad was incompetent for letting this happen. Evandria sighed. She hated this part. She was never a great public speaker to begin with. “I understand all of your concerns, but in order to address I would need to know what happened. Unfortunately I cannot do that when I have a mob of people trampling on my evidence. So, for the last time, I am going to say please leave the premises.” The young woman hoped the sharpness of her words would be enough to infer that there would be unpleasantness should they decided to test her.

As they grumbled and began to disperse, Evandria smiled. “Thank you for your cooperation.” Crude as it was, she got the civilians to leave. Well most of them, anyway. A stubborn straggler seemed determined to stay. A man in his thirties, with brown hair and weary eyes.

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Oisin Ocasta
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Thu Oct 03, 2019 9:05 pm

16th of Yaris, 2719
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Oisin had never been particularly fond of crowds. They were loud, and, well, crowded, and necessitated a kind of closeness and proximity that Oisin wasn't in any way enthusiastic about. Certain crowds were different than others, some stagnant and uncomfortable, some energetic and urgent, some shuffled along like a herd of farm animals, while some thundered around like a stampede; but they all left Oisin feeling more or less the same way: like he was trapped, like he had no freedom or control, like he had been swept up in a river or was splashing around in the middle of an ocean with no ability to navigate his way towards land.

There were times when crowds could be useful, of course. Crowds were distractions. Crowds had too many faces. Crowds let you slip around unnoticed, like a maja'wa beneath the surface of the Turga, unseen unless you wanted to be, or unless it was too late. Had Oisin been following someone, or attempting to observe them discretely, he would have welcomed a crowd that he could get lost in. But today, the crowd's many faces were of little help, thanks instead to the crowd's many voices, and many questions, protesting and insisting their way through whatever reserves of patience the Seventen might have had.

Perhaps Oisin could have exploited that distraction all the same, used it as an opportunity to sneak a little closer to the crime scene that the Seventen were safeguarding. But, while that may have given his eyes the opportunity to glimpse some of what the Seventen were trying to ensure no one did, there was only so much that could be uncovered by one's eyes alone. The Editor had discouraged him from wasting his time on this particular curiosity - No one wants to read about nothing being stolen - but it nagged at him. There was a pattern here, a repetition, a story that hadn't yet made itself obvious. Perhaps the story truly was nothing, and this really was a waste of his time. Oisin didn't like that notion; didn't like the idea of the world producing a narrative that underwhelming; but even if that was the situation, knowing as much was still preferable than not. True, there were some answers that were worse than the mystery they resolved, but those times were rare. Besides, this was the Dives, and Oisin knew people here. Maybe Barnaby was right, and there wasn't a story here worthy of print; but the news didn't stop just because no one wrote about it, and their duty as journalists was to inform the uninformed, and Oisin took that seriously, whether he was providing answers to five thousand curious minds, or just five.

If subtlety would not work then, the direct approach was his next best option. Oisin had not yet acquired a taste for being so forward, but he was at least developing a knack for it. He let the Seventen seek him out, loitering, hands in pockets as the public reluctantly dispersed. There were advantages to that, he had learned. Perhaps the Seventen would feel as if they were seeking him out, rather than the reverse; as if they'd stumbled across him, rather than him imposing upon them. A subtle difference, perhaps, but one welcomed all the advantages one could muster. It also spared him the challenge of trying to determine which of them to approach: the woman, effectively, had volunteered herself.

"Oisin Ocasta, Kingsway Post," he introduced as she approached, wincing a little as he did so. In the interests of honestly, it was necessary to state which newspaper he worked for; but it seldom did any favours, people even less inclined to answer questions for the local gossip rag than for a more reputable publisher. A hand emerged from his pocket, clutching a notepad and stylus. "I don't suppose you'd care to offer a statement?"
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Evandria Sericks
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Sat Oct 05, 2019 8:57 am

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With a sigh, the sergeant made her way to the man. He barely had any field, so perhaps a wick? There was nothing aggressive about his mannerism, so she figured she would again try to dismiss him diplomatically.

“Oisin Ocasta, Kingsway Post. I don't suppose you'd care to offer a statement?”

Evandria regarded the man coolly. She still had not gotten used to handling reporters – after all, they didn’t exist back in the small town of Berowyn. Most of her previous encounters with them ended up with her snapping at them to go away. Not quite the calm and collected image the Seventen was going for. “The investigation is still ongoing, so no, Mr. Ocasta. No statements from me or anyone involved.” Perhaps sensing her discomfort, Rvas approached her. The chrove eyed the reporter suspiciously, perhaps wondering if the man was a threat.

The young woman looked back at the house, wondering if she would find the same note hidden inside. Nothing was taken but something was left behind – all each of the previous three houses had it. A crumpled paper with sharp handwriting in black ink. Aveline. One name. That was all it said.

“Besides, I am sure you have heard the talk. Nothing was taken and no one hurt. It is hardly a story for the Kingsway Post,” the young woman said simply as she took in some of the loitering civilians who still watched from afar. It was difficult enough to get anyone to talk to her with a face that screamed foreigner. She did not need a reporter to scare more people off.

Evandria was still new to the neighborhood and frankly, she was not exactly well-versed on how to get the people to open up to her.

Before she could open her mouth again to tell Mr. Ocasta to leave, the newest recruit, Ryker, jogged towards her. It seemed like he was just finished interviewing the young woman, his eyes wide with excitement. “Sergeant, she claimed not to recognize the name either.”

Clocks, all her recruits are idiots. Evandria raised a hand to stop him from continuing to speak, glancing at the Kingsway Post man. “Now sir, if you would kindly leave and let us do our job.”
Last edited by Evandria Sericks on Sun Oct 06, 2019 6:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Oisin Ocasta
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Sun Oct 06, 2019 5:41 am

16th of Yaris, 2719
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It was something Oisin was quickly becoming accustomed to: getting politely but firmly ushered away from a potential story. In truth, he found it rather pleasant, by comparison to the way he'd grown accustomed to being treated in previous iterations of his life. On the one hand, that likely said more about the calibre of person he interacted with these days than it did about him, but there was certainly something to the notion that people were a little less likely brush off a person who got to call themselves a journalist, rather than a mere mercenary, to say nothing of a lowly wick mopping the floors back in the Old Rose.

Not everything had changed, however. Some parts of Oisin's older life still held true, like the value of listening rather than talking. True, he was seldom lucky enough to have one of the Seventen amble over and blurt out pertinent information, but in his experience so far, stories often had a habit of telling themselves for you, if you were willing to pay enough attention to hear it. The mention of a name, for example. Oisin had heard whisperings of such a thing - or rather, overheard drunken ramblings of such a thing; one of the benefits of keeping tabs on where the Seventen liked to drink, and managing to make yourself comfortable on an adjacent table - those his eavesdropping had yielded little else. The Seventen had all seemed as at a loss as whomever - a witness, Oisin presumed - the young officer had referenced.

Oisin grimaced slightly, as if he was reluctantly weighing up the merits of Evandria's insistence, as if it had been merely a suggestion. "I certainly have no desire to impede your investigation," he assured, as if he were trying to carefully dance around the issue, working to inject as much apparent sincerity into his words as he could muster. After all, he was a lowly reporter, far be it from him to stand in the way of a wise and noble member of the Seventen, yes? But he let a little something linger, a tiny whisper of doubt in his words, as if he was just as strongly beholden to an external set of obligations as Evandria was. "But I'm afraid I have my own job to do here, and I can no more return empty-handed than you can."

He let out a sigh, a little more theatrical than it needed to be, perhaps. "If only there were a way for our respective tasks to coexist. Say -" He waved his notepad vaguely, shoulders converting the gesture into an exaggerated shrug. "- if there were some sort of name you needed to track down, and you needed to convince a possibly reluctant public to help with that." The facade slipped a little, a flicker of a faintly mischievous smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Such a shame that a reporter for a notorious gossip tabloid wouldn't be in any way helpful in convincing such people to aid in your investigation."
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Evandria Sericks
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Tue Oct 08, 2019 5:10 am

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The sergeant was more than ready to walk away, let the recruits deal with the stubborn reporter. In fact she was already starting to turn back, when the man started speaking. It was hard to miss the purposeful drawl of his words, the things he was hinting at. Frankly, it prickled her the slightest bit that he figured out what it was they were lacking. Not to mention that the important piece of the puzzle was now in the hands of a Kingsway Post reporter.

Ryker would need a lesson of keeping his mouth shut.

She raised a dark eyebrow at the brown-haired man. It was certainly not every day that she encountered a character as bold as him. Most would leave or try some other sneaky way in order to get some scoop on the story. Never before had anyone came up to her alluding to some assistance. “What is it that you are offering then, Mr. Ocasta? Surely you can understand that I cannot simply tell all I know to a notorious gossip tabloid without any assurances that I will get something useful in return,” Evandria said innocently.

The young woman turned her back briefly, trying to survey the situation at hand. Her second-in-command, Constable Lorcan Girardi, was looking at her with questions in his green eyes – no surprise there. Their witness, the woman named Felise, seemed to have mostly calmed herself down. Unfortunately, the way she kept fidgeting with the hem of her shirt and stealing glances at them told her that perhaps she hadn’t spoken about everything.

Bargaining with a reporter… Anyone would have been able to tell that it was a terrible idea. In fact, should Lorcan heard all of it there was no doubt that he would have stopped her. There was a million ways that things could go from when you let the news get involved. Evandria let her gaze wander from him as she took in their surroundings. To know how these houses were connected to each other, she would have to question quite a handful of people. From what she had learned during her brief time here, the humans and wicks were more than a little apprehensive when talking to a Seventen or a galdor.

Evandria turned back to Oisin, tucking back a strand of raven hair that had managed to escape her ponytail. “I better not regret this in the future.”
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Oisin Ocasta
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Sun Oct 13, 2019 6:05 am

16th of Yaris, 2719
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Oisin offered another shrug that somehow managed to involve his entire body, his hands having found their way back into his pockets again. Perhaps he was being too bold. If he was, he placed the blame at Anatole Vauquelin's feet. There was something strange about the Incumbent, something that made the galdor less intimidating than perhaps Oisin should have found him. Perhaps it was making him too cavelier in his dealings with others of that ilk; perhaps he had been pushing his luck a little too much with the Seventen, and the upper class, and the various other aspects of galdori society that he poked and prodded for information from time to time. Yet, thus far it was a gamble that was working, and one that the expectation and reputation of a journalist - particularly one from the Post - seemed to reinforce and endorse. He'd meet his comeuppance one day, of that he had no doubt; but one day's problems were not today's problems, and for now the approach was working.

"We both know that I'm going to be talking to these fine people regardless. Maybe someone saw something, or heard something. Maybe I end up chatting to someone who knows what name you've got scrawled down on that paper there. This city loves its gossip, and regardless of how careful you and yours are or aren't with the particulars, we both know that I, or someone like me, is going to find things out eventually."

His nose wrinkled into a short, thoughtful sniff, his attention shifting away from the Seventen to the dispersing crowd of onlookers. You didn't need to know that you were in the Dives to realise it: you could see it written across every person, in the tiredness on their brows, the slump of their shoulders, the worn threadbare state of their clothes, or the coal-stained callouses on their hands. These were working folk, downtrodden and disenfranchised, and more than a little bitter for it, more often than not. It was where unpleasant and undesirable were collected together, for the convenience of any galdor who might wish to ignore in bulk anything that detracted from the finery of their high society. Crime seemed inevitable to the galdor, and so the Seventen ignored all but the worst, a naive decision if you asked Oisin, based on which way he expected the story of the Dives to go. It was one thing to ignore a few bees here and there, but ignore too many, and you had no one to blame but yourself when you discovered an entire hive nesting within your walls, and found yourself needing to contend with an entire angry swarm. To Oisin, the Resistance was already the first warning, the ominous drone filling the air around the galdor, yet their treatment of the Dives never changed.

Save, it seemed, for a few conscientious exceptions. His attention returned to the Sergeant, and to his unfinished answer to her question. "The thing is, Sergeant, you're a galdor and I'm not. You're in a uniform, and I'm not. You work for an institution that upholds the social order that has them all living in this unsavoury shithole of a neighbourhood. Me? I work for an institution that pokes and prods at that social order, that gently humiliates and humanises the upper echelons that these people resent."

Another shrug, another dismissal, as if his social commentary were nothing but an incidental statement of the obvious. " Now, we can do the usual dance - you ask first, I ask second, and then you wind up finding out what I learned and you didn't in tomorrow's paper - or we can work together, you learn what you need to learn first-hand, and we get a chance to stop this spate of break-ins before they have the chance to escalate into something worse."

A smile cracked at the corner of Oisin's mouth, almost as if he enjoyed this, almost as if beneath the stern-but-earnest attitude painted across his features, there was some part of him that thrilled and sparked with joy, either at the prospect of pitting his wits against a Seventen, or perhaps at the implications of playing a more active part in an actual investigation, of following in the footsteps of the truth wherever it led, and potentially leaving Vienda in an ever so slightly better state for having done so. It was subtle, and small, like a bird on a branch fluffing its feathers in preparation for taking flight, but it was there, and it was honest, and above all altruistic, woven into the wick field that hung loosely around him like an extra layer of trenchcoat.

"Now this name you've got. He or she?" He scanned his surroundings again, looking at the buildings this time, rather than the people. "Best place to start asking questions about a name is usually either a bar or a brothel, depending on which it is."
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Evandria Sericks
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Thu Oct 17, 2019 9:39 am

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“Very well, Mr. Ocasta. I have to admit that you sound like you know what you are doing,” Evandria said as she examined the wick from head to toe once more. It was certainly unusual to find a non-galdor speaking up to her so brazenly. On most days, humans and wicks alike would duck their head or hasten their steps when she passed them by. The eyes that did meet her gaze were often fearful or hateful – or even both. Her uniform and

That gave her a bit of a respect for Oisin Ocasta.

She gestured at the reporter to follow her into the house. It was better that they did not discuss the case out in the open. She could feel the weight of her squad member’s questioning looks, but no one said anything. The sergeant was in charge after all and her judgment was what had elevated her through the ranks so swiftly. “Before we start, it is only polite for me to tell you my name.” Once they were inside, she extended a hand and offered a smile that had won her more than a few favors in the past. “Evandria Sericks. I do hope I do not find unscrupulous things about me written in the papers tomorrow.”

The house was a small one – typical of those located in the Dives. They were now standing in the living room that seemingly also doubled as the dining room and kitchen. A rotting wooden table was pressed onto a wall, accompanied by mismatched chairs. Two armchairs that were covered with mysterious stains were placed at the center of the room. Evandria could not help from comparing the scene in front of her with those of the houses in uptown. The differences were almost painful to look at.

These lives these people lived couldn’t have been an easy one.

“We found the note here,” Evandria explained, pointing at the floor where broken glass were sprinkled all over it. It was the same way for all the other houses. A broken window as a mode of entrance and then the intruder picked the front door lock as an exit. It was curious considering if he or she had the skills to pick locks, why not do it to break in? It was stealthier and definitely smarter. Unless, of course, it was on purpose. To make sure that their presence was known. “It only said one word: Avaline.”

The sergeant let her gaze travel to the bedroom. There, the drawers on the dresser all had been thrown open, the clothes inside tossed onto the ground carelessly. With every house, the intruder had grown more frantic in their search. In the first house, he or she had taken the time to try to put everything back in its place. Even though it wasn’t perfect, the effort obvious. By now, it seemed like all the care was thrown into the winds.

Evandria doubted that was a good sign.

She turned back to the reporter. “Have you heard of the name, Mr. Ocasta? I haven’t had the chance to ask around for it.”
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