Letter received by Thorgim on 14 May 936 —
Thorgrim,
I was pleasantly surprised to see you escape my prison, although after our little duel in the Warrens perhaps I should not have been. You and your associates are clearly potent, and clearly quite hard to kill. It would have been easier for me if you hadn’t taken out Octon’s prize creation, but then the horrid old bastard will be completely solid soon and I won’t have to listen to him.
With regard to “the experiment” — you are missing the plural. That lower dungeon level contains “The Experiments” — mostly Octon’s, but a few happening under my supervision. I keep my eye on practical use, while he just likes to fuse things onto other things.
Anyway… I have a job for you, on terms that you may lke. My spies have discovered that House Zuxian are keeping something very special in a tomb in the Resting Field. Small groups of Zuxuan notables go pack and forth, muttering about how “Gorin won’t like his suggestions”, and “It’s ok about the stabbing, none of us can keep him out of our minds”, and “If I were in charge, I’d just let him die”. I don’t know about you, but that sounds exciting. I want it.
Now, after all the House Verdun trouble we’re all about as popular as Sedgins is, so Disilla is extremely tetchy and very conflict-averse. And unless that hole gets a lot bigger, we’re stuck with her. So I will pay 500sp for retrieval of this thing, but it has to be discrete — no-one can know that I have it. I’ll pay half on delivery, then half two weeks later if those Zuxian weirdos aren’t on my ass about it.
How does that sound?
Azad von Korp
The Wrong Kind of Wax 