Monster Party Novella Nosos: But what happens when the gears, get sick of the machine?
Chapter Eleven: You rest your head on dynamite, so you'll wake and atone, for every little finger that, (that) gets worked to the bone!
"Well, it is something." Florence Bastien reflected as she looked over the latest addition to Chateau Argent.
"It is not just 'something' it happens to be the only thing that will let even you have a chance at growing anything worth talking about in Nosos." Cal Wright insisted.
The alchemist had good reason to be somewhat defensive about the structure, it had been his idea from start to finish.
"Why do they call it a greenhouse? It seems more... clearish white gray than anything else." Reflected James Firecat.
Cal sighed heavily covering her face with a hand.
"Well to start with, it is a building, and it is made to grow plants in, so... why do you think it's called a 'greenhouse' Whiskers?
Anyway, Nosos isn't the only place that isn't exactly friendly to plant life. Home isn't that much better, though it is more coldly indifferent rather than actively hostile. Still even nature at its worse is no match for Lamordian engineering! Bring on the snow, bring on the acid rain, we can still grow plants in here..." Cal further reflected.
"Raising one little garden is all well and good, especially for the sake of collecting berries, but if we're going to make a difference in Nosos it will require more than just creating a few little green sanctuaries. We'll need to take the fight 'out there' to the city itself." The dryad insisted.
"Have you finally figured out how to that spell you've been working on? I mean I don't really care, but my Kitten likes to breath as much as anyone else who suffers from the terminal condition known as being alive. So, what makes him happy makes me... content." Mirri reflected.
"If we'd been anywhere else, I would have taken care of the matter well before now honestly. Gaia's voice has been nothing but a whisper since we arrived. That combined with my Silver Rose feeling especially temperamental slowed me down quite a bit.
Luckily, the spell was a fairly obvious deviation of one so simple almost any druid worthy of the name could do it. Purifying food and water is a simple enough matter, once I was able to communicate to Gaia what I desired, purifying air itself was not so much harder either." She declared proudly.
Then Florence made a few quick hand motions, followed by "speaking" a few words in a language that was more like the babbling of a spring brook than any human tongue.
In short order the air inside the greenhouse was cleansed of every trace of Nosos' perpetual stink which they'd never been able to escape until now. As a refreshingly clear scent wafted through the room, everyone (even Mirri) suddenly began to breath in deeply through their nostrils, as if unable to believe that they were finally being exposed to pure air once again.
"It won't last." Florence warned them.
"Sadly this is roughly equivalent to tying a cloth around the sort of wound that leaves a man's entrails hanging out for all the world to see.
I can purify the air wherever I am, but given the rate at which factories continue to spread more of that foulness, the reprieve won't be long lived. We either need to shut down the factories, or make sure every single one of them has a druid working at it who focuses their powers on casting that spell repeatedly." The dryad warned them.
"Druidic magic isn't especially plentiful in the Core, it is probably even rarer in Nosos." Cal noted sourly.
"Well it sounds like we need to train more druids then!" James Firecat contributed happily.
"That is more easily said than done, not many are called to the path of service to Gaia, and many of those who have the talent still choose not to answer her call. I think the odds of finding anyone both capable and willing to listen to her in Nosos are quite low." Florence admitted sadly.
"Grab some kids and make them do it." Mirri huffed.
"Excuse me?" Florence replied clearly take aback by the vampire's bunt words.
"Hey-ya, wee baron, trapped a few vixens? Hey-ya, grand duke, the trap's lying empty. Kids can be taught to do just about anything if you put your mind to it.
You would be surprised at just what horribly devious things some brats will do for money. All we need is gather a bunch of kids, sort out which of them have the right mystical mumbo jumbo to become druids, and before long you'll have a budding crop of grass worshipers. I can give them a few tastes of my charming personality if don't think you cold handle the task of convincing them on your own." She further added.
"Kidnapping children so that we can induct them into some sort of nature worshiping cult is not going to do wonders for Amalgamated Diamonds image." Devi warned.
"Who said anything about kidnapping? We do this like its been done for who know how long back home, we use orphans.
They don't have anyone else they could possibly depend on, so you've got pretty much complete control over them even without using magic! Hey-ya, wee baron, someone be springing the traps? Hey-ya grand duke, wolf be after the vixen." The vampiress declared confidently.
"Well that plan is completely lacking in anything even close to resembling morals, it might work though." Cal couldn't help but admit.
"No it won't. Follow me to the library, I've got another board to show you guys." Devi insisted.
A short while later the group were gathered together in a different room with the elf readily showing them still more fruits from her labors in compiling the vampire's research into the unspoken hierarchies of power in Nosos.
"The problem with Mirri's plan is simply one of logistics. For it to work would requires us to have access to a reasonably large supply of orphans." The blue haired woman insisted as she begun to spin the board around.
"You're telling me there isn't one? Men die of industrial accidents, women die of illness, how can there not be a bunch of orphans out there?" Mirri asked with a pout, clearly upset at having her idea shot down.
A moment later the board finished spinning revealing a picture of a familiar face.
"Say hello once again to Roger Tulle, hopefully you haven't forgotten all about him since last time. One of the oldest friends of Malus Sceleris, runs most of the textile factories in Nosos, and also the Malus Sceleris Homes for Poor Orphans.
Shortly after he started to making a name for himself in Nosos Malus created these places to look after all the orphans that indeed this city does produce at a prodigious rate. Children without parents can depend on having a roof over their heads, three warm meals a day, and fires to keep them warm on cold nights.
At least they can until they turn sixteen at which point they're kicked out onto the streets without so much as a copper coin.
I suppose that is still better than the alternative, but I doubt Malus opened these places up out of the goodness of his heart..." Devi couldn't help but point out.
"We were able to find out anything to suggest he's been using them for nefarious means?" Alexander cut in.
Devi shrugged awkwardly.
"Not as such... he mostly has just left them alone once they were fully established. He's only had a handful of major interactions that he's had with them.
There were five times when he adopted kids, all of them were boys between the ages of eight and ten. Every single one of them proceeded to suffer almost the exact same fate; after living less than half a year with Malus... they died by a disease, or combination of diseases, that no one, not even the doctors of Nosos, could clearly identity or treat." She concluded.
A heavy silence descended upon the library that only James Firecat was eventually able to break.
"Alex... do you think that..." He hazarded slowly, not quite able to fully voice his fears.
"That Malus adopted those children for the purpose of using them to experiment with some sort of horrific diseases worse than even Elevens or Dum-Dum Fever? No, I don't think he did that.
He already owns the orphanages, in a city like Nosos I doubt there is anyone keeping careful track of exactly how many orphans he's looking after. If he wanted to do something like that, all he needed to do is have a child delivered to place in the middle of the night. No, I think... I think what we're looking at is the curse..." Alexander slowly concluded.
"You mean the way that something tends to keep going wrong for darklords in certain small little ways?" Cal cut in, making sure that everyone was on the same page.
"Yes... Malus... I bet he did honestly want to adopt those children. Malus really wants to be a father... nobody knows anything about his own family, what his relation with his father was like, we can work with this." The silver haired man's lips began to twitch upward in a smile.
"Yes, in theory you could exploit one of an otherwise completely dark hearted man's noble impulses as a way to get under his skin. If you were an even bigger bastard than he was." Mirri said in a dispassionate voice.
Then there was another long awkward pause, though not quite as long as the one before it.
"Just to be clear, that wasn't an accusation, if anything that was admiration! How do you think we can ruin his life next? Maybe burn down the orphanages? Go back to that original plan I mentioned, kidnap a bunch of them, then make him hand over several big sacks of money to get them back?" She pointed out playfully.
"Down Beta. Besides, if Nosos should teach you anything it is that no one ever got true satisfaction in life just from being rich. Tell me Mirri, would you rather see Malus bankrupt, or would you rather see me break his soul?" He asked.
The black haired woman paused for a moment, opened her mouth wide, and took a few seconds to run her tongue over her fangs.
"I've got shivers... and I given that I'm dead I didn't think that was possible." She admitted her face flushing with dark delight.
"James, I need you and Mirri to do a little reconnaissance. Devi get them the location of the closest Malus Sceleris Home for Poor Orphans building. I want you to two to find out exactly what is going on in there and once you've done that... then I'll figure out how to use it against him." The eye-patched man insisted.
XXX XXX XXX
"Hey there kitty..." Lisa Taylor called out to the bright red furred cat she'd never seen before today.
The cat was the only truly colorful thing she'd seen in a very long time, everything else in her world was either dull grays, dark blacks or wickedly gleaming silver.
The cat stood out as something new to her, something different, and there was precious little difference between one day and another. Even its eyes were different, she'd never seen a cat with such soulful brown eyes.
She reached out a hand slowly and cautiously towards the cat, not wanting to frighten it away. The tom slowly raised its head and sniffed whiskers twitching.
Then it sneezed in the most adorable way imaginable.
"Sorry puss, there isn't anyone here to deal with the soot and dust but us, and we... we don't really want to." Lisa admitted.
It wasn't that she was lazy, laziness didn't last long here. No, the issue was that neither did excess energy.
She held out her hands awkwardly, and then the cat obliging jumped into her arms. It cuddled against her stomach and she found its fur to be pleasurably warm. Pleasurably warm, and also strangely clean.
She ran her hands through its fur, and then paused for a moment when she worried that she was in effect cleaning her hands by dirtying the cat's fur.
"So what are you doing here?" She asked the cat.
In response it let loose with a gentle "meow "that explained nothing, but would have to do for an answer.
Then it began to purr.
Lisa held it all the more tightly against her there, her entire body drinking in the wonderful vibrations. She held the cat close and waited for it to stop, except that it didn't stop.
If Lisa had been able to, she would have shut out the entire rest of the world and just sat there caressing the strange cat.
The world however had no respect for the wishes of Lisa Taylor.
"What do you have there?" A gruff voice demanded.
Looking up Lisa saw him. The brown haired man towered over her, and glowered down at both her and the cat.
"It's just a stray I found." Lisa replied, hugging the animal all the more tightly though now it had stopped purring.
"Well put it down now, it is time for your shift." The man insisted.
Fighting back tears Lisa slowly relinquished her new friend and began to stand up.
Once they were separated the man attacked the cat with a vicious kick.
"Savage beast, I won't have you spreading filthy disease to any of my girls!" He spat.
The kick struck the cat in its midsection and with a hissing cry of pain it went flying across the room.
The man chuckled to himself at the sight of the suffering he'd just inflicted.
"Make sure to step lively or you'll get the same!" He warned Lisa.
Lisa nodded sadly already feeling exhausted and spent even though she hadn't even started yet.
That was when she heard the roar.
WHAM!
Lisa had no idea how she'd missed it, you didn't just not see something like that. Except, that she had missed it, and so had the man.
The creature however did not miss the man, its mighty limbs dealt his midsection a powerful slap and drove the man the ground. It pinned him there beneath its paws and pressed its muzzle directly against his ears, then it snarled.
The man now went very, very still.
Lisa stared, having no idea what exactly she was seeing. The creature was unlike anything she'd seen before, well for the most part unlike anything she'd seen before.
It had tawny blond fur, and it honestly looked to Lisa like a cat... except more so, much more so.
The properly sized red furred tomcat walked back over to Lisa, then it proceeded to drape its fluffy tail languidly across the face of the captured man.
If Lisa hadn't known better, she would have assumed that the cat was actually mocking the man...
That was when the cat began to change.
It grew up and out, red front paws narrowing down into human hands covered by gloves of the exact same color, while the back ones became feet in red shoes. Red fur began to transform into a red jacket, shirt and pants. His hair was covered by a wide brimmed red hat.
The only part about him that didn't really change was his eyes, they were still brown and soulful. He paid no attention at all to the man who was currently being restrained by the gigantic golden furred monster, he kept his eyes locked solely on Lisa.
"Can you show me how to help?" He asked tenderly.
Lisa clung to the man as tightly as when he'd been a cat.
XXX XXX XXX
One fully grown man having his arms and legs bound in some the rope Mirri had "borrowed" from Devi and the pointing out of a hidden trapdoor later the hunt was on.
A red furred cat paced slowly along the floor, tendrils of mist curling around its paws with every soft silent step.
Not that it needed to be especially silent, the pounding of machinery would have been loud enough to drown out the approach of an entire clowder of cats.
When it found what was waiting for it, its brown eyes went wide, then it turned tail and ran backwards as fast as it could go.
It ran and ran and ran, it slipped expertly through the concealed trapdoor and then kept racing till it had managed to escape the Malus Sceleris Home for Poor Orphans completely.
It crawled over to the nearest section of the Nosos' extensive (but none too effective) sewer system and began to wretch.
XXX XXX XXX
"Here." Mirri Catwarrior handed James Firecat a canteen that she'd been keeping on herself just in case.
He drank greedily and then managed to only spit about half of it down into the gutter.
"That..." He gasped, but couldn't bring himself to say anything more.
Mirri nodded in agreement.
"You know... you know I was kidding back in the library, right?" She asked sounding a great deal more unsure of herself than normal.
"Yeah." James agreed before taking another long drink from the canteen, still trying to wash the fowl taste out of his mouth. What he couldn't do was wash the fowl taint from his soul.
"Good... I... I know I can count on Alexander, count on you, to pick my good ideas from my bad ones. I'd never... I'd never have an idea like that though..." She half stammered, once again proving that indeed even a dead woman could shiver, so long as cold wasn't the cause.
"Someone... someone needs to pay for that." James insisted.
"Oh yeah. Yeah that's one of the best ideas you've ever had Kitten." Mirri agreed.
"It... it is... probably legal though, so we can't just... I mean..." James half babbled, not sure how to deal with this particular problem.
"Alexander, lets go talk to Alexander He'll come up with a way to deal with this." Mirri promised James.
Then the two began their trek back to Chateau Argent.
XXX XXX XXX
Alexander Diamondclaw listened to everything his pair of scouts had to say with a detachment so icy you could have stood on it. For a very short while at least.
"Yes, that's a real pickle." He admitted in a voice that was utterly devoid of emotion.
The silver haired man reached into the desk he was seated at and pulled out a silver ring with brightly glowing blue runes engraved on it..
"Could you excuse me for a moment?" The silver haired man didn't wait for an answer before slipping it on.
"!" Said Alexander Diamondclaw.
His mouth moved but no words emerged.
The ring of silence projected a mystical barrier that neither James or Mirri's keen ears were able to pierce. His face became quite red for a while, but eventually he managed to settle down and removed the ring.
After doing that, he simply sat there, his body unnaturally still.
"All right, I have thought this through... I will rescue all the children, then I will murder them."
"That 'them' doesn't refer to the children right?" James asked taking Alexander's "plan" completely seriously.
"Alpha Male?" Florence Bastien coughed.
Alexander coughed himself and then his entire body convulsed like an animal trying to shake itself dry after a rainstorm.
"Okay as far as plans go that one is a baaaa... huh, couldn't quite make myself believe those words. That was a great plan, but I might just have a better one that doesn't involve making Nosos smell even worse than normal because its sewers are clogged with corpses." He admitted.
"If you tear the bodies up into enough small pieces you won't have that problem." Mirri offered helpfully.
"Be that as it may, I'm going to try and be gentlemanly about this. I intend to resolve this problem by writing a strongly worded letter." Alexander declared.
"If that doesn't work?" Mirri probed.
"Murder." He answered.
"Now then, James go get Cal, I'm going to need his skill with a pen to handle this, my own hand is unsteady enough at the best of times.
Mirri when he's done I'm going to need you to do another one of your special deliveries. After that, go back to the orphanage and take care of a little more prep-work. Meanwhile, I'll have to go see a man with a large sack of money and wait to discover what happens..." Alexander Diamondclaw instructed.
XXX XXX XXX
Malus Sceleris wasn't sure how the letter had managed to work its way past several different layers of security, but it had. One moment it hadn't been there, the next there was a letter sitting there. It was sealed with a crest in the shape of a snarling wolf.
He already knew it who it was from before he even opened it up, but that knowledge alone granted him no clues towards its contents.
"Go pay a visit to the Malus Sceleris Home for Poor Orphans closest to your mansion. There's a secret trap door in there, it will be marked with ink. You will be very interested to find out what is going on down there. If you're interested in paying me a visit later tonight I'll be at the Wrecked Wrench." Was all it said.
Clearly its writer had also known that Malus would be able to identify him perfectly well by the crest alone and so decided not to bother with the curtsy of a signature. But why should one expect a wolf to be civilized? He had no idea what sort of a game the beast was playing at, but Malus would get to the bottom of it.
XXX XXX XXX
The owner of Sceleris Industries had decided to bring a full score of armed men with him to the orphanage. He just felt better being surrounded by lots of very aggressive men armed with the very best guns that money could buy.
Sure enough there was a carefully built trap door that someone had made much less well concealed by smearing the edges of it with ink.
He had some of his men lever it up and then he headed down with two of his men leading the way just to be sure. He didn't think this was a trap, since how would the wolf have been able to break into this place and build such a trap door and escape notice in the process?
The only explanation that made any sort of sense was that the trapdoor had been built there by someone who had unfettered access to it.
Still, Malus Sceleris had not gotten to where he was in life by taking foolish risks. With his bodyguards making sure nothing dangerous could sneak up on him Malus he slowly made his forward.
Those men could protect their master from danger, but not from surprises.
Like the one that awaited Malus Sceleris at the end of a long hallway.
It was a large room filled to the brim to the machines of various types, much like many other rooms that Malus had been in at one time or another. There were two key differences however...
The first was that the workers were chained to those machines, and the second was that they were orphans. His orphans.
Then Malus' well practiced eye temporarily won over the rage which was filling his brain, and he was able to recognize exactly what sort of machines they were... looms. Then he knew.
XXX XXX XXX
"Everyone else out of the room..."
…..
"EVERYONE OUT OF THE ROOM NOW!"
"We don't work for you Mr. Sceleris we work for..."
"No... Malus is an old friend of mine, if he has something he wants to tell me alone it wouldn't be the first time. Get out..."
…..
"Roger...?"
"Malus...?"
"My orphans... what were you doing to my orphans?"
"Malus? I don't know what you're talking about!"
"You don't know? You don't know? If you don't know where the garments for your stores come from then you aren't smart enough to work for me and if you did know... either way your time in the Upper Crust is over..."
"Malus, what are you talking about?"
"You always had a slick tongue Roger... that was what I liked about you. There was no one I could count on to lie for me well as you could. I was always smarter though, that's why you work for me. No matter how good at it they are, a stupid man can only lie to a smart one for so long... How could you be so stupid to think that you could make money lying to me instead of for me?"
"Malus don't..."
"Do you know what I saw tonight Roger? I put those orphanages under your control because we go so far back, because I thought I could trust you. Well, after seeing what you decided to do to my orphans... now I know exactly what I can do with you."
"What... are you..."
Click.
BANG!
Thud.
XXX XXX XXX
The Wrecked Wrench was a reasonable enough tavern. There was nothing especially special about it, but it was clean and either through magic or luck it had somehow managed to arrange for it to be spared the worst of Nosos' olfactory assaults.
When Malus and his twenty bodyguards entered it was completely deserted except for the bartender.
"It really is amazing what money can do." Reflected the silver haired man behind the bar, directing his single eyed stare from the mug he'd been polishing up to his new arrivals.
Malus made a few quick hand motions and his bodyguards stepped back outside, leaving him to approach the bar on his own.
"Why did you do that?" He half snarled, preferring to stand rather than sit.
"Because I figured if I'm going to pay this place's normal proprietor to let me run it for the night, he'd appreciate finding his serving implements slightly cleaner afterwards." Alexander Diamondclaw answered with a shrug.
"I meant the note, about the orphanage..." Malus clarified, his eyes possessed a feral half enraged half haunted look about them.
Alexander put down the mug and rested both of his hands on the bar.
"I'm still a newcomer to Nosos, but I'm picking the rules pretty quickly all the same. I wouldn't dream of openly interfering with another man's business interests. It is a horrible thing when that happens you know?
For example, some people were skulking around the Amalgamated Diamonds mine last night, would you believe it? I don't know what they were doing there, but when we found them, two of them were dead of blood loss. As for the other two, well it seems someone decided to take a sledgehammer to their kneecaps, then their elbows.
So, given that the orphanages were your business, I let you handle it. Would you care for a drink?" He offered.
"Yes please." Malus gasped, his voice half choked.
It was the kind of voice primarily found among dehydrated desert dwellers who have finally reached an oasis, or men thinking about something they'd very much like to forget.
Alexander didn't bother to ask for an order, he simply went about the process of pouring out a drink for Malus Sceleris with nonchalant ease.
"So is there something on your mind?" He inquired as he started to pour himself a drink as well.
Malus raised up his mug, clearly about to toss his drink right in Alexander's face, but suddenly found his limbs restrained by a pair of black gloved hands.
"You're obviously in a bad way Mr. Sceleris, so I'm willing to forgive a little misbehavior. Still, I see no reason to be so uncivilized as to involve perfectly innocent liquor in our feud..." Alexander suggested.
Malus' muscles relaxed slightly, he took a long drink from the mug, placing it down on the bar, then he punched Alexander in the face.
The silver haired man coughed up a little blood, but otherwise seemed nonplussed, and simply took a
pull from his own container.
"So, would I be correct that you'll be taking a more personal investment in the running of your orphanages now? You should probably do that if you don't want to have to undergo a repeat of tonight's events.
That, or you could find someone else to handle that particular task, someone who could be trusted to put the good of others ahead of making a few gold. I hear people like that are very hard to find in Nosos though..." The silver haired man ruminated.
Malus punched Alexander a second time then went back to drinking for a while.
No sooner had he managed to finish his first serving than Alexander slid him a second.
"Just don't try to drink me under the table. Many are the demi-humans, including quite a few dwarfs, who have found themselves laying flat upon the floor cursing themselves for fools and the mice for being too loud after attempting that particular feat." He advised.
"I may not look it, but I didn't grew up in a city." Malus admitted as Alexander got to work finishing up his first beer.
"My father was a druid... and so was my mother... but she died giving birth to me.
I was nearly ten years old before my father allowed me to accompany him on one of his journeys into town to pick up a few things that neither his magic or the natural world could provide. I was shocked... shocked, at what I saw.
It was just a small town, but back then it seemed a city grander than Nosos to me, as if every house was a mansion! I'd never seen, never even imagined so many people living so close together, not when my father was the only other human I'd met before that day.
There was a girl, she had hair that gleamed like gold and her eyes were the only green thing I ever loved.
We talked a little... I stumbled over practically every other word I said, because I was so unused to speaking. My father had never been one for conversation you see. I made myself look like a right proper fool, but I managed to explain why she hadn't seen me before, because I lived off in the forest. She told me that she was the daughter of a local tavern keeper and that her name was Amanda.
I worried that I'd never be able to survive the wait to see her again, since my father tended to go for months between his visits. We held each others hands that day for so long that I'm amazed they didn't fuse together. She promised me that it wouldn't be so bad, that if I couldn't come to see her, she'd come to see me again..." Malus continued pausing his story briefly so that he could get some serious drinking done.
"I know what you're doing by the way." He warned as Alexander slid him a third drink.
"If you're worried about your tab, it is on the house." The silver haired man offered before going back to doing a little drinking of his own.
"Oh, and if you want to leave, the door is right there. I'm sure your bodyguards could provide equally suitable conversational companions if you waned to avoid unburdening yourself in my presence." He added.
Malus' eyes didn't even glance toward the door'.
"There... there was so little left of her when I found her. Hair, and a few flowers that she'd kept clutching until the end, I think... I think that they were for me.
She'd gone into the woods to try and find me, and a pack of wolves found her." Malus explained managing to drain about half of his drink in one long quaff. He followed this up by slamming his first into Alexander's face yet again.
"So go ahead, bark, woof, howl, other may people may think that it is just a charming eccentricity, but that's only because they've been rich and sheltered their entire lives! They've never had to discover exactly what death means, and exactly what it is wolves do to innocent children when given half a chance.
I'll never forget what my father said to me when I pleaded with him to use his magic against the beasts so that Amanda's death would not go unavenged.
'My son, how can you expect me to punish them for being true their nature?' were his exact words. It is in the nature of wolves to fall upon all that is good and wholesome in the world, and rip it apart with their fangs." Malus declared, his voice deadly serious.
"You know, there's a famous story in Mordent about a ship captain who comes to the conclusion that he should devote his entire life to hunting down a whale which ate one of his legs. It doesn't end well for him. That's the problem when you're dealing with animals, they're too stupid for you get to any real sense of satisfaction from getting 'revenge' against them." Alexander pointed out.
Malus having managed to completely drain his drink, now slammed the container onto Alexander's head.
"Don't patronize me. Revenge against an individual animal is pointless, there will always be more of them. Revenge against an entire type of animal though... that worked out pretty well for me I have to say. You see, I've managed to drive all the wolves out of Nosos, all the wolves, except for you." He hissed angrily.
"How did you do that exactly?" Alexander asked playfully, his expression of camaraderie still not chipped in the least by Malus' continued physical assaults.
"It isn't about killing the beasts, it is about making it so that they can't hunt. You get rid of all the easy sources of food for them. If you can do that, then they'll leave on their own soon enough. It was a matter of supply and demand just like any other business matter." Malus declared proudly.
"Well, that explains why I'm still here then, I try a lot harder than most other wolves. That, or I'm just have a lot less choosy about what to hunt." The silver haired man reflected.
"Prey on two legs, that's what you're willing to hunt." Malus growled.
"Ah Mr. Sceleris it seems that you really do know me all too well. So tell me, do you plan to drive out all the humans of Nosos so that I won't be able to hunt? You'll be in a fine situation then, a lone man atop a midden heap proclaiming himself king of all he surveys, seeing nothing worthy of ruling." Alexander needled his guest.
Malus motioned for a fourth drink and it was swiftly provided.
"You really think I hate you that badly? You're overestimating your importance Mr. Diamondclaw. I planned, plan on making Nosos a perfect city, the most wonderful place in the world for me to live, to be free of everything that I hated: I chased out all the wolves, I cut down all the trees, I crushed every single blade of grass beneath cobblestones. It was only after I'd done that, when I realized there were some things in the world that I hate more that wolves." Malus reflected somberly.
Alexander began to pour himself another round and simply flicked an eyebrow at his drinking companion rather than try and use words to coerce more information from him.
"Wolves have little interest in licking the blood from their lips, at least you can tell how horrible they are when you look at them. People though... people will make you think that they're your best friend in the world, right before they slide in the knife." Malus ground his teeth together in rage as he spoke.
"Well, if you can't find an trustworthy man in Nosos, you might have to settle for a trustworthy wolf." Alexander offered.
"You honestly think that I'm going to hand that particular pearl over to you just because you told me what Roger was up to and gave me a few drinks? To give you access to all those young minds? Do you expect me to clean, load, and prime my favorite gun before shooting myself in the head to make things easy for you next?" Malus spat.
"What I think is that you're about to find yourself dealing with a long night of pondering and then a splitting hangover. Beyond that, well I expect you to act in your own best interests Malus. Today both of us had a shared interest in seeing a wrong done to the orphans of Nosos be righted.
We'll just have to wait and see how our interests might possibly align tomorrow." Alexander told him before focusing on a little more drinking of his own.
"Last call!" He announced to no one in particular and the set about filling his and Malus' mug a final time.
XXX XXX XXX
The next day there were two pieces of information that everyone who was anyone in Nosos talked about. The first was that Roger Tulle had shot himself in the head, his will leaving everything to Malus Sceleris.
The second was that Malus had announced that he no longer had the energy to property run his orphanage, and was going to be letting Alexander Diamondclaw take over that particular aspect of Nosos' society.
XXX XXX XXX
Somewhere in Nosos, a black gloved hand reached out, and tipped over a golden knight, sending the figure toppling to lay flat upon a regicide board.
End Chapter
AN:There are spells in D&D that purify food or water, or even magically generate them as pure "mana" (food from heaven). There is no official spell that I know of for purifying the air, primarily because that's not a problem that comes up frequently enough/at all (not something negate actively poisonous gases, just turn soot/smog into normal clean air) but Florence has figure out how to create a low level druid spell that does it, not because she's the greatest druid in Ravenloft, it's just she's the only druid in Nosos, and so no one else has ever really focused on this particular problem from the approach that she takes..
The "gibberish" that Mirri is happily spouting at one point in this story is actually Nova Vassan thieves cant. It's a language/code that young thieves are instructed to use when interacting with adults they don't know to find out if they are thieves as well. With the right responses it can convey a lot of information, and without them the child just seems to be mindlessly rambling rather than planning crimes.
It is important to remember that Malus Sceleris (or at least how I write him) is quite different from most darklords. Not because of the fact that he doesn't have a lot of powerful combat/magical abilities, (after all Vlad Drakov is just a guy with an army...) but because there's nothing intrinsically violent about his personality.
Not to say that he won't make use of violence when it suits his needs of course, but he isn't driven to commit violent actions and violence isn't near the top of the list of his normal approaches to problem solving. He'd prefer to defeat his enemies with a pen than a sword is what I'm saying.
So he and Alexander can be in the same room together for extended periods of time and have these conversations without Malus feeling the need to seriously try and kill Alex and Alex actually feeling threatened enough to repay the favor.
Also Malus' love of/interest in protecting/caring for Orphans is from the same fan material source that I got the info on Henri DuCamp and Malus' six minions from. It is based around the fact that Malus felt like he himself was effectively an orphan growing up due to the fact that his mother died giving birth to him, and his father was so shaken by that event that it lead to him being emotionally abusive (also possibly physically abusive depending on how you interpret the phrase "punishments were nearly as common as meals") to Malus
It doesn't talk about how comforting/nice it is to be an orphan under his protection, but I think it works better if Malus is genuine in his desire to make sure that other children grow up to live happier lives then he did.
Darklords are always at their most interesting when you see that one tiny speck of something "human" still in them, that one aspect of their lives where there is a tiny pinprick of light escaping from the black hole that otherwise is their soul.
The way that Markov actually does seem to dote on his "daughter" Delphi, the way that Jacqueline Renier seems to be a stern but genuinely loving mother to her son, the fact that Azalin wants to be a good father, even if he still has no idea how to/is still actively committed to all the same mistakes that screwed things up for him and his son the last time around. Things like this add depth to the characters and make them interesting to write for/read about.
Thus, Malus sees at least a little of himself in every single one of those orphans. Hence, why when he finds out what Roger Tulle was doing he decided to respond to it by murdering him.
I'm not sure if I should make this more clear in the text where from Malus' perspective he sees an entire room of full of himself as a child, each and every single one of which is currently chained to a machine... something like that probably would work better in visual medium but maybe I'm just not trying hard enough and should include it in the story all the same?
Also the group is more or less entirely correct about what is going on with Malus and the kids he tries to adopt. Malus has dedicated his life to being the opposite of his father, which means actually being a good father to a son. The problem is that the powers which have turned his body into a living plague vector for things likes Dum-Dum Fever also either A) make him sterile or B) make having sex him give any woman unlucky enough to do it a nasty case of syphilAIDS.
When he tries to get around this by adopting a child instead, his disease powers flare out control and infect the kid if they spends any noticeable amount of time in his presence. The Dark Powers are dicks like that.
Also if you're wondering why James and Mirri react so strongly... please remember that most evil in Ravenloft is retail in the way it is handed out. The idea of an entire room full of children being used for slave labor... that's the kind of shit that even most Darklords find beyond the pail, because they may be horrific monsters who are beyond redemption, but they still have some standards thank you very much!
Mirri knows her place as a Beta in the pack means she has the "pleasure" of being as sadistic as possible when making suggestions because she knows that James or Alex will veto any idea that offends their sensibilities and prevent it from actually being carried out.
She enjoys playing the shoulder devil without actually expecting the things she suggests will ever actually take place. Also remember that Mirri is very much into personal cruelty, if she isn't the one doing something horrible to a person, what's the point of that person having something horrible done to them?
Thus while she might "suggest" kidnapping a bunch of orphans and holding them hostage in exchange for piles of money... seeing that those children had already in effect been kidnapped and had no hope at all of ever being released was a discovery she didn't expect and thus is left nearly as shaken as James.
It probably says I'm a bad writer for the fact that I worry that s**t like this isn't being fully conveyed in the text/subtext present in the chapter itself... but I'll try not to let that get to me since you get what you pay for and if I'm getting paid for writing these stories, well it would certainly be news to me!