Peek: The Rumor Mill

If there's one thing that can pique an adventurer's curiosity more than treasure, it's a rumor. The Dungeoneer's Guild is solid proof of that, with adventurers eagerly paying good coin for solid information. They'll also pay decent coin for tenuous information, and while the Dungeoneers take pride in vetting what they sell, there are other information brokers who will offer lesser information for a discount, of course.

Martl is one such broker, a rabbitkin with a very rare combination of affinities: Fate and Knowledge. Most with such a pair of affinities might seek to be a seer or a prophet, someone to give warnings of dire futures and how to avoid them. Martl much prefers being an information broker. Trying to piece together the future always gives him a headache. Instead, he prefers to piece together the present from rumors and gossip, and sell his conclusions to those who would like to try to profit from them.

Sure, he's missed out on many hoards of gold, but he's also missed out on the dangerous beasts that guarded them. He prefers the hustle and bustle of the capital to a drafty tent that most adventurers spend their nights in. He likes to wander all the places gossip can be heard, from town squares to the places people clean their clothes, to the various guild halls; he'll visit each in turn to pluck the little pieces of the present out of the gossip, panning for the little golden nuggets of truth in all the wild fantasies that people entertain.

This spring is already shaping up to be a lucrative one, too. It wasn't difficult for him to be certain the Crown Inspector was out of the capital on business, though he's still piecing together why. Still, a lot of adventurers like to keep tabs on the elf, hoping he'll either find a new interesting delve, or find his end in one that's a little too interesting. Rumors of Olander's demise are always circling, but Martl has yet to find a grain of truth in any of them.

The tiny tidbits he has been finding, though, make him wonder if there is something going on to the north. Merchants are almost as eager to trade rumors as they are goods, and there's whispering of movement in the sea routes. A more northerly one is supposed to be opening once more, carrying with it the whispers of faster times and safer waters. Martl isn't sure if he'd rather brave icebergs or sea serpents, but most sailors he's talked to say the bergs are better. Perhaps worse if you actually hit one, but they don't actively hunt and are easy to spot.

The presence of a new dungeon to the north isn't even a rumor, but fact backed up by the Dungeoneers themselves. The rumors fly, however, when talking about the specifics of the dungeon. It's a formidable foe, asserting its dominance over the surrounding dungeons and town. It's a toybox in all but name, trying its best to not harm adventurers. It has dozens of scions. It has valuable nodes. It has five enclaves. It Captured the town. The town has trained it to give whatever they want. So many rumors, so many contradictions! He's still trying to piece together what's going on with that dungeon, though he's almost positive the Crown Inspector is there working on just that.

There's even interesting theological rumors. The different priesthoods are not above gossip in the slightest, much as some faiths denounce the practice. They may as well denounce breathing for all the good it would do them. The Shield is changing how it trains its paladins, supposedly having found a new path for them to take. The Great Mother has her attention turned away from the capital, much to the consternation of her High Priest. The elf is usually rather stoic and occupied with either his devotions or his arcane research, but he's said to wander the halls at night, restless about something. The generally quiet Order of Order are more outwardly pleased about something. Order received a gift not long ago, one that should help the stability of the realm, somehow.

That sounds to Martl like the sort of thing that would make more obvious waves, but he can't deny the truth in it. He'll just be glad reality isn't going to fall apart around his ears. Even the few active worshipers of the Raven are a bit less dour recently. Most prefer not to think too much about their particular patron and his job, but Martl still tries to keep abreast of their activities. So far, he's only been able to tell there was much less lost recently, and something interesting gained. Even in their rumors, the followers of the Raven are poetic when they're not taciturn.

But all these little pieces of the truth are starting to stick together in ways he hasn't seen before. There is something big happening to the north, all these golden nuggets starting to form a picture. He's going to sit on this particular one for now, though. He's not above giving an incomplete bit of information out when someone it determined and wealthy enough, but this one... he'll keep this one to himself for now.

There's a lot of things he's missing, and a lot of things that could change. Some of the pieces fit together perfectly, some have deliberate voids, as if the information has been carefully pruned. Some pieces are even soft in his perception, still malleable, as if somehow unfinished. He's not even sure how that's possible. Still, he mentally organizes things as he makes his rounds. The overarching puzzle may be something he'll keep to himself, but the smaller clusters he can share. What would a Shield pilgrim care about a new sea route opening? For most of his customers, even if they could see the tenuous links between the disparate rumors, they wouldn't care.

He smirks to himself as a large orc with an axe on his back and a book on his hip approaches. Maybe he will share a little, after all. He may go off on unrelated tangents, but he's still fun to talk to. It also helps that he's more than willing to pay for even the most ludicrous pieces of information Martl can sift out.

"Ah, Noynur! Good to see you! I hope your coinpurse is full, because I have some interesting things to share about the happenings to the north."

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Inspired partially by Austin Miller, who wanted to know about how the capital would react to some of Thedeim's weirdness. He asked about more mundane things, which I think will be seen more in the story than in peeks, but it still made me think about the rumormill.