(Scars do not appear to be cause of death –shock ... - Bad Request

watch himself just to pad her coffers.
Well... a few more crisps wouldn't hurt.
The flow of ale and wine, beer and whiskey hasn't slowed a hair. Flashes of
dim light fills the room each time the door is opened, and each time it
admits a pair of burly thugs with a keg on each shoulder or a few more
patrons who were drawn to the tavern. No Hive rats are these, no... but
high-born men, women, and otherwise in fine silks. Their faces are veiled
with perfumed kerchiefs to block the Hive's stench even as it fades with the
day.
A woman sways in wearing a green silk gown and a high wig. Her pale white
hair curls around a cage, which holds two small buntings that flutter and
chirp as they flit among the perches. She is decked with jewels and clattering
with gold bracelets, and somehow had entered the Hive alone at this hour
without having her throat slit.
Three monks enter, swathed in black robes. Their faces are hard as if carved
from stone: slim, stern, and pious. Still they approach the bar and order all
manner of indulgences a Planar mind could conceive of, in defiance of their
vows.
And there is the group of a smattering of races, each as different as the next
in color and costume, but each muttering to themselves and nodding in
agreement, fingering the Signer brooches at their chests.
"So I bring myself to this tavern, one I've never seen before yet imagined in
my dreams."
"I've built this bar for some purpose and I know not what."
"All shall be revealed by myself to myself, of this I am sure."
A pitched shriek is heard, sharp as a dropped glass and as grating as a fiend's
claws on a chalkboard. Fluttering up over the crowd is a mephit, no more
than six inches tall. In its little claws it carries a tome that shifts among a
hundred colors. One moment it is circular, the next it is shaped like a spade.
And then it becomes a wedge, a square, a slim notebook before it turns into
a circular grimoire once again.
406