Back to the Nest
Tomasz is out today, but told me he wanted me, good ol’ Lydia, to write something in this new journal. So here I am while the Arcane Counsel wants to rake him over the coals again. I know he just wants to keep it peaceful with them, but I can’t figure out why he even bothers. They want to strong-arm the Oak and everything in it from us, but they don’t have standing - there’s no reason to even humor them. They’re just doing it because they can’t take that there’s any other large place of magic that isn’t at least paying lip service to them. I’d call the Arcane Counsel a bunch of thugs if they weren’t nearly fossilized from how old they are. Maybe he’s just trying to wait it out until they’re dead…
Of course, if we keep doing business like he does, we might have to close anyway. I don’t know how the books are done, but just today he gave three things away completely for free! He’s so softhearted. Maybe too softhearted. I honestly do not understand how he’s not worried about how much stuff the he gets his hands on costs or being able to pay us.
Anyway, about the freebies. This lady comes in, halfling, maybe 40? She spends twenty minutes browsing, got the same sort of attitude as a recently startled hen, real meek. It took her forever to walk up to us to ask for some help. Finally, she tells me she’s been looking for the Bantam Knight’s stuff - she’s been searching for a while and heard we probably had some of it, or could help her find it. I look around a bit until I find his cape. I find it tucked into the far end of a rack of cloaks and robes and stuff, and it’s this half-cape decorated completely with chicken feathers on the outside. I hand it to her, and ask her to follow me, because I think Tomasz can help find it faster.
In the back room, the old man’s sitting there, looking frustrated with whatever he’s writing. When I ask what he’s writing, Tomasz says he can’t be sure, since he can’t see it, which I think is odd because I can, and tell him so, at which point he pulls a face like he wants to coop himself up in his room and nap for a few hours. Apparently, the quill was supposed to write invisibly, so only the person using it could see the writing, but whoever made the thing got something in the enchantment backwards so only the person writing with it couldn’t see the message.
I didn’t ask how long he’d spent trying to figure that out.
Instead, I told him a customer and I needed some help, and he looked a good bit happier. Tomasz loves talking to customers so much sometimes I wonder if the Oak’s just an excuse for him to do that. I also tell him that she’s looking for the Bantam Knight’s gear, that we’d already found the cloak but figured he could help speed us along.
So he comes out and starts leading us to the two other pieces of gear he has, chatting away. Apparently she came all the way from the Westling Principalities, a little town called Red Dell. Tomasz seems unsurprised, since that’s where the Bantam Knight hails from. We get his spear, a kinda short boar spear with the crossbar under the head and some more chicken feathers at the butt of the haft, and move on. The halfling lady’s getting more excited but she’s also looking kind of sick while we look for the cap Tomasz says we have, and he chats more. She’s getting excited, chattering about how this knight founded an order called the Motley Eyrie, and was a hell of a fighter. Since he was a halfling, he was small, but could really jump, and used that to his advantage when fighting. Apparently that’s why he used this modified little boar spear - he’d jump, plant his feet on the crossbar, and stomp that spear into his enemies as he came down. As she’s demonstrating, she gasps and rushes forward to grab a goofy hat. It’s covered in chicken feathers, it’s got a brim that looks like a beak, and a bright red rooster comb on top. It’s the last piece we’ve got, and we go back to the front counter to work out payment.
She’s quiet the whole way as Tomasz talks admiringly of the Knight, because as always, he does his research. The Bantam Knight wasn’t ever actually knighted, people just called him that because he was gallant, but he seems to have earned it. He started fighting bandits that’d been harassing a few local villages, and when one of the neighboring Principalities, from before they unified, started marching on them, he steps up. The invaders are coming in to steal crops, burn villages, and levy taxes that they can’t bear, and he recruits help, founding the Motley Eyrie. The Eyrie begins resisting, protecting the people, and is instrumental to throwing the invaders out.
We get to the counter, and Tomasz finally asks why the lady’s looking for this stuff, and she finally seems like she’s gonna throw up. Then, he finally asks if she’s okay.
The halfling lady blurts out that the Bantam Knight is her great grand uncle, and she’s looking for these because they’re family mementos that got sold off when they needed money, and her grandma had gotten nostalgic over her uncle. She starts crying, because she’s terrified she’s gonna get price-gouged, and she’s afraid she doesn’t have the cash to pay.
I start trying to comfort her, saying we can work something out, it’ll be okay, the usual stuff. I’m thinking about how she can send payments or she can get one and send money for another when she gets it, and Tomasz offers to bring her to the back.
Without asking if she wants some, he pours some tea from the teapot, sits her down, and says that it belongs to her family so she can just have it!
Now, I don’t wanna sound stingy or mean - the stuff belongs to her family by rights, but we got a real expensive business to run. I know Tomasz spent good money to get a hold of these things. Just letting it go is taking a damn big loss (and on top of that we can’t actually guarantee that she isn’t lying about being related to the Knight, even if I do trust her)! I don’t say as much in front of the lady, but it’s something I’ve talked to Tomasz about before.
All he asks is that she talk about the Bantam Knight - something about it being rare he gets to talk to someone so close to a primary source - and she can leave with the stuff.
They chat for a while, she’s calmed down, she’s properly introduced herself as Posie Millet, and Tomasz asks her a final question, one that he couldn’t find an answer for, framing it as a way she can pay for the heirlooms. He asks her “Why did he theme himself after a chicken?” The answer was that she didn’t know - the best guess anyone in the family had was is that he just liked chickens.