This late in the day, the only ships coming or going are the patrol vessels.

You make your way out of the harbor into the city itself. The streets are quiet this evening, though you see people congregating outide taverns and eateries as well as merchants and vendors packing up for the day. A local madman wanders back and forth along the streets singing to himself and making faces at passers by, who blythly ignore him.

Z'Phir (ninja'd) is particularly drawn to the eateries, and following his nose you quickly find a place near the river that seems promising, the Happy Otter.

Z'phir stops for a moment to listen to the madman. Sometimes tainted, sometimes mad, sometimes driven that way such to lead to adventure.

Z'phir just wants to know the sort of nonesense he's spouting before ignoring him.

The madman seems torn. His ramblings and the faces he makes are clearly intended as warnings. He openly admits to anyone who will listen that he is horror marked, that the beast whispers in his mind, that he has seen things no namegiver should see.

But just as clearly he longs for contact with other people, and perhaps for a way to redeem himself.

So he is pushed and pulled by his conflicting desires, leaving his mind like a worn rope, fraying alarmingly.

When Rah-Sep-Roh-Teph first found himself in Travar, joining the local thieves' guild as a "face" seemed like a good strategy while he found his feet in a strange land, but the shine quickly wore off the routine meetings and extortions and simple bribery involved.

There's a world of adventure out there. Even here in the city there have been tales of horrors attacking ships while he heroically delivered warnings to freelancers or carried bribes to representatives of the Body of Five - the Wizards with the ear, and perhaps the strings, of the Magistrates - to discretely ignore the guild's activities.

So he is pleasantly suprised to see a familiar face when Shem-Ka-Ptah-Muun walks into the nondescript storefront near the air docks where he is stationed this evening as a contact. He had expected an evening of solitude and boredom.

Shem-Ka is just as clearly suprised and looks around puzzled.

"What forces bring a librarian to this den of thieves?" he asks in your native tongue.

After determining the madman won't give anything good, at least not that can be understood on an empty stomach, Z'phir goes into the Happy Otter (presumably with Atrii and Grabthar) and finds a table.

Grabthar seats himself and looks around at the place and its clientele, idly wondering what might make an otter happy.

Most likely fish, he surmises.

Being on the river, the main clientele of the Happy Otter are sailors and those just off the riverboats.

It seems the name is something of a joke, because the one thing the Happy Otter does not serve is fish! Your waitress explains to you that the owners decided anyone just off the boat would be sick to death of fish and would want to eat almost anything else rather than more fish!

The place is quite busy, but there is still plenty of room and you get a table with a view of the river. Food is hearty and defiantly land based. Prices range from 2-5 Founders.

Grabthar will buy a decent meal towards the top end of the price range, say 4 Founders. He pays with a gold Florin and expects to get change.

Gold is rare enough that nobody questions the source, though it does make Grabthar look flash, especially in his showy boots.

Talking of which, has he noticed anything about them yet. Are they comfortable? Do they even fit him? Anything unusual?