The Dragon Queen of Thelvadore

Raul Simmens stared at the piece of paper currently laying on his desk. Even after reading it multiple times, he couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding that had spread through his gut. It wasn’t that the message itself was alarming. Really, the report he had received was rather routine, all things considered. Not much different than all the others he had received over the last couple of months.

But therein lies the problem. Nothing had changed, and the reported sightings of suspicious activity around the other villages hadn’t subsided in the slightest. Oh, they weren’t consistent every month, but the fact remained that something was going on out there. Something that was far above his paygrade. And really, the paygrade of anyone in the affected villages.

Others may be reluctant to jump to conclusions the same way he did, given that all he had were second hand accounts and reports from other villages. But, in his life he had learned to trust his gut. It was what had gotten him through many hardships before, and had been the reason he had been elected as Dussel’s mayor.

Not giving a comment to the people waiting across from his desk, he turned his attention to the other reports waiting for him to his right, the ones that had come in the previous few months. Technically each village was independent, outside of perhaps being beholden to the same crown as another. But, given how far away from the rest of the kingdoms they were out here, he and the other mayors had sat down and decided to create something akin to a small information network, if one could call it that.

After all, out here, what ailed one village would often come to ail another. Just knowing that something was happening was oftentimes worth more than any amount of adventurers that could come to their aid.

It helped that with the expansion of the adventurers guild, Dussel was slowly but surely developing to become a center piece of the region. Of course, the guild claimed the same political independence as always, and he was glad for it, but he would lie if he said he didn’t feel comfort in the fact that more capable people would visit his little town more often.

That said, even though the guild had begun the construction of a branch office within Dussel about half a year ago, they weren’t yet fully done. The building itself was ready, but the infrastructure wasn’t. Raul wasn’t an expert on the arcane, he was no more than a simple lumberjack afterall, so he had no idea how the internal guild record system operated, or how long it would take for them to properly establish it in this branch. From what he had been told, little as it had been, setting it up required competent and trusted magicians.

So far they hadn’t yet reached here, which meant that the guild office was still very limited in its capabilities. Otherwise, it would have been far easier to keep the guild appraised about it all.

Scanning through the old reports, and comparing it with the latest one, he mentally reaffirmed his theories, before he finally put down the paper with a long sigh. Absently he glanced at the group of adventurers waiting in his office, the ones who had delivered the report to him on their way back to Vastell.

It was a bit unorthodox for a mayor such as himself to make such use of their time, but Dussel was a bit of an exception in many regards. And with the growth it had experienced in recent times came the need to expand other aspects of his daily operations. Especially when it came to the safety of his people.

“Did you come across anything strange on your way here?” He kept his voice neutral, absentmindedly scratching the stubble on his chin.

“Nothing worth mentioning, I don’t think.” The one to reply was the one who Raul mentally labelled the leader of the group, a young man called Maurice. He seemed like the reliable warrior kind of sort, and had been the one to speak for them ever since they arrived.

Raul gave the man a nod. “I see. Thank you for delivering this to me, especially considering the short notice and the lack of a formal guild quest.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Maurice said with a dismissive wave of his hand and a small smile. “We all come from small villages, so we know what life here is like. If we can help, we will. And it wasn’t exactly out of our way either.”

The man’s comment made Raul smile. It wasn’t rare to see folk from the smaller villages leave their homes in hopes to strike it big in the bigger cities or as adventurers, but it was also an unfortunate truth that many who decided on the more dangerous occupation often didn’t make it far. These four seemed quite competent and he sent a silent prayer to Mizuchi for their continued safety.

They exchanged a few more pleasantries before Maruice excused himself and the rest of his group, and Raul was left alone once again. With a long sigh, he rubbed his face. He reminded himself that, despite his sour mood and his gut feeling, the situation wasn’t in any way desperate. They weren’t in immediate danger, nor were there any signs of imminent change. All things considered, they were quite far away from the main sources of potential problems, and so far he hadn’t received word about any suspicious activity near Dussel.

But he still couldn’t help but worry. The sightings of the strange folk sneaking around villages wasn’t necessarily consistent, but it had been steadily increasing in recent times, if only by a little, and a few of the villages further away had even claimed that some of their own had gone missing. Raul wasn’t quite sure how much stock he could place in those reports. Some were certainly truthful, but even in his most pessimistic moments he doubted that all of them were.

After all, for all his best attempts, and the best attempts of the people from the other villages, their information network was nothing more than a number of letters delivered by travellers who made their way through the region. He couldn’t expect with any certainty that the reports he received were always fully up to date and accurate. There could be weeks, sometimes months, between updates.

And that was ignoring his own doubts in regards to the trustworthiness of the people who reported such. Historically the villages from which those claims came hadn’t been the most… agreeable. It was to be expected, given the history of these lands. While it had been centuries since then, and nobody had bothered to keep exact track of things, there had been a war fought here once upon a time between kingdoms that no longer existed.

The exact border had long since been lost to time, but you didn’t need perfect waymarkers to sense a difference in culture and history. So it came to no surprise to him that, with people being people, some still clung to some perceived sense of superiority that their ancestors might once have had. If history could teach you one thing, then it was that people, and humans especially, had a tendency to hold grudges over generations.

A knock interrupted his musings, and he took a moment to catch himself.

“Enter.”

The door opened and revealed Marlyn, who stepped into the room with that trademark concerned smile of hers, closing the door behind her. Despite his position as mayor, Dussel wasn’t big enough for him to actually need a secretary or something similar. But, ever since the death of Larrin, his best friend and Marlyn’s husband of twenty odd years, she had gotten into the habit of helping him with keeping everything organised.

There was a moment of silence between them, before Marlyn spoke. “Any news?”

Raul didn’t reply immediately, organising his thoughts, and glancing back down at the report still laying on his table. Finally, he leaned back in his seat, trying to relax his muscles a little bit. “Nothing particularly important. It appears our strange observers continue to linger around the southern villages, and some further out have reported some more kidnappings, but I’m not sure if I trust those words. If you were to add them all up, half their village would have to be gone by now, given how often they claim someone gets kidnapped. If that’s the case, they’d already have started to ask the guild for help.”

She nodded, taking a step closer and peering over onto the paper waiting in front of him. “I see… Well, hopefully the guild will be up and running by the time something does happen. Speaking of which, there’s another adventuring group that just arrived. They claim to be a courier working for the guild. You know anything about that?”

It took him a moment to interrogate his memories, but after a moment he nodded. “Ah, yes. A couple of folk needed some things, and since the guild was already planning to send someone out for their own needs, we decided to put it all together into one big delivery for ease of transport. I completely forgot about it, to be honest. Should’ve told you, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Marlyn replied with a sweet smile. “As long as you keep track of things. Should I show them in, then?”

“Yes, please. And thank you, Marlyn.”

She gave him another smile, then turned and left the room once more. Raul was left staring at the closed door, distracted from the chaos of the day. Marlyn had that sort of effect on him, he was very aware, and it hadn’t changed at all over the years. He smiled to himself at the thought.

Taking another deep breath and letting it out with a long sigh, he sat up straight once again and began to put away the papers still on his desk. Dussel wasn’t a big village, so he wasn’t in his office every day, but today, it seemed, he was destined to spend a little while longer here.

A few minutes later, there was another knock, although this time the door opened without his prompting. Three women walked inside, each esoteric in their own way. The sight took him by surprise, and he was ashamed of himself for staring in surprise for a moment.

Two of them were obviously demi-humans of some variety, although the third was less easy to place. From the ears poking out between the ginger hair, she was obviously elven in descent, but both the eye-colour and her figure wasn’t that of typical elves. Given those criteria, he could think of a dozen different variants of demi-humans she could belong to, which didn’t tell him much.

That said, asking could be considered rude, and it didn’t matter that much in the end. Not to mention that his gut told him she wasn’t your average elven woman, and he trusted that assessment.

Turning his attention to the other two, he found it equally hard to place them. Of course, demi-humans weren’t an unknown around these parts. For all the best attempts of the kingdoms west of Therondyl, the crown that Dussel was officially in service of, the continent of Fendalyr was still a melting pot of various different cultures and people, given its central location. That said, even here the two obvious demi-humans in the group would stand out in a crowd.

Not because either of them belonged to some insanely rare species of demi-human. Both were obviously Beastkin of some variety, and for both it was also relatively easy to place them. The reason they stood out was because of their individual features.

The woman in the lead was a Catkin, or some other feline Beastkin. Her tail and the cat-like ears decorating her head made that much obvious, although her demeanour, facial features, and other minute physical details, such as the shape of her face, or the colour of her eyes, made it hard to place her ethnicity. In addition, the shape of her ears was hinting at some Pantherkin heritage, but the tufts of fur decorating their tips didn’t play well with that assumption.

What really caught his attention, though, was the second woman. And she was far more of an enigma.

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