What a strange day. I admit I was surprised when I received a letter from Sergeant Vilroy asking for my help. The sergeant and I had spoken on several occasions previously when she’d come into my family’s forge for the odd bit of smithing work or armor refitting. I suppose she must have taken me at face value when I talked about my faith and my desire to help others. Either that, or she’s desperate. Either way, I decided to take her up on her offer and go to this meeting at the airship dock. If I’m ever going to find a way to return to the Holds and help my clan, it won’t be by staying isolated in the forge all day. I clearly wasn’t the only person Vilroy reached out to, as there were six others waiting at the dock with me. One of them, a dwarf named Thornduk, was by chance already familiar to me as he had previously rented out some time on my families forge. I don’t know how I feel about all that magic tinkering he seems keen on, but he’s clearly a skilled artisan, and I can surely respect that. The rest of the group, by and large, is still a mystery to me. How we all came to be waiting at that dock must have been quite the collection of improbable circumstances. When Vilroy arrived, she asked us to help her track down a warforged named Coal at some bar in the lower city called the Cog’s Carnival. The fact that she was asking us for help, rather than just employing the city watch definitely seems shady. While she says she needs people who won’t draw undue attention, I worry about what we might be getting into. That said, 50 gold total for a day’s work is no small matter– that money could go a long way towards helping my family pay the bills, as well as provide for a donation to Onatar’s Pool. Having all agreed to help the sergeant, we took the lifts down to the lower city. I fear I might have have made a bit of a scene at the gates to the High Wall district, but the guards eventually let us through. While I try to avoid this part of the city, luckily, some of the others in the group were more familiar with the streets, and it didn’t take us too long to find the warforged bar. I am generally pretty comfortable around warforged–they are all ultimately creations of Onatar after all–but this bar still made me nervous. We only had a name to go on, so while the group spread out around the place to try and gather information, I followed the dragonborn, a man named Sedriss, up to the bar. I’m not generally one with words, so, when in doubt, I did what I always do and ordered a drink. You could have oil-tempered steel in the sludge they served me, but I was able to keep down a gulp or two. Dwarves are a hearty people, but that was a test even for me! After some time, the dragonborn was able to learn that the warforged informant named Coal we were looking for was at the end of the bar. It seems though, that a group of unfamiliar faces surrounding an individual who is already afraid for their life was not the most comforting move on our part, and Coal panicked and ran out into the street. We were just able to catch up with them at the end of a bridge, but not before running into another group of individuals who were apparently also looking for Coal. I would have preferred to speak with this other group, but they seemed determined to resort to violence. Now, I can hold my own in a fight, but I was a bit taken aback by the range of abilities and powers the group showed when defending Coal. Perhaps Vilroy was on to something when she chose this particular strange group of people after all. We were able to quickly dispatch the attackers, and Coal told us why they were on the run. Apparently Coal and a friend were caught up in some kind of scheme lead by house d’Orien. The warforged was pretty light on details, but she did tell us that the son of a prominent member of the dragonmarked house had been kidnapped. Unfortunately, this was all the information Coal had, and, after several of us helped make sure they had the resources they needed, the warforged ran off to leave the city. It was dark by the time we made our way back to Vilroy. She seemed genuinely surprised to hear that House d’Orien was somehow involved, and she urged us to continue to look into the matter. I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself into here, but I think I want to see it through. If this is the path the gods have laid out for me, then I’d be a fool not to follow it. After all, even the finest of swords might begin with the roughest of iron.
