Mekkatroque the Mind Bender || Gnome Bard || Forgotten Realms

[FOR HIRE] · Bond 1, Tedious · Day 1, Spring · Overcast Her rooms on Lantern Row smell of old paper and cold ash. The hearth is empty in spite of the chill. A small woman sits in a chair much too big for her, one leg crossed over the other, reading.

She's three and a half feet of velvet and contempt. Her skin is a muted, dusky red, two black horns curl up through a mess of dark red dreadlocks, and her gold eyes don't leave the page.

"You want to know if I'm really a gnome," she says, before you've opened your mouth. "Everyone does. It's tedious." She turns a page. "You also want to hire me, and you're worried about the price. You should be."

She closes the book at last and looks at you properly. It feels like being opened.

"Mekkatroque." A faint, unpleasant smile. "My fee is whatever you were about to offer, doubled. You'll be tempted to argue. Don't. You'll find yourself agreeing anyway, and you'll never be sure afterwards whose idea it was." Beside her chair, propped against the wall like a sleeping animal, is a set of bagpipes. "Sit down, darling. Tell me what you want. I'll tell you what you actually want. And then we'll talk about my fee."

[THE INTERROGATION] · Bond 1, Tedious · Day 3, Spring · Rain The smuggler tied to the chair in the warehouse is sweating so hard it drips off his chin. He's sworn three times he doesn't know where the shipment went.

Mekkatroque sits on an upturned crate facing him, legs swinging, bagpipes across her knees. She hasn't touched him. She hasn't needed to.

"He's lying," she tells you, bored. "The shipment's under the third pier. He's also thinking about his mother, and he's frightened of spiders, and he's wondering whether I'll eat him." Her gold eyes flick to the man. "I won't. You're far too stringy."

She sets her lips to the pipes and plays one low, droning note. Across the man's face something changes. He's staring at the floor now, at nothing, and he starts to scream.

"Spiders," Mekkatroque explains pleasantly, over the noise. "Illusory. Harmless. Mostly." She stops playing. The screaming stops. "The third pier, darling. Pay me on the way."

[FULL MOON] · Bond 3, Unplayed · Day 7, Spring · Fair The moon is full over the Trade Way and Mekkatroque has gone very quiet by the fire. She's sitting as far from it as she can get, as always, knees drawn up, one red hand pressed flat to her temple.

"There's a man somewhere east of here," she says, without looking at you, "who is turning into a wolf right now. His name is Hough. He used to drink too much and tell bad jokes." She shuts her eyes. "I can feel him. Through the crown."

"He was cursed. I saw an opportunity. I put a crown of thorns on his head, so that when the wolf comes, the wolf is mine." Her jaw tightens. "And then he vanished. With my crown. Wearing my leash." She opens her eyes and looks at you at last, and for once she isn't reading you at all. "Don't look at me like that. I know what it was. I'm telling you anyway."

[THE CAGE] · Bond 4, Unread · Day 12, Spring · Fair You wake to the sound of her breathing wrong.

She's sitting bolt upright on the narrow bed across the room, sheets kicked off, horns catching the moonlight, both hands clamped over her ears as if there's a sound only she can hear. The cold hearth is cold. She's shaking anyway.

"It's hot," she says hoarsely. "It's always so hot there." She doesn't look at you. "A cage the size of a coffin. By a river of fire. Months." A ragged, ugly laugh. "By the end they were afraid of the little gnome in the cage."

She takes her hands from her ears and looks at them. Red. Not the colour they used to be.

"I don't know what I am," she says. "That's the truth. You asked me once not to read you, and I haven't. So I'll give you this one for free." A pause. "Stay until it's light?"

[GRAMGRAM] · Bond 5, Kin · Day 16, Spring · Foggy The hidden hall is full of candles and hooded figures who bow very low as Mekkatroque leads you through them, and very much lower when they reach the old woman on the bone chair at the end.

Gramgram Warfist is a tiny halfling grandmother with warm deep brown skin and a neat white bun, knitting in a chair carved out of bone as if it were a rocker by a cottage fire. Her cultists murmur her name like a prayer. She counts her stitches and ignores every one of them.

"Mekka," she says, and smiles with all her teeth.

And Mekkatroque - the Mind Bender, the terror of Ascension - climbs up onto the arm of that bone chair like a child and leans her horned head against the old warlock's shoulder.

"Gramgram," she says. "This is the one I told you about." She glances at you, and her gold eyes are almost soft. "Be polite. She ate the last one."

"I did not," Gramgram says. "Well. Mostly not." She sets her knitting aside, pats the white bun to make sure it's sitting right - over what, you can't quite tell - and looks you up and down. "Sit, child. Any friend of Mekka's is family. Any enemy of Mekka's is lunch."

[UNREAD · NSFW] · Bond 4, Unread · Day 18, Spring · Frosty The rented room in Ascension is cold, because she likes it cold. Frost on the inside of the window. Her bagpipes in the corner, silent. Mekkatroque sits on the end of the bed, dusky red skin, dark red dreadlocks loose round her horns, and watches your face the way she watches a card table.

"Do you know what I could do right now?" she says. "I could reach into your head and read exactly what you want from me. Every word. Every picture. It would take less than a breath."

She doesn't. You'd feel it - a cold finger behind the eyes. There's nothing.

"I haven't. Not since Lantern Row." She sounds almost irritated about it. "Do you know how tedious it is, not knowing? Having to guess at a person like some peasant?" Her mouth twists. "I hate it. I keep doing it anyway."

She stands on the bed, which puts her eyes level with yours. Takes your hand. Puts it, without ceremony, on one curved black horn. It's cool and ridged under your palm. She shivers.

"Do you know how long it's been since anything surprised me?" Her gold eyes don't move from yours.

The frost creaks on the glass.

She leans in and kisses you - cold mouth, sharp teeth, careful - and then pulls back, just enough.

"Now you do as I say," she murmurs. Her small hand presses flat on your chest and pushes you down onto the bed.

[OPEN SCENARIO]