Of Steam and Blood

Missing Informants You’re standing below the docking wall of the city, waiting what feels like hours for your contact to meet you here, and beginning to wonder if she scared off. Even after you chose such an open location to meet. This is the wall market after all, any more public of a location, you might as well meet at the bloody World Trade Center. In every direction there are booths upon booths of different vendors attempting to sell their diverse wares. Every kind of shop owner that can’t get permission to operate on the wall itself set up as close as they are allowed. A tinker with a prosthetic clamp for a hand, selling his cannibalizes gadgets and trinkets; a spice merchant behind his jerkily revolving booth, harassing and enticing the crowd with his latest shipment from the far west; a street urchin covered in black soot next to a farmers booth, pawning of the scavenged coal he dug up from the waste hills from the towns factory district. Suddenly, the elevator gearbox next to you begins to rattle and whine accompanied by a rhythmical clicking as the vertical chain next to you rapidly accelerates. A ponytailed, soot covered, halfling face slides into view from above. “Ya miss me?” Says the face. “You’re late…” “Don’t get all in a tizzy! The chains in the steel mills were jammed!” The face winks. *Click* The body attached to the face lands on her feet in front of you. She’s tall, for a halfling anyways, but a short stature can be a useful feature for a Chain Dancer. She still has to look up to meet your eyes. “Besides. Looks like we’re all set. They’re say’n down at the ‘Promised Land’ that the cargo is already stowed away somewhere in there, and the escorts are onboard.” “Good work. Your job here is done then.” “Aren’t you forgetting a little something?” Giving a heavy sigh, you reaches into your coat and grab a packet of paper bills. “All I got. Talk to our friend to get the rest.” The halfling gives a forced a sigh then smiles, taking the money and stuffing it into her tool belt, Which resembles a parachute harness with several satchels attached to the side at the hips. Three cables hang from the central buckle each tipped with a complex gear fitting. “And Lilly?” “Eh?” The face turns over the shoulder to look back. “Thank you. You risked a lot to help on this one.” “Any time Gov! Anything to help our noble protectors!” You smile and give her a nod. The face nods back, smiles one last time, and vanishes into the crowd. “This dam, dangerous city is going to hell.” You mutter, “but it has a couple good souls buried in the soot.”   Welcome To the World of Haliorbus