Lampshade Boardwalk
The Lampshade Boardwalk is a mighty, two-story, wooden boardwalk built out onto the Tien River in the northeast corner of Ossa. It is across the river from the city. It is a family friendly, carnival-like market street where both the poor and the elite mingle, with places for fishmongers, glasswork merchants, and high-end jewelers. It also has hotels, restaurants, a bookstore, and several sailors' bars with narrow alleys between the buildings. It does not have many gas lanterns and generally closes down by dark in the summer or nine o'clock in the winter. National guardsmen have patrol stations nearby. The boardwalk is also the location of the Palmora Pub.
STORY
Kissandra Vorcien anonymously blackmails Glissandi Magna into meeting her at the Palmora Pub after dark on the Lampshade Boardwalk. When Kizzie arrives, she scans the rooftops for hidden marksmen and feels safe knowing a rifle blast would draw national guardsmen to the spot that same minute. Glissandi arrives with a large purse of money, thinking her blackmailer could be paid off, but Kizzie simply wants to question her about her involvement in Adriana Grappo's murder. When Glissandi realizes this, she signals her two bodyguards to attack Kizzie before running away with the money. Kizzie dispatchs the bodyguards and chases Glissandi. When a couple of sailors from the Palmora Pub see them and call out, Kizzie gives the excuse that Glissandi stole her bag. She chases Glissandi to the second level of the boardwalk and catches her. However, Glissandi bites off her own tongue rather than spill any information under the influence of shackleglass. With her dying eyes, she looks over Kizzie's shoulder at the Tall Man lurking in the darkness. Kizzie runs to a narrow alley where she can get a better look at him. Thinking he might be a nightwatchman, bodyguard, a boardwalk madman, Kizzie flees and ducks back into the Palmora Pub and escapes beneath the boardwalk through a service hatch underneath the bar. From beneath the boardwalk, she watches the Tall Man, who sighs heavily before returning to Glissandi's body. Kizzie waits until she cannot hear his footsteps anymore and then finds a ladder back up to the boardwalk and escapes.
Thessa Foleer goes to the Lampshade Boardwalk for an afternoon of shopping and to feel a little freedom after having been a prisoner. She leaves her carriage and tells the driver to pick her up from the other end of the boardwalk in an hour. While browsing the glassworks merchandise, she finds better quality glassworking tools than Demir Grappo had provided almost immediately but it takes most of her hour to find a pound of refined cindersand, and she pays a premium for it. She then enters a bookstore, hoping to find books on alternative energy sources. The clerk sets out several of Professor Volos' books for Thessa to look at, and she chooses Taming Nature: The Future of Modern Architecture. When she exits the bookstore to head to her carriage, Temmen grabs her arm and puts a knife to her ribs, telling her to walk with him. Remembering the articles about all the murdered siliceers, she complies, following him as he leads her into an alley where no one can see them. Temmen states he recognizes her as the missing prisoner from Ivory Forest Glassworks and threatens to take her to Supi Magna for a bounty, but Pari appears and strangles Temmen to death. They flee the scene, blending in with the crowd until Thessa sees the Grappo carriage and goes inside with Pari. Pari looks out of the curtain and sees that people have already found Temmen's body, but the national guardsmen would never dream of looking inside of a guild-family carriage for the murderer. Thessa asks Pari why she is at the boardwalk, and Pari explains that after the Ivory Forest Glassworks burned down, she had to look elsewhere for work, and Lampshade is one of the best places to find jobs. While searching, she spotted Temmen and Thessa and followed them into the alley.
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Pier
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