RP:Another Dead Journalist
Part of the Through A Glass, Darkly Arc
This is a Mage's Guild RP.
Summary: The Mage's Guild put out an assignment to investigate the death of an illusionist named Alwyn Coldcleaver. That presents a problem for Mage's Guild Arcane Steward Lanlan D'l'sel D'issan, because he's the murderer! Whoopsie! Time to "investigate" his own murder, cover his tracks, and frame an innocent. Lanlan invites Matron Gevurah D'Artes because she loves messing with innocent people's lives.
The scene of the crime: a luxury suite at the large inn on Cenril's Beloy Street. Lanlan and Gevurah (who is disguised as Mage's Guild Apprentice Karasu) arrive at the scene and quickly clear the room to take over the investigation. Gevurah discovers that Alwyn is a journalist. She reads a local newspaper, pieces it together from Cenrili news she's heard from her surface spies, and decides on how they should frame the death of Alwyn Coldcleaver, illusionist and journalist.
They stage the scene of the crime with evidence that makes it apparent that Alwyn Coldcleaver was about to publish and exposé revealing that a secret witch-werewolf cabal (possibly led by Mayor Uma and Hudson Landon, hmmmm?) have been plotting to undermine Cenrili democracy. Alwyn was apparently killed by werewolves!
Then things get weird between Lanlan and Gevurah. She confesses she is marrying Daath. Lanlan gets upset and confesses his love with Gevurah (drow style, by promising to murder and torture her enemies). They find another room in the inn. Get intimate. Then Gevurah announces she's still marrying Daath tho.
Fancier Room for Rent
Lanlan returns to the scene of the crime. There's guards and city officials here investigating the mysterious death of a man named Alwyn Coldcleaver. "This man is a member of the Mage's guild, and I'm here to investigate the cause of his death," says Lanlan, as he taps the xalious-wood staff against the floor. "This is my assistant." The authoritative tap of the staff is reduced by the fancy rug on the floor. "We appreciate your cooperation in this matter, please clear the room." He and Gevurah enter the fancy room where there is a man dead in a chair. No blood, no apparent cause of death. But his fingers are curled around both arms of his comfy seat and his face is wrinkled up in terror. They're might be some human lingerers belligerent or curious enough to stick around. "I can't begin my investigation until you all leave. I'll notify you when we're done." They probably wouldn't recognize Gevurah even if they saw her, because Lanlan would have dolled her up in the look of a mage's guild apprentice. Once the rabble has cleared, Lanlan locks the door and enchants the room so no sound can escape from it. "This is the man I told you about. Couldn't let him take credit for the recent discoveries he's made." Lanlan shrugs at Gevurah.
Gevurah :: Typically Lanlan needs to work a lot harder to convince Gevurah to join one of his silly hijinks. Today’s hijink takes place on the surface, which Gevurah, under normal circumstances, would resist even more. But today the matron was much more yielding. As they travel to Cenril, she wonders if once Lanlan finds out about her betrothal to Daath, he will stop trying to persuade her to enjoy the fruits of their power in asinine but (she would admit to herself) fun ways? That Lanlan places Gevurah in the role of assistant simply to troll her is neither new nor unexpected. She hisses at him as he has come to expect and enjoy. This is their rapport, their happy, growling banter. It’s so unusual for two dark elves who fully embrace drow supremacy and the drow evil creed to find a way to be evil together while having fun. No one treats her like this. No one but Lanlan has acknowledged that sometimes she wants to leave the gothic castle behind and play God with the souls of others on a whim. There is no reason to do any of this, much less to frame an innocent, when it’s just as easy to erase evidence, but it’s just fun to mess with other people and ruin their lives. Once Lanlan has cleared the room, Gevurah stares at her disguise in mirror by a standing lamp and scowls at the feline face staring back at her. She has no idea who she is disguised at, but if you must know, she looks exactly like Karasu. “Did you have to make me a feline?” she mutters as she crosses over to the corpse. “Are felines a fetish of yours?” she asks. She sweeps a hand over the corpse’s chest without touching it and can immediately determine how this soul came to pass, by whose hand, why, when. She can feel on the corpse the fear that this man felt as he died, like shadows burned into stone after a nuke. She grins darkly at Lanlan in appreciation of the unnecessarily cruel way he disposed of this illusionist. A newspaper on the coffee table nabs her attention, in particular the name of a journalist. “You said his name is Alwyn Coldcleaver?” She nods towards the paper. “He’s a journalist too.”
Lanlan actually never has to convince Gevurah of anything. She loves him so much that all he really has to do is let her know they'll have some alone time, then play the game of batting away her objections. It's an admittedly fun game, and he couldn't enjoy it more with anyone else. But it goes both ways. Obviously Lanlan doesn't actually need help covering up a murder. This is the perfect excuse to get her to spend time with him, doing things they both like doing... They'd probably even go for brunch later. He'd never go as far as to say they were dating, that's surfacer nonsense. Totally accurate though. "Oh, good eye there, Karasu," he says as he lifts up the newspaper. "Very astute for an apprentice." Suddenly 'Karasu' starts purring, because she's so happy for Lanlan's praise and not because Lanlan can magically make sounds come out of people and things. "So he was murdered for writing a profile piece about someone, publishing information they very much did not want public." Yes it was all coming together. Lanlan pulled out some scrap paper and handed it to his assistant. "Do you have any enemies in Cenril? Or anyone you feel should be taken down a notch. I think Alwyn was writing something about that person and the murderer, in his haste, forgot to search the body for clues." Strange that the body of this somewhat accomplished mage had apparently no magical artifacts on him when he died though.
Gevurah doesn’t brunch. Or date. The faux feline’s face screws up in confusion at the name ‘Karasu’. It takes a moment for Gevurah to realize her image must be based on a real feline named Karasu. “That’s disgusting,” she says through the fake purr sounds Lanlan creates. She shudders at the thought of Lanlan, or frankly any drow, bedding a non-drow. As Lanlan insists on treating this ‘Karasu illusion’ as a submissive who is yearning for his validation, it all comes together in Gevurah’s mind, graphically and pornographically so. She dry heaves, looking for a moment like she will cough up a hairball. Maybe she shouldn’t feel any version of guilt about her engagement to Daath after all. “If you’re so taken with this feline, just enslave her already and leave me out of your fantasies. Absolutely disgusting,” she mutters as she picks up the newspaper and flips through the articles looking for a good political angle. “You’ll regret it when she sheds on the bed.” In the opinion section of the paper he finds an article that cites statistics about a spike in werewolf crime and blames Mayor Uma’s weak on crime tactics. House D’Artes spies in Cenril have also given Gevurah valuable information about the precarious political balance in Cenril, and Gevurah forms a plot. “Do you know Hudson? Landon. He’s the,” she pauses as she tries to remember the surfacer expression and says in heavily-accented common, “big fish in this small pond,” she switches back to drow. “He’s a werewolf, has the mayor of this town under his paw. Let’s say this journalist was about the expose a werewolf-witch cabal trying to, what do they call it? When the voting, the democracy, falls apart?” Back to common, “undermine democracy.” She grins wickedly at the thought as she continues in drow, “That phrase, it makes these surfacers’ heads spin. I never liked that Hudson dog. Pompous with no power to back it up.” At least not the kind of power magical beings like the drow appreciate.
Lanlan doesn't like gross things like hairballs, he pulls his cape around his torso and retreats away from his minion a few steps while she has her fit. "I am NOT taken with this feline," he says sternly. Obviously when he didn't correct her she thought her bad joke actually had some truth. Now she's jealously thinking his affections might have wandered. "I don't know her or any of the apprentices, but she is so ugly that I remember what she looks like." For now he dismisses the illusion of Karasu on her person. She looks like a powerful and inexplicably sexy drow matron again. "I know of Hudson and I thought those were only rumors. But I guess it's true, and he murdered my poor colleague to shut him up. It doesn't look like a werewolf killed him though," he pulls out a sharply serrated dagger and purposefully steps toward the werewolf's victim. He grabs a fistfull of hair and jerks his head up to the side, exposing the tender flesh of his neck. Gently, he places the teeth of the knife against Alwyn's neck to start setting the stage for a gruesome werewolf attack. But he stops abruptly and turns to Gevurah. "Maybe you want to do this part?" So romantic. Once they appropriately mutilate the corpse and splash its blood all over the place, they can make up some nonsense about how they found 'a strange canine-looking tooth' lodged in its neck and how some of the illusionists magic went crazy when he died. Basically, 'magic was done here'. It's usually enough to explain away civilians' suspicions.
Gevurah glances down at her ebon arms when Lanlan dispels the illusion and exhales the tension she didn’t know she was carrying. Her violet (in the light) eyes widen in horror as Lanlan is about to botch the cover up by carving into a corpse. Mages, they don’t know the first thing about Death. “Yes,” she snaps as she takes the dagger from him. “The corpse won’t bleed. It won’t look right. Seal the door.” As Lanlan secures the room, Gevurah uses the serrated dagger to cut into her own palm and smears her blood over the corpse’s forehead. She whispers a lengthy prayer and with her free hand pulls grave dirt out from under her piwafwi where she keeps a bottomless satchel hidden. She sprinkles the dirt over the smeared blood and suddenly the corpse springs back to life, gasping for the first breath of its new life. Alwyn remembers everything from his previous life, and recognizes his guildmate and murder. “Lanlan?!” he gasps, “Why?!” Gevurah tosses the dagger back to Lanlan and says, “Do it now. It will look nice and fresh.” A chill runs down Alwyn’s spine and he rises to flee, his arms weaving an arcane circle in front of him to teleport himself outside the room and down the hall. Gevurah slaps Alwyn hard to break his concentration on the spell then yanks him back into the chair. She steps aside for Lanlan to stage the murder correctly.
Lanlan was totally unprepared for this and glances back at Gevie, "Huh? I already sealed the door," but he goes and jiggles the door to make sure and renews the muffling spell. When he turns back around Alwyn is alive again! "What are you doing!?" He almost catches the knife but it bounces in his hands and falls to the floor, so he hastily scoops it up and pours a hefty amount of emotions, mostly fear and confusion, into an illusion. Lanlan instantly turns into a nightmarish werewolf with a strange alien double mouth and limbs branching into sharpened tendrils. The effect has Alwyn frightened and preparing to gate his way back home, but Gevurah slaps him just in time. The awkward mashup shambles quickly over to the journalist and lunge its many tentacles into his neck, torso, face, legs. Alwyn knows one of these will actually hurt, but he can't decide! So Lanlan slashes him across the chest, then the neck, then an arm, then etcetera until the poor man is murdered all over again. For good measure he adds parallel scratches next to each so he's striped with groups of three or four gaping lacerations in various places all over his body. The blood gruseomely gets splattered all over the room. Afterwards, Lanlan appraises his work. It looks good! "Now just dab his rough draft into some viscera." There is one more thing they have to do though just in case. "We need to destroy his brain somehow, so if they DO decide to resurrect him for some reason, he can't say anything about what actually happened." Lanlan grabs hold of his hair again and pulls out his really nice sturdy long pencil and sticks it up Alwyn's nose. Then he slams his palm against the eraser to break through the thin little bone between the nose and brain and shakes it all around and mashes up the gray matter until it comes dribbling out on his gloves! Lanlan shudders. "Gross." Now he'll have to disguise both of them. She once again looks like Karasu and he looks like himself minus blood and brain matter. Just before they leave, he looks back. "One more thing. A glass wand falls from his sleeve to his hand and a brush head materializes at the tip. He dabs it against Alwyns neck and uses the paintbrush to create a perfect bloody werewolf pawprint leading towards the window. Now they're approximately done. "Lunch?"
Gevurah cackles delightedly as she is splattered by Lanlan’s carnage. The spectacle! It’s like being back in Trist’oth Arena watching a monster tear apart some social-climbing warrior from a lower house, that house’s crown jewel, eviscerated. Aaaah, such bliss! Then Lanlan jams a pencil up the corpse’s nostril and brain fluid and chunks leaks through the nose. Gevurah feels a gut-wrenching pang of affection for this bizarre drow mage who defies drow decorum but embraces drow values. When he asks for lunch, she abruptly and inexplicably steps away from him, turns towards the window with her back to him, and says nothing.
Lanlan is obviously confused, but he purposefully cleans his dagger in a formerly dry spot on Alwyn's clothes. He knows she hasn't ate yet. "It's not like you to be offended by the sight of a mangled corpse..." He advances slowly, spreading out her bloody footprints until they're convincing werewolf pawprints. He follows her stare out the window, seeing nothing. "Oh! Right. Obviously we would clean up first so we don't accidentally ingest disgusting human blood, and you wouldn't have to be dressed like a feline anymore." Something's still weird, maybe this is what abject infatuation looks like when you're a drow matron disguised as a feline.
Gevurah's jaw sets tight, her lips purse thinly, as she argues with herself, hates herself for feeling anything even close to guilt. Who the hell is Lanlan to be worthy of such consideration? She explains herself to no one. All of them - every last drow, including Lanlan and Daath - should expect nothing but her mercy, they should be grateful she permits them to speak freely to her. When Lanlan jokes about the feline disguise, she twists her fingers into an arcane sigil and dispels the feline illusion from her body. Priestesses as powerful as she know some basic arcane tricks. Tolerating the illusion was always a necessary part of their game, always has been. Pretending she needs Lanlan to remove it was always part of their shared world of secret, un-drow-like fun. Lunch isn’t a game. Lunch is just two people who enjoy each other’s company living in that company. She meets Lanlan’s gaze fiercely. She tries to will him to guess it, or, better yet, to say something stupid so she can on the high ground she prefers: indignant anger. Go on, Lanlan, say something stupid so she can leave without having to wrestle with this strange emotion, this guilt that by keeping this from him she is somehow betraying him.
Lanlan literally has no idea what he said to make her mad, so he retreats a step backward while searching her eyes for some kind of clue. "I guess you've spent enough time with me to know how to dispel that, I didn't realize." No change. Still grumpy. So he takes another cautious step back, and takes another shot in the dark. "So," he clears his throat, "thank you for helping me with this. Couldn't have...done it without you...?" He probably could have. "Yes...bringing him back to life just to kill him all over again, that was expert. Made the cover-up way more effective. AND way more fun." Everything he said was totally just a probe, a test to see how she would react. Eventually he would say the right or wrong thing. But eventually if she couldn't come clean with whatever was actually bothering her, he'd say the wrong thing on purpose just to put an end to the suspense.
Gevurah sighs through her nose in disappointment as she turns towards him. Whatever tension she just held deflates and is replaced with resignation. “Yes, lunch. But not in this fish town. Vailkrin?” Her steps bring her closer to him to walk alongside him out of this room. The thrill of the kill, the electricity that it always elicits between them momentarily dead.
Lanlan sees her suddenly disappointed and is further confused. At least she's mollified a bit? It takes a minute, because fear makes his thoughts muddled. But now she's calm and he easily realizes what's actually going on. They're alone in a fancy room that they themselves decorated, how romantic! "Wait," he says as he pivots to put himself in her way and put them face to face. Gently, he puts his scum-covered gloves to rest near her elbows and caresses. "We don't have to leave yet," he says, his red eyes staring almost creepily (the drow word for soulful) into hers. "The silence spell won't end for a while." Lanlan knew it was only a matter of time. Of course this was why she agreed to this clandestine mission away from all their minions and underlings! Now she had him right where she wanted him.
Gevurah doesn’t move away from Lanlan when he takes a step to stand close and caress her arm, nor does she lean into him. Her arms cross before her chest, though his hand remains fixed just above her elbow. She meets his gaze steadily. Does she wants this? Probably, yes, ideally not in human blood, but why not. Daath doesn’t care, he’s made it a point to say so, and if he did care, she would laugh at him for being such a surfacer. No, she doesn’t hesitate for Daath’s sake. His interest in her is purely transaction, with a dose of hoping to get laid, but no expectation of it. Lanlan’s interest in her has never been transactional. He’s never asked a thing of her, nothing he actually needed. Then why does her stomach churn at the idea of keeping this secret from him? She could lay with him, dump him, marry whoever she wants, kill whoever she wants, rinse, repeat, answer to no one. F*** it, she should do exactly that. That’s what she should do right now. Her stare searches his as she says, “I’m marrying Daath.”
Lanlan cackles loudly. What a weird kind of joke that was, or was it a test to see if he would be jealous? But he looks back into her eyes and there's no sign of a shift. She's serious. Lanlan loses concentration of his disguising spell and it fades. He loses concentration over his countenance and it grimaces. Eyes are cast down and away. But what sense does this make? "Why?" He asked without letting go. "You're the most powerful person in the Underdark." He wished he could reason this out in his head, but it didn't make sense, and besides he couldn't filter himself. "Even if all the other houses cooperated for the first time IN YEARS to dethrone you, you'd know me and my house would stand with you, don't you?" Of course she did. His grip on her arms tightened just a little, but he still didn't meet her gaze again. Couldn't even look at her. "And if you did hear of something, you'd tell me. Then we'd infiltrate a rival house and brutally assassinate their patron. Then we'd kidnap another one and force it to fight naked against the Razurath. And we'd do that to every one of them and every one of their underlings until they knew even thinking such a thing would be suicidal!" And it couldn't be like she actually wanted Daath. He smelled like dead people's feet (probably) and spent more time on the surface than underground. And he was totally disinterested in all the political games they played. And he never had any fun. "And he's nothing like--" Lanlan met her gaze again, resolved. It lingered there for just a moment. Then he pulled her toward him and pecked her on the lips with his, because he wanted to and he needed to know something. He knew how brazen this was, and braced himself for a lot of pain.
Gevurah :: A knife twists in Gevurah’s chest as Lanlan confesses his love. It is said that drow don’t feel love, but how else can you explain his sudden torrent of earnest words, his promise of always standing with her house, of killing and torturing her enemies. He doesn’t utter a single joke or sarcastic phrase. She expected him to be angry, reproachful, vicious - she’s seen him be all of those things, but never this. Her lips and body meet his, and she’ll never admit to anyone that her heart beats fast. Her guarded matron heart, seemingly impenetrable, is still elven. The drow are still social creatures who build cities, form clubs, churches, amass, break bread, toast wine, marry, screw, and sometimes, maybe, rarely, impossibly, love. As the kiss slowly deepens, he can feel her heart beat wildly against his chest, a thrumming fueled by arousal and fear. Not a fear of him, but a fear of what is happening. To trust is to die, that’s the drow mantra. But she completely trusts him with her body. Throughout her adult life she has taken a few lovers, all of them weak enough that she could kill them in an instant. She never bedded any threat. Lanlan is a patron, formidable in his own way, and yet she does not fear him. She trusts him, and that’s terrifying. She pulls her mouth away reluctantly, her body stays close, and she peers into his gaze searching to see if anything has changed, if this was another game to him, some misguided conquest. Also, it’s clear from her body language that as bloodthirsty as she may be, she doesn’t actually want to do this in this blood-spattered room. Thankfully, they’re in a hotel. There’s options.
Lanlan holds his eyes closed for several moments after her, until he's sure he's not dead. At this range, there's approximately nothing he could do if she decided to cause rats to chew through his stomach and burrow out of his skin. The thought of it excited him for some reason, and excited him even more so when he opens his eyes and finds it not happening. That something else was happening, the culmination of feelings and desires he would deny to anyone he ever felt, and tried to deny himself. His eyes are open, and he remembers where they are. Since his boldness was rewarded the first time, he presses his lips into hers again and slowly drags the tips of his fingers down her back. Reluctantly he lets her go, so he can disguise himself. In a few quick strides he opens the door a crack and peeks out of it. He vanishes on the other side. There's banging on a door across the hall. Someone answers, someone just beginning to unpack their things. "Get out," Lanlan demands. "Get OUT! If you impede our...uh...investigation, I'll maim you in terrible and permanent ways such that they'll not know if it was done by man or beast." To make his point, he creates an aura of black writhing flames that fill the poor tourist or traveler with dread, and he leaves without his clothes or supplies. "And have some towels sent up." He kicks the guys stuff under the bed to make the fancy room look neat and presentable. He sits on the bed for a moment, wondering if this is his chance to escape his inevitable untimely murder. But he'd known for a while that this is how he wanted to die. So he goes back to see if she'll follow him.
Gevurah grins to herself as she overhears Lanlan’s bombastic eviction of a pathetic human. She follows him despite the alarm bells ringing deep in her gut. Trust, vulnerability, affection, oh my! The risk makes the act all the more sensational and gratifying, but the experience is anything but smooth and easy. At first she resists her emotional vulnerability and tries to adhere to an old routine prescribed by an imbalance of power (i.e. she has all of it, her love has none). It doesn’t work, because that isn’t them. The truth is her attraction to him depends largely from the fact she likes him, trusts him, and can be vulnerable. To resist what surfacers would call ‘love’ ruins the coupling. Halting, awkwardly, and with his help, she gives in until she understands for the first time why surfacers insist on pairing love with sex. It enhances it. It *is* better. Maybe those surfacers *are* onto something. She’ll never admit to it though. She says nothing sweet or romantic to Lanlan as they find each other in a place uniquely theirs. And yes, of course, she pursues tried and true drow kinks. Love doesn’t make you a ninny. Still, the fact she’s even willing to do it in this way says more than enough. Afterwards, she is surprised to discover she doesn’t want to immediately dress and leave. She lingers in the bed with Lanlan and her thoughts drift. Without looking at him she says, “I will-” she corrects herself, “I may still marry Daath.”
Lanlan knows he can't have the type of sex he has in the Underdark up here, because it's selfish; utilitarian. If she's going to make a decision that might interfere with their being together, he'll make her regret it with this. He knew how they did it up here, he knew how prolong the gratification and make it more intense. He explores her body and she'll find he pays special attention to her sounds and movements until he's learned a good deal how he can exploit her senses. Unexpectedly, she does concede more of her power than she ever has with clothes on and he takes advantage. It might be the only time he can. Once their finished, he leans back, almost breathless. He narrows his eyes at her once she finally speaks. It shouldn't be romantic to mention another man at this point, but the way she corrects herself is. A little bit. Strongly, he feels the urge to play it cool. Having to catch his breath makes it easier to hesitate and gather his thoughts. "I don't have to understand your reasons," he concedes, thoughtfully, through clenched teeth. Something's still boiling beneath his skin. "But I don't. I don't understand. And I think you're being--" He catches himself, because he still knows who he's talking to and maybe wants to live a little longer. "I think that would be unfortunate. For a number of reasons." He keeps looking at her and lies right to her face, "It wouldn't change us."
Lanlan's Investigate Report Filed to the Mage's Guild
A report of my findings in the mysterious death of Alwyn Coldcleaver, illusionist.
Upon entering his hotel room, the apprentice and I instantly realized what the "mysterious circumstances" were in regards to Alwyn Coldcleaver's death. He sat apparently restfully in his chair. Nothing whatsoever was wrong with him! Except that he was, as you know, dead. Quickly I deduced why. There was an enchantment at work, making everything appear clean and orderly. I dismissed the enchantment, and the feline apprentice was instantly horrified. Never had he/she seen such a terrible scene.
Blood spatters were everywhere! Curtains, bedspread, carpet, walls...All splashed with blood. Blood covered pawprints of some kind of monster trailed away from Alwyn to the window.
And his corpse was no longer looking happily restful. His countenance was one of abject terror, surprise. Lacerations of varying depth striped the poor man's body head to toe.
Obviously, these wounds perished him.
So we knew it was a monster that killed him. We searched his hotel room for more clues. Along with the blood stains and other viscera, we found that the enchantment also hid piles of dirty clothes, plates of unfinished food in various states of putrefaction. Wine stains mixed with blood stains on the blankets and carpet. Other kinds of stains...
Certainly the hotel manager would've charged him a small fortune to have this place cleaned and repaired back to standard. I believe Alwyn himself put the illusion on the room. We did know him to be quite the slob didn't we! May he rest in peace.
Out of respect for the dead, we searched him last. In a secret pocket, we found a small piece of glass with strange markings on it. It seemed useless at first, but when fueled with a bit of magic, it projected what I can only think must be one of Alwyn's memories.
Alwyn seems to have spied on a meeting between Hudson Landon (rumored to be a werewolf) and Mayor Uma (believed to be a witch). He sees and hears them discussing the fate of an editor by the name of Kramer, who runs a newspaper called "The Hammer of the Witch".
I've left the strange memory glass here with this letter.
Signed,
Lanlan
[ooc: end words of letter, start description of memory glass]
In a small wooden box is the "memory glass". It's a thin brittle square the width of two fingers. And clear, except for some very delicate scratches on both sides of the surface. Once it's charged with a teeeensy bit of magic, it hovers and spreads images out on a surface close to whoever activated it, wall, floor ceiling, even the letter it came with. They're very small images, and one could glean that if Alwyn used a bigger piece of glass, he could project them more greatly. But then it would've been harder to conceal! He (Lanlan) thought of everything. With a magnifying glass and deathly quiet room however, Hudson Landon and Mayor Uma are revealed, talking in a darkened alley at twilight. The vision of them is intermittently obscured by the side of a house, sometimes you see a human hand gripping its edge.
"He's too close!" Hudson hisses.
"You can't just kill Henry Cramer," whispers Mayor Uma, "He's too high profile. If you killed him, everyone will think it's because what he's printing in the Hammer of witches is true."
"It is true, that's why we have to kill him. Some of it is anyways."
After that, there's a sharp gasp, and the projected images spin away from the two high profile members, and away from the alley to a road, bathed in moonlight. The vision bobbles as he runs, and you hear him through gasping breath, "This is Alwyn Coldcleaver, and I just found actual evidence of Hudson and Uma's conspiracy! This is HUGE! But I have to hide..." The vision darkens and retreats into the shard of glass. It returns itself to its case.
[ooc note: The memory glass video and letter was faked by Lanlan but this is OOC KNOWLEDGE ONLY.]