Nitendae Rates

Nitendea’s attempts to join the Nompariel Thieves’ guild, had met with only moderate success. He’d been allowed ‘training rights’ but prohibited from any actual, less-than-legal, nocturnal activities.

He was also, acutely aware that he’d only been allowed to deal with the lower echelons of the organization.

He’d tried both persuasion and threat but, despite there being ‘no honour amongst thieves’, there was a strong sense of fear and self preservation. Everyone knew that to reveal the guild leadership was a self inflicted death sentence.

So, here he sat at a back table of ‘The Queen’s Gambit’. An, unsurprisingly dark and dangerous, drinking establishment. Sipping slowly from a glass of, what passes here as, red wine, Nitendae surveys his fellow drinkers.

Booze addled thugs and opportunistic pick-pockets. Human all.

These horrible people were typical examples of how the Elves viewed Humanity.

Foul as Orcs but with the morals of Goblins.

Nitendae sighed.

He knew that Humans could be much more, could be great but he had to accept that they generally straddled both extremes.

Just then a young girl, barely out of single figures, appeared at his table. Clutched in her hand is a sealed envelope…

‘Is that for me?’

The young girl nods and carefully lays it down upon the small table.

Her hand is still out when Nitendae notices that she’s staring at him. Half-elves aren’t unheard of but they are still quite a rarity.

Shrugging, Nitendae slices open the envelope with his thumbnail.

‘Nitendea.

The cost of membership to our Nompariel guild varies from applicant to applicant, depending on their area of expertise.

Your entry to our guild will be a single, unharmed bird from the dovecote of the famed merchant: DeGuile.

If successful, deliver it to me in the concealed room at the back at the ‘Queen’s Gambit’.

Good luck,

Valois’

Jerking his head around, Nitendae peers at the back wall behind him. There’s another room there?! Searching the dents and wallpaper seams, he fails to spy any telltale cracks or lever-like mechanisms.

It may be the darkness but perhaps he should brush-up on his observation skills?

‘Ahem’, mock-coughs the little girl with her hand still out, palm up.