2017-05-20: Old Friends and New
- Log: Old Friends and New
- Cast:Josephine Lovelace Noah Hawthorne (NPCing Ambrose Montagu)
- Where: Ambrose's office in Linga.
- Date: 05-20-2017
- Summary: Josephine Lovelace, in possession of a mysterious object, seeks out a colleague she hasn't seen in ten years. He happens to have just the lead for her to follow -- and just the errand boy to help her fetch it.
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
Anyone looking to find Ambrose Montagu -- and there are more people of that description than one might expect -- is inevitably directed to his office, one of several in a larger building housing experts in the field of Filgaian history and culture. Even in the dreadful heat of Ignas it remains cool and shadowed throughout most of the day, its single window in pale stone walls looking out on a rambling field populated at all hours with students and Drifters in Linga to seek information about whatever bauble or relict they may have stumbled over in the course of their journeys.
It's neater than most offices of the type, particularly given his reputation as an absent-minded old gentleman: none of the stereotypically chaotic stacks of documents, books and scrolls piled high around what was once a desk. His desk is massive, very old, but well-kept oiled wood. A few small fossils and other curios are situated at one end, away from the writing pad, inkwell, and the like. There are two comfortable chairs arranged on the opposite side from the leather wingback he usually sits in. Along one wall is a small sideboard for beverages, taxidermied animal heads and some other trophies in cases mounted there, while the opposite wall consists entirely of bookshelves, all of his materials neatly organized.
He is, at the moment, writing something at the desk. Now in his mid or late sixties, his hair is a brilliant shock of white kept neatly combed. He's portly -- tenured, of course -- and well-dressed in a three-piece suit, with glasses and a watch chain, a perfectly folded pocket square, and the look of a man for whom all of these things are a daily wardrobe decision.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
At last.
It takes a little convincing of the regular staff, once Josephine works out -- the students are very helpful on this, perhaps surprisingly -- where Montagu's office is located in the university city. But not too much. A few vague statements about 'an old colleague' 'a great find' 'must speak to him as soon as possible if not earlier' and the like helped grease the wheels. The best part is, they're even mostly true. The best bits of misdirection often are.
And she hasn't even had to play her desperation move.
So far so good, she thinks, walking down the hallways of the building as she advances towards the door the staff had indicated. The information had been on point about Montagu -- so far -- so it seems likely she's onto something now.
Honestly, it probably was her fault for looking in the wrong place for so long, but what's done is done. Josephine puts her hand on the doorknob and lets herself in.
She hasn't knocked.
...Older than she expected. A minor problem, possibly -- but regardless her initial reaction is brief (just slightly widened eyes) and quickly overtaken by the bright, friendly smile the archaeologist projects towards the man at the desk. "Ambrose! It's been a long time, hasn't it?"
Her stance is loose and easy, her long coat swaying slightly as she approaches his desk. Not unlike a pirate's parrot, a pigeon looms broodily from her shoulder. That's new, compared to the tightly-wound woman of a decade prior. Among other things. "Do you remember me? It's Josephine, Josephine Lovelace." Resting her left hand on her hip, she gestures outwards with her right, using that moment to briefly take in the contents of the office. "I was just in the area," she continues, "and thought, it's about time I dropped by."
Josie tilts her head a touch to the right. "How have you been?"
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
Ambrose Montagu blinks up from what he's doing, and squints. The light from the hall is brighter than that in his office, and for a moment all he can see is a very tall, feminine silhouette, the voice not one that he recognizes. He lifts one hand and adjusts his glasses on his nose, taking her in as details about her begin to resolve once she's no longer standing in the wedge of light created by the open door. His expression gradually shifts from bafflement to thoughtfulness, trying to lay his mental fingers on a memory she seems connected with--
And then she gives him her name, and his expression crinkles cheerfully. "Oh, Miss Lovelace! So it has, so it has. Please, just give me a moment to-- oh, but I would never have recognized you," he enthuses, maneuvering his chair back and finally giving himself enough room to stand and cross the room to meet her, reaching out for one of her hands with both of his. He veritably twinkles, this man, a lively sparkle in his pale blue eyes. "But then, of course, I imagine it must be the same for you!" He pats his stomach. Chortles, even. "Ten years does give one time to sink comfortably into things. Too comfortably, I think! In the area for the Exhibition, are you? So many people are. So many. Though this blockade, my dear, with Aveh..." He seems to lose some of the momentum of his cheer, though he recovers quickly, with a warm smile. "Please. Come and have a seat, and tell me what brings you all the way to Linga."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
The name 'Lovelace' is, at least, somewhat infamous around these parts. At least among the older scholars, and if only for the simple fact that Josie's father, Timotheus, graduated from here. Before abandoning Linga to join the coterie that became Marze. Add to that her father's difficult personality, and...
No one fights or holds grudges the way academics do. And -- as had been explained to Josie once, ages ago -- no one took so much brutal glee in the prospect of bringing over a hated rival's kin to their side as an academic.
That smile she wears only broadens. As if in resignation to the inexorable wheel of life, she shakes her head, closing her eyes briefly. "I suppose time is cruel," she mock laments, turning both hands palms up as if to the heavens. "To think, we've both changed so much! Still, I think the experience gained has been worthwhile, don't you?" She extends a hand -- her left, most notably -- allowing him to take that gloved hand in his.
The bird on her shoulder settles almost irritatedly into her makeshift perch, eyes narrowed as Penelope stares at Ambrose. "As a matter of fact, yes -- and don't mind her, she's not liking this heat -- but that isn't the one reason I'm in the area," Josie says, briefly gesturing towards the pigeon on her shoulder. "A shame about that blockade, though. Once the Exhibition ends, there's going to be a problem, don't you think?"
She pulls a chair back a touch moments after being prompted, stepping around the seat to settle crossleggedly into the chair. She tilts her head again, this time as if considering her words. "Well, I suppose I should admit I'm not just here to catch up on old times -- as enjoyable as that is! The truth is, I've managed to find something I can't quite place, and I'm afraid even the other researchers I've spoken to haven't been able to tell me much, either." She leans back in her seat, allowing her hands to fold together loosely in her lap.
"I was hoping someone who was attending the Exhibition would be able to tell me more about it, but..." She closes her eyes, and sighs. "It's not exciting enough for their tastes, I suppose."
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
Don't you?
"It always is, Miss Lovelace. It always is."
Once she's been ushered into her seat, he leaves her where she is and limps -- because he does have a limp, and he did not pick up his cane when he rose from his chair -- with as much grace as a limping man can muster to the sideboard in order to pour drinks for the two of them. Fruit-infused water, from a sweating pitcher. Apparently it isn't late enough in the day for Ambrose to break out whatever dusty bottles are stored in the cabinet underneath.
"I think we'll be very lucky if the problems wait until after the Exhibition, my dear, but yes. Very likely so. War does rather complicate things, doesn't it." Not a question. He glances over his shoulder at the narrow-eyed pigeon -- who knew pigeons could even do that? -- and blinks twice. "Yes, well. Well. She and I can agree on that. Never made for the heat, myself, and then you begin to get old and the cold is almost as bad! The very caprice of existence."
He returns to where she's sitting and hands her the glass directly, then braces his free hand on the arm of the adjacent chair rather than returning to her own, leaning heavily on that hand to help him sit. The injury is new in the last ten years; there would not have been any mention of it prior.
If academic rivalries are the stuff of generational feuding, then academic discoveries are the stuff of frenzied competition. News that she has in her possession something unplaceable opens his expression like a flower. "Is that so? A visit from an old friend and a mystery out of the ages? What a remarkably good day this is turning into."
He leans in, just a little. "Do you have it with you?"
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
A limp. She sits up a little in her seat but doesn't rise. Looks like she's not the only one to gain a few extra problems in the last decade...
"Thank you, Ambrose." A pity, she wouldn't mind having a drink or two, but since this is a town rife with students, she imagines she won't have much challenge with this down the line.
"Between Kislev and Aveh, you mean? I've heard a few rumors." Adlehyde is technically still a neutral party in all of this, but... She meets his eyes nonetheless, the unspoken question there unusually subdued for the archaeologist's apparent current persona. 'Or is it someone else'? She's heard a few rumors, seen a few odd movements.
She shakes her head, once again turning her hands as if to beseech the heavens for clemency. "Alas, I suppose that's how it is, isn't it? Even in the desert, you only get shuffled from one extreme to the next," says the woman who has been delving into ruins in Aveh for the last decade. "Freezing at night, baking the next day... Well, I suppose that's as much as we can ask for in Filgaia, in the end. Even the birds."
Her smile grows a touch impish after a moment, and she adds, "...I suppose you could say this weather really 'ruffles her feathers'?"
She's grown a sense of humor, too. Not a good one, but we all start somewhere.
Murmuring another word of thanks, she accepts the glass, cradling it loosely in her left hand.
"Of course, I brought it with me." She shifts in her seat and then rises -- trading the glass off to her opposite hand -- fishing about within an apparently deep pocket on the inside of her coat. What she brings out is a bundle of white cloth--
Well, that's how it looks before she deposits it on his desk, carefully unwrapping the item the item there.
It's a smallish chunk of metal that sits in the middle of the handkerchief-- or at least that's how it seems at first glance. Even considering its apparent composition, it's a little heavier than someone might expect if picked up. On one side, there's some sort of raised surface. A relief, perhaps?
"I found this out west, out in the Badlands. I haven't seen anything like it since." This is also not technically a lie.
She leans forward, peering at it from her current angle. Leaning, she gestures vaguely to a spot here, a faintly darkened patch there. "There might be a few smudges. It... well, it did survive a fire." Her lips press a bit thinly here, creating the effect of a particularly brittle smile. "I suppose it's only good practice to admit what an artifact has been exposed to, isn't it?" Glancing away briefly, she shakes her head. "...It didn't seem to be badly damaged, though. I'm afraid a few things have happened in recent years. Still, it could be worse. It could have been destroyed."
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
"Kislev and Aveh, yes. And now this 'Gebler' group, about which I cannot tell you much, I'm afraid, save that they have remarkable technology."
It's a terrible joke that she tells, but Ambrose is a golden soul and he laughs anyway; maybe he laughs because she was sweet to try to make him laugh, and that might be reason enough all on its own. "Indeed!"
And then: the piece de resistance. Ambrose leans toward the desk, and from within one of his inner coat pockets retrieves a slender metal rod with a rounded end. Rather than touch the artifact directly, he uses this to turn it one way and then the other, but it's startlingly heavy. He tucks it away and instead draws a peculiar monocle from his coat pocket -- the thing connected to the watch chain. It has interesting peacock swirls of sheen on the convexity of the surface. What they do isn't clear, but he brings that lens to bear on the object, eventually conceding to pick it up and place it in his hand, feeling the heft of it. "Curious. Very curious."
It's not until he sees the relief that he says anything else, and even then it's only after he puts the object down on the handkerchief and stands up out of his chair to cross to his shelves, plucking his cane up along the way. "Fascinating, fascinating. Where did you say you found it, exactly? And what in goodness' name happened that it was almost destroyed? Was it melted in that way previous to your finding it, or was the heat responsible?"
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie wrinkles her brow. "Gebler. Funny, someone I was briefly partnering with in Adlehyde mentioned a 'Gebler'. Still assisting in Aveh, are they? Well, so long as things here remain unaffected..." Those Gear parts she'd investigated (and largely disassembled to the point of oblivion) had been like nothing she'd seen before. Even normal Gear parts she can -- despite a lack of grounding in Gear mechanics -- make at least some rudimentary sense of. These were the first time she'd felt more or less adrift in a turbulent sea.
Leaning in slightly, she watches in silence as Ambrose investigates the artifact. Without access to the proper tools, she had deferred on doing anything invasive herself -- better to leave it to someone who had a better idea of what they were doing. Occassionally, even Josephine can show prudence.
At some length, once he's finished his initial evaluation, she speaks again. "It was a ruin out in the Badlands. Unfortunately..." She trails off, glancing away. "...It's a little complicated."
Unfortunately, there's one problem with knowing precisely which one.
A problem that Ambrose quickly rounds on, knowingly or not.
There is a long pause. Josie -- visibly -- wrestles with the decision to tell him or not, her brow furrowed and her mouth tight as she watches his face. In the end, she sighs. "...Someone set my house on fire, Ambrose. They were trying to kill me. I know it. That's why I've been having so much trouble relocating the site -- I lost all of my research." All of it. A decade's worth. "I suppose that's that's one way to know that what I have is the real thing?" Her smile here is weak at best, though.
"Before that, though... It wasn't in perfect condition, but that's only expected from something so old." She glances down at the table, her smile a rueful one. "If none of the researchers I knew out in Aveh could place it -- and if someone tried to kill me over this -- I knew this had to be something big. But... I need more than that. I need to know what this is, and why it's so important."
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
Ambrose stops rifling through his shelves and turns on the ball of his foot to look at her when she tells him that someone tried to burn her house down -- and that she believes they were trying to kill her.
"My word. All for -- for that?" He exhales, and beneath the luxurious moustache he has there is the suggestion of a deeply disapproving frown. "Animals!" He stabs the ground once with his cane, and then turns back to what he'd been doing with renewed purpose. "It's just your luck coming my way, then, because I recognize that relief."
From a stack of current correspondence, Ambrose retrieves a single sheet of paper. It has a crease in the middle to indicate it was sent from elsewhere, but nevertheless: he limps back over to her chair with the aid of his cane and hands it to her.
"This came to me through...sources, we'll say, from some Linga scholars who were able to break through the blockade. It's a relief rubbing taken from a known ruin in the Badlands, just as you say."
The image there is very clearly of the object on the handkerchief.
"It very clearly dates back to at least the Metal Demon Wars, and seems likely to be older. The writing on the relief is a Zeboim dialect, in fact. I can't translate it, and sadly, the blockade being what it is...of course, I'm in no shape to go plundering ruins any longer, myself, even without the blockade. But your answers may be there, in that very ruin." He quiets, folds both of his hands on top of his cane in front of himself, and considers her. "There's a young man I know who may be able to offer you some assistance, however. He's presently in Adlehyde on business of his own, but he spent many years in the Badlands, and elsewhere." His moustache twitches in the suggestion of a smile. "A boy after my own heart, a bit. More of a scholar than you might expect to look at him. Or speak to him. Or, eh..." He flounders, then waves it off. "Well, anyway. He can be a handful, but he's easily lured in by a mystery. Strong and willing to go running about, doing reckless things, and if you're in danger you could do worse than to have someone watching your back, young lady. I can write you a note of introduction, if you like."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie shakes her head, for once honestly at a loss. "Even a rival wouldn't stoop that low," she comments, even that frail smile vanishing from her lips. She lowers her voice, leaning against the desk. "I've heard rumors about people who disappear, after investigating this or that ruin. It makes you wonder if they disappeared, or..." She gestures, a touch helplessly, with her one free hand, apparently content to let the subject matter trail away into the void.
And the, Josephine blinks, stunned for just that instant. "--You do?" Almost immediately after she eases out of that brief shock, a genuine and whole-hearted smile returning to her face. "You do! Oh, it looks like I really am lucky, aren't I?" To have survived an apparent murder attempt, for one, and for two...
She watches him pull a page of correspondance -- taking the moment to pass her glass of water to her left hand again and attempt to surreptitiously shake out her right -- and once again leans in an attempt to read the correspondance that he is surely about to review--
--Or take the sheet of paper from him when he hands it to her, that also works.
She glances down at the paper. Then her gaze shifts towards the metal object on the table. Slightly, she rotates the sheet. "...It's the same."
Arching a pale eyebrow at 'sources' and smiling slightly at 'break through the blockade', she nods once he explains what she has before her. "So there would be more of those objects like this? Did they give a location?" Josie visibly stops herself, though, shaking her head in dismay. "...But that's no good unless I'm willing to risk my life running the blockade, isn't it. I suppose I'll just have to wait for things to settle down again."
If this situation drags on, though, she considers to herself privately, it might just be her only recourse.
Metal Demon Wars. Zeboim. "Really." Both eyebrows lift, this time. "That's... quite old either way, isn't it." She hands the sheet back over to him to take, then straightens. "Hmm... I'll have to think about this. But if I understand what you're saying correctly... If I were able to go to that ruin and send back some additional material -- rubbings and the like -- you might be able to translate? Then, perhaps we could find out what we're dealing with here, and what's so important that someone's willing to kill over it."
Tilting her glass slightly to the right and left as he describes an acquaintance of his, Josie's expression is unusually neutral, as if she's going over a few things in her head. "Hmm. So this person you know... they're skilled, are they?" Probably at running blockades, if that gut feeling she's got is telling her anything about this. "--A handful is fine -- you know, people often say that about me, too," Josie says, briefly waving her right hand through the air dismissively. "I prefer the term 'vibrant', anyway. So, what's the name of your boy?"
He'll write her a note. "Really, would you do that for me?" She smiles. Brightly, tilting her head as if briefly coquettish. "Ambrose, you've always been such a dear~ I'm sure it would help, especially with some strange woman coming into his life and everything else. Back to Adlehyde, though..." Her gaze is unfocused briefly, as if she's contemplating every step she'll need to take along the way back. "Well, it's not such a bad trip. Maybe I'll even find someone heading part-way there, at least." Getting a lift would cut some time out.
<Pose Tracker> Noah Hawthorne has posed.
Ambrose Montagu circles back around to the working side of his desk and spends some moments retrieving what he needs in order to write her the note that he's promised to write. His chair creaks as he settles into it, a shape that cradles his weight with all of the loving familiarity that nearly ten years of occupying that chair has been capable of creating.
"I don't know if there are more objects like that one, or if that one is the sole object described in the relief. The ruin is certainly of the appropriate age. Quite old, yes. Either way. Over a thousand years old at the earliest, I expect." The soft whisper of his pen on the parchment fills the brief silence to follow.
When he's finished writing, he sits back and looks at the page, squinting through his glasses, and then sets it down to fan it with his hand, helping the ink to dry. "It may be that he can translate it, but you'll have to ask him. Good with languages, the boy is. Some Zeboim dialects have been translated in part by scholars, and I never know which of them he's befriended. ...or extorted. Hah. But you'll be well-matched to put up with him, I expect. 'Vibrant' enough not to let him push you around, I do think so!"
He chuckles, skims the letter to check that the ink is well and truly dry, and then folds it down the middle with a sharp crease.
"Adlehyde is quite popular with the students. Port cities, you know. Bustling places with lots of...'cultural value.'" The way he says those words, with a wry little twinkle in the eye, suggests he's probably talking more about booze and women (or men!) of questionable moral fiber than about actual culture. "His name is Noah Hawthorne, and I've included the last address he left with me on the page, though I can't promise you he's still there. Transient heart he has. If you have trouble finding him, the Adventurer's Guild is a good place to begin."
He sets the paper down and slides it across. It reads:
"Hawthorne my boy,
The young lady bearing this letter is an old colleague of mine from before the Age of the Cane (and the ever-widening bum). She has a curious object in her possession and a clue to follow, and were I twenty years younger I would have run off on this adventure in a heartbeat. Instead, I intend to pass her into your able care and I fully expect that you will treat her not with the same dignity and respect you would treat me, but a great deal more than that.
"If the task piques your interest, I will collect a favor at a later date, and if it does not you may consider this due recompense for nearly getting me drowned.
"Do try to stay out of trouble,
-B."
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie nods, wrinkling her brow. "Another thing to confirm, then." If there's more than one of these, or whatever else might be lying in the depths of that ruin. "A thousand years... It's astonishing, isn't it. To think someone made something that lasted this long, longer than their people ever did."
She'd always said that was the reason for it -- the reason she had fallen in love with history.
Josie's gaze briefly tracks the pen as it scratches across the paper, as if attempting to make out a word or two. Glancing away after a few moments of this, she pauses long enough to finally take a much-needed drink. ...Not bad.
"Hmm, I guess we'll just have to see what he can do. In the meantime, unless you needed it for anything, I think I should take this back." She gestures towards the metallic object. "Your friend might want to look at it himself. Besides," and here she does frown, if briefly, "I don't think anyone's been following me, certainly not all this way across Ignas, but there's always the chance..."
Or someone might just take it from him, or any number of scenarios while she turns her back. It's safer if she keeps it.
'Extorted' just means that she smiles. "I'm a little too old now to let a man push me around that easily," she says, and it might be mistaken for 'dryly' if it weren't for the decidedly playful grin visible between her parted lips. "Still, this friend of yours sounds like he might be fun to work with. I don't mind my usual partners, these days, but there's a world of difference between your average Drifter and one with some proper experience."
What can she do but shrug, shake her head, and glance away? "And with the Exhibition on, I'm sure it's even more of a draw. I saw some of the people in town for it though -- and I can assure you that many of them were not there to 'broaden their horizons'! Still, when you're young..."
Josie can only sigh. "It makes me wish I'd lived a little more when I was young, too." With barely a glance, she accepts the folded letter, slipping it into one of her coat's inner pockets.
She'll illicitly read that letter later.
She straightens slightly, setting her half-full glass on the edge of his desk. Her dark gaze lingers on him. "So, with that out of the way... I don't suppose you had the evening free, Ambrose? It would be good to catch up while we have the chance -- and since I still had a few things I wanted to do while I was back in Linga, I'm not heading to Adlehyde immediately!"