[Game Thread] Harrowed Land

[Mal Radagast]

But Death Alas.

Dawn has broken over the fields and the Pharast yard, though there isn’t much colour in it. Crunching slowly across the cold path, catching cobwebs of morning mist on her ankles...watching the pale dawnlight dance across hoarfrost fields, unmelting...a crow calls. In Varisia, the sunrise is often called Sarenrae’s blush...who told her that? Ah, of course – she glances at the coffin with a sad smile. Crunch, crunch...no blushing today, no blushing anymore...

Six pairs of crunching footsteps slow. Across the darkwood casket, she catches Adivion’s eye as they lower it beside the grave. Silence now, as she wipes those few cold tears from her face and stretches her arm, gets the blood flowing back into it. “My father...” she begins, though it only trails off. She clears her throat, watches a warm plume of breath rise, taking these most recent minutes of her life with it.

Kendra Lorrimor-Vukal chuckles, raw and rueful. She shakes her head, dislodging a few curled locks of pale hair, as pale as the dawn, in fact. Her eyes are not red-rimmed, her expression is not grief-stricken...though it is cold as gravestone, and as hard, and you don’t doubt that there is an ache there, carved into it, as it were. “My father,” she repeats, “was...well, truth be told, I don’t know what he was. I doubt if anyone did.” She’s got a quick, sharp way of speech which gives her a wry tone, almost mocking, but it’d be hard to say what or whom. “He was partly a man, but mostly a memory. Everyone who knew him, you know, they talked about him more than they ever talked to him. He was...always there, and never.” She looks around to each of you with her eyebrows twitched up as though to say, You see? And you do see – you might have thought you were an odd one out, only barely knowing the Professor, trading letters every several months, meeting once every few years or decades if at all...though here by his grave, less than a dozen people standing around, and hardly any of them even seem to recognize one another.

“When I was a little girl, and I would ask him where he went, he told me he was out collecting stories. He loved stories, you know, all sorts, not just the important ones.” She shakes her head again, correcting herself, the trace of a smile around the edge of her lips. “No, that’s...not quite right. He would say that they’re all important, every one. So I thought we could...well here, I’ll start.” A nod, to no one in particular. “I spent most of my growing up at the Girls’ School of County Cant is where you are, one of the thirteen counties comprising Ustalav - if you know the region, you might presume that the boarding school would be down in Marian Leigh.Cant...there were lots of jokes about that, I can tell you. Anyoldway, it was only summers I spent with him, and only some summers at that. Probably for the best. Still...” She sighs then, sits down on her father’s coffin, gives the darkwood an affectionate pat. “One summer, he had to go out northeast, and I begged and I begged – I had always wanted to see the Veiled Lake, always as long as I’d heard of it – and he said it was too dangerous, but I wore him down. It wasn’t a lecture tour, it was...he’d been swapping letters with a Taldan druid, they were having ghoul troubles down there, nothing they couldn’t handle but horribly persistent, and father, he had a theory. He always had a theory.”

Kendra stretches her grey-stocking legs, knocking a few small stones into the open grave with the toes of her battered grey boots. The boots have seen their share of graveyards, but then, in Ustalav, haven’t they all? Though she isn’t thinking about Ustalav, now. Staring off – east, as you might notice – there’s wistful memory and adventure and hunger in her pale eyes. “Just north of Chesed, where the Sellen comes out of the lake, I watched him do something nobody else could think of...probably broke a hundred laws in three countries, too.” She chuckles, not as raw as before, and echoed with an impish giggle...a young girl finally sharing a joke she’s wanted to tell for years. “He laid a geas on the river. See, for all his reputation, father never was powerful, not in the traditional way. What he was, he used to tell me, was clever, which is much better. Had a knack for those things, too...he said it was all in the stories, tell the right story and it sticks. I helped him salt the banks as he told the Sellen all the old Pharast river-lore, and brought a part of that Other River into it, laced all through it and charged with taking the dead to its Mistress.”

“Of course what he didn’t realize was, that story would make him salt the entire river before the spell took hold.” Hopping to her feet again, pushing a lock of that white-gold hair back behind an ear and scrunching down into her big grey coat (broader around the shoulders than she is, it makes her look quite small when she sinks into it like that), and you can see the girl who giggled a moment ago, the girl who waits behind the sad woman’s eyes, who remembers a trip to the another name for the Lake of Mists and VeilsMisty Lake and then down the river with her father. She grins. “Oh brother, did we ever get in trouble that trip. You know the River Freedoms don’t say it, but they don’t allow compulsions, and they must not’ve read father’s paper on the differences between them. Every time one of ‘em felt that geas, we had to hide or high-tail, playing merry hell across that country till we hit Galt! His Taldan colleague had to meet us at Woodsedge where the Galtans were debating whether to let the Riverfolk have us...what a trip.”

Looking down into the grave, the woman’s face darkens, the girl hidden away again... “I’d never spent that much time with him, together, you know...and never again, until after my Clark died...and I came back here.” She shrugs, though her eyes don’t leave the grave. You get the feeling that they won’t again, not for a while, when the silence returns to her.

A crow calls.

 

Here we go!

So you can gather that Kendra is encouraging you each to share a story, a memory of him. It doesn't have to be much, or very telling if you're trying to be guarded - just one piece of kindness you watched him show, or one scooby-doo mystery you helped him to solve, maybe a scuffle you helped one another out of, some little thing. (You've actually all heard of this at some point or other, it's just a very old Ustalav funeral rite. Some folks keep to it, others don't.) I know we've each discussed backgrounds and such, and there are definitely at least a few years in between each of you meeting the Prof and now - this is an opportunity to introduce everyone to your character, through how they interacted with the man you're all here to honor and remember. (Instead of having to say 'I am Thark the Half-Orc Barbarian and my parents were killed by goblins can we all go adventuring together?") Honestly you don't even have to give anyone your name - presumably you've met and made introductions some time in the last day or three while gathering for the funeral.

Standard format for OOC notes relevant to specific posts, by the way, will be spoilerbuttons - they'll range from brief to lengthy, as you may have noticed I ramble a lot. I may possibly repeat myself in the OOC thread as well, because I have anxiety about being clear and comprehensible.

Hope you all enjoy!

[Greaven]

Bishop sighed somewhat, hand tucking into his jacket as he stood in silence, listening to Kendra's words. This was nothing new to him, not even remotely, and there was a complete lack of emotion on his pale face. He pulled out a chain of holy icons, thumbing through them as one might flip through keys on a ring, until he comes to Desna and Pharasma, finding them by touch alone. He stroked both worn symbols with his thumb as he listened.

Sighing once more, he stepped forward, the veneer cracking a bit as he cants his head ever so slightly, "Not usually on this end of the affair. Hello you old coot. Taking another trip ahead?" Bishop squats and whispers to the coffin, "Miss Kendra is bound to be none to pleased. Lets hope she takes her time catching up to you." Patting the coffin he stands again, a calming sigh, and a bit of a smile follow. His thumb rests on Desna once more, as he thinks back.

Tired blue eyes roll about back and forth, as if he were searching for the words from scratch, "I met the professor under unfortunate circumstances, but if not for those circumstances, I doubt I ever would have. We know about him in my family, and it is not uncommon for us to have met him, he was ever the inquisitive sort, so, when a question arises that the keepers of the dead cannot answer, one must turn to The Scholar." The smile turned wry as he glances to Kendra.

"It is never fun to bury a loved one, less so to do it twice, and so, with my questions, I sought him out." He mused as he looked back to the others, taking a slow, thoughtful break before continuing. "A curious creature bent over tomes and scribbled notes is what I found, and despite his life's work sprawled before him, he stopped what he was doing, to help with my bothersome questions. Life, Death, Undeath, Cults, strange rituals... When I was lost, he helped shed light on the path, and by doing so, helped to salvage a lost and broken soul."

Raising up the holy symbols, he drops Desna's as he strokes Pharasma's, "All journeys come to a close, all children must return home. But, the end of every journey, is but the beginning of another. As you traveled this life, you searched for the secrets to be had. You helped the lost to find their way." His thoughtful expression shifted a little as he dropped Pharasma's token, and cast his eyes down to the coffin, "And though you offered me guidance on this journey, like the Lady of Graves, I can only usher you on to your next." Tucking the chain of religious icons back into his coat, he retrieved a rather plain tome, setting it on the coffin, "For when the road grows dull. A bit of a dry read, but, it is only fair I shared my research with you."

As he turns to bow his head to Kendra, the fluttering of wings, and the caw of a crow drew his attention back. The large bird set a small stone with a protective rune on it upon the coffin. "You know that was yours. I could have carved him another." The crow's response was to flutter to his shoulder, and peck firmly at his ear, drawing a bit of blood, "Fine, fine, you wanted to give him a gift as well. Now cut it out, or next time you'll be a rat." The crow puffed up indignantly but simply sat there. Bishop finished paying his respects with a bow and stepped aside.

[Humble Athena]

The next man to speak was young, blond, and terribly thin beneath the oversized black coat-of-many-pockets he wore. His clothes were cheap and well-worn, but clean. His hair, freshly trimmed but with the slanted bias of a left-handed self-hack. His nails were overgrown for a man's, but likewise meticulously clean. All in all, he seemed a man who wanted to make himself presentable, but didn't quite know how, and was embarrassed by that fact, from the way he shrank into himself once the duty of carrying the coffin was done. He barely even seemed to breath as he stood there.

As the silence stretched on, he raised his head from his stare at the ground. "It's hard to follow a speech such as that, but I'll try." There was another pause as a deep breath was drawn, before he continued. "Our friend spoke true of the Professor's tendency to shed light in the darkness. My meeting with the man was much the same. I was lost, without hope. He came when no-one else would. Without his kindness and determination, I would not be here. Without his knowledge and faith, I would be dead, or worse. I owe my life to him, because he saved me. I just wish I could have been here to return the favor."

[tomplum]

Velkan Lupescu Velkan listened absentmindedly to the Professor's daughter as she went on about some trip where they poisoned a river. Reminiscing about the past was something of a luxury if someone could conjure up a good memory. Most floating about in Velkan's mind were anything but. Though, looking at the Professor's coffin, the face of Hans came to Velkan's thoughts only because Petros had brought a bit of the past back to the present. Hardly something to share in front of strangers though. He waited until a couple others had said their piece and then stepped forward himself. One last puff on his smoke and he launched it through the air into the cemetery snow. It made an arcing path of smoke as it zipped through the air to die in a hiss in the powder. To die with a hiss. Was there anyway to avoid such fate? "Name's Velkan Lepescu of the Vagabond Scholars." Most would know of the traveling thinkers, a small guild of philosophers who believed that an age of science and enlightenment might bring this country out of their dark days and raise them to the status of a real global presence with something to offer. They toured around the smaller towns and villages, bringing what they can of new medicine and technology, trying to improve the lives of the commoners. "Obviously, through my profession, I came to meet the Professor. We shared many a letter and even a few house calls to discuss our theories on the entropic nature of the world. Well, my theory anyway. He was always far more optimistic than I." Velkan was about to expound more when a vicious fit of coughing overtook him. He waved his hand to inform the others he had completed his speech. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and moved ten or fifteen steps away as he attempted to catch his breath.

[HughtheHand]

Clarence Torry A slight young man, perhaps just into his twenties, looks in concern at Velkan Lepescu as he breaks into the coughing fit. The young man has a round face, topped by limp black hair. Above his full lips and slight, pointed nose sit large watery eyes. It's almost as though were you to flick something into his eyes, it would sink into them like a coin in a wishing well. As Velkan walks away, these eyes glance around anxiously at the others gathered there, and the young man realizes that the time has come for him to introduce himself. He clears his throat and pulls with a finger at the collar of his ill-fitting shirt. "I'm sorry, this is my first time at a funeral... My name is Clarence, Clarence Torry. I'm afraid I'm not part of any group or order or anything really... I am -or, was- a baker..., ehh..., umm... I also owe Professor Lorrimor a very great debt. He was very kind to me, though he did not have to be. Were it not for his help, I don't know where I would be right now, or if I would be anywhere at all." Clarence's voice rings out nasal and breathy, and he shifts his weight constantly from one foot to the other. As he is speaking, his eyes are focused solely on the coffin. Those sad eyes now raise up to look at the Professor's daughter. He bows his body forward towards her in an awkward display of respect. "I am terribly sorry for his passing, as I said, he was very kind to me. I wish I could have known him better." Clarence winces and turns his head down and away, squeezing his eyes shut tightly. Then he breathes out slowly, wraps his hands around his elbows, and turns back to stare at the coffin again.

[Mal Radagast]

The hilltop is quiet for a moment, but then a man speaks up from off to one side - the latest pallbearer to arrive, he appeared in town last night and you haven't heard much out of him all morning - he was walking beside Kendra at the head of the coffin, and then he wandered off just after they lowered it. He's leaning against a tree, now, just over there...staring off into that pale grey morning. He cuts a rather dashing figure, tallish, long coat the color of heavy rain on the horizon, dark hair slicked back. "Cagey young fellows, aren't you? Well don't you worry so much...we all know that anyone close to Petros keeps more than a few skeletons in the closet, sees more than a little blood on our hands. Between us, I won't judge you for that if he wouldn't." Small shocks of silver along his temples, but nothing else to indicate age. It's odd, then, that he speaks of the Professor so intimately. "Petros Lorrimor..." he muses. "...Petros was an actual Professor, teaching at Lepidstadt when I met him, not the wandering scholar everyone seems to remember. He wasn't there for long, they...he left. Difference of opinion, you know how it is." He chuckles. "He once called me his star pupil, but he had it backwards, you see...Petros was my star professor."

Patting the pockets of his rain-colored coat, the man eventually finds a silver cigarette case. He pushes off away from the tree, walks over to Kendra by the coffin, and offers her one. She lights two and passes one back with a practised dexterity, smiling sadly...fondly, but sadly.

The man continues. "My name is Adivion Adrissant, of the Ardeal-Caliphas Adrissants, if you follow that sort of thing. I was raised in the traditional crumbling manor of Ardis, educated by the finest tutors money can buy...living or dead." He offers you all grimace and then a shrug. "It's how things were...still are, some places. Soon as I could, I was off to Lepidstadt...the real world, as I thought of it, not the mummified corpse of a world I grew up in." He shakes his head, once slick lock falling over one dark eye, giving him a very dramatic, romantic sort of look. You wonder whether that was intentional. "Only, the University was as mummified as the rest of this dusty old country...as pedantic and outdated as anything else, no matter what new trinkets they devise. Petros...Petros was the only one there who challenged me, who tested me, catalyzed in me new growth. I never graduated that place...never cared to. When he left, I left."

Taking another long drag, Adivion watches the smoke coil up over the treeline, fade into the sky. He smiles, nostalgic, and almost continues to speak, when his dark eyes narrow, seeing something down the little hill you've just marched up. "Hello, what's this?"

Headed your direction are a motley group of townsfolk, somehow all sharing the same scowl. From that scowl and the odd array of shovels and pitchforks, it isn't hard to tell their intentions. Kendra glances up, then rolls her eyes. "An angry mob in Ustalav...how original." She stands up, flicks her half-smoked cigarette into the empty grave, crosses her arms in front of her, and glares.

The first man to meet that glare melts back into the crowd, and the second, until one of the thicker heads is left standing in front. A middle-aged farmer, from the looks of him, balding before his time and attempting to smirk as he scowls, the way stupid folk do when they think they're being clever. "Me an' the lads been talkin', an' we don't want the likes of him buried here wit' all our loved ones." Some of the others behind him nod; others of the others behind him are staring at you, curious and calculating. Kendra raises her eyebrows. The fellow in front shuffles his feet. Finally, one of the lads behind him shouts, "'E's a necromancer!"

Adivion bursts out laughing.

[Humble Athena]

"Are you sure you and the lads haven't been drinking, as well?" Nik asked, stepping forward, as he let his arms drop to his sides. He walked with slow purpose until he stood directly in front of the of the speaker, almost seeming to grow larger as his bulky coat slipped open and trailed behind him. Icefire eyes bored into the man in front of him. "You lot don't know a damn thing if you think the Professor was a necromancer! He was the opposite, a good man who protected the likes of you and your loved ones from horrors, often before you even had a chance to know you were in danger. But you have concerns, do you? You should be concerned instead about the consequences of interrupting a group of mourners, of bringing the threat of violence to hallowed ground! Actions have consequences, and when you do ill, ill comes back to you. I strongly suggest you leave, before you bring the ire of the gods themselves down on your ignorant heads."

[Greaven]

Bishop blinks. Then blinks again. And then once more, his raven mess flopping to a side of his pale face. Really? A necromancer? Bishop was from more of a middle of nowhere, nothing, village than here, and even They wouldn't be this absurdly stupid. His pale, steely blue eyes roll so profoundly, you could almost feel his internal groan.

Crow upon his shoulder, sickle strapped at the small of his back, over his armored coat, and flail like mass of holy symbols dangling from his hand, he gives a thin, daring smile as he looks to the mob with his smile growing wider and wider. "Necromancer? Do tell. You believe that a servant of the Lady of Graves, Mother of Souls, the Gray Lady herself, should mourn the passing of her most loathed nemesis? Tell me, are you daft, or just plain simple?"

Taking a long, slow breath, he suddenly barked like a sergeant dressing down new recruits, "Shut your holes! You are obviously both!" His eyes narrowed as he looked to the particularly thick one, considering him for a long moment as he paused, slamming his own shovel into the ground. "You do more than smear the integrity of our friend, you insult us as well. As a Keeper of the Dead, I warn you, those who wish to break the sanctity of Pharasma's protection, whether I am here or not, Will answer to me, and, Every Keeper in these lands." As a native, this threat was heavy indeed, for his family was big, and wide spread, and this was the family business. If they wanted to exhume this body, they would pay the price, much as Nik astutely said.

The crow started cackling as it canted it's head, "Wow!" it continued to caw an obnoxious laughter, "Brother, shall I tell the family to shun them?" The crow shuddered as it tried to contain it's laughter.

Bishop sighed again, "Depends on them, now hush, before you get us accused of witchcraft." Well, it wouldn't be entirely wrong, but still, it was a matter of semantics, and he really didn't want to have that debate with these particular fools.

[tomplum]

Velkan Lupescu Does it really matter where someone is buried? Before any instincts of self-preservation or insult or even curiosity why these people felt slighted by the deceased Professor or even what difference it would make to anyone if he was buried there, the question of why it mattered blew into Velkan's head like a fog blowing in from the sea. He had no intention of getting into a tussle with the local riffraff. Finding oneself on the wrong side of the law was not something he had set out to do when he had agreed to attend his old friend's funeral. When Bishop and Nik stepped forward and did nothing short of threaten the mob, Velkan wiped the last vestiges of blood from his lips, tucked her kerchief back into his pocket and tried his best to meld into the background.

[HughtheHand]

Clarence Torry As the group of men approach up the hill, Clarence shuffles awkwardly, placing the grave between himself and the approaching men. He listens as the men call the Professor a necromancer, and looks aghast down at the coffin. Could he be? But aren't necromancers evil? He was so kind to us... Somewhere inside he feels a familiar sensation, like someone snorting with derision inside his head. He notices that the man called Velkan is sidling away from the mob as well, and he gives him an awkward smile of recognition. Nik is shouting at the mob, telling them to leave the mourners in peace. Suddenly the man with all the holy symbols was shouting back at the mob. "Tell me, are you daft, or just plain simple?" -- "Shut your holes! You are obviously both!" A vicious bark of laughter erupts from Clarence's throat, and for a moment his eyes gleam with dark humor. That visage vanishes as quickly as it came, and Clarence claps his hands over his mouth, eyes bulging wide. He shrinks backwards, pulling out a handkerchief and dabbing at the sweat on his forehead.

[Mal Radagast]

Hearing the condemnations of Nikol speaking of divine ire as the crow, a creature everyone knows is favored of Pharasma, lights on Bishop’s shoulders in the midst of the boneyard, the mob takes a collective step back. It’s easy to read the frustration, confusion and fear on their faces…mostly older faces, looks like a bunch of middle-aged farmers who maybe did have one too many pints down the pub and found a bad idea at the bottom of the bottle. Looks like the typical array of backhoes and pitchforks, one young man with a square on the end, not pointed like a spade – useless for digging, but quite good at scooping coal into a furnace or manure into a wheelbarrowcoal shovel.

Of course, they wouldn’t be a proper mob without a bit of stubborn momentum, and so their de facto leader speaks up again. But he sounds a lot less sure of himself this time. "E-everyone knows as necromancers in the graveyard brings deadmen back up!" There follows an assorted collection of nods and that’s-rights from behind him, trying to work up a good lather again since they lost their footing.

In the midst of this rabble rousing, Kendra cracks her knuckles and shakes them out by her sides – the bone-crickling sound itself snaps louder than it should be in this space. A few crows take off out of the nearest tree, the one on Bishop’s shoulder flaps and shuffles his feet, and the mob takes a moment to consider its position. She takes another drag of her smoke and then crushes it underheel. "If you think a dead necromancer is your problem, you oughta have another think." She winks, and the man up front melts back into the crowd...his face now a contorted motley of rage and horror.

There’s a moment of silence in the graveyard. Nik and Bishop standing at either side of Kendra, the mob uncertain, Velkan and Adivion off to one side rolling their eyes…Clarence has to clamp both hands over his mouth to keep another raucous bark of laughter from escaping at the sight of this morning landscape.

And directly into that moment strides a greybeard, grey-cassocked dwarf, bellowing, “Kendra Lorrimor, if yew start a fist foight in moy Yard I swear by Pharasma’s frigid left tit I shall paddle the lot of ye!” He pauses. “Wit that man’s shovel.” He points to the shovel and the crowd parts, stumbling over itself to disperse and look as un-mob-like as it can. The poor young man is left staring like a deer and questioning his life choices.

He drops the shovel.


.

 

Welp, Kendra was all too happy to jump in on that Intimidation check with you - honestly she's got a lot of feels lately and wouldn't mind knocking some fool's lights out if he tries anything. She's surely not in a mood to put up with any of that nonsense here and now of all places.

But as it turns out, all that ruckus also drew the attention of the local cleric. (Which, incidentally I was going for a Westcountry sort of accent - like Hagrid, or Sam Gamgee - what do you think?) Which appears to have put an end to that. The mob is shuffling off, muttering and stomping but at least in an away sort of direction.

Now what?

[Humble Athena]

There was a glimmer of a satisfied smirk on Nikol's face as the men dispersed, but it quickly faded. He gave a cautious nod to the dwarf but as the fellow had addressed Kendra, he did not feel the need to put himself into that conversation. The words had been harsh, but the meaning was made with reason. Instead, he knelt and picked up the shovel, holding it back to its owner crosswise. "A man should always take care of his tools, and use them for their proper purpose." he advised the menace in his voice dialed back almost entirely. "Let's go back to our business and not harass any more grieving daughters, shall we?"

[tomplum]

Velkan Lupescu Now that things had quieted down with the mob, Velkan felt a bit more at ease to ask the question which had been plaguing him since he had heard about the good professor's untimely death, so he steered his query toward his old friend's daughter. "Well, now that that lunacy has been put to rest. Milady Kendra, the details of your father's death struck me as rather suspicious when I first heard them. For someone such as himself who saw the good people could do in life and the hope he had in positive thought, to go out in such a 'random' way seems ill-fitting to me and more in line with my view point that...well, that we're all just swimming against the current at the edge of a waterfall. Would you be so kind as to share the particulars of his passing?"

[Greaven]

Bishop smirked as the dwarf scattered the crowd as his eyes slowly roll up to the bird on his shoulder. It was a priceless moment, and although simple decency hadn't won out the day, it was still good that the mob wasn't going to be an issue if only for the moment. His curious gaze drifted to Kendra, his head canting slightly, "A brawl would have done some of us good, shame it was wasted. But, all's well it didn't muck up the funeral, one supposes. Didn't much fancy having to dump a bunch of beaten folk outside of town and dousing them in ale. Would have been a lot of work to save their dignity." He gave a broad grin as he chuckled.

Snorting lightly, he patted of some of the dirt from his jacket, reclaiming his shovel as he sighed. "Knowledge, knowledge everywhere, but the daft know not where to look. It's amazing that they would have the gall to interrupt something so sacred. I can only hope they aren't all that dumb, and someone put them up to it." Turning on heel, Bishop regards the others gathered, looking them all over, once more, somewhat curious. The seemed... a varied bunch, at least. His musings turned to the grave as he couldn't help but grin, "Wonder if the old man would have laughed at this. A lovely community, coming together for the lynching of a corpse. They must simply have the funnest festivals." His eyes rolled in exaggerated fashion as he slung the shovel up on his shoulder and chortled as he shook his head.

[HughtheHand]

Clarence Torry Clarence slowly removes his hands from over his mouth, and watches anxiously as the mob seems to be backing down from the confrontation. The others seem to be moving on, talking to each other and to Lady Kendra. Clarence keeps a wary eye on the mob, hoping that they will just go away and mind their own business, but keeps his ears on the conversation between Velkan and Kendra, hoping to learn more about how Prof. Lorrimor met his fate.