[ Four years ago, on the night when Adrian was almost driven from Lupu, the world lost three hours of sunlight. Dawn came late the next morning, and dusk early the in the afternoon that followed it. The winter was harsher for it, the things of the night bolder.
There had been burnings before, of course. But now, now the smell of blood and charred flesh is on the air at all times. Hard, dark times need scapegoats and fearful people find them in their hundreds. An inventor is one of them - a religious man, who only wished to use his machine for duplicating texts to allow even the poorest man to find comfort in a copy of the Bible. His work burns with him and his secrets are lost to all normal means.
The Silk Merchant does not employ normal means. All attempts to track down anything of the late inventor's work lead to him and the caravan he travels with (the speakers warn against seeking him out, but there are fewer of them these days). His wagon is an extravagant one, pulled by a unicorn of all things, with silkmoths flitting in and out of it. There are in fact a few bolts of silk at the stall he keeps, but none of his customers seem to walk away with any of it regardless of how much money changes hands. ]
A way to copy books? Oh, I think for such esteemed company- [ His smile grows a little. There are few pleasures in life that he enjoys more than having something that someone else needs. There is something delightful about having that sort of power - petty power though it may be - over a representative of Dracula himself. -I may just have something like that. ] -I may have something a little like that.
[ He takes what looks like a leaf of paper - a thick one, oddly patterned - and lets a quill hover over it. ] Your patron - just how much does he want these secrets?
AU of an AU
There had been burnings before, of course. But now, now the smell of blood and charred flesh is on the air at all times. Hard, dark times need scapegoats and fearful people find them in their hundreds. An inventor is one of them - a religious man, who only wished to use his machine for duplicating texts to allow even the poorest man to find comfort in a copy of the Bible. His work burns with him and his secrets are lost to all normal means.
The Silk Merchant does not employ normal means. All attempts to track down anything of the late inventor's work lead to him and the caravan he travels with (the speakers warn against seeking him out, but there are fewer of them these days). His wagon is an extravagant one, pulled by a unicorn of all things, with silkmoths flitting in and out of it. There are in fact a few bolts of silk at the stall he keeps, but none of his customers seem to walk away with any of it regardless of how much money changes hands. ]
A way to copy books? Oh, I think for such esteemed company- [ His smile grows a little. There are few pleasures in life that he enjoys more than having something that someone else needs. There is something delightful about having that sort of power - petty power though it may be - over a representative of Dracula himself. -I may just have something like that. ] -I may have something a little like that.
[ He takes what looks like a leaf of paper - a thick one, oddly patterned - and lets a quill hover over it. ] Your patron - just how much does he want these secrets?