CaraVela’s Preparations for Singorn’s MissionDeparting quickly from the palace solarium, CaraVela hastens to a seedier part of the royal city, where she has made more-or-less-trusted contacts over the years with traders and freighter captains of a certain reputation for those times when she has needed exotic materials for her crafting. As in the past, there is always quick coin or barter to be made, in exchange for services with no questions asked, a convenience for CaraVela since keeping coin holds little interest for her personally but is a necessity at times.
In their profession, her contacts – or their associates in the city – all too often have need of healing but would be loath to explain where they received their wounds to Singorn’s priesthood. CaraVela tries to get to that part of the city to stock up on something at least every few months to maintain her contacts, and has a niche market established for her particular services of healing, as well as the occasional Spell they may need, and sometimes even a repair or replacement of the delicate tools they use… professionally, of course. Recently as her own skills have grown in the same areas shared by these professionals, CaraVela has even found herself to have more empathy for their world-view than she did before when it was a straightforward trade relationship of convenience.
This time, CaraVela’s needs are a bit different, to their surprise, but still right up their alley… literally.
Besides some coin, she asks for part of her bargain in materials they often have on hand, and quickly puts together kits for disguise from some of… well, from some of the city’s best thieves and con artists. They, of course, do not ask her why, but most seem pleased she is asking, offer professional tips about the materials’ use, and several even have a congratulatory air or give her a wink quite different from the leering wink she often gets… perhaps she is finally becoming one of them. Acceptance from another group! CaraVela is pleased too, to begin to be treated more like an insider.
For her part of the deal, CaraVela can give them bargain prices compared to 50GP per Healing Potion, as well as discretion they can trust – as they have come to know – and she leaves within the hour, with several well-stocked disguise kits well packed into a suitably nondescript carpet bag.
She has stocked up on the tools and materials of disguise, and more than a little expert guidance to augment the knowledge she has accumulated through years of experience in hiding in society, with enough quantity of materials to help everyone in the party who would like her aid.
In return, news of her presence spreads quickly, and injured professionals line up quickly, or are carried in by their associates, as CaraVela heals and saves them from weeks or months of recovery – if ever – from an assortment of knife, dagger, and sword wounds, minor and major maimings, and in one case, severe blood loss and likely death from an on-the-job injury earlier in the day. A dozen or more quick cases, at bargain rates between 10 and 50 gold pieces but most at the lower end, net her a barter value in the range of 350GP, which she takes in trade for the equivalent contents of four professional quality disguise kits packed into the carpet bag and worth about 50GP each in supplies (though her contacts may not actually have paid for those materials, but barter is barter) and not overweight for the bag, and a few small ladies’ purses of mostly small common coins from all over the coast – she makes sure they are not all local to the capital – an assortment totaling the remaining 150GP, for travelling money in case of necessities. Oddly, or perhaps it was no surprise, these associates happened to have quite a collection of empty ladies’ purses, in quite serviceable conditions.
In not much more than an hour since the meeting with Singorn broke, CaraVela is on her way to her bungalow on the outskirts of the Royal Observatory. Buying from the experts who have already assembled the materials was much faster than going to the market! There are still a few odds and ends she wants to add – a little more of a selection of materials, lace trim, buttons, and clasps to sew, and other small personal items to complete a disguise for longer term use – but she can pick those up in the market quickly and inexpensively in a few minutes on the way to the palace.
Once inside, she begins the disguise. She washes dark color into her hair and puts it up in a bun, hiding its unruliness. She packs some of her own personal effects into her own internal storage, hidden but handy in case she needs them later.
Then with a combination of Magic (but no Illusion), professional disguise materials, and the flair for such things that she has recently acquired along with the other skills that keep surprising her, CaraVela transforms her appearance, watching herself carefully in the full length mirror she has learned to keep for such occasions when she needs to practice an appearance.
She spends a few of her precious minutes first adjusting the appearance of her colors and fabrics, and then practicing appearing to walk in the long divided skirts while actually hovering, till she has the weight, sway, and length of the skirt and the height of the float just right, making sure to show an occasional flash of boot to keep the appearance of steps convincing – inevitably blue, as her boots always are now. This is not the first time she has wanted to appear to be walking while hovering in a humanoid form with legs covered in skirts, and it comes easily. There will be no footprints, but that is unavoidable, and just as well for some purposes anyway.
CaraVela adjusts the cut of the blouse equally carefully to cover her well, reveal little, and keep her free for action in the ways she especially needs – loose sleeves, loose neckline, but entirely modest.
Once she is satisfied, she carefully memorizes the details of the appearance so she can slip into it easily and accurately.
The
Disguise procedure takes no more than half an hour; CaraVela packs a few other personal effects in the carpet bag to go with the disguise she has created, and then she is on her way back to the palace.
To avoid being seen leaving her bungalow, CaraVela turns Invisible and peeks through the curtains to wait till no one is near a hidden spot she has arranged outside in sight of the window for other times she has wanted to come or go unobserved. Then she Teleports inside a small thicket of landscaping on the grounds of the Observatory a little less than 50 feet from her door with a good view of the surrounding area. When the immediate area is clear, she turns visible again, steps from the thicket, and hastens back to the palace via the drygoods shops in the market, arriving in less than two hours overall – apparently just after Johnathan and Celia returned, who seemed to be the first ones back; or perhaps Johnathan and Celia simply waited till Singorn was ready for them with the portal …or perhaps it took CaraVela even less Time and she got back almost before she left? CaraVela has noticed odd things happening with Time lately, especially when she is in a hurry to respond to something, but hasn’t pinned down anything specific yet; it just seems that Time is on her side, sometimes.
The palace guards may not recognize CaraVela in disguise as an invited member of the party, and she does not tell them. But most or all nevertheless seem quite charmed with her once they notice her, and turn a blind eye toward the thin, mousy-looking woman of indeterminate blood, probably Elven at least in part, who presents herself while nervously clutching a well-worn travel satchel in the style of a carpet bag with a broad shoulder strap that passes over shoulders a tad too bulky for her proportions – she even holds the flap open for inspection, a glimpse inside, where they can see packets of neatly folded, quality cloth on top, as if from a tailoring shop, and no room for serious weapons. For all her timidity, she nevertheless radiates the surety of a servant on a mission for the master, and scurries directly to the solarium as the guards help in the way guards do for servants in a hurry – when they are so inclined – by letting the servant pass without delay for obviously unnecessary questions.
Her long divided skirts in a nondescript brown tweed nearly brush the floor, only showing an occasional hint of blue boot as they sway. A blue kerchief covers the bun in her dark hair, and a plain beige blouse covers her arms to the wrist. Loose-sleeved and loose at the neck but definitely not revealing, its prim cut is ringed with an unembellished border at neck and cuff. Her only jewelry visible is a charm bracelet just peeking out of a sleeve.
Adjustments to equipment, for this trip:
Disguise Kit, 50GP x 4
150 GP in small change, minus 5GP spent in the market on additional drygoods and small personal items to enhance the kits
Other mechanics:
Before choosing the carpet bag, purses and coins, and the materials in the Disguise Kits, CaraVela tests them to make sure they are non-Magical and simply chooses others if they are. Probably nothing is, but in the unlikely event something registers she will warn her
accomplicesassociates. She doesn't want Magically tagged goods.
To get the disguise as perfect as possible before memorizing it, CaraVela enters Distorted Clock Stance to double the duration of her buffs, spends uses of several Skill buffs on the Disguise check, ordinarily rolled secretly; but with Skillful Moment applied during the finishing touches, the result is fixed: +31 +5 Insight(Future Sight), Take 20 via Skillful Moment = 56.
CaraVela’s observation about “odd things happening with Time” is more fluff than mechanics at this point, though Clockwatcher Stance, her usual, seems to make the world slow down a bit, in her personal perception, and Distorted Clock even moreso – she feels she can simply get more done in less Time than before, which has some truth to it. Maybe more than she knows.