CaraVela’s Preparations for MissionsCaraVela hastens to a seedier part of town, 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 town – all too often have need of healing but would be loath to explain where they received their wounds to official healers. CaraVela tries to get to that part of town 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 minor Spell they may need, and sometimes even a repair or replacement of the delicate tools they use… professionally, of course.
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 town’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 the official healers, 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 anyone in a 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 far less than the going rate of gold for healing, net her a barter of professional quality disguise kits and other useful small masterwork tools packed into the carpet bag (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 region – she makes sure they are not all local to the town – an assortment totaling the remaining gold piece value, 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.
Soon, CaraVela is on her way to her bungalow on the outskirts of town. Buying from the experts who have already assembled the materials is 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 disguises for longer term use – but she picks those up at home quickly and in under an hour is on her way to wherever adventure next leads her.
In that hour, she chooses a nondescript disguise to be the kind of person who passes unnoticed in a town. 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 a dash of Magic (but no Illusion), professional disguise materials, and the flair for such things that she has recently acquired, CaraVela transforms her appearance, tracking the changes carefully in the full length mirror she has learned to keep for such occasions when she needs to practice an appearance, a walk, a way to hold herself.
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 and techniques she used to create this appearance so she can slip into it easily and accurately, in mannerism as well as visually.
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, turning Invisible to avoid being seen leaving her bungalow. The door itself is nearly a hidden spot, by a small thicket of landscaping with a good view of the surrounding area from inside. When the immediate area is clear, she turns visible again, steps from the thicket, and hastens away.
Adjustments to equipment, for this trip:
Disguise Kit, several of them as the DM might allow, plus some leftover GP in small change
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 spends uses of Skill buffs on the Disguise checks, ordinarily rolled secretly but with Skillful Moment applied during the finishing touches so the result is fixed.
