Since his return to Rephidim, Lochinvar Arques has been engaged in routine work on the outskirts of the city – patrolling the estates of farmers and nobles, looking for trouble. Typically, trouble comes in mundane forms, like Farmer Tallgrass's Dromodon breaking the fence and trampling Lady von Sedgewick's gardens, or poachers trying to capture an exotic Jilisie bird roaming in a rich Eeee merchant's preserve. On this day, however, Lochinvar has been told to report to his commander for a new assignment.

Lieutenant do Nell has only recently been appointed to his current position, having just graduated from the Academy. He is zealous in his devotion to the Temple, attending each of their nightly services – a distinction shared by few, even among the priests themselves. Some of Lochinvar's fellows grouse that do Nell spends too much time contemplating spiritual matters and not enough contemplating Ranger matters, but the Doberman does seem to spend at least as much time at his job as his retired predecessor.

When the winged Hekoye enters his office, the lieutenant sits behind his desk, scratching away with quill against parchment. He holds up one hand, palm out, acknowledging the other's presence and forestalling any commentary just yet.

Lochinvar steps a little further inside the office to just in front of the desk, waiting there for further acknowledgement.

The ranking Gallee finishes with his writing, signing the parchment with a flourish and dropping his quill into the inkpot. He applies a blotter over the document while he looks to his visitor. His lip curls up slightly at one corner as he recognizes the other. "Ah, Ranger Arques," he acknowledges. "I have an assignment for you."

The Hekoye/Vartan nods once, and quirks an ear ever so slightly in curiosity. He remains silent for the moment, waiting to hear of the assignment.

The Doberman coughs, pulling out a slate and eyeing it for a moment. "Ah, yes. You have, perhaps, heard some of the recent rumors about, ah, monsters in the sewers?"

Lochinvar shrugs a little. "I've heard a little, not too much," he offers. "Just overheard conversations and speculations. Though, I've not heard of any substantial evidence of 'monsters'"

"Yes, well." He coughs. "Be that as it may, the Inquisition has asked that the Rangers investigate the matter, citing that 'wild animals' are our provenance. Accordingly, you will do so." Do Nell rifles through a few pieces of paper, and produces a scrap with several lines written upon it, which he extends to the Ranger. "Three of the incidents have been by what the Inquisition regards as 'reputable' sources, though none of them involved loss of limb, much less life. These are the approximate locations of the incidents. You may find it a bit tricky to get to them, as they are, naturally, located in the sewers themselves."

The ranger takes the offered paper and looks through it briefly.

The paper offers short directions – involving going to a certain address, entering the sewers through, in two cases, a manhole, and in one, through an open man-sized pipe beneath a bridge, then following a few twists and turns to the precise underground spot. One of the locations given would be in Darkside, while another is beneath Freedom Park and the last in the Bazaar.

It also offers a brief description of each incident. In the Darkside incident, a lone individual witnessed something "bubbling" beneath the surface, then heard a loud roaring noise and fled. At the Bazaar, a different witness attested that a monstrous tentacle reached out of the sewage, grabbed his pack full of possessions, and dragged them beneath the surface. When the witness attempted to retrieve it, he was beaten back and fled. The last incident had two witnesses, who attest to the same kind of "bubbling" sound as the first. They lost a bow and a shoe to the monster when one of them attempted to investigate.

Lochinvar grimaces slightly at the paper, as entering the sewer system has never been high on his "to-do" list. "What was the order of these incidents? Which location was first reported?"

"They're not dated?" He scowls, extending a hand for the scrap, then frowns further at it. The Doberman pulls out a drawer from his desk, and rifles through a few files. "Well, the Inquisition sent down the request. I'm sure Inquisitrix Faith would know more, if you wish to ask her."

"It may be useful to know," replies Lochinvar. "Of course, it may also not matter. It could be difficult to track down much evidence in the sewer system, due to the nature of it."

Lieutenant do Nell smirks briefly, then sobers. "Yes, yes, I'm sure. Still, do the best you can with it. If you've any other questions, see the Inquisition. You are dismissed."

Lochinvar nods. "Of course, sir," he says and turns to leave the office.

The so-called monster appeared in this part of the sewers, near Freedom Park, and the winged Hekoye has made his way down here with no trouble save for the overpoweringly unpleasant stench. At least the manhole is located almost directly above the spot described, so he didn't have to go far to reach it. The tunnel here is broad and relatively open, with a maintenance path to one side. A dented pipe pulled out from the wall marks where one of the two purportedly wrestled with the "monster."

Lochinvar has tried the "muffle" the stench a little by tying a handkerchief around his nose, but it's not helped that much. At least he's glad he didn't eat just before coming down here. He stands on the maintenance path, looking around a little at the area of the supposed incident.

There are some old track-marks in the coat of dirt on the ground before the spot, suggesting that someone was sliding on the maintenance path, between the bent pipe against the wall, and the raw sewage opposite it. One foot appears to have been braced against the ground, while the other, from the marks, would have been straight out, probably already over the sewage when the slide began.

The winged Hekoye kneels down a little to inspect the marks a little closer, hrming to himself. He also tries probing the "water" a little with the spear he brought with him.

As he inspects the area more closely, he finds traces of a few green scales clinging to the ledge, half-covered by the slime that's accumulated around it. Nothing happens when he prods the sewer liquid, though he also notes that the tip of his spear doesn't hit the bottom of the channel when he does so.

"Deep," he comments to himself. Deeper than I was expecting, he muses to himself as an afterthought. Picking the spear out of the goop, he then looks to pay more attention to the scales, trying to lift one out with a finger.

The scales are small and flaky, like shed skin from a snake, each individual scale less than half the size of Lochinvar's finger tips. He manages to pull a couple out of the grime intact, though dirty.

Lochinvar looks at the scales, considering a way to store them and take them back for the Inquisition to look at. In the end, he determines the best way is to wrap them in a handkerchief and put it in one of the pouches on his belt. However, the only handkerchief he has is the one muffling his nose. Taking it off to use it, he wrinkles his nose up at the stench.

Distant pumps make the sewage flowing sluggishly beside him churn a little while he packs the remnants up, and the stench, remarkably, manages to be even worse without the handkerchief covering his nose.

The ranger places the handkerchief into a belt-pouch, and continues to look around for anything else of note, to give a hint as to where whatever left these scales went.

The area around the maintenance path is scuffled by footprints suggesting humanoids, and careful examination of the area produces a few short pieces of loose fur. No further evidence can be found of any kind of scaled beast moving along the maintenance path.

Lochinvar sighs a little and stands up – at least, as "up" as he can in these tunnels. There doesn't seem to be much else to find down here.

A chunk of something Lochinvar would rather not try to identify bumps along the channel, sending a small slosh of liquid onto the path, but nothing else seems to be happening.

The winged coyote makes his way back to the manhole, to head to the next location.

The Hekoye, judging the time at mid-afternoon, decides to try to reach the Darkside site before it gets any later. He makes his way to it, and finds the experience even more unpleasant than the last. As he climbs down the manhole into the sewer, he soon finds himself ankle-deep in sludge, with no maintenance path visible.

Lochinvar looks down at his feet in the muck, and sighs. This is going to take ages to clean off, he realizes. Taking the spear, he uses it to probe at the filthy water in front of him, just in case there are any deep areas like before.

The spear plunges into the unresisting water, and as Lochinvar continues to drop it, probing for the bottom, he realizes that he must be on a maintenance ledge – if a submerged one. The sewer's channel runs deep, though at last the spear point does touch stone, after sinking over half its length into the sludge.

The winged coyote tries to keep himself to the submerged ledge as he slowly makes his way forward.

It's rough going through the slick, watery flotsam, and more than once Lochinvar nearly loses his footing. Eventually he finds himself at what he guesses would be the right location, based on his directions, but unlike the Freedom Park scene, no tell-tale clues appear in evidence. The flowing sewage has swept everything away.

Lochinvar looks around though anyway, hoping at least to find something, having come all this way through all this filth.

A closer study of the walls reveals nothing more of apparent significance. Everything down here seems to have been rotting or decaying for a long time – nothing strikes his tracker's eye as recent.

Finally, the ranger tries experimenting around with the spear, just to see how deep the channel might be here.

The flow must be much deeper here than even at the entrance, as even holding onto the end of the spear and probing with its full length, he cannot touch the bottom with it. The winged Hekoye abruptly realizes that were it not for the swamped path, he would have to be swimming to get down here.

That thought really does make Lochinvar thankful for the path, even though it is submerged. Still, it seems like there's nothing of interest here either, which just leaves one site left.

The winged Hekoye finds early evening upon him by the time he finally clambers, dripping and stinking, out of the sewers. His present condition makes him feel almost at home in Darkside, but he's certainly in no hurry to linger here. Still, by the time he gets through the Bazaar area and spends some time investigating the designated locale, the sun will definitely be setting.

Lochinvar makes his way towards the Bazaar area, but not too quickly, even though he doesn't want to hang around Darkside. If he gets to there close to sunset, there should be less people around that might get put off by his … current state.

Through judicious use of dawdling, the demi-Vartan finds himself strolling through the Bazaar at dusk. He sticks to the backways and away from the clumps of people, andmanages to go mostly ignored, though he does notice a lot of people covering their noses and looking around with disgusted looks as he – and his scent – waft by.

Looking around, Lochinvar tries to figure out where the entry way to the next part of the sewer system is.

This one is easy to spot – it's an open tunnel that a road passes over, the open mouth spilling drained water out into a channel. As he flies down to enter the shaft, he wonders briefly if this is just for drainage, and not a part of the sewers proper at all, as the water here seems relatively clean.

Deciding not to dwell on that, and preferring to get this over with so he can go and bathe soon, Lochinvar climbs into the pipe and starts walking down it to where the final incident happened.

Some twists and turns later, he finds the tunnel deepening severely, and the hum of the sewer machinery seems louder here than it had at the other sites, though the water still smells pretty clean, and there's a nicely-divided path for him to walk on above it. He comes upon a missing flagstone, about where the scuffle purportedly took place – perhaps knocked loose during the incident.

At least there's a ledge this time, Lochinvar thinks to himself as he makes his way along it, and pauses to look at the missing stone. He kneels down to see if anything was left, like at the first site.

As with the first site, signs of a disturbance are apparent, but the evidence is much older. A few stray pieces of fur might be from whomever came upon the "monster," and there are marks in the dust suggesting a passerby who kicked up a fuss here, including the place where the pack was dragged from the ledge. But these signs are fading with time – it's been most of a holiday at least since this happened, judging by the renewed buildup of grime, and a less-experienced eye than Lochinvar's would not be able to tell this at all. The flagstone that was pulled from the path isn't anywhere along it – presumably it fell into the water during the fight.

Though the water here doesn't have the foul scent that the other sewers held, in the darkness it reflects back the glow of Lochinvar's lantern with a mirror-like finish, making it no easier to see through than the filthy muck had been.

Lochinvar tries poking the water with his spear, trying to see if he can find the flagstone beneath the surface.

It takes him a few minutes, but eventually the tip of the spear butts up against something solid but loose on the floor of the channel. As with the other spots, the channel is surprisingly deep here, forcing him to crouch and extend his arm full length to hit bottom.

Lying down on the ledge on his front, the ranger puts his arm into the water to try and determine whether this is the missing stone or not.

The Hekoye needs to duck head, neck, and part of his torso beneath the surface in order to extend his reach to the loose flagstone below, but he eventually manages to snag it and drag it, dripping, back to the surface. The cool water through his fur feels almost pleasant after slogging through muck earlier. The recovered stone fits neatly back into the empty space along the walkway.

A few moments' of careful examination reveals another scraping of scales, caught in a crack of the stone.

The ranger smiles inwardly a bit. At least this is evidence of a common factor between at least two of the sites, maybe all if he'd found anything in Darkside. He picks out a couple of the scales and puts them with the others in the handkerchief, folding it in such a way to keep the scales from the two sites separate.

Though the light here is really too dim to tell, the scales don't look the same to him – the new ones seem larger and a different color, but maybe that's just because they're older. There doesn't seem to be anything else unusual or interesting about the flagstone.

Lochinvar puts the handkerchief back into his belt-pouch, figuring that he can always compare the two samples of scales later under better light. Prior to putting the flagstone back, he checks the space where it fits, just in case he missed anything there.

After prodding at the dark space where the stone used to rest for a few moments, his fingers feel a small flat disk in the indentation.

The Vartan/Hekoye mmms? and feels around the disk, trying to free it and pull it up.

After a little tugging, he drags it out. Using his still damp fingers, he's able to clean it off easily enough, and peering at it by the lantern light, he identifies it with a start: it's the face of a compass.

Lochinvar tries to clean the rest of it off. Perhaps there's a marking as to who it might belong to.

Unfortunately, the only markings on it appear to be the four directions, and tick points to mark degrees between them. The needle and the base are both missing from the device.

Strange, Lochinvar thinks to himself, and does a quick search around to see if he can find the rest of the compass here.

A search of the immediate area doesn't turn up the rest of the compass, but he does find a drafting stylus wedged into one of the cracks between the ledge and the wall. The stylus has initials engraved on it: EGV.

Perhaps one of the victims? the winged coyote supposes, and puts it into another belt pouch. He looks around this area to see if there's anything further, since he's on a bit of a roll for finding things at the moment.

Unfortunately, that seems to be it for out-of-the-ordinary things. The only other items he finds are dirt, rocks, and water.

Lochinvar finishes his looking around, sighing a little. No sign of where it came from, or where it went. Maybe the Inquisition can make sense of what I did find, he thinks to himself, gathering up his spear to head back out.