Getting Woken Up By The Cops Is Not Fun

You'd think that after a chaotic morning, I might get a break. I was just hoping it would last a bit longer than an afternoon.

Pretty much as soon as I finished writing my last entry, Kovach left to go get in touch with Mr. Simon, and I got to take off to the Vermissian. I found an entrance to the vault pretty easily, but it was in one of the pipe systems they used to use to contain water run off before they realized that trying to merge the subway with an Eldritch horror was a bad idea. And even though I knew the geometry would be fucky going in, I still managed to fall on my face. And worse, I messed up the cozy little reading nook that was in there. The splash from my fall ended up kicking up a lot of water. Thankfully, the books were alright, but the chair is fucked. And whoever visits next is going to know it was me because I signed the visitor log. Hopefully the pile of notes I left is enough to save some face.

I think I got kind of lucky. I definitely found one of the smaller vaults, but it still had a guide to Aelfir religious etiquette that were pretty useful. Definitely out of date and hard to decipher though all the weird allegory, but whatever. Turns out the pendant we found was a symbol of this thing called the Autumn Banquet. It has something to do with the worship of Brother Autumn. He's supposed to be the deity of death and closure. The Aelfir belief is that if something is coming to an end, it probably has to do with him. Or it used to be. It's been out of fashion for the last century to openly worship him.

That book didn't go too much detail, but that's what the vault is for. It took some scrounging, but I found a book from around when the Aelfir originally took over about ritual mutilation as worship of Brother Autumn. It…was not a fun read. It went into way more detail than I needed. Most of it was on ritual amputation, but there was some stuff about scarification that I had to skip. The more I looked at those passages, the more it felt like Leaves was carving into my skin all over again.

At least it had some relevant information. The author went on a tangent about some new (at the time of publishing), fringe methods of worship that they thought were noteworthy, stuff that had to do with removing concepts themselves from existence. And one of the groups they mentioned was the Autumn Banquet. The Autumn Banquet wasn't content to see the Drow languish in misery and squalor. So they'd fund whatever well-intentioned Drow efforts to rebuild that looked like they were going to fail, just so the resulting failure was more spectacular.

What a bunch of fucking scumbags. The Drow noble houses were forced to sign away the city. To go in and fund our efforts to rebuild, just so they can praise their gods when they fail spectacularly…makes me angry just writing about it. But shit like this is why I joined the Ministry. I'm sick of playing nice with them and staying out of the way. Their fucking laws let someone rent me for four years and cover me with scars.

Shit. I don't want to think about this anymore. It's like I can feel his scalpel running down my arms all over again.

I left a stack of notes on what I'd found under the research log. It doesn't fix the chair, but at least it's something. Besides, I think the chair is less important than the information. I hope someone comes to fix it eventually. That place was cozy. And then I fucked it up.

Anyways. I went back to the…whatever the fuck that bar/tea shop Kovach likes is called. The one Gunther works at. It's been a long day and the name is completely escaping me. Kovach got there a little bit later and I filled him in on the whole Autumn Banquet thing. He let me know he'd sent word to Mr. Simon about the whole Garris thing, and we agreed to meet up at the Benevolent Order of Wisdom and Discovery in the morning. I still have no idea if Garris being dead counts as resolving the matter.

And after this morning, I'm not optimistic. I woke up way earlier than I would have liked because people were yelling outside. Didn't recognize most of the voices, but one of them was Maji Dobbs. So I poked my head outside and got the pleasure of meeting Garris's replacement. Now-Captain Hemlock is going on a bit of a power trip, I think. Trying to make a name for himself by cracking down on petty crime. Which apparently translates into kicking my next door neighbor's door down at 7:30am. (According to Maj. Dobbs, Greeves was kind of a piece of shit, so maybe he had it coming.)

You can bet that the moment I see five guards standing in the hallway to my building, I got nervous. I remembered to bury my vape in my dirty laundry last night so it wouldn't be obvious at a glance, but that wouldn't help much if they tossed the place. And my heart fucking sank when one of them walked out of Greeves's place with a bag of shrooms.

This feels targeted. This isn't a rowdy part of town, but it's not exactly sober either. There's me, Greeves apparently does shrooms, and half the building does Malak. Including Maj. Dobbs. But it's not like any of us are here to cause trouble. I don't know where other people get their fix, but at least Red's just trying to make a living. And we barely ever have guards out here. I've seen them exactly once since I moved in. Until this morning.

I had to do something to get Hemlock to fuck off. If he was to go into my place, the ivory alone could get me locked up. It's not like I leave ministry stuff lying around, but our Hidden Mistress only knows what a scummy guard with sufficient motivation could put together. So…I brought up Leaves. Of course Hemlock didn't know who I was talking about. So I had to explain to him as monosyllabicaly as possible that there's a very well connected Aelfir who might have some opinions on his pet getting dragged away. Thankfully, a couple of the guards knew of Leaves and one said that I probably wasn't worth the trouble. And Hemlock agreed as bitterly as possible.

They fucked off after that, and I got to have an awkward exchange with Maj. Dobbs. She definitely seemed thankful that the guards left us alone, but I can tell she knows that something's up with me. And I think she knows it's more than just the drugs. I'm really hoping I don't have to find a new apartment soon. If all else fails, maybe I can hole up with Aster for a while. And if that fails, Leaves.

I'm not super thrilled that I had to bring Leaves into this mess. I hope it doesn't get back to him. Worst case, I can tell him that I was using and that I needed a way to get the Guard off my back. Doesn't imply I've been involved with the Ministry, and it's not like Leaves couldn't reasonably know I've been getting high in my free time. He's the one who supplied me for nearly four years. I just don't actually know if Leaves would try and get me out if I was arrested. He was definitely worried when I ran off, but I think that was more about him than about me.

Okay, fine. It was definitely more about him. But I don't think he'd want to see over four years of his art go to waste.

I feel kinda bad for one of the guards. The other one who seemed to know who Leaves is. Kid couldn't have been older than seventeen and looked like a fish out of water. He looked so fucking naive. He's got to be on his Durance, and he seemed new to the job to boot. Didn't seem like he even knew why they were shaking down apartments in a relatively quiet part of town. I wonder why they even sent him. Didn't look like he was actually helping the others out that much. But I guess that's good for me.

The whole mess made me late to meet Kovach. To be fair, that's kind of on me. I wasn't confident that Hemlock wasn't going to send some people back to my apartment after I left, so I grabbed my ivory and hid it in a box I made out of one of those trashy romance novels I bought a while back. Took the box to the vault and tucked it at the bottom of a two foot tall stack of books. I don't think there's any way the guard is going to find it. Going to the Vermissian isn't easy for the uninitiated — they usually don't do well with the whole non-euclidian geometry part. And it's not like I can't buy more if one of the other Sages decides to take it for themselves.

I got some time to think on the walk over to the Benevolent Order. The image of that one guard walking out with the bag of shrooms kept coming back into my brain. I guess it's fortunate for everyone that Greeves wasn't there. I'd hate to be the one to find out what they would have done to him. And I realized that means sucking up to them in some way. Making myself look like a law abiding, upstanding citizen and not just an Aelfir kiss-ass. If I can find out anything about those people who moved into Red's territory, I might be able to kill two birds with one stone. But honestly, I'll take just about anything to deflect suspicion from me.

At least Kovach didn't seem to mind that I was late. Didn't sound like his neighborhood is getting shaken down, but maybe it's just a matter of time. Damn, I really see what Mr. Simon meant when he was hinting that the ministry would rather have Garris alive. They're clearly not paying Hemlock enough to keep his nose out of places it doesn't belong.

Anyways. Kovach and I went to one of the offices at the Benevolent Order, and the clerk pointed us towards the professor for the course we found the syllabus for. Theoretical Prayer 102. The professor seemed like a piece of work. She was meeting with a student when we got there and pointed them towards a night class if they were thinking of trying to advance to the 201 level course. Kovach and I waited for her to wrap up, and just about all she would tell us was that Garris sat in on one of her classes a few weeks back. Apparently she was lecturing on the overlap of Aelfir and Drow prayers, which sounded kind of interesting until she kept talking.

She asked Kovach and I which was more difficult, Divine or Occult prayer. I said that from everything I'd gathered, they seemed difficult in different ways (and that's mostly true. I still think occult shit is harder because the odds of shit blowing up in your face go up dramatically, but I wanted to be diplomatic) and she said I was wrong. Kovach said Divine was harder and she said that he was right because “you have to ask nicely.”

I didn't have any words. I still don't. She went on this whole antiquated spiel about how no one knows how to ask for things nicely anymore. But whatever. She's just another entitled academic. It's not like I haven't dealt with people like her before. I'm just not used to directly interacting with them. Leaves was always the one who talked to the art snobs when he was showing me off. I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone at his exhibits. And if this professor was in any way representative of what that would have been like, I'm glad he spared me the trouble.

At least she pointed us in the direction of her TA. There was still like half an hour before class started, so Kovach and I tried to have a word with him to see if he knew anything else. I say tried, because this poor guy was definitely put off by Kovach. Wouldn't say a word until I kicked Kovach out. And I'd be lying if I said I couldn't understand why. I don't think Kovach quite gets how intimidating he can come across.

But once I got this guy alone, he was at least willing to open up a bit. Not going to name names, on the off chance that someone in whatever universe these are getting posted to reads this and finds a way back to me just to rat me out. Highly unlikely, but not impossible. I don't want to drag some hapless student who's just up to his eyeballs in debt into any of this mess. He's been working as a TA since he changed majors and he was basically stuck there to pay off his loans. He definitely wasn't looking for trouble, and from how anxious he was, I'm thinking he might have stumbled into some.

He confirmed that Garris was in the class when the professor said he was. Dude showed up for a lecture, asked some questions, talked to some students, and left. Remember how I mentioned that Garris had a sketch of some Drow in a red cloak? Well, I forgot to mention this last time, but Kovach had a part of his conspiracy board devoted to the red cloaks. It sounds like they're the people who moved into Red's territory, too. And apparently, Garris thought they had some connections to the Benevolent Order.

The TA wouldn't say much more than that, other than that we should come to the night course and we should say that we're enrolled with The Brotherhood. Apparently he told Garris the same thing. I don't actually know what this Brotherhood is. If it has anything to do with the Autumn Banquet, I'd hazard a guess that they have something to do with some religious sect that worships Brother Autumn. Maybe even the Autumn Banquet. There's still several hours to kill between now and the night class, so I got the chance to write this out at least. Not sure what I'm going to do after I finish this. The smart thing to do would be to try and find something I can use to suck up to the guards. Well, maybe. I've heard very few people speak with the sheer level of vitriol Hemlock pulled out when he told me he hoped he didn't see me at the Guard station.

When I get a moment, I'll have a word with Kovach. He has at least some knowledge of the criminal underground. He's got to have enough information on someone to get them caught. Or at least, he'll have enough of a lead that I can follow and get the Guard off my back. And I guess it wouldn't hurt to look and see if there are any apartments available for rent.