Willfully stupid and poor (Ardent Cashail)
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Ky had warned her, she could not even deny it to herself. Yngdir and Rasuil had also showed incredible caution in these swamps, an important fact given how skilled the two were. Ashena even had warned her of the great dangers found amidst the marsh grasses and malodorous mists. She had even seen lizardmen and strange ghostly wisps proving that the kobolds were the least of her worries here. This was not a case of being uninformed, it was a case of being willfully stupid.
“Now if I can just shake down the ‘bolds for uh….” She does quick mental arithmetic as she lays in the cattails with algae forming designs on her leather armor. “...273 more gold that will place me just about where I was before I went to....” She continued in that line of thought with tabulations along some large ledger that existed in her head. For all her general dimness, she was a snap at math and kept her own monetary accounts with some degree of skill. She had been in the red for so long she was starting to wonder if adventuring gains were akin to winning some type of contest rather than on par with being employed.
She was shaking down the kobolds, there was no other way to say it. She did not give a wit for any damage they did to Peltarch, big stuffy rich people conclave it was. She was not even sure if the kobolds were actively causing anyone harm! She never saw them out of this godforsaken swamp so perhaps they kept to themselves, somehow amassing surprising amounts of coin. How they came about such riches was beyond her but if there was some way to get it without killing them, she would have. The image of grabbing one of the scaly little jerks and holding it upside down while she shook it almost made her giggle. If it was only that easy, she would be here twice a day to get her take.
But there was a danger the young sneak had forgotten about and that was the rats. One of them was creeping on her now as she lay there being some kind of swamp accountant. It crawled stealthily along the bank, nose pressed close to the ground as its whiskers held drops of fetid water that beaded to the end before dropping as delicate gems. It was creeping closer upon her boot and opened its mouth to expose long yellowed front teeth moments before sinking into her calf.
The language that sprang from that girl’s mouth would have sent a Calimport sailor to the temple for a week to beg forgiveness. It was a loud high pitched outcry of profanity as she yanked the offended leg back to her and proceeded to use the other to kick the rat in the face. It shrieked at the first kick and tried to retreat but at that moment the streambank gave way plunging both of them into the stream. The rat found this much less traumatic than the half elf. It could swim.
She went down into the shallow stream, hitting hard enough to sink into the rotting vegetable mass that made up the bottom of these swamps before coming up sputtering and coughing with algae clinging to her dark skin and weeds in her hair. The rat took advantage of this to swim rapidly away, somewhere in its tiny rat brain it was making a primitive note not to bite people who could kick so hard. However, the noise she had made had drawn every kobold for half a mile to where the water had been disturbed and the soaked and irate woman stood with the fletching of her arrows dark from the stagnant water. It took a moment to soak in the magnitude of the danger she was now in before she stumbled and grappled ashore and slid several times on the muddy bank to gain purchase on the land. Then she started to run toward the pass between the trees she was fairly sure was how she got here. Her boots squelched loudly and her cloak was a heavy blanket on her back as darts pinged and pattered on the trees around her, hisses seemingly on her heels.
It ended up costing her Two damn gold to rest in the Mermaid’s crowded common room and another four even more damned gold for the hot water to bathe and soak her armor, forced on her by the innkeeper before he would allow her near the stairs.