Chapter 458: Chapter 442 – Information Gathering 101, or How to Pretend to be a Stranger

“If the local people either looked on nonchalantly or reminded you to ‘mind your own business’ despite shady acts happening before them (like crimes confidently committed in broad daylight, or seedy hooded sorts preaching about some unheard of god-monsters) like it was nothing unusual, RUN.

 

They would likely be either in cahoots with whatever seedy stuff was going on or too far gone to be of any help against it. Never approach THAT sort of situation unless you are supremely confident that your team could handle it. Even then, it’s always better to have a battalion of the town guards with you, just in case.” - Haerkul of Clan Poisonrot, investigator constable from Elmaiya.

“Would you believe it!? So many years and all of a sudden the tailhunter was on the loose again. I swear, I have no idea why we bother to pay taxes for constables who can’t even handle this sort of outrage!” vocally claimed a middle-aged woman with vulpine features – features that were relatively common in the Deyos Barony – as she slammed her tankard of ale on the table. “Why, the Faerrels, good, honest people, those, left town because they were spooked by the recent uptick in disappearances… Where did them Faerrels left to again, dear?”

 

“Saelostov, my dear,” replied a quiet and rather taciturn-looking middle-aged man from the table he shared with several other men his age, all of whom looked accustomed to an honest life of labor in the ranches that were all over the area surrounding Deyosia, the region’s only and largest city. “The Faerrels left for Saelostov.”

 

“Right, Saelostov,” noted the middle-aged woman as she continued her rant. “I swear, if I was a couple decades younger and unmarried I’d be hiding in my house if I heard that sick bastard’s on the loose once more. Nobody they snatched ever returned, y’know?” she continued. “I’m just glad all four of my kids were boys. Damned Tailhunter ain’t into boys, so that’s a relief.”

 

The so-called “Tailhunter” the woman was vehemently cursing was what the locals of Deyosia had taken to calling the unknown culprit behind the many disappearances of women under thirty. One feature that all the victims shared was that they had at least a quarter of therian blood from the sort of vulpine breed that the woman was part of. Oddly, no full-blooded therians of the breed ever went missing, as the victims were all half, quarter, or further down the line in heritage.

 

Meanwhile, while the woman ranted long-windedly about how the guards and local constables were of no use, Aideen calmly sipped the ale in her tankard as she listened to every bit of potentially useful information from the woman’s rant and mentally noted them down in her mind. She had been the one to ask the woman about it, playing the curious traveler who had caught some news about the disappearances but knew little about it.

 

It was a trick that Aideen learned long ago when she was training and often worked with the Death’s Hands. An easy trick to learn about the local situation, where they simply leveraged the local people’s tendency to gossip and boast their knowledge of their hometown to outsiders. It took very little to trigger that sort of response, and all they needed to do was to play the curious outsider.

 

She had often even taken it further by pretending that she was a traveling bard. Everyone knew that bards would often make up songs about interesting things they ran across in their journey, and to have something about their hometown be sung about by one often became a point of pride for the locals of whichever town it happened to. 

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And Aideen did just that as she claimed to be a traveling bard – with Celia posing as a fellow traveler she met during her journey – and played a couple tunes to entertain the crowd in a local pub in exchange for a tankard of ale. Her skill with the harp had never dulled as she would often take the instrument out and play it when she was bored in her travels, so it was easy enough to captivate the locals.

 

In exchange, she not only got her tankard of ale from a widely smiling proprietor – quite a few new customers had been attracted to the establishment by her playing and singing – but also quickly found a local matron with a penchant for gossip who was all too eager to share with her. While there were many rumors and other uncertifiable things amongst what the matron said to her, there were some points that Aideen felt might be useful as well.

 

The matron was a local, born and raised in one of the ranches outside Deyosia, so she was all too familiar with the situation there. She even recalled certain details that others might have missed out or forgotten to take note of, details that directed Aideen’s suspicion a certain way, partly because the timing was a bit too close to call them coincidental.

 

Like how the old Baron’s favorite concubine passed away in childbirth with a stillborn baby just months before the first disappearances decades ago. 

 

On its own, that bit of information might not have been one that caught her curiosity, but the fact that said concubine was one-eighth therian of vulpine breed – the exact sort of people that the “Tailhunter” usually chose as victims – combined with it to make the coincidence into a suspicious one, when put together next to each other.

 

Then there was how the disappearances suddenly not only recurred, but increased after the old Baron’s death a decade ago. His eldest son and successor the new Baron was known to be of a militaristic mind, supposedly a ruthless man, who was not quite well-liked by the locals who favored the more laid-back old Baron.

 

None of the information the matron offered piqued Aideen’s curiosity as much as some gossip that the matron supposedly heard from another whose cousin’s sister-in-law’s daughter supposedly worked as a maid in the Baron’s mansion, that supposedly around a week before she arrived there had been a violent accident in the Baron’s mansion and the Baron himself was injured because of it.

 

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