From alt.pub.dragons-inn Sat Aug 26 09:45:19 1995 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:8654 Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!simtel!col.hp.com!csn!yuma!holly.ACNS.ColoState.EDU!not-for-mail From: arsmith@holly.ACNS.ColoState.EDU (Alan Smith) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [NTY] Mysteries I -- mysteries discovered. Date: 23 Aug 1995 22:01:03 -0600 Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523 Lines: 120 Message-ID: <41gthv$1d30@holly.ACNS.ColoState.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: holly.acns.colostate.edu The following people write for/help with the [NTY] Thread. Kelly J. Cooper (kjc@cs.rutgers.edu) Steven Hutchison (hutch@ibeam.intel.com) Alan Smith (arsmith@holly.colostate.edu) And special thanks to... Claudia Mastroianni (cmarie@max.tiac.net) For formatting, seeing that things are spelled right, and...well, the rest I don't really need to tell you about. The Great Mother was created by Andy Solberg and is on loan to [NTY]. The Bismanians were created by Alan Smith, all except Jorma who is on permanent loan to Alan, barring his creator coming back. This story may be kept in both private and free public electronic and hard-copy archives, all other rights reserved. ================================================================= In a congregation of 3,000 members of the island race known as Bismanians, a single hundred of peace officers is generally considered adequate to maintain order. Provided, of course, they know what they are doing and do it well. In the Bismanian colony of It-At, situated in the city of Generica, far from the home islands, the task of organizing and directing the colony police force fell to Baranamon Oiovarda. "Mon," as he was called in the Bismanian custom of selecting a single syllable from the first name, did not delude himself with the notion that he was any kind of a supercop, and he was the first to admit that the law enforcement in It-At was not perfect; indeed, far from it. On the other hand, and he was the first to admit this too, law enforcement in It-At was a sight better than what the Generican Guard was doing in the area immediately surrounding It-At, a section called "low town." In fact, Bismanian justice had advanced to the point where a body could not turn up out of nowhere, as had the body of one of It-At's leading citizens, without prodigious efforts being made to find and punish the killer. "Annun Thorharma," the watch officer read off his notebook as Mon looked at the naked, beaten, broken body as it lay in the warehouse on the low city side of the colony. "Citizen, 54 years old, owner of three merchant vessels, the _Tradewind_, the _Dealer_ and the _Discount_. All profitable ventures: she brought in 100 kilosheckels last year." "I know her," Mon replied. "She was an avid politician. Only person to give Pal Lintesul the grilling he deserved when he negotiated that trade agreement with Rameshan. She also sponsored that bill to have us check the licensed prostitutes for joystix addictions, remember?" "Vividly," the watch officer replied. He was always in a conflict about working with the LPs, as his wife called them. He enjoyed it, she didn't. "You think some joystix dealer did it?" "It's possible. It's always bad to theorize before you know your facts. Let's see what we can find out from the body first." Annun Thorharma was laying in much the same position marionette puppets lie in when their master has thrown them with some force against the nearest wall. Her arms and legs were splayed akimbo, and bent grotesquely where the bones had been broken, presumably (as evidenced by the bruising and lack of a laceration save where the bone tore through) by a series of savage blows, with some sort of blunt object. Her skull was crushed in by the same (or a similar) object. The rest of her body, which was totally unclothed, was covered with various cuts and stab wounds, small and large some which may have been fatal, others which may not even have been noticed. On the whole Mon and the watch officer both got the vauge impression that there was some kind of a pattern to the cuts, but deliberate examination didn't show anything. Around the body, throughout the rest of the warehouse, was nothing out of the ordinary: no weapon, no clothes, no unexplained footprints in the thick dust that coated the floor, no speck of blood. In fact, it was this last lack that troubled Mon the most as he first thought on the murder. "Where's all the blood?" he asked, idly. "Those were pretty savage wounds." "Possibly under the body?" the watch officer suggested. "I can have my men move her, if there's nothing more you want to see." "Do that," Mon replied. He watched dispassionately as the watch officers placed Annun Thorharma on a stretcher and carried her off, then stared passionately at what lay beneath her. There was, indeed, blood, in specks and droplets where her wounds had touched the ground, but the great pool which he had expected was not there. --------- --------- Being seen was NOT something the corporal in charge of lambda squad of the ShunRangers was used to. He felt vulnerable. The fact that the three other members of his squad were there, hidden in nooks and crannies as they paced along beside him helped a little, but he couldn't help surveying the buildings on either side, thinking of where danger had come from, back in the shunned center.... He blinked his eyes and coughed, the shock of which brought him back to the present, infinitely more comfortable reality. Ambling through the streets of It-At, keeping a discreet if watchful eye on Palandun Lintesul's aunt Silvenfrin and her charge, Jorma, was usually a job undertaken by the colony's watch, but apparently Mon Oiovarda had had to pull most of his guards for some special duty, and the ShunRangers' captain had volunteered them to fill in the gaps. The Shun's horrors could wait another day. An arrangement that was okay with the corporal, who could, while he was taking his stroll, keep an eye on the mage-shop he ran in civilian life. Indeed, it would be interesting to see things through mage-sight again while on duty. One so rarely did it in the Shun.... He blinked twice. He blinked again. He stared. He switched mage sight off, then on again. He switched it off again and began a rapid-fire series of finger-and-hand gestures he and his squad had worked out to send messages to each other. The substance of his missive (the part that was not orders on how the squad was to deploy and what it was to do) was actually fairly brief. It was: "Quarry lost. We've been following an illusion."