The Song of Karamurat

[Seperallis]

The midday sun beamed upon the crowds, the uncomfortable burning heat on peoples' necks and shoulders and backs causing a musky miasma to blanket the small seaside market square; not even the incoming sea breezes could part the odoriferous sea of human stench, its salty taste pushing with it the fishy aromas of the nearby weirs, swirling the hazy brew amongst the vat of bodies to be boiled by the fires above into a vile concoction the likes to which the locals had long grown accustomed. Shop owners shouted to passersby to partake of their time, for "harmless" conversation, for stepping out and swindling those who gave more than a passing stare. Peddlers moved amongst the crowds with wares in hand seeking out those of means or those who did not appear local... and preferably both, with whom they could pass along their perfectly legitimately gained goods where the only stealing they partake in are those low prices, lowest!

A man to the left shouting about his being the freshest produce in the streets as it visibly began to turn in the heat; a woman on the right championing the unparalleled craftsmanship of her baskets, woven underwater from the freshest of reeds to preserve their strength and quality. The noise and the miasma and the choking dust in which so many bodies moved created an orderly mess of chaos in which one could quite easily mask oneself from those one wished to avoid.

Perfect for our protagonists.

The nature of the place itself gave rise to the atmosphere which generated within it. Inversheil was one of those seaside hamlets to which one only entered for three reasons: to quickly divest oneself of goods better left divested, to cheaply vest oneself of goods better left divested, or to divest oneself of problems better left in other lands with as few questions asked as possible.

Of course, such problems sometimes had a habit of following oneself, even to places like Inversheil...