Rodrick Grath's page

"Uh ... pleased to meet you," Rodrick offers the dwarf his hand.

Dorn and Vhailor see Rodrick Grath urgently weaving his way through the crowd toward them. "Vhailor, listen," he hails the gnome as he returns the last handshake and wish of success from the Trunauans he is passing, "can you keep an eye on Brinya while we're away? Just drop in on her now and then? With Banny and I both gone, she might need some support, or a friendly visit, or ... I don't know, just check on her?"

"You'll be at the funeral tonight," Rodrick half-asks, half-invites. "At sunset, in the Commons?"

"Some of the people on the list," Rodrick puts in nervously, "they're not bad people, just people looking to help out a fellow down on his luck. Daktani's almost always down on his luck, to hear him tell it, and being persecuted unfairly."

Rodrick lays a hand on his father's arm. "Dad. I'll explain later. Let's focus on the threat to the town right now."

Marikel makes his way generally forwards, but asks of Rodrick, "Where do you suggest? I was going to give Banny and Miss Alicia an hour, but suddenly it's seeming like a lot of damage can take place in that time."

"I ... I'm not sure," Rodrick stammers. "I guess ... I'd say start with the hound? If there's any trail to follow, it's not getting any fresher, and the more people cross it during their day, the harder it will be to follow. I'll have a word with the guard set on the site, make sure they'll let you through."

Rodrick sighs. "Dad lit into him last night about the pie-contest thing. And Dad ... is really good at blaming himself ... for things. I think there's part of him that thinks it would be only fitting."

Marikel and Vhailor spy Rodrick loitering anxiously near the front door. When he sees them exit the office, he hurries over to them. "I ... didn't say anything to Dad about this," he says apologetically. "Figure there's no point in him making a scene until we have the facts in hand. Did you get the Chief Defender's approval to investigate?"

Rodrick gets up to exit the school teacher's house as well, showing no inclination to stay behind and comfort his sister-in-law ... and to be fair, she's going to have to be leaving soon herself to meet her students. "I'll come with you to Ivory Hall," he volunteers. "Handle Dad, if he's there."

"That was...," Rodrick shifts uncomfortably. "Dad laid into him when the ladies complained about that pie thing. Doesn't have anything to do with this. Unless you think one of the pie ladies killed him."

"What I mean is that I don't think your father did it," Ali replies to Rodrick.

"Of course he didn't. No one here thinks he did. Do they?" He turns challenging eyes on Brinya.

"Somehow, I think that if your father found out, there'd be an enraged beating rather than a cut bowstring and a blow to the back of the head."

"What?!" Rodrick demands. "No! What kind of a person do you think my father is?"

Rodrick sighs heavily and corrects her. "Our father didn't approve. Kerst thought -- we all did -- that it would be better not to openly defy him."

"Did someone actually see him jump?"

"Didn't one of the patrol see him?"

Rodrick nods. "Inger. She was on watch in the southern tower. She was the one to sound the alarm."

"If'n it's only been your hand on the false knife so far, Rod, then we might have good odds of trackin' by scent, if we can get one of th' folk to lend us a dog. Don't Jess Meeson got a mutt?"

"Aye." Rodrick produces the substitute hopeknife, holding it daintily between his thumb and forefinger as though his hand hasn't been all over it. "Anyone have a sack or a cloak or something to wrap it in so the dog doesn't go straight for one of you after it trees me?"

Rodrick looks momentarily offended that Vhailor was watching him, then sighs as he recalls the bigger picture. "Maybe," he confesses, "if I knew what it was. She was asking about Kerst. Said he seemed upset about something and wouldn't talk to her about it. I told her I'd talk to him if I saw him ... which I didn't. When he didn't bunk at the barracks, I figured they'd made it up."

He turns to Marikel. "That would explain the hopeknife. If they moved the body and only realized his knife was missing afterward, they knew the missing knife would raise suspicions so they found a replacement. That means it's someone who knows enough about Trunau to know our traditions. It also means, if we can find Kerst's hopeknife, it's probably where he was attacked."

"No sign of his hopeknife," Marikel informs Roderick. "Would you know his sword? He has that."

The half-orc gives a half-shrug. "Standard issue weapon. Nothing special. Still, it was made at Clamor; Sara Morninghawk would know her own work."

Keeping anything from the body?

"Aye," Rodrick nods. "Best take him to Ivory Hall. The Chief Defender's expecting him." As the honor guard tends to moving the body, he steps in closer to Banny and continues in a more hushed tone. "I'm the only one who's held the knife since I took it out of the wall. I don't know how many people may have touched it before then, though." He looks to Marikel. "Well, Padre? Did he have his own hopeknife?"

The small knot moves out of the Longhouse toward Brinya's small house.

Sticking with the group, Alicia, or investigating something on your own?

"But did you look?" he insists. When a positive affirmation isn't forthcoming, he looks to the tarp-covered body and hesitates. Unable to bring himself to search the body, he ventures to Marikel, "Padre? You're a healer, aren't you? Would you check to see if he was carrying anything? A hopeknife? We could lay him out on the desk, respectful-like."

"And his hopeknife? Did you look for his hopeknife?" Rodrick asks brusquely.

Needing to hustle to keep up with Rodrick's intent Vhailor out-of-breath asks "What's different with Kerst's hopeknife? - anything on it that'd help us identify it?"

Rodrick answers Vhailor with a quick nod but fails to elaborate further. He hustles around the front of the building and bursts through the door, startling the Patrolmen who are still lingering a bit awkwardly around the dead body. "His weapons?" Rodrick demands of them breathlessly. "He was armed when you found him?"

"Don't know who... but it'd be a good place to start looking for answers?"

Rodrick meets the gnome's eyes and nods. "Come on," he invites him, bringing the hopeknife as he heads back to the front of the Longhouse, moving with renewed vigor.

The gnome follows the bereaved half-orc around the building, but Rodrick seems barely to notice Vhailor's overture. Instead, he is staring at the hopeknife he just pulled out of the mortar between the stones. "This isn't Kerst's," he says simply, turning it over in his hand. "So ... who put it here?"

Jagrin turns his face toward his oldest son inquisitively. Rodrick hesitates, glancing from his father to the Chief Defender, then lowers his gaze to the floor. "No," he responds flatly, "nothing I can think of."

"Dad, that wasn't anything...," Rodrick protests weakly. "I mean, he wasn't.... He wouldn't have...."

"Rodrick?" one of the search party answers. "No, it's Kerst."

Jagrin Grath freezes in place, and Halgra takes advantage of the moment to step quickly past him and twitch back the edge of the tarp just enough to reveal the dead man's face. The twin brothers are like enough that the uncanny veil of death might make identification difficult ... except that at that moment, Rodrick comes out the front door of the Longhouse. The palpable tension of the moment almost immediately checks his advance. "Who...? Dad? What is it?"

"Rodrick! Where can I find your brother?"

"Over by the pies," Rodrick hooks his thumb in the indicated direction. "With Banny."

Rodrick tries to follow the gnome's anatomical logic for a moment, then gives up. "How do you eat a sandwich?" he asks wickedly.

"Nary a skerrick of cutlery to be found across the whole table! Using ones fingers.." making a thoroughly disgusted snort "...I mean probably the same hands they use to..." half making a motion of wiping his arse before catching himself and coughing instead.

Rodrick chuckles. "Only pair of hands they have," he points out. "Do gnomes keep an extra set for the latrine? Or use one hand for everyday and the other on formal occasions?"

Rodrick stifles a laugh. "That was me," he whispers to Vhailor as he tries to lead him away from the tables. "I always said I was Kerst when I got caught."

"Are there many rules for an event such as this?... or is it as barbaric as it seems?"

Rodrick is watching the dispute with more amusement than consternation. He shrugs. "This is the first I've seen of it. I suppose it's for Banny to say."

"True enough," Rodrick nods. "We have to haul lumber from miles out to maintain the palisades and watchtowers. Father and Halgra are hoping to convince the Council to set aside a few of the fields for reforestation, though it will make the farmers unhappy. Everyone prefers grain and vegetables in the hand to lumber a generation or more from now." He looks up at Banny's newest announcement. "What's she up to now? Looks like Kerst is in the middle of it, as usual."

"No, I...," Rodrick frowns, unconsciously tightening his grip on the puppet and forcing its limbs into uncomfortable-looking contortions. "I wasn't intending Kerst to be the villain; I thought we'd be a pair, fighting side by side against the ... ghost-rats, or whatever."

"If they looked the same then it'd be hard to tell which was villain and which was not... especially if you looked away, they might change when you weren't looking" tapping his nose knowingly and upsetting the lay of his lensless glasses.

Rodrick looks bewildered for a moment, then frowns. "So ... you think Kerst is the evil twin?" He glances down into the crowd long enough to overhear Banny's announcement but doesn't react to it otherwise.

"It's a puppet... of you. It's a sheet of vellum upon which you can write your own stories... a chord of song with lyrics as yet unwritten." manipulating the arms and legs as he does "Our hero forlorn and despondent... rises to the call of battle and overcomes the enemy..." trailing off and blinking a bit as he realises that he's come with only one toy, and for true puppet-play there would be a need for more "I can make you some dastardly fiends to slay as well? - demons, or devils... or rats..."

Rodrick laughs heartily. "Rats -- now there's a fearsome foe for a hero to fight! Make them ghost rats: they say the old mine shafts in Bloodmarch Hill are haunted by ghost rats ... although I always thought Halgra Blackblade started the rumor to keep the kids out of them." He examines the figure with some interest, folding the arms and legs. "Could be my brother, too, you know. How about you make me another one just like this so I have a matched pair, and we'll call it even, what do you say?"

Quizzically, Rodrick takes the manikin gingerly between his fingers. "Well, it's...," he begins, "... what is it?"

Marikel nods to Rodrick as he approaches but frowns at his words to Ruby before politely correcting him.

"Ruby is not a little girl anymore. This one won't be hiding with the children should trouble arise. She'll be fighting with the rest of us adults. And I'm sure she'll make us all proud. How is your weapon's training, Ruby?"

Ruby looks alarmed, as if she's been called on in class to answer a question about an assignment she hasn't done. Rodrick smiles to cover for her. "Just keep the pointy end toward the orcs," he advises her. "Unless, of course ... well ... we'll hope it won't come to that, as long as the Patrol are standing." He claps her on the shoulder encouragingly and, for once, seems pleased to see Vhailor's approach. "Well, Mr. Falk, what do you think of our Hopeknife Ceremony, now you've participated in one?"

Rodrick crosses the stage to where Ruby is standing with Marikel to congratulate the blushing girl. "For a moment there, I was afraid you were going to pull against us all by yourself," he says, leaning down toward her ear with a smile. "My brother and I sure would have looked foolish if everyone saw one little girl pull us off our feet." He winks.