[IRP] Return to the Dread Isle

[Alusq]

Holding close the heavy brown cloak she'd recently taken to to avoid pickpocketing hands sliding through its cut, Renata strode towards the docks to see what the men in the inn had been talking about. Mercenary work wasn't glamourous, but it was a step above being a glorified highwayman. For several weeks, Renata had lived her life on the roads between various places in Lycia, unable to stray into any highly-populated location for long for fear of arrest, and after the sum she'd received for her stolen valkyrie horse had run out she first resorted to the charity of gullible travelers who mistook her for a traveling nun of some sort before giving into the fact that it would be much more efficient to extort them outright. It was a depressing existence, living off of either pity or terror, depressing enough that Renata had decided to stake everything on a trip to Badon, where the law famously made exceptions for just about anything and anyone and a place where most of her old compatriots from the Church of the Preservation wouldn't dare stray. She thought of the tome stowed in her small pack, which hadn't been proving very worth carrying these days compared to her sword, but perhaps it could see some use against whatever cursèd abominations awaited her on Valor...

The Dread Isle. It needed no explanation on how it got its name, not even to Renata.  She'd inquired with the patrons of the bar to learn of the nature of this mission setting out for the isle soon; it had taken a mug of ale for her to ask loudly enough to be taken seriously. Renata had no strong feelings about iconoclasm, but she did have ample experience in a certain strain of it from her old life of going door to door to collect sacrilegious tomes of sorcery for mass burnings. The irony was not lost on her that this was her first opportunity to legitimately make some money, made especially ripe by the fact that no one Renata had met in this place had recognised her, not even those with ties to the clergy. The loss of her horse and her scarf, the most defining article of her appearance, had apparently worked wonders for her fledgling ability to skulk around unnoticed.
... "Make some money". My ambitions have certainly made some compromises... What began with a flowery dream of overthrowing the Church had given way to the will to survive, a feral force with which Renata had been almost entirely unfamiliar before she had murdered a clergyman on that fateful day months ago. Renata knew she couldn't let her past define her: she would keep her options open, and this mission was an opportunity to ingratiate herself to the Church, an organization that—

"Well? Whattaya want; knitting lessons?!" The impatient grunting of the mercenary in front of whom Renata was now standing jolted her back to the real world.
"I want to speak with Wratt," Renata replied with a no-nonsense flatness.