The Lady In Red Really Wants Me Dead

Episode 1: The Smallest Dragon You Ever Saw

"When I was a kid, my mom used to say I'd grow up the day I stopped looking for trouble, like any good halfling does. I'm forty-six years old now, and trouble looks for me."                                                                                            Jack O, Halfling Detective

Jack crossed his hairy feet nonchalantly, reading the newspaper as he leaned against the wall. He took a drag from the hand-rolled cigarette that hung perilously on his lips, hoping the taste would mask the stink of the city. A halfling could always hope. The smoke forced him to squint as he swept through the headlines: A mysterious string of murders. The princess of distant Chirenia, kidnapped. Another mad necromancer sent to Grimbledawn in a straightjacket.

Just another morning in Caedwind City, and of little importance to a small player in a big game. None of them looked like workable cases.

Not for Jack at least.

Glancing over the newspaper, he flicked the burnt up cigarette on the pavement. Through the hurried strides of tall-folk legs, across the busy street, the six story office building was almost mocking him. Whenever he looked at it —with those immaculate white arches and those perfectly red bricks— Jack couldn't help but gag a little, and it wasn't just the stink of the goons inside. It made him feel like a hungry pup staring down a fat direwolf, hoping to catch some scraps if they ever fell off the plate. The letters were painted over the main door, shimmering gold and slightly irritating: Pendreon Detective Agency.

If this was a game Jack was playing, then they were the biggest players in town. No doubt their boys were already working on those murders, looking for that missing elven princess, and all Jack could do was wait here and fish for whatever they wouldn't take.

He'd had little luck this past week. In fact, he was more than a little desperate for a job. Grundli had given him that look this morning, as he left the office, and then the speech:

"I know it's hard out there, but it's also hard in here, ya know? I need money. Golden Griffins, Jack! Barbershop's barely bringing in any as it is. I can't exactly charge folks for asking why I have a four foot detective living under my stairs, now can I?"

Grundli was a good enough dwarf, honest as they came, and he had very honestly explained that Jack had one week, or he'd find his office — and everything in it— on the sidewalk.

Even Sting.

But no, Jack knew the dwarf didn't have the heart to do that to the little guy, not to Sting. His furniture and belongings were an entirely different matter, however.

If it came to that, it would only be a matter of time before Drillby's boys got to him. They had come by the shop more than once already, looking for Jack. Probably to settle things over that whole nasty bit of business a couple of months back.

Folding the newspaper, Jack reached for the tobacco pouch in his pocket. He'd need another one if there was more waiting to be done. He was running his tongue through the edge of the rolling paper when he finally caught a whiff of them: scraps, falling off the plate.

Across the street, two Pendreon goons —half-orcs by the look of their jutting jaws and porcine noses— were throwing a man face first into the sidewalk.

Jack stuffed the half-rolled cigarette into his pocket and rushed into the crowd, not bothering to look up at the surprised faces as he weaved between the tall-folk's legs. On the street, aether-wheels rushed past with a hollow iron howl, threatening to flatten any halfling that crossed their path. Chances were, the drivers didn't even see Jack standing there.